Bracing the Waves (Ivan Aivazovsky, 1890)
If one was to present only one painting a day from Aivazovsky’s ouevre, it would take 22 years to post them all! Whew! That is mass production on the scale of Detroit! Where did he find the time? Did he draft impecunious art students to help? Only the Shadow knows…
A Young Girl in Russian Folk Dress (Aleksandr Alekseyev, 1837)
I’m pulling back now to a period closer to the roots of Russian art in the modern sense. No, not Modern Art, but, “modern” art in the meaning of “painting done in the academic Western European style”. However, there appear to be aspects of naive technique, so, this may very well be an untrained artist, or, one who only attended a provincial art school (probably the latter).
A Lady in Red (Fyodor Shapayev, 1957)
Not all art of the Soviet period was “heroic tractor drivers and milkmaids” nor was it all beaming Pioneers and hunky Red Army soldiers. Most of it was dependable realism, and the art faculties turned out many competent artists. This, perhaps, was a blessing in disguise. It spared Russian art much of the pseudo-intellectual trash that hangs in MOMA and other such venues. I still say that I have not seen a man with two noses, or, a woman with three breasts. Such is not art… what it is… I truly can’t say. Oh, well, the “artists” who paint such shlock have found a good “hustle”, if nothing else.
