A series of events ‘Days of the Soviet Icon’ will take place at the Institute of Scientific Information for Social Sciences, INION RAS, as part of the Religious Studies lecture series ‘Re-ligare’(the Department of Philosophy).
An icon is first and foremost an object of religious veneration, but it can also act as an object of scientific research, material evidence of the past. The Soviet icon is a multifaceted narrative of the times of scarcity and religious everyday life during the period of large-scale campaigns against the Church and religion.
We present to you the programme of events:
- 25 November at 17:00 in the Assembly Hall of INION RAS, public lecture ‘The Icon as a Complex Object: from the Middle Ages to the USSR’ by Dmitry Igorevich Antonov (Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor at the Russian State University for the Humanities).
The lecture will focus on what an ‘icon’ is in the living religious tradition. As will be shown, the understanding and perception of the ‘icon’ radically changed among urban dwellers of the 20th century. At this time, the icon began to be understood, firstly, as a type of painting, a ‘pure image’. Secondly, as a ‘window into another world’ and a ‘canonical’ representation of theological ideas. The first understanding is connected with the total destruction of Russian material religion by the Bolsheviks in the 1920s and 30s. The second is related to the writings of the theologians of the 20th century. All of this has little to do with how icons were perceived in the Middle Ages and Modern times, or with their perception in the Russian provinces in the 20th century. By examining these issues we will understand why Soviet ‘kiotki’ are direct heirs of medieval icons; what are the constructing principles of foil icons of the 19th and 20th centuries; and what are the specific historical, cultural and social aspects of the Soviet era prayer images.
- 25 November at 18:30 Opening of the exhibition ‘Days of the Soviet Icon’ by the Director of INION RAS Alexei Vladimirovich Kuznetsov and a tour of the exhibition by its authors.
The icons presented at the exhibition show the traditions of the Nizhny Novgorod, Voronezh, Lipetsk, Ulyanovsk, Bryansk, and Samara regions, Krasnoyarsk Krai, and the Republic of Mordovia.
- 26 November at 16:00 there will be an additional tour by the authors of the exhibition.
- 26 November at 16:30 in the Assembly Hall of INION RAS, lecture ‘The Icon’s (Co-)Existence’ by Ivan Pavlovich Davydov (Doctor in Philosophy, Professor at Moscow State University).
Today there are numerous icon-painting schools and workshops in Russia, and large-scale exhibitions of icons painted in different techniques are regularly held. This has not always been the case. In the USSR professional icon painters and conservator-restorers could be trained in only a few universities, and not all those who wished to pursue this career could do so.
In his lecture Ivan Pavlovich Davydov will share his recollections about some aspects of the existence of icons in the late Soviet period of 1988-91, usually overlooked by art historians as unimportant. Historical examples of preserving and accidentally collecting even low-value cultural monuments of the ‘antique tsarist period’ will be used to demonstrate the difference between church icons saved from destruction, made according to all the rules of the canon of the period, and icons of the ‘simple style’, i.e. riza- or foil-covered icons.
Illustrated albums published in the USSR, ‘originals’ of ‘samizdat’ icons, pigments and tools used by icon painters and miniaturists of the last century, processed and unprocessed icon boards, and modern paints will be shown.
We will talk, first of all, about a marginal movement among icon-painting enthusiasts and amateurs, namely the phenomenon of the ‘folk icon’, when people with no artistic training often took up the brush ‘at the call of their heart’. Since the surge of interest in icon painting in Soviet Russia occurred in the late 1980s and early 1990s, we may refer to the fruits of such spontaneous creativity of the USSR citizens by the term ‘Soviet icon’.
The questions of the iconographic canon and its evolution, the art history classification of the Saviour's and Mother of God images, and the modus operandi of icons' existence in the contemporary ecclesiastical, near-church and extra-church space (museums, galleries, private collections) will be offered for discussion.
The lecture preceds a practical ‘Bryansk case study’ of Maria Sukhova's foil craft. It is designed for a wide audience and will be accompanied by visual materials.
- 26 November at 18:00 Master class by Maria Sergeyevna Sukhova, specialist in the foil craft. At this master class you will be able to observe the process of creating a foil frame and even take part in it.
- 6 December at 18:00 in the ‘big hall transformer’ of INION RAS, open lecture ‘Secret Nuns and Heirs of Traditions: the Craft and Path of the Masters of the Soviet Icon’ by Dmitry Yurievich Doronin(PhD in History, Senior Research Fellow at the Educational and Scientific Centre for Visual Studies of the Middle Ages and Modern Times in the Russian State University for the Humanities).
In the open lecture the fate of the icon industry in the Soviet era will be discussed. After the revolution, industrial production and ways of distribution of icons were disrupted, and the craft once again fell into the hands of individuall artisans. They turn to new materials, reinterpreting the traditions of the 19th century foil icon in a different way.
During the Soviet years, there were at least four generations of masters, most of whom were devout women. The first generation was represented by nuns who lived ‘in the secular world’, living out their days in the villages and hamlets closest to the former monasteries after the closure of the monasteries and their return from exile. Subsequent generations were very diverse in their decision to turn to the craft - there were those whom we can call ‘heirs of piety’, and ‘experimenters’ who renewed the tradition, as well as ‘moneymakers’, for whom icon-making was a source of income.
Each master had their own relationship with the ‘time of tradition’: some of them inherited their craft from a family dynasty, others included in the ‘arsenal’ of their images and artistic methods the pre-Christian heritage of Finno-Ugric peoples, for example (in our exhibition), the Mordva-Erzya.
You can register for the events here.
Organizing committee:
Head of the Lecture Series: Sergey Goryunov
Executive Secretary: Anastasia Shadieva
Coordinator: Vyacheslav Kostylev
