1.
Saint Petersburg
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Saint Petersburg is Russias second-largest city after Moscow, with five million inhabitants in 2012, and an important Russian port on the Baltic Sea. It is politically incorporated as a federal subject, situated on the Neva River, at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea, it was founded by Tsar Peter the Great on May 271703. In 1914, the name was changed from Saint Petersburg to Petrograd, in 1924 to Leningrad, between 1713 and 1728 and 1732–1918, Saint Petersburg was the capital of imperial Russia. In 1918, the government bodies moved to Moscow. Saint Petersburg is one of the cities of Russia, as well as its cultural capital. The Historic Centre of Saint Petersburg and Related Groups of Monuments constitute a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Saint Petersburg is home to The Hermitage, one of the largest art museums in the world. A large number of consulates, international corporations, banks. Swedish colonists built Nyenskans, a fortress, at the mouth of the Neva River in 1611, in a then called Ingermanland. A small town called Nyen grew up around it, Peter the Great was interested in seafaring and maritime affairs, and he intended to have Russia gain a seaport in order to be able to trade with other maritime nations. He needed a better seaport than Arkhangelsk, which was on the White Sea to the north, on May 1703121703, during the Great Northern War, Peter the Great captured Nyenskans, and soon replaced the fortress. On May 271703, closer to the estuary 5 km inland from the gulf), on Zayachy Island, he laid down the Peter and Paul Fortress, which became the first brick and stone building of the new city. The city was built by conscripted peasants from all over Russia, tens of thousands of serfs died building the city. Later, the city became the centre of the Saint Petersburg Governorate, Peter moved the capital from Moscow to Saint Petersburg in 1712,9 years before the Treaty of Nystad of 1721 ended the war, he referred to Saint Petersburg as the capital as early as 1704. During its first few years, the city developed around Trinity Square on the bank of the Neva, near the Peter. However, Saint Petersburg soon started to be built out according to a plan, by 1716 the Swiss Italian Domenico Trezzini had elaborated a project whereby the city centre would be located on Vasilyevsky Island and shaped by a rectangular grid of canals. The project was not completed, but is evident in the layout of the streets, in 1716, Peter the Great appointed French Jean-Baptiste Alexandre Le Blond as the chief architect of Saint Petersburg. In 1724 the Academy of Sciences, University and Academic Gymnasium were established in Saint Petersburg by Peter the Great, in 1725, Peter died at the age of fifty-two. His endeavours to modernize Russia had met opposition from the Russian nobility—resulting in several attempts on his life
2.
Russian Empire
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The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until it was overthrown by the short-lived February Revolution in 1917. One of the largest empires in history, stretching over three continents, the Russian Empire was surpassed in landmass only by the British and Mongol empires. The rise of the Russian Empire happened in association with the decline of neighboring powers, the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Persia. It played a role in 1812–14 in defeating Napoleons ambitions to control Europe. The House of Romanov ruled the Russian Empire from 1721 until 1762, and its German-descended cadet branch, with 125.6 million subjects registered by the 1897 census, it had the third-largest population in the world at the time, after Qing China and India. Like all empires, it included a large disparity in terms of economics, ethnicity, there were numerous dissident elements, who launched numerous rebellions and assassination attempts, they were closely watched by the secret police, with thousands exiled to Siberia. Economically, the empire had an agricultural base, with low productivity on large estates worked by serfs. The economy slowly industrialized with the help of foreign investments in railways, the land was ruled by a nobility from the 10th through the 17th centuries, and subsequently by an emperor. Tsar Ivan III laid the groundwork for the empire that later emerged and he tripled the territory of his state, ended the dominance of the Golden Horde, renovated the Moscow Kremlin, and laid the foundations of the Russian state. Tsar Peter the Great fought numerous wars and expanded an already huge empire into a major European power, Catherine the Great presided over a golden age. She expanded the state by conquest, colonization and diplomacy, continuing Peter the Greats policy of modernisation along West European lines, Tsar Alexander II promoted numerous reforms, most dramatically the emancipation of all 23 million serfs in 1861. His policy in Eastern Europe involved protecting the Orthodox Christians under the rule of the Ottoman Empire and that connection by 1914 led to Russias entry into the First World War on the side of France, Britain, and Serbia, against the German, Austrian and Ottoman empires. The Russian Empire functioned as a monarchy until the Revolution of 1905. The empire collapsed during the February Revolution of 1917, largely as a result of failures in its participation in the First World War. Perhaps the latter was done to make Europe recognize Russia as more of a European country, Poland was divided in the 1790-1815 era, with much of the land and population going to Russia. Most of the 19th century growth came from adding territory in Asia, Peter I the Great introduced autocracy in Russia and played a major role in introducing his country to the European state system. However, this vast land had a population of 14 million, grain yields trailed behind those of agriculture in the West, compelling nearly the entire population to farm. Only a small percentage lived in towns, the class of kholops, close to the one of slavery, remained a major institution in Russia until 1723, when Peter I converted household kholops into house serfs, thus including them in poll taxation
3.
Moscow
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Moscow is the capital and most populous city of Russia, with 13.2 million residents within the city limits and 17.8 million within the urban area. Moscow has the status of a Russian federal city, Moscow is a major political, economic, cultural, and scientific center of Russia and Eastern Europe, as well as the largest city entirely on the European continent. Moscow is the northernmost and coldest megacity and metropolis on Earth and it is home to the Ostankino Tower, the tallest free standing structure in Europe, the Federation Tower, the tallest skyscraper in Europe, and the Moscow International Business Center. Moscow is situated on the Moskva River in the Central Federal District of European Russia, the city is well known for its architecture, particularly its historic buildings such as Saint Basils Cathedral with its brightly colored domes. Moscow is the seat of power of the Government of Russia, being the site of the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow Kremlin and Red Square are also one of several World Heritage Sites in the city. Both chambers of the Russian parliament also sit in the city and it is recognized as one of the citys landmarks due to the rich architecture of its 200 stations. In old Russian the word also meant a church administrative district. The demonym for a Moscow resident is москвич for male or москвичка for female, the name of the city is thought to be derived from the name of the Moskva River. There have been proposed several theories of the origin of the name of the river and its cognates include Russian, музга, muzga pool, puddle, Lithuanian, mazgoti and Latvian, mazgāt to wash, Sanskrit, majjati to drown, Latin, mergō to dip, immerse. There exist as well similar place names in Poland like Mozgawa, the original Old Russian form of the name is reconstructed as *Москы, *Mosky, hence it was one of a few Slavic ū-stem nouns. From the latter forms came the modern Russian name Москва, Moskva, in a similar manner the Latin name Moscovia has been formed, later it became a colloquial name for Russia used in Western Europe in the 16th–17th centuries. From it as well came English Muscovy, various other theories, having little or no scientific ground, are now largely rejected by contemporary linguists. The surface similarity of the name Russia with Rosh, an obscure biblical tribe or country, the oldest evidence of humans on the territory of Moscow dates from the Neolithic. Within the modern bounds of the city other late evidence was discovered, on the territory of the Kremlin, Sparrow Hills, Setun River and Kuntsevskiy forest park, etc. The earliest East Slavic tribes recorded as having expanded to the upper Volga in the 9th to 10th centuries are the Vyatichi and Krivichi, the Moskva River was incorporated as part of Rostov-Suzdal into the Kievan Rus in the 11th century. By AD1100, a settlement had appeared on the mouth of the Neglinnaya River. The first known reference to Moscow dates from 1147 as a place of Yuri Dolgoruky. At the time it was a town on the western border of Vladimir-Suzdal Principality
4.
Russia
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Russia, also officially the Russian Federation, is a country in Eurasia. The European western part of the country is more populated and urbanised than the eastern. Russias capital Moscow is one of the largest cities in the world, other urban centers include Saint Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Nizhny Novgorod. Extending across the entirety of Northern Asia and much of Eastern Europe, Russia spans eleven time zones and incorporates a range of environments. It shares maritime borders with Japan by the Sea of Okhotsk, the East Slavs emerged as a recognizable group in Europe between the 3rd and 8th centuries AD. Founded and ruled by a Varangian warrior elite and their descendants, in 988 it adopted Orthodox Christianity from the Byzantine Empire, beginning the synthesis of Byzantine and Slavic cultures that defined Russian culture for the next millennium. Rus ultimately disintegrated into a number of states, most of the Rus lands were overrun by the Mongol invasion. The Soviet Union played a role in the Allied victory in World War II. The Soviet era saw some of the most significant technological achievements of the 20th century, including the worlds first human-made satellite and the launching of the first humans in space. By the end of 1990, the Soviet Union had the second largest economy, largest standing military in the world. It is governed as a federal semi-presidential republic, the Russian economy ranks as the twelfth largest by nominal GDP and sixth largest by purchasing power parity in 2015. Russias extensive mineral and energy resources are the largest such reserves in the world, making it one of the producers of oil. The country is one of the five recognized nuclear weapons states and possesses the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, Russia is a great power as well as a regional power and has been characterised as a potential superpower. The name Russia is derived from Rus, a state populated mostly by the East Slavs. However, this name became more prominent in the later history, and the country typically was called by its inhabitants Русская Земля. In order to distinguish this state from other states derived from it, it is denoted as Kievan Rus by modern historiography, an old Latin version of the name Rus was Ruthenia, mostly applied to the western and southern regions of Rus that were adjacent to Catholic Europe. The current name of the country, Россия, comes from the Byzantine Greek designation of the Kievan Rus, the standard way to refer to citizens of Russia is Russians in English and rossiyane in Russian. There are two Russian words which are translated into English as Russians
5.
Imperial Academy of Arts
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The Russian Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg, informally known as the Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts, was founded in 1757 by Ivan Shuvalov under the name Academy of the Three Noblest Arts. Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned a new building, the academy promoted the neoclassical style and technique, and sent its promising students to European capitals for further study. Training at the academy was virtually required for artists to make successful careers, formally abolished in 1918 after the Russian Revolution, the academy was renamed several times. It established free tuition, students from across the country competed fiercely for its few places annually, in 1947 the national institution was moved to Moscow, and much of its art collection was moved to the Hermitage. The building in Leningrad was devoted to the Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, since 1991 it has been called the St. Petersburg Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The academy was located in the Shuvalov Palace on Sadovaya Street, in 1764, Catherine the Great renamed it the Imperial Academy of Arts and commissioned its first rector, Alexander Kokorinov, to design a new building. It took 25 years to complete the Neoclassical edifice, which opened in 1789, konstantin Thon was responsible for the sumptuous decoration of the interiors. He also designed a quayside in front of the building, with stairs down to the Neva River, Ivan Betskoy reorganized the academy into a de facto government department, it supervised matters concerning art throughout the country, distributing orders and awarding ranks to artists. The academy vigorously promoted the principles of Neoclassicism by sending the most notable Russian painters abroad, in order to learn the ancient and Renaissance styles of Italy and it also had its own sizable collection of choice artworks intended for study and copying. The adherents of this movement became known as peredvizhniki, led by Ivan Kramskoi, they publicly broke with the Academy and organized their own exhibitions, which traveled from town to town across Russia. Ilya Repin, Mikhail Vrubel and some other painters still regarded the academys training as indispensable for the development of professional and technical skills. After the Russian Revolution of 1917, the Imperial Academy passed through a series of transformations, after the Academys move to Moscow that year, the building in what was then called Leningrad was renamed Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. The national academy has stayed in Moscow, in 1991 it was renamed the Russian Academy of Arts. The old academys art collection, which included works by Poussin, David. During the Soviet era, academies were free of tuition fees as they were financed by the government, many would-be students would apply to the Academy for as many as six or seven years in a row without success. With just twenty places available and thousands of applicants, the competition was brutal, well-known graduates of Ilya Repin Leningrad Institute for Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1930–1950s include, The Russian Academy of Arts has been headquartered in Moscow since 1947. Its current president is Zurab Tsereteli and its vice-president is Tair Salakhov and it is also called the St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts, Sculpture and Architecture. - Saint Petersburg, NP-Print Edition,2007, the Leningrad School Russian Academy of Arts The St. Petersburg State Academic Institute of Fine Arts Sergei V. Ivanov
6.
Portrait
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A portrait is a painting, photograph, sculpture, or other artistic representation of a person, in which the face and its expression is predominant. The intent is to display the likeness, personality, and even the mood of the person, for this reason, in photography a portrait is generally not a snapshot, but a composed image of a person in a still position. A portrait often shows a person looking directly at the painter or photographer, nonetheless, many subjects, such as Akhenaten and some other Egyptian pharaohs, can be recognised by their distinctive features. The 28 surviving rather small statues of Gudea, ruler of Lagash in Sumeria between c.2144 -2124 BC, show a consistent appearance with some individuality. Some of the earliest surviving painted portraits of people who were not rulers are the Greco-Roman funeral portraits that survived in the dry climate of Egypts Fayum district. These are almost the only paintings from the world that have survived, apart from frescos, though many sculptures. Although the appearance of the figures differs considerably, they are considerably idealized, the art of the portrait flourished in Ancient Greek and especially Roman sculpture, where sitters demanded individualized and realistic portraits, even unflattering ones. During the 4th century, the portrait began to retreat in favor of a symbol of what that person looked like. In the Europe of the Early Middle Ages representations of individuals are mostly generalized, true portraits of the outward appearance of individuals re-emerged in the late Middle Ages, in tomb monuments, donor portraits, miniatures in illuminated manuscripts and then panel paintings. Moche culture of Peru was one of the few ancient civilizations which produced portraits and these works accurately represent anatomical features in great detail. The individuals portrayed would have been recognizable without the need for other symbols or a reference to their names. The individuals portrayed were members of the elite, priests, warriors. They were represented during several stages of their lives, the faces of gods were also depicted. To date, no portraits of women have been found, there is particular emphasis on the representation of the details of headdresses, hairstyles, body adornment and face painting. One of the portraits in the Western world is Leonardo da Vincis painting titled Mona Lisa. What has been claimed as the worlds oldest known portrait was found in 2006 in the Vilhonneur grotto near Angoulême and is thought to be 27,000 years old. Profile view, full view, and three-quarter view, are three common designations for portraits, each referring to a particular orientation of the head of the individual depicted. Such terms would tend to have greater applicability to two-dimensional artwork such as photography, in the case of three-dimensional artwork, the viewer can usually alter their orientation to the artwork by moving around it
7.
Impressionism
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Impressionism originated with a group of Paris-based artists whose independent exhibitions brought them to prominence during the 1870s and 1880s. The Impressionists faced harsh opposition from the art community in France. The development of Impressionism in the arts was soon followed by analogous styles in other media that became known as impressionist music. Radicals in their time, early Impressionists violated the rules of academic painting and they constructed their pictures from freely brushed colours that took precedence over lines and contours, following the example of painters such as Eugène Delacroix and J. M. W. Turner. They also painted scenes of modern life, and often painted outdoors. Previously, still lifes and portraits as well as landscapes were painted in a studio. The Impressionists found that they could capture the momentary and transient effects of sunlight by painting en plein air, the Impressionists, however, developed new techniques specific to the style. The public, at first hostile, gradually came to believe that the Impressionists had captured a fresh and original vision, even if the art critics and art establishment disapproved of the new style. In the middle of the 19th century—a time of change, as Emperor Napoleon III rebuilt Paris, the Académie was the preserver of traditional French painting standards of content and style. Historical subjects, religious themes, and portraits were valued, landscape, the Académie preferred carefully finished images that looked realistic when examined closely. Paintings in this style were made up of brush strokes carefully blended to hide the artists hand in the work. Colour was restrained and often toned down further by the application of a golden varnish, the Académie had an annual, juried art show, the Salon de Paris, and artists whose work was displayed in the show won prizes, garnered commissions, and enhanced their prestige. The standards of the juries represented the values of the Académie, represented by the works of artists as Jean-Léon Gérôme. In the early 1860s, four young painters—Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and they discovered that they shared an interest in painting landscape and contemporary life rather than historical or mythological scenes. A favourite meeting place for the artists was the Café Guerbois on Avenue de Clichy in Paris, where the discussions were led by Édouard Manet. They were soon joined by Camille Pissarro, Paul Cézanne, during the 1860s, the Salon jury routinely rejected about half of the works submitted by Monet and his friends in favour of works by artists faithful to the approved style. In 1863, the Salon jury rejected Manets The Luncheon on the Grass primarily because it depicted a woman with two clothed men at a picnic. While the Salon jury routinely accepted nudes in historical and allegorical paintings, the jurys severely worded rejection of Manets painting appalled his admirers, and the unusually large number of rejected works that year perturbed many French artists
8.
Russian language
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Russian is an East Slavic language and an official language in Russia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and many minor or unrecognised territories. Russian belongs to the family of Indo-European languages and is one of the four living members of the East Slavic languages, written examples of Old East Slavonic are attested from the 10th century and beyond. It is the most geographically widespread language of Eurasia and the most widely spoken of the Slavic languages and it is also the largest native language in Europe, with 144 million native speakers in Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. Russian is the eighth most spoken language in the world by number of native speakers, the language is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Russian is also the second most widespread language on the Internet after English, Russian distinguishes between consonant phonemes with palatal secondary articulation and those without, the so-called soft and hard sounds. This distinction is found between pairs of almost all consonants and is one of the most distinguishing features of the language, another important aspect is the reduction of unstressed vowels. Russian is a Slavic language of the Indo-European family and it is a lineal descendant of the language used in Kievan Rus. From the point of view of the language, its closest relatives are Ukrainian, Belarusian, and Rusyn. An East Slavic Old Novgorod dialect, although vanished during the 15th or 16th century, is considered to have played a significant role in the formation of modern Russian. In the 19th century, the language was often called Great Russian to distinguish it from Belarusian, then called White Russian and Ukrainian, however, the East Slavic forms have tended to be used exclusively in the various dialects that are experiencing a rapid decline. In some cases, both the East Slavic and the Church Slavonic forms are in use, with different meanings. For details, see Russian phonology and History of the Russian language and it is also regarded by the United States Intelligence Community as a hard target language, due to both its difficulty to master for English speakers and its critical role in American world policy. The standard form of Russian is generally regarded as the modern Russian literary language, mikhail Lomonosov first compiled a normalizing grammar book in 1755, in 1783 the Russian Academys first explanatory Russian dictionary appeared. By the mid-20th century, such dialects were forced out with the introduction of the education system that was established by the Soviet government. Despite the formalization of Standard Russian, some nonstandard dialectal features are observed in colloquial speech. Thus, the Russian language is the 6th largest in the world by number of speakers, after English, Mandarin, Hindi/Urdu, Spanish, Russian is one of the six official languages of the United Nations. Education in Russian is still a choice for both Russian as a second language and native speakers in Russia as well as many of the former Soviet republics. Russian is still seen as an important language for children to learn in most of the former Soviet republics, samuel P. Huntington wrote in the Clash of Civilizations, During the heyday of the Soviet Union, Russian was the lingua franca from Prague to Hanoi
9.
Painting
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Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface. The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, Painting is a mode of creative expression, and the forms are numerous. Drawing, gesture, composition, narration, or abstraction, among other aesthetic modes, may serve to manifest the expressive, Paintings can be naturalistic and representational, photographic, abstract, narrative, symbolistic, emotive, or political in nature. A portion of the history of painting in both Eastern and Western art is dominated by motifs and ideas. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action, the term painting is also used outside of art as a common trade among craftsmen and builders. What enables painting is the perception and representation of intensity, every point in space has different intensity, which can be represented in painting by black and white and all the gray shades between. In practice, painters can articulate shapes by juxtaposing surfaces of different intensity, thus, the basic means of painting are distinct from ideological means, such as geometrical figures, various points of view and organization, and symbols. In technical drawing, thickness of line is ideal, demarcating ideal outlines of an object within a perceptual frame different from the one used by painters. Color and tone are the essence of painting as pitch and rhythm are the essence of music, color is highly subjective, but has observable psychological effects, although these can differ from one culture to the next. Black is associated with mourning in the West, but in the East, some painters, theoreticians, writers and scientists, including Goethe, Kandinsky, and Newton, have written their own color theory. Moreover, the use of language is only an abstraction for a color equivalent, the word red, for example, can cover a wide range of variations from the pure red of the visible spectrum of light. There is not a register of different colors in the way that there is agreement on different notes in music. For a painter, color is not simply divided into basic, painters deal practically with pigments, so blue for a painter can be any of the blues, phthalocyanine blue, Prussian blue, indigo, cobalt, ultramarine, and so on. Psychological and symbolical meanings of color are not, strictly speaking, colors only add to the potential, derived context of meanings, and because of this, the perception of a painting is highly subjective. The analogy with music is quite clear—sound in music is analogous to light in painting, shades to dynamics and these elements do not necessarily form a melody of themselves, rather, they can add different contexts to it. Modern artists have extended the practice of painting considerably to include, as one example, collage, some modern painters incorporate different materials such as sand, cement, straw or wood for their texture. Examples of this are the works of Jean Dubuffet and Anselm Kiefer, there is a growing community of artists who use computers to paint color onto a digital canvas using programs such as Adobe Photoshop, Corel Painter, and many others. These images can be printed onto traditional canvas if required, rhythm is important in painting as it is in music
10.
Alexander Serov
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Alexander Nikolayevich Serov was a Russian composer and music critic. Alexander Serov was the father of Russian artist Valentin Serov, Alexander Serov was born in St. Petersburg on January 11,1820, the son of Nikolai Ivanovich Serov, a Finance Ministry official. In Russia, Hablitz became a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences among other official posts. Serovs father Nikolai wanted him to become a lawyer as well, Serov was more interested in music, however, and became a friend of another law school student, Vladimir Stasov, who eventually became a famous art critic. Serov completed his studies in 1840 and started working as a lawyer in the government bureaucracy in St. Petersburg as well as in Simferopol, eventually, his interest in music prevailed, and in 1850 he quit his job and began to compose music and to write music journalism. He also gave lectures, though neither activity provided well for him financially. In 1863 Alexander Serov married his student Valentina Serova, who went on to become a composer. In 1865 a son, Valentin Serov, was born to them and he became a distinguished painter, and one of the premier Russian portrait artists of his era. Among his notable paintings were Girl with Peaches, and The Girl Covered by the Sun, in 1871, Alexander Serov unexpectedly died of a heart attack. His widow finished his last opera and promoted his legacy, as a composer, Serov is notable for composing operas. His first opera, Judith, was first performed in 1863, although Serovs operas Judith and Rogneda were quite successful at the time, none of his operas is performed today. A CD recording of Judith was made in 1991 by the orchestra, whereas Serov was an acclaimed critic and composer, his relations with fellow intellectuals were sometimes far from ideal. For example, he and Stasov became enemies over the values of Glinkas two operas. Judith Rogneda The Power of the Fiend du Quenoy, Paul, Alexander Serov and the Birth of the Russian Modern. Opera and Drama in Russia As Preached and Practiced in the 1860s, new ed. Rochester, University of Rochester Press,1993. Works by or about Alexander Serov at Internet Archive Free scores by Alexander Serov at the International Music Score Library Project
11.
Valentina Serova (composer)
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Valentina Semyonova Serova was a Russian composer of German-Jewish descent. Her family had converted to Lutheranism before she was born, serovas parents were merchants who operated a shop that specialized in colonial wares. Introduced through a friend, they married in 1863 and in January 1865 their son Valentin Serov was born. Valentin would grow up to become a painter, renowned for his portraits. Alexander Serov died of an attack in January 1871, and Valentina completed the last act of his third and final opera. She used his sketches and her memory of what Alexander had played to her to finish the work, solovyov helped her with some of the instrumentation and editing. The opera premiered in April 1871, initially unsuccessful, its revivals fared rather better and was the only opera by Serov to be performed in Soviet times. The experience of finishing her husbands opera inspired Serova to compose her own operas and her first opera, Uriel Acosta, premiered in 1885 at the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow. She had shown the score to Tchaikovsky earlier that year, Valentina asked him if he would give her some lessons in harmony, but he recommended she seek out the guidance of Anton Arensky instead. Her second opera, Maria dOrval, was never performed and is considered lost and her third opera, Ilya Muromets, was successfully staged in Moscow with Feodor Chaliapin in the title role in 1899. Serovas fourth and last opera has not been preserved and even the title is now unknown and she died in Moscow on June 26,1924. Serovas sister Adelaida and brother-in-law Yakov Simonovich were early childhood pedagogues who in 1863 founded Russias first kindergarten, Valentin married their adopted daughter Olga Trubnikova and had five children with descendants now living in Russia, France, Cyprus, and Lebanon. After Serovs death she married a second time to a physician and they had two children, a son who died in childhood and a daughter, Nadezhda, who married into the aristocratic Zhilinsky family. Serovas son-in-law and grandson from Nadezhdas marriage were both executed during Stalins rule, one of her great-grandsons perished in World War II, the other was the painter Dmitry Zhilinsky
12.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
13.
Ilya Repin
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Ilya Yefimovich Repin was a Russian realist painter. He was the most renowned Russian artist of the 19th century and he played a major role in bringing Russian art into the mainstream of European culture. His major works include Barge Haulers on the Volga, Religious Procession in Kursk Province, Repin was born in Chuguyev, in Kharkov Governorate, Ukraine into a family of military settlers. His father traded horses and his grandmother ran an inn and he entered military school to study surveying. In 1863 he went to St. Petersburg Art Academy to study painting but had to enter Ivan Kramskoi preparatory school first and he met fellow artist Ivan Kramskoi and the critic Vladimir Stasov during the 1860s, and his wife, Vera Shevtsova in 1872. In 1874–1876 he showed at the Salon in Paris and at the exhibitions of the Itinerants Society in Saint Petersburg and he was awarded the title of academician in 1876. In 1880 Repin travelled to Zaporozhia in Ukraine to gather material for the 1891 Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks and his Religious Procession in Kursk Province was exhibited in 1883, and Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan in 1885. In 1892 he published the Letters on Art collection of essays and he taught at the Higher Art School attached to the Academy of Arts from 1894. In 1898 he purchased an estate, the Penates, in Kuokkala, in 1901 he was awarded the Legion of Honour. In 1911 he traveled with his common-law wife Natalia Nordman to the World Exhibition in Italy, in 1916 Repin worked on his book of reminiscences, Far and Near, with the assistance of Korney Chukovsky. He welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1917, celebrations were held in 1924 in Kuokkala to mark Repins 80th birthday, followed by an exhibition of his works in Moscow. In 1925 a jubilee exhibition of his works was held in the Russian Museum in Leningrad, Repin died in 1930 and was buried at the Penates. Repin was born in the town of Chuguyev, in the Kharkov Governorate of the Russian Empire and his father Yefim Vasilyevich Repin was a private in the Uhlan Regiment of the Imperial Russian Army. As a boy Ilya was educated at the school where his mother taught. From 1854 he attended a military Cantonist school and he did not have fond recollections of his childhood, mainly due to the military settlements his family lived in. In 1856 he became a student of Ivan Bunakov, an icon painter. In 1859–1863 he painted icons and wall-paintings by commission for the Society for the Encouragement of Artists, in 1864 he began attending the Imperial Academy of Arts, and met the painter Ivan Kramskoi. In 1869 he was awarded a gold medal for his painting Job
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Pavel Chistyakov
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Pavel Petrovich Chistyakov (Russian, Павел Петрович Чистяков, was a Russian painter and art teacher, known for historical and genre scenes as well as portraits. His father was a serf who had worked as an estate manager. Despite the financial burdens, he saw to it that his son had an education, first at a parish school in Krasny Kholm. In 1849, he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied with Pyotr Basin, from 1854 to 1858, he received two silver medals and one gold, for his depiction of Hermogenes in prison. In 1861, he graduated with the title of Artist, another gold medal, before leaving, he taught for a short time at a preparatory school in Saint Petersburg. In 1862, he headed for Germany, followed by visits to Paris. Upon returning in 1870, he was awarded the title of Academician for several works he had sent home and his few works were mostly of an historical nature, which he attempted to infuse with a psychological depth, rather than merely representing the events. He became an Associate Professor at the Academy in 1872 and, following the reorganization of 1892, from 1890 to 1912, he served as head of the Department of Mosaics and oversaw several mosaic projects, notably at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour and Saint Isaacs Cathedral. His wife Vera, daughter of the painter Yegor Meyer, was also an artist of some note, the street where he lived was named in his honor and, in 1987, his home became a museum. Чистяков и его педагогическая система, Искусство,1940 Olga Lyaskovskaya, Чистяков, Tretyakov Gallery,1950 Чистяков П. Чистяков — теоретик и пед, 590pgs, Искусство,1953 Ely Bielutin and Nina Moleva, Павел Петрович Чистяков. теоретик и педагог, Академии художесть,1954, yelena Churilova, Я ещё могу съездить к Чистякову, Прана,2004 ISBN 5-86761-054-3 Biography and appreciation @ the Bezhetsk website
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Realism (arts)
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Realism in the arts is the attempt to represent subject matter truthfully, without artificiality and avoiding artistic conventions, implausible, exotic and supernatural elements. Realism has been prevalent in the arts at many periods, and is in part a matter of technique and training. In the visual arts, illusionistic realism is the depiction of lifeforms, perspective. Realist works of art may emphasize the mundane, ugly or sordid, such as works of realism, regionalism. There have been various movements in the arts, such as the opera style of verismo, literary realism, theatrical realism. The realism art movement in painting began in France in the 1850s, the realist painters rejected Romanticism, which had come to dominate French literature and art, with roots in the late 18th century. Realism is the precise, detailed and accurate representation in art of the appearance of scenes. Realism in this sense is also called naturalism, mimesis or illusionism, realistic art was created in many periods, and it is in large part a matter of technique and training, and the avoidance of stylization. It becomes especially marked in European painting in the Early Netherlandish painting of Jan van Eyck, however such realism is often used to depict, for example, angels with wings, which were not things the artists had ever seen in real life. It is the choice and treatment of matter that defines Realism as a movement in painting. The development of increasingly accurate representation of the appearances of things has a long history in art. It includes elements such as the depiction of the anatomy of humans and animals, of perspective and effects of distance. Ancient Greek art is recognised as having made great progress in the representation of anatomy. Pliny the Elders famous story of birds pecking at grapes painted by Zeuxis in the 5th century BC may well be a legend, roman portraiture, when not under too much Greek influence, shows a greater commitment to a truthful depiction of its subjects. The art of Late Antiquity famously rejected illusionism for expressive force, scientific methods of representing perspective were developed in Italy and gradually spread across Europe, and accuracy in anatomy rediscovered under the influence of classical art. As in classical times, idealism remained the norm, intriguingly, having led the development of illusionic painting, still life was to be equally significant in its abandonment in Cubism. The depiction of ordinary, everyday subjects in art also has a history, though it was often squeezed into the edges of compositions. However these objects are at least largely there because they carry layers of complex significance, pieter Bruegel the Elder pioneered large panoramic scenes of peasant life
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Western Europe
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Western Europe, or West Europe, is the region comprising the western part of Europe. Below, some different geographic and geopolitical definitions of the term are outlined, prior to the Roman conquest, a large part of Western Europe had adopted the newly developed La Tène culture. This cultural and linguistic division was reinforced by the later political east-west division of the Roman Empire. The division between these two was enhanced during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by a number of events, the Western Roman Empire collapsed, starting the Early Middle Ages. By contrast, the Eastern Roman Empire, mostly known as the Greek or Byzantine Empire, survived, in East Asia, Western Europe was historically known as taixi in China and taisei in Japan, which literally translates as the Far West. The term Far West became synonymous with Western Europe in China during the Ming dynasty, the Italian Jesuit priest Matteo Ricci was one of the first writers in China to use the Far West as an Asian counterpart to the European concept of the Far East. In his writings, Ricci referred to himself as Matteo of the Far West, the term was still in use in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Post-war Europe would be divided into two spheres, the West, influenced by the United States, and the Eastern Bloc. With the onset of the Cold War, Europe was divided by the Iron Curtain, behind that line lie all the capitals of the ancient states of Central and Eastern Europe. Although some countries were neutral, they were classified according to the nature of their political. This division largely defined the popular perception and understanding of Western Europe, the world changed dramatically with the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989. The Federal Republic of Germany peacefully absorbed the German Democratic Republic, COMECON and the Warsaw Pact were dissolved, and in 1991, the Soviet Union ceased to exist. Several countries which had part of the Soviet Union regained full independence. Although the term Western Europe was more prominent during the Cold War, it remains much in use, in 1948 the Treaty of Brussels was signed between Belgium, France, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. It was further revisited in 1954 at the Paris Conference, when the Western European Union was established and it was declared defunct in 2011, after the Treaty of Lisbon, and the Treaty of Brussels was terminated. When the Western European Union was dissolved, it had 10 member countries, six member countries, five observer countries. The CIA divides Western Europe into two smaller subregions, regional voting blocs were formed in 1961 to encourage voting to various UN bodies from different regional groups. The European Union is an economic and political union of 28 member states that are located primarily in Europe, some Western and Northern European countries of Iceland, Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein are members of EFTA, though cooperating to varying degree with the European Union
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Mikhail Vrubel
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Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel is usually regarded amongst the Russian painters of the Symbolist movement and of Art Nouveau. In reality, he stood aloof from contemporary art trends, so that the origin of his unusual manner should be sought in Late Byzantine. Vrubel was born in Omsk, Russia and his paternal grandfather Mikhail Antonovich Vrubel was of Polish heritage, he served in the Imperial Russian Army, then headed the Astrakhan Cossacks. Aleksandr Mikhailovich Vrubel followed his fathers steps and made a military career and his wife Anna Karlovna von Krabbe was Danish. Vrubel was one of the four children and his mother died when he was three years old. The next year he entered the Imperial Academy of Arts, where he studied by direction of Pavel Chistyakov, even in his earliest works, he exhibited great talent for drawing and an idiosyncratic style. He would later develop a penchant for fragmentary composition and an unfinished touch, in 1884, he was summoned to replace the lost 12th-century murals and mosaics in the St. Cyrils Church of Kiev with new ones. In order to execute this commission, he went to Venice to study medieval Christian art and it was here that, in the words of an art historian, his palette acquired new strong saturated tones resembling the iridescent play of precious stones. Most of his works painted in Venice have been lost, because the artist was interested in creative process than in promoting his artwork. In 1886, he returned to Kiev, where he submitted designs to the newly built St Volodymir Cathedral. The jury, however, failed to appreciate the novelty of his works, at that period, he executed some illustrations for Hamlet and Anna Karenina, which had little in common with his later Demon and Prophet themes. In 1905 he created the mosaics of the hotel Metropol in Moscow, while in Kiev, Vrubel started painting sketches and watercolours illustrating the demon, from a long Romantic poem by Mikhail Lermontov. The poem described the carnal passion of an eternal nihilistic spirit for a Georgian girl Tamara, at that period Vrubel developed a keen interest in Oriental arts, and particularly Persian carpets, and even attempted to imitate their texture in his paintings. In 1890, Vrubel relocated to Moscow where he could best follow the burgeoning innovations, like other artists associated with the Art Nouveau style, he excelled not only in painting but also in applied arts, such as ceramics, majolics, and stained glass. He also produced architectural masks, stage sets, and costumes and it is the large painting of Seated Demon that brought notoriety to Vrubel. During 1896, he met the opera singer Nadezhda Zabela. Half a year later married and settled in Moscow, where Zabela was invited by Mamontov to perform in his private opera theatre. While in Moscow, Vrubel designed stage sets and costumes for his wife, who sang the parts of the Snow Maiden, the Swan Princess, using Russian fairy tales, he executed some of his most acclaimed pieces, including Pan, The Swan Princess, and Lilacs
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Konstantin Korovin
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Konstantin Alekseyevich Korovin was a leading Russian Impressionist painter. Konstantin was born in Moscow to a merchant family officially registered as peasants of Vladimir Gubernia and his father, Aleksey Mikhailovich Korovin, earned a university degree and was more interested in arts and music than in the family business established by Konstantins grandfather. Konstantins older brother Sergei Korovin was a notable realist painter, Konstantins relative Illarion Pryanishnikov was also a prominent painter of the time and a teacher at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. In 1875 Korovin entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and his brother Sergei was already a student at the school. During their student years, the Korovins became friends with fellow students Valentin Serov and Isaac Levitan, in 1881–1882, Korovin spent a year at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg, but returned disappointed to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. He studied at the school under his new teacher Vasily Polenov until 1886, in 1885 Korovin traveled to Paris and Spain. Paris was a shock for me … Impressionists… in them I found everything I was scolded for back home in Moscow, Polenov introduced Korovin to Savva Mamontovs Abramtsevo Circle, Viktor Vasnetsov, Apollinary Vasnetsov, Ilya Repin, Mark Antokolsky and others. The groups love for stylized Russian themes is reflected in Korovins picture A Northern Idyll, in 1885 Korovin worked for Mamontovs opera house, designing the stage decor for Giuseppe Verdis Aida, Léo Delibes Lakmé and Georges Bizets Carmen. In 1888 Korovin traveled with Mamontov to Italy and Spain, where he produced the painting On the Balcony, Konstantin traveled within Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia and exhibited with the Peredvizhniki. He painted in the Impressionist, and later in the Art Nouveau, in the 1890s Korovin became a member of the Mir iskusstva art group. Korovins subsequent works were influenced by his travels to the north. In 1888 he was captivated by the northern landscapes seen in The Coast of Norway. His second trip to the north, with Valentin Serov in 1894, Korovin painted a large number of landscapes, Norwegian Port, St. Triphons Brook in Pechenga, Hammerfest, Aurora Borealis, The Coast at Murmansk and others. The paintings are built on a web of shades of grey. The etude style of works was typical for Korovins art of the 1890s. Using material from his trip, Korovin designed the Far North pavilion at the 1896 All Russia Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod and he painted ten big canvasses for the pavilion as well, depicting various aspects of life in the northern and Arctic regions. After the closure of the Exhibition, the canvasses were eventually placed in the Yaroslavsky Rail Terminal in Moscow, in the 1960s, they were restored and transferred to the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1900 Korovin designed the Central Asia section of the Russian Empire pavilion at the Paris World Fair and was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French government, in the beginning of the 20th century, Korovin focused his attention on the theater
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Abramtsevo Colony
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Abramtsevo is an estate located north of Moscow, in the proximity of Khotkovo, that became a center for the Slavophile movement and artistic activity in the 19th century. The estate is located in the village of the same name, originally owned by author Sergei Aksakov, other writers and artists — such as Nikolai Gogol — at first came there as his guests. Under Aksakov, visitors to the estate discussed ways of ridding Russian art of Western influences to revive a national style. In 1870, eleven years after Aksakovs death, it was purchased by Savva Mamontov, under Mamontov, Russian themes and folk art flourished there. Several workshops were set up there to produce furniture, ceramic tiles. One building, the manor, is said to have been the model for the estate in which Anton Chekhov set The Cherry Orchard. The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture ISBN 0-520-06929-3 Abramstevo National Park Abramtsevo Museum The Moscow Times on Abramtsevo
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Tretyakov Gallery
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The State Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, Russia, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world. In 1892, Tretyakov presented his famous collection of approximately 2,000 works to the Russian nation. The façade of the building was designed by the painter Viktor Vasnetsov in a peculiar Russian fairy-tale style. It was built in 1902–04 to the south from the Moscow Kremlin, during the 20th century, the gallery expanded to several neighboring buildings, including the 17th-century church of St. Nicholas in Tolmachi. In 1977 the Gallery kept a significant part of the George Costakis collection, Pavel Tretyakov started collecting art in the middle of 1850. The founding year of the Tretyakov Gallery is considered to be 1856, schilder and Skirmish with Finnish Smugglers by V. G. Kudyakov, although earlier, in 1854-1855, he had bought 11 graphic sheets and 9 pictures of old Dutch masters, in 1867 the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel and Sergei Tretyakov was opened. The Gallery’s collection consisted of 1,276 paintings,471 sculptures and 10 drawings of Russian artists, in August 1892 Tretyakov presented his art gallery to the city of Moscow as a gift. In the collection at time, there were 1,287 paintings and 518 graphic works of the Russian school,75 paintings and 8 drawings of European schools,15 sculptures. The official opening of the called the Moscow City Gallery of Pavel. The gallery was located in a mansion that the Tretykov family had purchased in 1851. As the Tretyakov collection of art grew, the part of the mansion filled with art and it became necessary to make additions to the mansion in order to store. Additions were made in 1873,1882,1885,1892 and 1902-1904, construction of the façade was managed by the architect A. M. In early 1913, the Moscow City Duma elected Igor Grabar as a trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, on June 3,1918, the Tretyakov Gallery was declared owned by Russian Federated Soviet Republic and was named the State Tretyakov Gallery. Igor Grabar was again appointed director of the museum, with Grabar’s active participation in the same year, the State Museum Fund was created, which up until 1927 remained one of the most important sources of replenishment of the gallerys collection. In 1926 architect and academician A. V, shchusev became the director of the gallery. In the following year the gallery acquired the house on Maly Tolmachevsky Lane. After restructuring in 1928, it housed the administration, academic departments, library, manuscripts department
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Felix Yusupov
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Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov, Count Sumarokov-Elston was a Russian aristocrat, prince and count from the Yusupov family, best known for participating in the assassination of Grigori Rasputin. He was born in the Moika Palace in Saint Petersburg, the capital of the Russian Empire and his father was Count Felix Felixovich Sumarokov-Elston, the son of Count Felix Nikolaievich Sumarokov-Elston. Zinaida Yusupova, his mother, was the last of the Yusupov line, of Crimean Tatar origin, and very wealthy. For the Yusupov name not to die out, his father was granted the title, the Yusupov family, richer than any of the Romanovs, had acquired their wealth generations earlier. It included four palaces in Petrograd, three palaces in Moscow,37 estates in different parts of Russia, coal and iron-ore mines, plants and factories, flour mills, at twelve he began wearing his mothers gowns. He describes in his autobiography often spending time with Gypsy bands and his older brother took him often to restaurants and cafés. From 1909 to 1913, he studied arts at University College, Oxford, where he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. Yusupov was living on 14 King Edward Street, had a Russian cook, a French driver, an English valet, a housekeeper and he owned three horses, a macaw and a bulldog called Punch. He smoked hashish, played polo and became friendly with Luigi Franchetti, a player, Jacques de Beistegui. At some time, Yusupov got acquainted with Albert Stopford and Oswald Rayner and he rented an apartment in Curzon Street, Mayfair, and met several times with the ballerina Anna Pavlova, who lived in Hampstead. Back in Saint Petersburg, he married Princess Irina of Russia, the bride was wearing a veil that had belonged to Marie Antoinette. The Yusupovs went on their honeymoon to Cairo, Jerusalem, London and Bad Kissingen, when World War I broke out in August 1914, both were briefly detained in Berlin. Irina asked her relative, Crown Princess Cecilie of Prussia, to intervene with her father-in-law, the Kaiser refused to permit the Yusupov family to leave but offered them a choice of three country estates to live in for the duration of the war. Bébé was largely raised by her grandparents until she was nine. She was very spoiled by them and her unstable upbringing caused her to become capricious, according to Felix. Felix and Irina, raised mainly by nannies themselves, were ill-suited to take on the day-to-day burdens of child-rearing, Irina adored her father but had a more distant relationship with her mother. After the death of his brother, Felix was the heir to an immense fortune, consulting with family members about how best to administer the money and property, he decided to devote time and money to charitable works to help the poor. The losses at the Eastern Front were enormous, and after a year,1.5 million Russian soldiers had died, Felix converted a wing of the Moika Palace into a hospital for wounded soldiers
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Isaac Levitan
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Isaac Ilyich Levitan was a classical Russian landscape painter who advanced the genre of the mood landscape. Isaac Levitan was born in a shtetl of Kibarty, Augustów Governorate in Congress Poland and his father Elyashiv Levitan was the son of a rabbi, completed a Yeshiva and was self-educated. He taught German and French in Kowno and later worked as a translator at a bridge construction for a French building company. At the beginning of 1870 the Levitan family moved to Moscow, in September 1873, Isaac Levitan entered the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture where his older brother Avel had already studied for two years. After a year in the copying class Isaac transferred into a naturalistic class, Levitans teachers were the famous Alexei Savrasov, Vasily Perov and Vasily Polenov. In 1875, his mother died, and his father seriously ill and became unable to support four children. The family slipped into abject poverty, as patronage for Levitans talent and achievements, his Jewish origins and to keep him in the school, he was given a scholarship. In 1877, Isaac Levitans works were first publicly exhibited and earned recognition from the press. In 1880 his painting Осенний день, Сокольники was bought by famous philanthropist and art collector Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov. In the spring of 1884 Levitan participated in the art exhibition by the group known as the Peredvizhniki. Levitan often visited Chekhov and some think Levitan was in love with his sister, in the early 1880s Levitan collaborated with the Chekhov brothers on the illustrated magazine Moscow and illustrated the M. Fabritsius edition Kremlin. Together with Korovin in 1885-1886 he painted scenery for performances of the Private Russian opera of Savva Mamontov, in the 1880s he participated in the drawing and watercolor gatherings at Polenov’s house. Levitans work was a response to the lyrical charm of the Russian landscape. Levitan did not paint urban landscapes, with the exception of the View of Simonov Monastery, mentioned by Nesterov, during work in Ostankino, he painted fragments of the mansion’s house and park, but he was most fond of poetic places in the forest or modest countryside. Characteristic of his work is a hushed and nearly melancholic reverie amidst pastoral landscapes largely devoid of human presence, fine examples of these qualities include The Vladimirka Road,1892 Evening Bells,1892, and Eternal Rest,1894, all in the Tretyakov Gallery. Though his late work displayed familiarity with Impressionism, his palette was generally muted, in the summer of 1890 Levitan went to Yuryevets and among numerous landscapes and etudes he painted The View of Krivooserski monastery. So the plan of one of his best pictures, The Silent Monastery, was born, the image of a silent monastery and planked bridges over the river, connecting it with the outside world, expressed the artists spiritual reflections. It is known that this made a strong impression on Chekhov
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Nikolai Leskov
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Nikolai Semyonovich Leskov was a Russian novelist, short story writer, playwright, and journalist who also wrote under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky. His major works include Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, The Cathedral Clergy, The Enchanted Wanderer, and The Tale of Cross-eyed Lefty from Tula, Leskov received his formal education at the Oryol Lyceum. In 1857 Leskov quit his job as a clerk and went to work for the trading company Scott & Wilkins owned by Alexander Scott. His literary career began in the early 1860s with the publication of his short story The Extinguished Flame and his first novel No Way Out was published under the pseudonym M. Stebnitsky in 1864. From the mid-1860s to the mid-1880s Leskov published a range of works, including journalism, sketches, short stories. Leskovs major works, many of which continue to be published in versions, were written during this time. A number of his works were banned because of their satirical treatment of the Russian Orthodox Church. Leskov died on 5 March 1895, aged 64, and was interred in the Volkovo Cemetery in Saint Petersburg, Leskovs ancestors on his fathers side were all clergymen in the village of Leska in Oryol Gubernia, hence the name Leskov. Semyon Dmitrievich was a man, friends referred to him as a homegrown intellectual. Leskov spent his first eight years in Gorokhovo, where his grandmother lived and he acquired his early education in the house of Strakhov, who employed tutors from Germany and France for his own children. As the German teacher started to praise Leskov for his gifts, his life became difficult, at his grandmothers request, his father took Nikolai back to Oryol where he settled in the family house at 3 Dvoryanskaya Street. In 1839 Semyon Leskov lost his job through a row and intrigue, so we left our house in Oryol, sold what we had in the city and bought a village with 50 peasants in the Kromy region from general A. I. The purchase was made mostly on credit, for mother was still hoping to get her five thousand off of Strakhov which never came, the tiny village father had bought was eventually sold for debts, Leskov later remembered. What the Leskovs, with their three sons and two daughters, were left with was a small Panin khutor, one very poor house, a watermill, a garden, two peasants houses and 40 dessiatins of land. This is where Nikolai had his first experiences with oral folklore, in August 1841 Leskov began his formal education at the Oryol Lyceum. After five years of progress all he could manage was a two-year graduation certificate. Bukhstab, comparing Leskovs school failures with those of Nikolay Nekrasov who had had similar problems, in June 1847 Leskov joined the Oryol criminal court office, where Sergey Dmitrievich had once worked. In May 1848 Leskovs familys property was destroyed by a fire, in July of the same year Leskovs father died from cholera
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Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov
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Nikolai Andreyevich Rimsky-Korsakov was a Russian composer, and a member of the group of composers known as The Five. He was a master of orchestration, Scheherazade is an example of his frequent use of fairy tale and folk subjects. Rimsky-Korsakov believed, as did fellow composer Mily Balakirev and critic Vladimir Stasov, however, Rimsky-Korsakov appreciated Western musical techniques after he became a professor of musical composition, harmony and orchestration at the Saint Petersburg Conservatory in 1871. He undertook a rigorous program of self-education and became a master of Western methods, incorporating them alongside the influences of Mikhail Glinka. His techniques of composition and orchestration were further enriched by his exposure to the works of Richard Wagner and he wrote that he developed a passion for the ocean in childhood from reading books and hearing of his older brothers exploits in the navy. This love of the sea might have influenced him to two of his best-known orchestral works, the musical tableau Sadko and Scheherazade. Through his service as Inspector of Naval Bands, Rimsky-Korsakov expanded his knowledge of woodwind and brass playing and he passed this knowledge to his students, and also posthumously through a textbook on orchestration that was completed by his son-in-law, Maximilian Steinberg. Rimsky-Korsakov left a body of original Russian nationalist compositions. He prepared works by The Five for performance, which brought them into the classical repertoire. Rimsky-Korsakov is therefore considered the architect of what the classical music public considers the Russian style of composition. Rimsky-Korsakov was born in Tikhvin,200 kilometres east of Saint Petersburg, the father of the composer, Andrei Petrovich Rimsky-Korsakov, though born out of wedlock, went on to serve first as the vice-governor of Novgorod, and then in the Volhynian Governorate. The composers mother, Sofya Vasilevna, was the daughter of a peasant serf, the Rimsky-Korsakov family had a long line of military and naval service. Nikolais older brother Voin,22 years his senior, became a well-known navigator and he later recalled that his mother played the piano a little, and his father could play a few songs on the piano by ear. Beginning at six, he took lessons from local teachers and showed a talent for aural skills. Although he started composing by age 10, Rimsky-Korsakov preferred literature over music and he later wrote that from his reading, and tales of his brothers exploits, he developed a poetic love for the sea without ever having seen it. This love, and prompting from Voin, encouraged the 12-year-old to join the Imperial Russian Navy and he studied at the School for Mathematical and Navigational Sciences in Saint Petersburg and, at 18, took his final examination in April 1862. While at school, Rimsky-Korsakov took piano lessons from a man named Ulikh and these lessons were sanctioned by Voin, who now served as director of the school, because he hoped they would help the youth to develop social skills and overcome his shyness. Rimsky-Korsakov wrote that, while indifferent to lessons, he developed a love for music, fostered by visits to the opera and, later, Ulikh perceived that he had serious musical talent and recommended another teacher, Feodor A. Kanille
25.
John Singer Sargent
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John Singer Sargent was an American artist, considered the leading portrait painter of his generation for his evocations of Edwardian era luxury. During his career, he created roughly 900 oil paintings and more than 2,000 watercolors, as well as countless sketches and his oeuvre documents worldwide travel, from Venice to the Tyrol, Corfu, the Middle East, Montana, Maine, and Florida. His parents were American, but he was trained in Paris prior to moving to London and his commissioned works were consistent with the grand manner of portraiture, while his informal studies and landscape paintings displayed a familiarity with Impressionism. In later life Sargent expressed ambivalence about the restrictions of formal portrait work and he lived most of his life in Europe. Art historians generally ignored the society such as Sargent until the late 20th century. Before Sargents birth, his father, FitzWilliam, was an eye surgeon at the Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia 1844–1854, after Johns older sister died at the age of two, his mother, Mary, suffered a breakdown, and the couple decided to go abroad to recover. They remained nomadic expatriates for the rest of their lives, although based in Paris, Sargents parents moved regularly with the seasons to the sea and the mountain resorts in France, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland. While Mary was pregnant, they stopped in Florence, Tuscany, Sargent was born there in 1856. A year later, his sister Mary was born, after her birth, FitzWilliam reluctantly resigned his post in Philadelphia and accepted his wifes entreaties to remain abroad. They lived modestly on an inheritance and savings, living a quiet life with their children. They generally avoided society and other Americans except for friends in the art world, four more children were born abroad, of whom only two lived past childhood. Although his father was a patient teacher of basic subjects, young Sargent was a rambunctious child, as his father wrote home, He is quite a close observer of animated nature. His mother was convinced that traveling around Europe, and visiting museums and churches. Several attempts to have him formally schooled failed, owing mostly to their itinerant life, Sargents mother was a fine amateur artist and his father was a skilled medical illustrator. Early on, she gave him sketchbooks and encouraged drawing excursions, young Sargent worked with care on his drawings, and he enthusiastically copied images from The Illustrated London News of ships and made detailed sketches of landscapes. FitzWilliam had hoped that his sons interest in ships and the sea might lead him toward a naval career, at thirteen, his mother reported that John sketches quite nicely, & has a remarkably quick and correct eye. If we could afford to give him really good lessons, he would soon be quite a little artist, at the age of thirteen, he received some watercolor lessons from Carl Welsch, a German landscape painter. Although his education was far from complete, Sargent grew up to be a literate and cosmopolitan young man, accomplished in art, music
26.
Anders Zorn
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Anders Leonard Zorn was one of Swedens foremost artists. He obtained international success as a painter, sculptor, and etcher, among Zorns portrait subjects were King Oscar II of Sweden, and three American Presidents, Grover Cleveland, William H. Taft, and Theodore Roosevelt. At the end of his life, he established the Swedish literary Bellman Prize in 1920, Zorn was born and raised on his grandparents farm in Yvraden, a hamlet near the village of Utmeland in the parish of Mora, Dalarna. He studied until the age of twelve in the school at Mora Strand before progressing in the autumn of 1872 to a grammar school in Enköping. From 1875 to 1880 Zorn studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm, members of Stockholm society approached him with commissions. This was how Zorn met his wife, Emma Lamm, early in 1881 and her background was different from Zorns. Coming from a wealthy Jewish merchant family, she was interested in art, Zorn traveled extensively to London, Paris, the Balkans, Spain, Italy and the United States, becoming an international success as one of the most acclaimed painters of his era. It was primarily his skill as a painter that gained Zorn international acclaim based principally upon his incisive ability to depict the individual character of his model. His subjects included three American Presidents, one of whom was Grover Cleveland in 1899, as well as his wife, along with William H. Taft, at 29, he was made a Chevalier de la Légion dhonneur at the Exposition Universelle 1889 Paris World Fair. Portrait paintings Zorns art made him wealthy and he was able to build up a considerable collection of art. The objects were not only bought in his country but also during the many travels he made abroad. In their joint will, Anders and Emma Zorn donated their holdings to the Swedish State. Some of his most important works can be seen at the National Museum of Fine Arts in Stockholm, among them is Midsummer Dance, a depiction of dancers in the evening light of a rural Midsummers Eve celebration. Other museums holding works by Zorn include the Musée dOrsay in Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The Zorn Collections located in Mora and Garberg, Älvdalen, consist of four dedicated to the life. The main museum - Zornmuseet - was designed by Ragnar Östberg, shown there are extensive works of Zorn and his collected art by Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, The Hovingham Master, Bruno Liljefors, Albert Edelfelt, and Pehr Hilleström. The Bellman Prize is a prize for an outstanding Swedish poet. The prize was established by Anders Zorn and his wife Emma in 1920, in 1886, Anders Zorn and his wife Emma, had bought land close to Mora church and here they moved a cottage from his maternal grandfathers farm
27.
Frans Hals
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Frans Hals the Elder was a Dutch Golden Age portrait painter who lived and worked in Haarlem. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and he helped introduce this style of painting into Dutch art. Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture, Hals was born in 1582 or 1583 in Antwerp as the son of cloth merchant Franchois Fransz Hals van Mechelen and his second wife Adriaentje van Geertenryck. Like many, Hals parents fled during the Fall of Antwerp from the Spanish Netherlands to Haarlem, Hals studied under Flemish émigré Karel van Mander, whose Mannerist influence, however, is barely noticeable in Hals work. In 1610, Hals became a member of the Haarlem Guild of Saint Luke and he worked on their large art collection that Karel van Mander had described in his Schilderboeck published in Haarlem in 1604. The most notable of these were the works of Geertgen tot Sint Jans, Jan van Scorel, however, the entire collection of paintings was not formally possessed by the city council until 1625, after the city fathers had decided which paintings were suitable for the city hall. The remaining art that was considered too Roman Catholic was sold to Cornelis Claesz van Wieringen and it was in this cultural context that Hals began his career in portraiture, since the market had disappeared for religious themes. The earliest known example of Hals art is the portrait of Jacobus Zaffius and his breakthrough came with the life-sized group portrait The Banquet of the Officers of the St George Militia Company in 1616. His most noted portrait today is the one of René Descartes which he made in 1649, Frans Hals married his first wife Anneke Harmensdochter around 1610. Frans was of Catholic birth, however, so their marriage was recorded in the city hall, unfortunately, the exact date is unknown because the older marriage records of the Haarlem city hall before 1688 have not been preserved. Bavochurch where both are buried, though Frans took over 40 years to join his first wife there, Anneke died in 1615, shortly after the birth of their third child and, of the three, Harmen survived infancy and one had died before Hals second marriage. As biographer Seymour Slive has pointed out, older stories of Frans Hals abusing his first wife were confused with another Haarlem resident of the same name. Indeed, at the time of charges, the artist had no wife to mistreat. After his first wife died, Hals took on the daughter of a fishmonger to look after his children and, in 1617. They married in Spaarndam, a village outside the banns of Haarlem. Frans Hals was a father, and they went on to have eight children. Contemporaries such as Rembrandt moved their households according to the caprices of their patrons, for this reason, we can be sure that all sitters were either from Haarlem or were visiting Haarlem when they had their portraits made. Hals work was in throughout his life, but he lived so long that he eventually went out of style as a painter
28.
Peredvizhniki
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In 1863 a group of fourteen students decided to leave The Imperial Academy of Arts. The students found the rules of the Academy constraining, the teachers were conservative, in an effort to bring art to the people, the students formed an independent artistic society, The Petersburg Cooperative of Artists. The society maintained independence from support and brought the art. From 1871 to 1923, the society arranged 48 mobile exhibitions in St. Petersburg and Moscow, after which they were shown in Kiev, Kharkov, Kazan, Oryol, Riga, Odessa and other cities. Peredvizhniki were influenced by the views of the literary critics Vissarion Belinsky and Nikolai Chernyshevsky. Belinsky thought that literature and art should attribute a social and moral responsibility, like most Slavophiles, Chernyshevsky ardently supported the emancipation of serfs, which was finally realized in the reform of 1861. He viewed press censorship, serfdom, and capital punishment as Western influences, because of his political activism, officials prohibited publication of any of his writing, including his dissertation, but it eventually found its way to the artworld of nineteenth-century Russia. Peredvizhniki portrayed the many-sided aspects of life, often critical of inequities and injustices. But their art showed not only poverty but also the beauty of the way of life, not only suffering but also fortitude. Peredvizhniki condemned the Russian aristocratic orders and autocratic government in their humanistic art and they portrayed the emancipation movement of Russian people with empathy. They portrayed social-urban life, and later used historic art to depict the common people, during their blossoming, the Peredvizhniki society developed an increasingly wider scope, with more natural and free images. In contrast to the dark palette of the time, they chose a lighter palette. They worked for naturalness in their images, and the depiction of peoples relationship with their surroundings, the society united most of the highly talented artists of the country. Among Peredvizhniki there were artists of Ukraine, Latvia, and Armenia, the society also showed the work of Mark Antokolski, Vasili Vereshchagin, and Andrei Ryabushkin. The work of the critic and democrat Vladimir Stasov was important for the development of Peredvizhnikis art, pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov showed the work of these artists in his gallery and gave them important material and moral support. Landscape painting flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, Peredvizhniki painted mainly landscapes, some, like Polenov, used plein air technique. Two painters, Ivan Shishkin and Isaak Levitan, painted landscapes of Russia. Shishkin is still considered to be the Russian Singer of forest, the Russian landscape gained importance as a national icon after Peredvizhniki
29.
Russian Museum
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The State Russian Museum, formerly the Russian Museum of His Imperial Majesty Alexander III is the largest depository of Russian fine art in Saint Petersburg. It is also one of the largest museums in the country, the museum was established on April 13,1895, upon enthronement of Nicholas II to commemorate his father, Alexander III. Its original collection was composed of artworks taken from the Hermitage Museum, Alexander Palace, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, many private collections were nationalized and relocated to the Russian Museum. These included Kazimir Malevichs Black Square, upon the death of the Grand Duke the residence was named after his wife as the Palace of the Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna, and became famous for its many theatrical presentations and balls. Some of the halls of the palace retain the Italianate opulent interiors of the imperial residence. The Ethnographic Department was originally set up in a specially designed by Vladimir Svinyin in 1902. The museum soon housed gifts received by Emperors family from representatives of peoples inhabiting various regions of the Russian Empire, further exhibits were purchased by Nicholas II and other members of his family as State financing was not enough to purchase new exhibits. In 1934, the Ethnographic Department was given the status of an independent museum, the city of Málaga, home to thousands of Russian expats, has signed an agreement to host the first overseas branch of the State Russian Museum. Works displayed in Malaga will range from Byzantine-inspired icons to social realism of the Soviet era and they will be on display in 2,300 square metres of exhibition space in La Tabacalera, a 1920s tobacco factory. The new museum is scheduled to open in early 2015
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Watercolor
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Watercolor or watercolour, also aquarelle, a diminutive of the Latin for water, is a painting method in which the paints are made of pigments suspended in a water-based solution. Watercolor refers to both the medium and the resulting artwork, the traditional and most common support—material to which the paint is applied—for watercolor paintings is paper. Other supports include papyrus, bark papers, plastics, vellum, leather, fabric, wood, Watercolor paper is often made entirely or partially with cotton, which gives a good texture and minimizes distortion when wet. Watercolors are usually translucent, and appear luminous because the pigments are laid down in a form with few fillers obscuring the pigment colors. Watercolors can also be made opaque by adding Chinese white, in East Asia, watercolor painting with inks is referred to as brush painting or scroll painting. In Chinese, Korean and Japanese painting it has been the dominant medium, india, Ethiopia and other countries have long watercolor painting traditions as well. Fingerpainting with watercolor paints originated in mainland China, however, its continuous history as an art medium begins with the Renaissance. The German Northern Renaissance artist Albrecht Dürer, who painted several fine botanical, wildlife, an important school of watercolor painting in Germany was led by Hans Bol as part of the Dürer Renaissance. Despite this early start, watercolors were used by Baroque easel painters only for sketches, copies or cartoons. Notable early practitioners of watercolor painting were Van Dyck, Claude Lorrain, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, however, botanical illustration and wildlife illustration perhaps form the oldest and most important traditions in watercolor painting. Botanical illustrations became popular during the Renaissance, both as hand-tinted woodblock illustrations in books or broadsheets and as tinted ink drawings on vellum or paper. Wildlife illustration reached its peak in the 19th century with such as John James Audubon. Several factors contributed to the spread of watercolor painting during the 18th century, Watercolor artists were commonly brought with the geological or archaeological expeditions, funded by the Society of Dilettanti, to document discoveries in the Mediterranean, Asia, and the New World. This example popularized watercolors as a form of personal tourist journal, the confluence of these cultural, engineering, scientific, tourist, and amateur interests culminated in the celebration and promotion of watercolor as a distinctly English national art. William Blake published several books of hand-tinted engraved poetry, provided illustrations to Dantes Inferno, from the late 18th century through the 19th century, the market for printed books and domestic art contributed substantially to the growth of the medium. Satirical broadsides by Thomas Rowlandson, many published by Rudolph Ackermann, were extremely popular. Among the important and highly talented contemporaries of Turner and Girtin, were John Varley, John Sell Cotman, Anthony Copley Fielding, Samuel Palmer, William Havell, the Swiss painter Louis Ducros was also widely known for his large format, romantic paintings in watercolor. These societies provided annual exhibitions and buyer referrals for many artists, in particular, the graceful, lapidary, and atmospheric watercolors by Richard Parkes Bonington created an international fad for watercolor painting, especially in England and France in the 1820s
31.
Pastel
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A pastel is an art medium in the form of a stick, consisting of pure powdered pigment and a binder. The pigments used in pastels are the same as used to produce all colored art media, including oil paints. The color effect of pastels is closer to the natural dry pigments than that of any other process, Pastels have been used by artists since the Renaissance, and gained considerable popularity in the 18th century, when a number of notable artists made pastel their primary medium. An artwork made using pastels is called a pastel, Pastel used as a verb means to produce an artwork with pastels, as an adjective it means pale in color. Pastel sticks or crayons consist of powdered pigment combined with a binder. The exact composition and characteristics of an individual pastel stick depends on the type of pastel and it also varies by individual manufacturer. Dry pastels have historically used binders such as gum arabic and gum tragacanth, methyl cellulose was introduced as a binder in the twentieth century. Often a chalk or gypsum component is present and they are available in varying degrees of hardness, the softer varieties being wrapped in paper. Some pastel brands use pumice in the binder to abrade the paper, dry pastel media can be subdivided as follows, Soft pastels, This is the most widely used form of pastel. The sticks have a portion of pigment and less binder. The drawing can be readily smudged and blended, but it results in a proportion of dust. White chalk may be used as a filler in producing pale, Pan Pastels, These are formulated with a minimum of binder in flat compacts and applied with special Soft micropore sponge tools. A 21st-century invention, Pan Pastels can be used for the painting or in combination with soft. Hard pastels, These have a portion of binder and less pigment. These can be used with other pastels for drawing outlines and adding accents, hard pastels are traditionally used to create the preliminary sketching out of a composition. However, the colors are brilliant and are available in a restricted range in contrast to soft pastels. Pastel pencils, These are pencils with a pastel lead and they are useful for adding fine details. In addition, pastels using a different approach to manufacture have been developed, Oil pastels, These have a soft, buttery consistency and they are dense and fill the grain of paper and are slightly more difficult to blend than soft pastels, but do not require a fixative
32.
Lithography
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Lithography is a method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by German author and actor Alois Senefelder as a method of publishing theatrical works. Lithography can be used to print text or artwork onto paper or other suitable material, Lithography originally used an image drawn with oil, fat, or wax onto the surface of a smooth, level lithographic limestone plate. The stone was treated with a mixture of acid and gum arabic, when the stone was subsequently moistened, these etched areas retained water, an oil-based ink could then be applied and would be repelled by the water, sticking only to the original drawing. The ink would finally be transferred to a paper sheet. This traditional technique is used in some fine art printmaking applications. In modern lithography, the image is made of a coating applied to a flexible aluminum plate. The image can be printed directly from the plate, or it can be offset, by transferring the image onto a sheet for printing. In fact, photolithography is used synonymously with offset printing, the technique as well as the term were introduced in Europe in the 1850s. Beginning in the 1960s, photolithography has played an important role in the fabrication, Lithography uses simple chemical processes to create an image. For instance, the part of an image is a water-repelling substance. Thus, when the plate is introduced to a printing ink and water mixture, the ink will adhere to the positive image. This allows a flat print plate to be used, enabling much longer, Lithography was invented by Alois Senefelder in the Kingdom of Bavaria in 1796. In the early days of lithography, a piece of limestone was used. After the oil-based image was put on the surface, a solution of gum arabic in water was applied, during printing, water adhered to the gum arabic surfaces and was repelled by the oily parts, while the oily ink used for printing did the opposite. Lithography works because of the repulsion of oil and water. The image is drawn on the surface of the print plate with a fat or oil-based medium such as a wax crayon, which may be pigmented to make the drawing visible
33.
Vasily Kachalov
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Vasily Ivanovich Kachalov was one of Russias most renowned actors. He worked closely and often with Konstantin Stanislavski and he led the so-called Kachalov Group within the Moscow Art Theatre. It was Kachalov who played Hamlet in the Symbolist production of 1911 and his father was Ivan Shverubovich, a Belarusian Orthodox priest from Wilno. His schoolmates at the college included Felix Dzerzhinsky and Konstantinas Galkauskas. In 1896, he left the law department of Saint Petersburg University in order to pursue an acting career. After four years of touring the Russian provinces and a stint at the Suvorin Theatre. The snow maiden was played by Stanislavskis wife, Maria Lilina, another of his lovers was Alisa Koonen. He met his wife, actress Nina Litovtseva, when they were acting in the Kazan Drama Theatre, Kachalov was greatly admired for his magnetic voice. He played Baron Tuzenbach after Meyerholds departure from the theatre, in the original 1904 production of The Cherry Orchard he appeared as Trofimov. He starred in Nemirovich-Danchenkos production of Ivanov later that year, all in all, he took more than 50 roles in Stanislavskis company. After the Russian Revolution, the Kachalov Group went touring Central Europe and did not return until the summer of 1921, Kachalov was named one of the first Peoples Artists of the USSR after the title was instituted in 1936 and received a Stalin Prize in 1943. He was also the recipient of the two Orders of Lenin, the Kazan State Theatre was given his name in 1948. The Russian director and puppeteer, Sergey Obraztsov, described seeing Kachalov on stage, different too was that amazing process of creating a phrase, and every visual image evoked by the word. One had the impression that Kachalov was not merely speaking but thinking aloud, and that the words one heard were only a part of what he was seeing with his inner eye. For that reason people did not merely listen to Kachalov, they watched what he was talking about. ”Role, Ekdal 1901 - The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, directed by Stanislavsky, role, tolstoy 1902 - Three Sisters, Anton Chekhov. Role, Tuzenbach 1902 - The Lower Depths, Gorky, role, Baron 1903 - The Pillars of Society, Ibsen. Role Hilmar 1903 - Julius Caesar, Shakespeare, role, Julius Caesar 1904 - The Cherry Orchard, Chekhov. Role, Trofimov 1904 - Ivanov, Chekhov, role, Ivanov 1905 - Ghosts, Ibsen
34.
Tamara Karsavina
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Tamara Platonovna Karsavina was a Russian prima ballerina, renowned for her beauty, who was a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and later of the Ballets Russes of Serge Diaghilev. After settling in Britain at Hampstead in London, she began teaching ballet professionally and she assisted in the establishment of The Royal Ballet and was a founder member of the Royal Academy of Dance, which is now the worlds largest dance-teaching organisation. Tamara Karsavina was born in Saint Petersburg, the daughter of Platon Konstantinovich Karsavin and his wife, a principal dancer and mime with the Imperial Ballet, Platon also taught as an instructor at the Imperial Ballet School. He counted among his students Michel Fokine, a dancing partner. Karsavinas older brother Lev Platonovich Karsavin became a philosopher and medieval historian. Her niece, Marianna Karsavina, married Ukrainian author and artistic patron Pyotr Suvchinsky, through her mother, Karsavina was distantly related to the religious poet and co-founder of the Slavophile movement, Aleksey Khomyakov. Karsavinas father had once been the pupil of Marius Petipa, teacher and choreographer. Karsavina suspected that Petipa was behind the political intrigue that resulted in her father being forced into early retirement, though Platon continued to teach at the Imperial Ballet School, and also retained some private pupils, he was disillusioned by the experience. Karsavina later wrote, I think the blow to their pride meant more than financial considerations to them, after all, we always lived from hand to mouth, never looking ahead, spending more when there was something to spend, fitting in somehow when there wasnt. Father had reason to expect his being kept for the second service and he was sore at heart parting with the stage. Due to his own experiences, Platon initially refused to allow Karsavina to study ballet. Mothers dream was to make a dancer of me, Karsavina later wrote. It is a career for a woman, she would say, and I think the child must have a leaning for the stage, she is fond of dressing up. Without seeking Platons permission, Karsavinas mother arranged for her to taking lessons with a family friend. When Platon learned months later that his daughter had begun dancing lessons, he took the news in his stride, far from receiving preferential treatment, however, Karsavina referred to her father as her most exacting teacher. And to the tune of his fiddle I exerted myself to the utmost, in 1894, after a rigorous examination, Karsavina was accepted at the Imperial Ballet School. At her mothers urging, Karsavina chose to graduate ahead of schedule in early 1902 and they desperately needed the small income Karsavina would receive as a dancer with the corps de ballet. After graduating from the Imperial Ballet School, Karsavina enjoyed a rise through the ranks
35.
Ivan Krylov
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Ivan Andreyevich Krylov is Russias best known fabulist and probably the most epigrammatic of all Russian authors. Formerly a dramatist and journalist, he discovered his true genre at the age of 40. While many of his earlier fables were loosely based on Aesops and La Fontaines, later fables were original work, Ivan Krylov was born in Moscow, but spent his early years in Orenburg and Tver. His father, a military officer, resigned in 1775 and died in 1779. A few years later Krylov and his moved to St. Petersburg in the hope of securing a government pension. There, Krylov obtained a position in the service. His literary career began in 1783, when he sold to a publisher the comedy “The coffee-grounds fortune teller” that he had written at 14, although in the end it was never published or produced. Beginning in 1789, Krylov also made three attempts to start a magazine, although none achieved a large circulation or lasted more than a year. Despite this lack of success, their satire and the humour of his comedies helped the author gain recognition in literary circles, little is known of him in the years immediately after, other than the commonly accepted myth that he wandered from town to town playing cards. Soon, however, he moved on to St Petersburg and returned to writing with more success, particularly with the productions of “The Fashion Shop”. These satirised the nobility’s attraction to everything French, a fashion he detested all his life, Krylovs first collection of fables,23 in number, appeared in 1809 and met with such an enthusiastic reception that thereafter he abandoned drama for fable-writing. By the end of his career he had completed some 200, after 1830 he wrote little and led an increasingly sedentary life. A multitude of stories were told about his laziness, his gluttony. Towards the end of his life Krylov suffered two cerebral hemorrhages and was taken by the Empress to recover at Pavlovsk Palace, after his death in 1844, he was buried beside his friend and fellow librarian Nikolay Gnedich in the Tikhvin Cemetery. Roughly the same formula was followed in the 1824 painting of him by Peter A. Olenin, an 1832 study by Grigory Chernetsov groups his corpulent figure with fellow writers Alexander Pushkin, Vasily Zhukovsky and Nikolay Gnedich. In 1830 the Academician Samuil I. Galberg carved a portrait bust of Krylov and it may have been this or another that was presented by the Emperor to his son Alexander as a new years gift in 1831. A bust is also recorded as being placed on the table before Krylovs seat at the banquet held in his honour in 1838. The most notable statue of him was placed in the Summer Garden ten years after his death, regarded as a sign of the progress of Romanticism in Russian official culture, it was the first monument to a poet erected in Eastern Europe
36.
Landscape painting
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In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition, detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects. The two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going well over a thousand years in both cases. Landscape views in art may be imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a patch of land had existed in Old English. The earliest pure landscapes with no figures are frescos from Minoan Greece of around 1500 BCE. The frescos from the Tomb of Nebamun, now in the British Museum, are a famous example. These were frequently used, as in the illustrated, to bridge the gap between a foreground scene with figures and a distant panoramic vista, a persistent problem for landscape artists. The Chinese style generally showed only a distant view, or used dead ground or mist to avoid that difficulty, aesthetic theories in both regions gave the highest status to the works seen to require the most imagination from the artist. They were often also poets whose lines and images illustrated each other, a revival in interest in nature initially mainly manifested itself in depictions of small gardens such as the Hortus Conclusus or those in millefleur tapestries. The frescos of figures at work or play in front of a background of trees in the Palace of the Popes. Several frescos of gardens have survived from Roman houses like the Villa of Livia, a particular advance is shown in the less well-known Turin-Milan Hours, now largely destroyed by fire, whose developments were reflected in Early Netherlandish painting for the rest of the century. Landscape backgrounds for various types of painting became prominent and skilful during the 15th century. The Italian development of a system of graphical perspective was now known all over Europe. Indeed, certain styles were so popular that they became formulas that could be copied again and again, after the publication of the Small Landscapes, landscape artists in the Low Countries either continued with the world landscape or followed the new mode presented by the Small Landscapes. The popularity of landscape scenes can be seen in the success of the painter Frans Post. Salvator Rosa gave picturesque excitement to his landscapes by showing wilder Southern Italian country, there are different styles and periods, and subgenres of marine and animal painting, as well as a distinct style of Italianate landscape
37.
Mir iskusstva
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In fact, few Europeans outside Russia actually saw issues of the magazine itself. From 1909, several of the miriskusniki also participated in productions of Sergei Diaghilevs Ballets Russes company based in Paris, the artistic group was founded in November 1898 by a group of students that included Alexandre Benois, Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Filosofov, Léon Bakst, and Eugene Lansere. The starting moments for the new group was organization of the Exhibition of Russian. The magazine was co-founded in 1899 in St. Petersburg by Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst and they aimed at assailing low artistic standards of the obsolescent Peredvizhniki school and promoting artistic individualism and other principles of Art Nouveau. Apart from three founding fathers, active members of the World of Art included Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Eugene Lansere, exhibitions organized by the World of Art attracted many illustrious painters from Russia and abroad, notably Mikhail Vrubel, Mikhail Nesterov, and Isaac Levitan. Representative works In its classical period the art group organized six exhibitions,1899,1900,1901,1902,1903,1906, in 1904-1910, Mir iskusstva did not exist as a separate artistic group. Its place was inherited by the Union of Russian Artists which continued officially until 1910, the Union included painters, illustrators, restorators, and scenic designers. In 1910 Benois published an article in the magazine Rech about the Union of Russian Artists. Nicholas Roerich became the new chairman, the group admitted new members including Nathan Altman, Vladimir Tatlin, and Martiros Saryan. Some said that the inclusion of Russian avant-garde painters demonstrated that the group had become an organization rather than an art movement. In 1917 the chairman of the group became Ivan Bilibin, the same year most members of the Jack of Diamonds entered the group. The group organized numerous exhibitions,1911,1912,1913,1915,1916,1917,1918,1921,1922 Saint-Petersburg, the last exhibition of Mir iskusstva was organized in Paris in 1927. Some members of the group entered the Zhar-Tsvet and Four Arts artistic movements, like the Romantics before them, the miriskusniki promoted understanding and conservation of the art of previous epochs, particularly traditional folk art and the 18th-century rococo. Antoine Watteau was probably the single artist whom they admired the most, such Revivalist projects were treated by the miriskusniki humorously, in a spirit of self-parody. They were fascinated with masks and marionettes, with carnaval and puppet theater, with dreams, everything grotesque and playful appealed to them more than the serious and emotional. Their favorite city was Venice, so much so that Diaghilev, as for media, the miriskusniki preferred the light, airy effects of watercolor and gouache to full-scale oil paintings. Seeking to bring art into every house, they designed interiors. Bakst and Benois revolutionized theatrical design with their ground-breaking decor for Cléopâtre, Carnaval, Petrushka, potter, Michelle, ‘Mir iskusstva, Serge Diaghilev’s Art Journal’, in NLA News, July 2005, Volume XV, Number 10 Mir iskusstva Artists at the Russian Art Gallery
38.
Modernism
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Among the factors that shaped modernism were the development of modern industrial societies and the rapid growth of cities, followed then by reactions of horror to World War I. Modernism also rejected the certainty of Enlightenment thinking, and many modernists rejected religious belief, the poet Ezra Pounds 1934 injunction to Make it new. Was the touchstone of the approach towards what it saw as the now obsolete culture of the past. In this spirit, its innovations, like the novel, atonal and twelve-tone music, divisionist painting and abstract art. Modernism explicitly rejected the ideology of realism and makes use of the works of the past by the employment of reprise, incorporation, rewriting, recapitulation, revision, others focus on modernism as an aesthetic introspection. While J. M. W. Art critic Clement Greenberg describes the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as proto-Modernists, There the proto-Modernists were, of all people, the Pre-Raphaelites actually foreshadowed Manet, with whom Modernist painting most definitely begins. They acted on a dissatisfaction with painting as practiced in their time, rationalism has also had opponents in the philosophers Søren Kierkegaard and later Friedrich Nietzsche, both of whom had significant influence on existentialism. A major 19th-century engineering achievement was The Crystal Palace, the huge cast-iron, Glass and iron were used in a similar monumental style in the construction of major railway terminals in London, such as Paddington Station and Kings Cross Station. These technological advances led to the building of structures like the Brooklyn Bridge. The latter broke all previous limitations on how tall man-made objects could be and these engineering marvels radically altered the 19th-century urban environment and the daily lives of people. Arguments arose that the values of the artist and those of society were not merely different, but that Society was antithetical to Progress, the philosopher Schopenhauer called into question the previous optimism, and his ideas had an important influence on later thinkers, including Nietzsche. Darwins theory of evolution by natural selection undermined religious certainty and the idea of human uniqueness, in particular, the notion that human beings were driven by the same impulses as lower animals proved to be difficult to reconcile with the idea of an ennobling spirituality. Karl Marx argued that there were fundamental contradictions within the capitalist system, historians, and writers in different disciplines, have suggested various dates as starting points for modernism. Everdell also thinks modernism in painting began in 1885–86 with Seurats Divisionism, the poet Baudelaires Les Fleurs du mal, and Flauberts novel Madame Bovary were both published in 1857. In the arts and letters, two important approaches developed separately in France, the first was Impressionism, a school of painting that initially focused on work done, not in studios, but outdoors. Impressionist paintings demonstrated that human beings do not see objects, the school gathered adherents despite internal divisions among its leading practitioners, and became increasingly influential. A significant event of 1863 was the Salon des Refusés, created by Emperor Napoleon III to display all of the paintings rejected by the Paris Salon. While most were in standard styles, but by artists, the work of Manet attracted tremendous attention
39.
Maxim Gorky
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Alexei Maximovich Peshkov, primarily known as Maxim Gorky, was a Russian and Soviet writer, a founder of the socialist realism literary method and a political activist. He was also a nominee for the Nobel Prize in Literature. Around fifteen years before success as a writer, he changed jobs and roamed across the Russian Empire. Gorkys most famous works were The Lower Depths, Twenty-six Men and he had an association with fellow Russian writers Leo Tolstoy and Anton Chekhov, Gorky would later mention them in his memoirs. Gorky was active with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime, and for a time closely associated himself with Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanovs Bolshevik wing of the party. For a significant part of his life, he was exiled from Russia, in 1932, he returned to Russia on Joseph Stalins personal invitation and died there in June 1936. Born as Alexei Maximovich Peshkov on 28 March 1868, in Nizhny Novgorod and he was brought up by his grandmother and ran away from home at the age of twelve in 1880. After an attempt at suicide in December 1887, he travelled on foot across the Russian Empire for five years, changing jobs, as a journalist working for provincial newspapers, he wrote under the pseudonym Иегудиил Хламида. He began using the pseudonym Gorky in 1892, while working in Tiflis for the newspaper Кавказ, the name reflected his simmering anger about life in Russia and a determination to speak the bitter truth. Gorkys first book Очерки и рассказы in 1898 enjoyed a sensational success, Gorky wrote incessantly, viewing literature less as an aesthetic practice than as a moral and political act that could change the world. He described the lives of people in the lowest strata and on the margins of society, revealing their hardships, humiliations, and brutalisation, but also their inward spark of humanity. Gorkys reputation grew as a literary voice from the bottom strata of society and as a fervent advocate of Russias social, political. By 1899, he was associating with the emerging Marxist social-democratic movement. At the heart of all his work was a belief in the inherent worth, in his writing, he counterposed individuals, aware of their natural dignity, and inspired by energy and will, with people who succumb to the degrading conditions of life around them. But if thou art for thyself alone, wherefore art thou and he publicly opposed the Tsarist regime and was arrested many times. Gorky befriended many revolutionaries and became a friend of Vladimir Lenin after they met in 1902. He exposed governmental control of the press, in 1902, Gorky was elected an honorary Academician of Literature, but Tsar Nicholas II ordered this annulled. In protest, Anton Chekhov and Vladimir Korolenko left the Academy, from 1900 to 1905, Gorkys writings became more optimistic
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Maria Yermolova
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Maria Nikolayevna Yermolova was said to be the greatest actress in the history of the Maly Theatre in Moscow and the first person to be proclaimed the Peoples Artist of the Republic. Her contemporary and fellow Russian actor Constantin Stanislavski proclaimed her the greatest actress he had observed, thus placing her above Sarah Bernhardt. From 1889 to 1928 she lived in a house on Tverskoy Boulevard in Moscow, following her death, her flat was designated a national monument, and the Yermolova Theatre in the Tverskoy District of Moscow still bears her name. A minor planet 3657 Ermolova, discovered by Soviet astronomer Lyudmila Zhuravlyova in 1978 is named after her, Ermolova crater on Venus is also named in her honor
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Feodor Chaliapin
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Feodor Ivanovich Chaliapin was a Russian opera singer. He himself spelled his surname, French-style, Chaliapine in the West, in English texts, his given name is most usually rendered as Feodor or Fyodor, and his surname is most usually seen as Chaliapin. This spelling also better reflects the fact that the name is pronounced with three syllables, not four, Feodor Chaliapin was born into a peasant family on February 1,1873 in Kazan, in the wing of merchant Lisitzins house on Rybnoryadskaya Street 10. This wing no longer exists, but the house with the yard where the wing was situated is still there, the next day, Candlemas, he was baptized in Epiphany Church on Bolshaya Prolomnaya street. His godparents were his neighbors, the shoemaker Nikolay Tonkov and Ludmila Kharitonova and his vocal teacher was Dmitri Usatov. Chaliapin began his career at Tbilisi and the Imperial Opera, St. Petersburg in 1894 and he was then invited to sing at the Mamontov Private Opera, his first role there was as Mephistopheles in Gounods Faust, in which he was a considerable success. At Mamontov he also met Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was serving as an assistant conductor there, with Rachmaninoff he learned the title role of Mussorgskys Boris Godunov, which became his signature character. Chaliapin returned the favor by showing Rachmaninoff how he built each of his interpretations around a culminating moment or point, Rachmaninoff put this approach to considerable use when he became a full-time concert pianist after World War I. On the strength of his Mamontov appearances, the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow engaged Chaliapin, during the First World War, Chaliapin also appeared regularly at the Zimin Private Opera in Moscow. At the end of his career, Toscanini observed that the Russian bass was the greatest operatic talent with whom he had ever worked. In 1925, while performing in New York, his piano accompanist was a young Harry Lubin, Chaliapin toured Australia in 1926, giving a series of recitals which were highly acclaimed. Privately, Chaliapins personal affairs were in a state of disarray as a consequence of the Russian Revolution of 1917, at first he was treated as a revered artist of the newly emerged Soviet Russia. He still maintained, however, that he was not anti-Soviet, Chaliapin initially moved to Finland and later lived in France. Cosmopolitan Paris, with its significant Russian émigré population, became his base, and ultimately and he was renowned for his larger-than-life carousing during this period, but he never sacrificed his dedication to his art. Chaliapins attachment to Paris did not prevent him pursuing a international operatic and concert career in England, the United States. In May 1931 he appeared in the Russian Season directed by Sir Thomas Beecham at Londons Lyceum Theatre and his most famous part was the title role of Boris Godunov. Chaliapin made one film for the director G. W. Pabst. The film was made in three different versions – French, English, and German, as was sometimes the prevailing custom, Chaliapin starred in all three versions, each of which used the same script, sets, and costumes, but different supporting casts
42.
Charcoal
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Charcoal is a lightweight, black residue, consisting of carbon and any remaining ash, obtained by removing water and other volatile constituents from animal and vegetation substances. Charcoal is usually produced by slow pyrolysis- the heating of wood or other substances in the absence of oxygen, the whole pile is covered with turf or moistened clay. The firing is begun at the bottom of the flue, the success of the operation depends upon the rate of the combustion. The operation is so delicate that it was left to colliers. They often lived alone in small huts in order to tend their wood piles, for example, in the Harz Mountains of Germany, charcoal burners lived in conical huts called Köten which are still much in evidence today. The massive production of charcoal was a cause of deforestation. The increasing scarcity of easily harvested wood was a factor behind the switch to fossil fuel equivalents, mainly coal. Charcoal made at 300 °C is brown, soft and friable, and readily inflames at 380 °C, made at higher temperatures it is hard and brittle, in Finland and Scandinavia, the charcoal was considered the by-product of wood tar production. The best tar came from pine, thus pinewoods were cut down for tar pyrolysis, the residual charcoal was widely used as substitute for metallurgical coke in blast furnaces for smelting. Tar production led to deforestation, it has been estimated all Finnish forests are younger than 300 years. The end of tar production at the end of the 19th century resulted in rapid re-forestation, the charcoal briquette was first invented and patented by Ellsworth B. A. Zwoyer of Pennsylvania in 1897 and was produced by the Zwoyer Fuel Company. The process was popularized by Henry Ford, who used wood. Ford Charcoal went on to become the Kingsford Company, Charcoal has been made by various methods. The traditional method in Britain used a clamp and this is essentially a pile of wooden logs leaning against a chimney. The chimney consists of 4 wooden stakes held up by some rope, the logs are completely covered with soil and straw allowing no air to enter. It must be lit by introducing some burning fuel into the chimney, if the soil covering gets torn by the fire, additional soil is placed on the cracks. Once the burn is complete, the chimney is plugged to prevent air from entering, the true art of this production method is in managing the sufficient generation of heat, and its transfer to wood parts in the process of being carbonised. A strong disadvantage of this method is the huge amount of emissions that are harmful to human health
43.
Helena Roerich
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Helena Ivanovna Roerich was a Russian philosopher, writer, and public figure. In the early 20th century, she created, in cooperation with the Teachers of the East and she was an organizer and participant of cultural activity in the U. S. conducted under the guidance of her husband, Nicholas Roerich. Along with her husband, she took part in expeditions of hard-to-reach and she translated two volumes of the Secret Doctrine of H. P. Blavatsky, and also selected Mahatma’s Letters, from English to Russian. Roerich was born in the family of Ivan Ivanovich Shaposhnikov, a well-known Saint-Petersburg architect, ekaterina Vassilievna Shaposhnikova, Roerich’s mother, belonged to an ancient Golenischev-Kutuzov family, which originated from Novgorod at the end of the 13th century. Roerich grew up and was educated in rich cultural traditions of her family, since childhood she was inquisitive, and independent. In 1895, Roerich graduated from Mariinsky Gymnasium in Saint-Petersburg with a gold medal, though the education she received there was of a great quality, Roerich often studied additionally on her own. After finishing her education at gymnasium, Roerich entered the Saint-Petersburg musical private school, the director of this school was I. A. Borovka, a senior of metropolitan conservatoire, and professor of piano playing and he was a noted figure in Petersburg’s musical culture of the time, and personally mentored Roerich. But her relatives banned her from entering the conservatoire, worried that she would be interested by the ideas found in the student environment. Thus, Roerich continued her education at home, where she perfected her grasp of foreign languages, Roerich and her mother often spent the summer at Bologoe in the Novgorod region, with her aunt E. V. Putyatina, at the estate of her husband, Prince P. A, in 1899, at Bologoe, she met the painter and archeologist Nicholas Konstantinovich Roerich. They fell in love, and in spite of her relatives opposition, in 1901, she, in 2001, at the place in Bologoe where they first met, a memorial named Monument of love was established. It contains a quotation from N. Roerich’s essay The University, I met Lada, my partner in life and inspirer, at Bologoe and this was a strong alliance of two loving people united by deep mutual feelings and common views. N. Roerich wrote about their marriage in his declining years, and the obstacles turned into possibilities. I devoted my books, To Helena, my wife, friend, many of Roerich’s paintings were a result of their common creativity. He called her She who leads in his books, and asserted that on many his canvases and we created together, and not without reason it was said that the works must have two names, women’s and men’s. Nicholas and Roerich had two children, in August 1902, their eldest son George was born. Later, he became a world-renowned scientist and orientalist and their younger son, Svetoslav, was born in October 1904
44.
Revolution
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Aristotle described two types of political revolution, Complete change from one constitution to another Modification of an existing constitution. Revolutions have occurred through history and vary widely in terms of methods, duration. Their results include major changes in culture, economy, and socio-political institutions, scholarly debates about what does and does not constitute a revolution center on several issues. Several generations of scholarly thought on revolutions have generated many competing theories, the word revolucion is known in French from the 13th century, and revolution in English by the late fourteenth century, with regards to the revolving motion of celestial bodies. Revolution in the sense of representing abrupt change in an order is attested by at least 1450. Political usage of the term had been established by 1688 in the description of the replacement of James II with William III. The process was termed The Glorious Revolution, there are many different typologies of revolutions in social science and literature. One of several different Marxist typologies divides revolutions into pre-capitalist, early bourgeois, bourgeois, bourgeois-democratic, early proletarian, Charles Tilly, a modern scholar of revolutions, differentiated between a coup, a top-down seizure of power, a civil war, a revolt and a great revolution. Other types of revolution, created for other typologies, include the social revolutions, proletarian or communist revolutions, failed or abortive revolutions, the term revolution has also been used to denote great changes outside the political sphere. Such revolutions are usually recognized as having transformed in society, culture, philosophy and technology much more than political systems, some can be global, while others are limited to single countries. One of the examples of the usage of the word revolution in such context is the Industrial Revolution. Note that such revolutions also fit the slow revolution definition of Tocqueville, a similar example is the Digital Revolution. Perhaps most often, the revolution is employed to denote a change in socio-political institutions. Jeff Goodwin gives two definitions of a revolution, political and socioeconomic revolutions have been studied in many social sciences, particularly sociology, political sciences and history. Scholars of revolutions, like Jack Goldstone, differentiate four current generations of scholarly research dealing with revolutions, the scholars of the first generation such as Gustave Le Bon, Charles A. Second generation theorists sought to develop detailed theories of why and when revolutions arise and they can be divided into three major approaches, psychological, sociological and political. The works of Ted Robert Gurr, Ivo K. Feierbrand, Rosalind L. Feierbrand, James A. Geschwender, David C. Schwartz, the second group, composed of academics such as Chalmers Johnson, Neil Smelser, Bob Jessop, Mark Hart, Edward A. As in the school, they differed in their definitions of what causes disequilibrium
45.
Bloody Sunday (1905)
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For other events of the same name, see Bloody Sunday. The massacre on Bloody Sunday is considered to be the start of the phase of the Revolution of 1905. After the emancipation of the serfs in 1861 by Tsar Alexander II of Russia, prior to emancipation no working class could be established because serfs working in the cities to supplement their incomes retained their ties to the land and their masters. The emancipation of the resulted in the establishment of a permanent working class in urban areas. Peasants “were confronted by social relationships, a frustrating regime of factory discipline. Generally unskilled, these peasants received low wages, were employed in working environments. Although some workers still had a relationship with their employer, factory employers were more present. Under serfdom, peasants had little, if any, contact with their landowner, in the new urban setting, however, factory employers often used their absolute authority in abusive and arbitrary manners. Their abuse of power, made evident by the working hours, low wages. “The Russian term for strike, stachka, was derived from an old term, stakat’sia- to conspire for a criminal act. ”As such, Russian laws viewed strikes as criminal acts of conspiracy. These corrections did not address a grossly unbalanced system that favored the employers. This caused the continuation of strikes and the first major strike in Russia. This new phenomenon was a catalyst to more strikes in Russia. This large strike prompted officials to consider regulations that would restrain the abuses of employers, a new law was passed in 1886 that required employers to specify working conditions in their factories in writing. This included the treatment of the workers, the hours. This new law also created factory inspectors who were charged with preserving industrial peace, despite these changes, strike activity again reached high proportions during the 1890s, resulting in the restriction of the workday to eleven and a half hours in 1897. Georgii Apollonovich Gapon was seeking a way to make a mark on the world by serving a noble cause, the Assemblys objectives were to defend workers rights and to elevate their moral and religious status. The Assembly served as a type of union for the workers of St. Petersburg, the Assembly would act as one of the catalysts for what would later be known as Bloody Sunday
46.
Distemper (paint)
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Distemper is a term with a variety of meanings for paints used in decorating and as a historical medium for painting pictures, and contrasted with tempera. The binder may be glues of vegetable or animal origin, soft distemper is not abrasion resistant and may include binders such as chalk, ground pigments, and animal glue. Hard distemper is stronger and wear-resistant and can include casein or linseed oil as binders, Distemper is an early form of whitewash, also used as a medium for artistic painting, usually made from powdered chalk or lime and size. Alternatives to chalk include the toxic white lead. Distempered surfaces can be marked and discoloured, and cannot be washed down, so distemper is best suited to temporary. The technique of painting on distempered surfaces blends watercolors with whiting, the colours are mixed with whitening, or finely-ground chalk, and tempered with size. The whitening makes them opaque and gives them body, but is also the cause of their drying light, a source of considerable embarrassment to the inexperienced eye is that the colours when wet present such a different appearance from what they do when dry. Many Medieval and Renaissance painters used distemper painting rather than oil paint for some of their works, the earliest paintings on canvas were mostly in distemper, which was also widely used in Asia, especially in Tibetan thankas. Distemper paintings suffer more than oil paintings as they age, and it was the commonest medium for painting banners and decorations for temporary celebrations, both of which attracted artists of the highest quality, especially when they were official court artists. Too much of the glue disposes the painting to crack and peel from the ground, while, with too little, it is friable, other sources would describe the Mantegnas as also being in distemper. Contemporary artist John Connell was known for using distemper in paintings sometimes as large as ten feet, fayum mummy portraits, from Late Antique Egypt Dirk Bouts Entombment, 1450s. National Gallery, London Many paintings by Mantegna The Raphael Cartoons, London Édouard Vuillard Lunch at Vasouy,1901, mark Tobeys White Journey, modern Le Grand Teddy by Édouard Vuillard Removing Distemper. Soft Distemper The Problem with Distemper
47.
Mythology
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Mythology refers variously to the collected myths of a group of people or to the study of such myths. Myths are the people tell to explain nature, history. Myth is a feature of every culture, mythologizing continues, as shown in contemporary mythopoeia such as urban legends and the expansive fictional mythoi created by fantasy novels and comics. A cultures collective mythology helps convey belonging, shared and religious experiences, behavioral models, the study of myth began in ancient history. Rival classes of the Greek myths by Euhemerus, Plato and Sallustius were developed by the Neoplatonists, the nineteenth-century comparative mythology reinterpreted myth as a primitive and failed counterpart of science, a disease of language, or a misinterpretation of magical ritual. Recent approaches often view myths as manifestations of psychological, cultural, or societal truths, the term mythology predates the word myth by centuries. It first appeared in the fifteenth-century, borrowed from the Middle French term mythologie, the word mythology, comes from Middle French mythologie, from Late Latin mythologia, from Greek μυθολογία mythología from μῦθος mythos and -λογία -logia. The word mythología appears in Plato, but was used as a term for fiction or story-telling of any kind, combining mỹthos. From Lydgate until the seventeenth or eighteenth-century, mythology was similarly used to mean a moral, fable, from its earliest use in reference to a collection of traditional stories or beliefs, mythology implied the falsehood of the stories being described. It came to be applied by analogy with similar bodies of traditional stories among other cultures around the world. The Greek loanword mythos and Latinate mythus both appeared in English before the first example of myth in 1830, in present use, mythology usually refers to the collected myths of a group of people, but may also mean the study of such myths. For example, Greek mythology, Roman mythology and Hittite mythology all describe the body of myths retold among those cultures, dundes defined myth as a sacred narrative that explains how the world and humanity evolved into their present form. Lincoln defined myth as ideology in narrative form, scholars in other fields use the term myth in varied ways. In a broad sense, the word can refer to any traditional story, due to this pejorative sense, some scholars opted for the term mythos. Its use was similarly pejorative and now commonly refers to its Aristotelian sense as a plot point or to a collective mythology. The term is distinguished from didactic literature such as fables. Main characters in myths are usually gods, demigods or supernatural humans, however, many exceptions or combinations exist, as in the Iliad, Odyssey and Aeneid. Myths are often endorsed by rulers and priests and are linked to religion or spirituality
