Art and Faith

A Self-Portrait (Boris Kustodiev, 1912)

KUSTODIEV Boris Mikhailovich

Born: 23 February 1878, Astrakhan

Died: 26 May 1927, Leningrad

My work gives me heartaches, and these agitations, which go away after some three or four hours, often change into disappointments. My painting sometimes seems so unnecessary, and this junk and rubbish often shames me. I so love the vibrancy of colour, but, I cannot seem to transmit the full meaning of it all, and in this, I find tragedy.

Boris Kustodiev

This youth from beyond the Volga, talented beyond compare, is the splendour of our academy; he is our hope for the future.

Ilya Repin

A Portrait of Ivan Bilibin (Boris Kustodiev, 1901)

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev was born on 23 February (7 March, new style) 1878 into the family of an instructor at the local spiritual seminary. He studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in St Petersburg (1896-1903), where one of his instructors was the famed artist Ilya Repin. He belonged to the Mir Isskustva (World of Art) movement and was a member of the Union of Russian Artists. Ilya Repin had the young artist assist him in the painting of the monumental The Session of the Supreme Council of State (1901-03, now in the Russian Museum in St Petersburg). At the same time, his skill as a virtuoso portraitist was evident, as seen in his A Portrait of Ivan Bilibin (1901). Later, from 1908, he also worked in the field of sculptural portraiture. In addition, during 1905 to 1907, he drew caricatures for the magazines Zhupel (Bugaboo) and Adskaya Pochta (The Infernal Mail).

A Portrait of Fyodor Shalyapin (Boris Kustodiev, 1922)

He lived in St Petersburg and Moscow, but, he frequently travelled into the most picturesque corners of the Russian provinces, most of all into the cities and villages of the Volga region where he was born, and he made depicted its traditional way of life in his cycles Carnivals, Rural Holidays, and Fairs, and he also painted the varied colourful human types found there in the cycles Merchants, Merchant Wives, and Beauties in the Bath. The first picture of this type was The Fair (1906, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), it was intended to be part of an unpublished series of lubki (popular prints). This series and related canvasses, such as A Portrait of Fyodor Shalyapin (1922, in the Russian Museum) are similar to colourful prints depicting Old Russia. He perceived the Revolution as a bright carnival, a spirit shown in The Bolshevik (1920, now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow), done in the style of the old traditional lubki.

By the Volga (Boris Kustodiev, 1922)

By 1916, paralysis left Kustodiev in a wheelchair, but, he continued to actively work in different media of art, continuing his popular Volga cycle. After the Revolution, he created his best book illustrations, especially for Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk by Nikolai Leskov and Russia by Zamyatin. Boris Mikhailovich died in Leningrad on 26 May 1927.

Art Katalog: zhivopis i grafika

http://www.art-catalog.ru/artist.php?id_artist=12 (in Russian)

REPIN Ilya Yefimovich

Born:  24 July 1844, Chuguyev, Kharkov Guberniya

Died: 29 September 1930, “Penatakh”, village of Kuokkala on the Karelian Isthmus

I wish to recreate a correct and whole picture of life in its full essence, in its full animated perception, to being into complete harmony the manner of the people depicted and the whole vital movement of the spirit in my paintings… this task is immense. I try to reproduce this ideal, which is an aspiration of most intelligent people, striving to live up to the highest ethical and aesthetical demands!

Ilya Repin

The portraiture of Repin reached the highest peaks known to the artistic spirit. Some of them are simply stunning in approach and execution.

Aleksandr Benois

Prayer Over the Chalice (Ilya Repin, beginning of the 1860s)

Ilya Yefimovich Repin, one of the greatest Russian artists, was born in Chuguyev in Kharkov gouberniya on 24 July (5 August, new style) 1844 into the family of a Great Russian military veteran settled in the region. His first formal artistic training was at the local school for military topographers (1854-57), and then he studied with I. M. Bunakov, a local iconographer. From 1859, when he was only 15-years-old, he undertook commissions to paint icons and church frescoes.

A Newspaper Vendor in Paris (Ilya Repin, 1873)

After moving to St Petersburg in 1863, he studied at the drawing school of the Society of the Encouragement of the Arts. Whilst studying there, he was introduced to the famous artist Ivan Kranskoi, and he continued his training at the Academy of Fine Arts (1864-71). Living on a stipend granted him by the Academy, he travelled through France and Italy from 1873 to 1876, where he thoroughly absorbed the currents found in Impressionism and Symbolism. In 1877, he returned to Chuguyev, then, he went to Moscow, and from 1882 he lived in St Petersburg. He moved into his much-loved estate “Penatakh” near Kuokkala on the Karelian Isthmus in 1900. Repin was one of the most active members in the exhibitions of the Peredvizhniki (Wanderers) and he warmly supported the Mir Iskusstva (World of Art) movement in the early 1900s.

Christ Raises the Daughter of Jairus (Ilya Repin, 1871)

His early religious paintings done according to the programme of the Academy’s exhibitions such as Job and His Friends (1869) and Christ Raises the Daughter of Jairus (1871) already show his surprising gift of artistic-psychological concentration, a skill that subordinated all the means at his disposal to create a major dramatic impact. He became a sensation with his Burlaki (Bargehaulers on the Volga) (1870-73), a work he completed only after doing numerous studies, some of which were painted whilst he was on a voyage down the Volga with fellow-artist Fyodor Vasiliev. The youthful Repin created a picture that is redolent of the impressively bright expressiveness of nature, yet, it also rings with a terrible force of protest that is ripening in these outcasts of society.

Refusing Confession (Ilya Repin, 1885)

The best works by Repin became landmarks of Russian social consciousness. Pathos and protest were inseparably connected in them at first, as in the solemn, yet, also sarcastic, Easter Procession in Kursk Guberniya (1880-83), now in the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. His other social protest works divide into two main parallel streams. Thus, together with his “revolutionary cycle” about the tragic disorder in society, Refusing Confession (1879-85), They did not Expect Him (1884), The Arrest of the Anarchist (1880-92), and The Demonstration on 17 October 1905 (1907), he also painted canvasses lauding the pomp and circumstance surrounding the ceremonial façade of the Empire, such as The Reception of the Small-Holding Elders by Tsar Aleksandr Aleksandrovich (1885) and The Solemn Session of the Supreme Council of State (1901-03). His spirited brush was saturated with a powerful emotional force in depicting the historical tales found in The Zaporozhe Cossacks Write a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1878-91) and Tsar Ivan Grozny Murders His Son Ivan (1885). Now and again, these emotions literally splashed outside the canvasses. In 1913, the iconographer A. Balashov, positively hypnotized by Repin’s portrayal of the mad tsar Ivan Grozny, slashed the painting with a knife. This became the genesis of a public debate between Repin and M. A. Voloshin about the boundaries between art and reality.

A Portrait of Baroness Varvara Iskul von Hildebrandt (Ilya Repin, 1889)

Repin’s portraiture is amazingly lyrical and attractive. He created sharply-characterised general human studies such as A Peasant with an Evil Eye and The Protodeacon (both 1877), numerous depictions of prominent cultural figures such as Modest Mussorgsky (1881), P. A. Strepetov (1882), Pavel Tretyakov (1883), and several of Lev Tolstoy. He also created graceful portraits of figures in high society such as the Baroness Varvara Iskul von Hildebrandt (1889). His canvasses featuring his family are especially colourful and sincere, as in An Autumn Bouquet (Daughter Vera Repina) (1892), and a whole series of paintings featuring his second wife, Natalia Nordmann-Severova. He was also a virtuoso at graphic portraits done in pencil or charcoal, such as in works portraying E. Duze (1891), Princess M. K. Tenisheva [1898], and Valentin Serov (1901). Repin was also a skilled and exemplary teacher, being the professor-leader of his own atelier (1894-1907), and the rector of the Academy of Fine Arts (1898-99), whilst simultaneously teaching in the school workshop of Princess Tenisheva.

What Freedom! (Ilya Repin, 1903)

Even in his old age, he continued to astonish the public. The apogee of his impressionistic-picturesque freedom, and at the same time, a sign of his deep insight into the psychology of his subjects, was found in his portrait studies for The Solemn Session of the Supreme Council of State (1901-03). In his mystifying and contradictory painting What Freedom! (1903), with a young couple rejoicing on the shores of the iced-up Neva, Repin expressed an ambivalent attitude to the new generation, one could call it “love-hostility”.

Christ Wearing the Crown of Thorns (Ilya Repin, 1913)

After the October Revolution in 1917, the artist found himself outside of Russia as the part of the Karelian Isthmus where his estate, “Penatakh”, was located became part of independent Finland. It became part of Russia again only in 1946, after the artist’s death. In 1922-25, he painted some of his best religious canvasses, especially the pitch-dark tragic work Golgotha (now in the Art Museum of Princeton University in the USA). In spite of high-level invitations, as was shown by a letter from Klimenty Voroshilov in 1926, he did not return to his native land, although he kept in close contact with his friends there, especially K. I. Chukovsky. Ilya Repin died on 29 September 1930 in his beloved “Penatakh”. In 1937, Chukovsky issued Repin’s memoirs and an anthology of articles concerning his art entitled The Distant Close One (Dalekoye Blizkoye). The book has been reprinted numerous times up to the present.

Art-Katalog: zhivopis i grafika

http://www.art-catalog.ru/artist.php?id_artist=24 (in Russian)

The portrait at the top of the article is by Valentin Serov, and dates from 1892.          

Stepan Razin [Boris Kustodiev, 1918]

Stepan Razin is one of the colorful rogues of Russian history. He and and his merry crew of Cossack cut-throats are the Russian equivalent of the jolly buccaneers of the Spanish Main. By the way, Stepan Razin is a Russian figure, and if you hear Galician Uniate claims that he was “Ukrainian”, that is ridiculous. I cannot understand why those people steal from our history. Oh, well… consider the source. 

The Prayer of an Expectant Mother (Dmitri Petrov, 2005)

This is the Mother’s Day picture par excellence. The picture says it all, so, there are no words to say.

To all our mothers:

THANK YOU!

Victory! (Pyotr Krivogonov, no date (1960s?))

Today is VICTORY DAY! Glory to all our veterans of World War II, of all nationalities, who rid the world of the Nazi menace. If this had not been done, the world would be a sadder place.

NEVER FORGET their sacrifice!

NEVER FORGET the innocent victims!

NEVER FORGET the cost that was paid!

If we forget, we shall be doomed to repeat it, under a new face, assuredly, but, it would be the same old horror. That is why you should never listen to those who advise you to “move on”. Be it in one’s private life, or in the larger life of society, this advice is always destructive and malicious. We must always be mindful of the past, so that we can draw the proper lessons from it. A person or society laking a past is a soulless golem, never forget that.

To all our veterans, wherever they may be, whatever nationality they may be, or whatever was the form of their service:

THANK YOU!

It cannot be said often enough or loudly enough. We honour you. 

The Soul of the Russian People (Mikhail Nesterov, 1916)

Some of the staunchest supporters of the OCA have been Anglo-Saxon converts without ties to a traditional Orthodox nationality. They do not realise that if you sever a branch from the tree, it dies. That is what the OCA is, a branch cut off from the Mother tree of the Church of Russia. To regain life, the people of the OCA must rejoin themselves to the Mother Church. The delusions of Alexander Schmemann must be cast aside, for they are nothing but hindrances to unity in Christ.

Orthodoxy is a living family, it comes to us in all-too-human vesture. For instance, you can be “Greek” Orthodox or “Russian” Orthodox, these are legitimate expressions of the Faith. There are smaller groups such as Rumanians and Serbs that are legit too. However, there is no such thing as “American” Orthodoxy. That is an illusion ginned up by the SVS and Again crowd. It is a discarnate monstrosity lacking bones and sinews; it is a soulless golem fabricated by Schmemann and his lot in the 60s.

Look at this painting! It illustrates the rootedness of Russian Orthodoxy. Greek Orthodoxy (and the other smaller groups, too) is rooted just as solidly. Russian Orthodoxy has always been more “multi-cultural” than any other expression of Orthodoxy. Many peoples, many languages, and many expressions of faith are found within it. Can you believe that the Syosset apparat is passing the lie that the MP is going to dismiss all American-born priests? What utter delusion and prelest! Which would you want to belong to? A world-wide, powerful, and vibrant Church of many nationalities or to an impotent sect that limits itself to one ethnos and one region?

Look at the painting! Who is in the forefront of the image? A young boy. And a little child shall lead them. Whom do you wish to follow? The grinning corpse of Alexander Schmemann, or this little boy? I choose the latter. What about you?

Holy Rus (Mikhail Nesterov, 1905)

I was searching for an image that properly embodies what I feel concerning the unity of our Russian Orthodox Church in America. This, I say, is where the rubber hits the road! We must put Christ in our lives first of all, as Blessed Laurus the Silent did. Because he did so, there is now unity between the MP and the ROCOR. I would say to all in the OCA to put Christ first, and not Schmemann first, as you are doing now. You were led astray by a fanciful pied-piper. We want you back home. CHRIST wants you back home. Is a dead and deluded theologian that important to you? I would hope not.

In the realm of photography at least, Nicky and I are still Luddites. We don’t have a digital camera yet (such things DO cost money), so, I had to wait for the film to be developed.

In his Cossack best

The Blessing of the Easter baskets 1. Don’t they all look yummy?

The Blessing of the Easter Baskets 2

An Easter procession in the rain

Fr Luke Murianka censes the faithful, Fr George is behind him to the left

KHRISTOS VOSKRESE!

VOISTINNU VOSKRESE!

There are many Orthodox Christians who make a minor cottage industry of bashing the Easter Bunny at this time of year. I say, “GET REAL!” The Easter Bunny does not involve theology, and it is a completely secular aspect of the holiday. In short, it hurts nothing. We should be asking ourselves what kind of major malfunction exists in those who perpetually have long faces and who attack anything that is remotely fun. They come up with myriad reasons for why we should banish the Easter Bunny to the outer darkness, whereas I would point out that this is a harmless little piece of fun that does not contradict any of the Church’s teaching.

Yes, I LIKE the Easter Bunny. He is part of my holiday, and I dare any long-faced and constipated sort to attack it. Some things are just fun, they are not serious. They bring a smile to our faces, and I say that God smiles when He sees such. LIGHTEN UP. That lot shall be surprised on the Last Day, when the Good Lord may very well say to them, “No soup for you!”  

Easter (Yuliya Kuzenkova, 2002)

The joy of our Lord’s resurrection was celebrated not only at great cathedrals and famous monasteries, it was found in many humble and ordinary parish churches throughout the world. My thanks to all the priests who served all too many services, the singers who sang their hearts out, and to the ordinary faithful who greeted this day wherever they were. THIS is were the Easter was found, in the hearts of uncounted ordinary Petes and Helens, Nicks and Kikis, and Andys and Marys. THAT was the true treasure of the day.

KHRISTOS VOSKRESE!

VOISTINNU VOSKRESE!