FINAL EXAM TAKES PLACE ON MONDAY 27TH OF SEPTEMBER AT 16-18. PLACE: PINNI A, Paavo Koli lecture hall .

SECOND CHANCE TO TAKE THE EXAM (OR RE-TAKE IT) WILL BE ON MONDAY 25TH OF OCTOBER AT 16-18. PLACE PINNIB5069.

Visual culture makes up a significant part of a particular national culture or civilisation and encodes the main values and attitudes of the people and state. For understanding Russia with her dramatic history this is particularly significant. The course aims at providing the students with knowledge of the Russian visual arts and contemporary visual environment with its semiotics and encoded social values.

Content of the course

Starting from the Russian icon and the 19th century painting, the course concentrates on Russian avant-garde art, the Soviet poster and Soviet/Russian art-photography with special attention to the following topics:

• The Russian avant-garde: in literature and in visual arts;
• The history of the Soviet poster;
• Photography and propaganda;
• Gender in Russian painting, poster and photography;
• Censorship in visual arts under Stalin;
• Famous Russian war photographs and photographers;
• Socialist realism in the visual arts (1950s-1980s);
• The re-emergence of fine-art photography in the 1970s;
• Outstanding contemporary Russian photographers.

The final part of the course deals with the Post-modernist 'visual quotation' in Russian pop-culture.

The course is organized in cooperation with Aleksanteri Institute's Russian and East European Master's School.

Syllabus:

Week 1

Mon 6 Sept:

Introduction: the roots of the Russian visual culture.

The icon as an entrance into spiritual world.

Lubok and the "low culture".

Tue 7 Sept:

The Russian art in  the 18-19th centuries.

Critical realism of Fedotov and the Wanderers (Itinerants): Perov, Kramskoi, Repin.

The national idea and the national ideal in the Russian visual arts: Nesterov, Vasnetsov, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Glazunov.

Art for the sake of art: Mir iskusstva (the World of Art movement) and the Silver Age of Russian Culture: Levitan and Chekhov, Vrubel and Lermontov,

The idea of the feminine: Petrov-Vodkin and his reference to the spiritual values of the Russian icon, Kustodiev and his idealisation of provincial low-middle class life,

Refined  aesthetism of Zinaida Serebriakova

Mark Shagal's flying lovers  and his representation of the Jewishness.

Wed 8 Sept:

Birth of Futurism.

The futurists manifesto "A slap in the publics face".

David Burliuk as the father of Russian futurism.

Mikhail Larionov and Natalya Goncharova.

Futurism in literature and in visual arts.  Book design and experiments in poetry. Kamensii, Kruchonych, Xlebnikov

Mayakovsky and Burliuk.

Malevich an Kruchonych. The first futurist opera The victory over the sun. 1913.

The birth of Malevich's The Black Square.

Malevich and his UNOVIS group.

Suprematism (non-objective art).

Malevich and his heritage today postmodernism.

Fri 10 Sept:

Pavel Filonov and his idea of the ?made? artwork.

Constructivism. Tatlin and his fantastic projects.

El Lissitzky, Bauhaus and Soviet propaganda. Birth of new visual language in photography and cinema. Dziga Vertov and His  Man with a moviecamera.

Alexander Rodchenko  and "The October Group".  

WEEK 2

Mon 13 Sept:

Story of the  Soviet poster. Dmitri Moor.

Arts under Stalin.  The doctrine of the Socialist realism.

Censorship and purges. Gustav Klutsis.

Manipulation with the works of art and photographs.

Tue 14 Sept:

The Socialist realism in the post-war Soviet Russia. The gender aspect of the socialist realism.

Search of the national idea. Ilya Glasgunov.

Depicting a woman: Socialist realists (Samokhvalov, Deineka, Laktionov against their predesessors  Zinaida Serebriakova, Mikhail Nesterov, Kuz'ma Petrov-Vodkin, Boris Kustodiev, 

Dissident and underground arts. The Bulldozer exhibition.

Ernest Neizvestnyi and leader of the state. Nikita Chrushchev.

Mikhail Shemiakin.

Visual arts in the post-modern times.

The Mit'ki group.  Komar and Melamid

Wed 15 Sept:

Photography as propaganda and as visual art.

Famous war photographs.

Photography in Russia in 1980s.

Photography in Russia today.

Documentary and fine-art-photography.

Photogphaphers of St.Petersburg

Fri 17 Sept:

Revision. Workshop and discussion on photography and visual arts.

Selected Literature:

Bowlt, John E and Matich, Olga. Laboratory of Dreams: The Russian Avant-Garde And Cultural Experiment. NY, 1999.

Bown, Matthew Cullerne. Art under Stalin. New York : Holmes & Meier, 1991.

Condee,  Nancy.  ed..Soviet Hieroglyphics. Visual Culture in Late Twentieth-Century Russia. London, 1995

Douglas, Charlotte. Kazimir Malevich. London, 1994

Elliott, David. New Worlds: Russian Art and Society, 1900-37. London, 1989.

Gray, Camille. The Great Experiment: Russian Art 1863-1922. Thames and Hudson, Ltd. London: 1962.

Kelly,  Catriona and Shepherd, David eds. Constructing Russian culture in the age of revolution, 1881-1940. Oxford : Oxford University Press, 1998.

King, David. The Commissar Vanishes: The falsification of photographs and art in Stalin Russia.-  Edinburgh, 1997.

Lavrentiev, Alexander. Alexander Rodchenko. Photography. 1924-1954. Koln, 1995.

Tarasov, Oleg.   Icon and Devotion. Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia.- London, 2002.

Enrollment via NettiOpsu