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Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age of the Romanovs
June 1 through December 31, 2004
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Washington, D.C. - Tradition in Transition: Russian Icons in the Age
of the Romanovs is Hillwood Museum & Gardens' second installment
in its new series of temporary exhibitions. This exhibition is an
innovative examination of the impact of Western culture on the evolution
of Russian religious painting from the seventeenth through the twentieth
centuries. Forty-three icons and oklads (decorative icon covers) and
two books from this period will illustrate this fascinating story.
Icons from this still little-known period in the history of Russian
icon painting traditionally have been seen as artistically inferior
to those of the medieval "Golden Age," when Russian icon
painting reached its apogee. Yet "late icons" reveal a rich
variety of conflicting styles and ideas that makes them sensitive
gauges of a culture undergoing rapid change. Objects on display will
include jeweled icons once owned by the imperial family, mass-produced
images made for the poorest peasants, traditional icons revered by
those who strongly opposed any deviation from the convention, and
others that illustrate modern Western innovations.
Tradition in Transition illustrates how the once coherent language
of the Orthodox icon was disrupted and diverted along new paths by
a newly Westernized elite eager to challenge long-held values and
traditions. How well they succeeded may be judged by the realism and
sensuality of some images, the emphasis on linear perspective in others,
as well as by the use of oil paint in addition to the more traditional
tempera (pigments mixed with egg yolk). The extent to which the new
elite failed is evidenced by the remarkable persistence of the traditional
icon to the end of Romanov rule in 1917. It is this multiplicity of
influences, tensions, and stylistic shifts that so vividly characterize
the icons of Romanov Russia.
The seventeenth-century icon of the Kazan Mother of God epitomizes
traditional Russian icon painting. Rooted in Byzantine art, it emphasizes
elongated facial features, almond-shaped eyes, expressive lines, and
an intense spirituality. The treatment of similar subject matter a
century later in the icon of the Mother of God "Pledge to Sufferers"
represents a radical departure from the two-dimensionality of the
earlier icon, whose task was to represent the timeless, immutable
world of the spirit. Here one finds a realistic modeling of the faces
combined with a fashionable brocade gown of naturalistically rendered
folds and a white veil topped with Western-style crown.
The growing preferences for contemporary and fashionable Western styles
exhibited by the Russian educated elite were especially apparent in
the art of the oklad. Comparing the oklads on two icons of the Annunciation
reveals how rapidly changes in secular artistic fashion penetrated
the tradition-bound world of icon adornment. In the earlier example,
the oklad consists only of a gilded border of stamped metal edged
with freshwater pearls and accented with precious stones. It simply
frames the solemn scene, defining the boundaries between physical
reality and the divine world. The later icon, dating to Catherine
the Great's reign, is a stunning example of eighteenth-century rococo,
exuberant in its profusion of repoussé floral swags, ornamental
urns, and rocaille cartouches. Entirely covering the icon, this oklad
closely mimics the painting underneath with its mullioned windows,
tiled floors, and domestic setting reminiscent of the Flemish interior
scenes popularized through Western engravings and illustrated Bibles.
It is particularly fitting that this exhibition should be held at
Hillwood Museum & Gardens, which houses one of the first American
collections of Russian icons. Marjorie Merriweather Post and her husband,
Joseph Davies, assembled the foundation of this collection during
his tenure as U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1937-38. The
collection was further enriched with a bequest from Madame Frances
Rosso (née Wilkinson), the American-born wife of Augusto Rosso,
the Italian ambassador in Moscow from 1936 to 1940. In 2002 Hillwood
acquired on long-term loan the outstanding collection of icons formerly
belonging to
Laurence A. Steinhardt, U.S. ambassador to the Soviet Union in 1939-41,
courtesy of the Laurence A. Steinhardt-Sherlock Trust, a Washington,
D.C. foundation. Tradition in Transition brings together these three
collections to present the rich and multilayered history of the late
icon.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a catalog written by guest curator
Wendy Salmond, Ph.D., associate professor of art history at Chapman
University in Orange, California. A symposium is planned for early
fall 2004.
Hillwood Museum & Gardens was the Washington residence of Marjorie
Merriweather Post (1887-1973), cereal heiress and art collector, from
1955 to 1973. Mrs. Post assembled the most comprehensive collection
of Russian imperial art outside of Russia and a world-renowned collection
of eighteenth-century French decorative arts. Among the notable items
are imperial Fabergé eggs, chalices, icons, and liturgical
vestments from imperial Russia, Beauvais tapestries, and Sèvres
porcelain. Hillwood is set upon twenty-five acres, twelve of which
are enchanting formal gardens, including a Japanese-style garden and
a French parterre. Hillwood opened to the public in 1977.
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