Wendy Salmond

In 1911 Vasily Kandinsky published the first edition of ‘On the Spiritual in Art', a landmark modernist treatise in which he sought to reframe the meaning of art and the true role of the artist. For many artists of late Imperial Russia - a culture deeply influenced by the regime's adoption of Byzantine Orthodoxy centuries before - questions of religion and spirituality were of paramount importance. As artists and the wider art community experimented with new ideas and interpretations at the dawn of the twentieth century, their relationship with ‘the spiritual' - broadly defined - was inextricably linked to their roles as pioneers of modernism. This diverse collection of essays introduces new and stimulating approaches to the ongoing debate as to how Russian artistic modernism engaged with questions of spirituality in the late nineteenth to mid-twentieth centuries. Ten chapters from emerging and established voices offer new perspectives on Kandinsky and other familiar nam...

Fedor Shekhtel\u27s four pavilions for the 1901 Glasgow International Exhibition are often described as the birthplace of stil\u27 modern, a specifically Russian response to the international phenomenon of Art Nouveau. But with their volatile mix of vernacular and modern forms they can also be seen as a reflection of the \u27Witte System,\u27 the process of rapid industrialization to which Serge Witte committed Russia during his tenure as Minister of Finance (1892-1903). Witte took up his post just in time to approve Ivan Ropet\u27s designs for the Russian section at the 1892 Columbia World\u27s Exposition in Chicago; he stepped down two years after signing off on Shekhtel\u27s plans for Glasgow. The years in between these two exhibitions saw both the radical transformation of Russian society and a corresponding shift in how Russia presented itself at the world\u27s fairs. The Old Russian Style that had satisfied the outside world\u27s expectations of Russian culture for decades gave way, if only briefly, to a dynamic and unsettling neo-Russian style. When a British reviewer dismissed the Glasgow pavilions as \u27the new are seen through Slavic distorting glasses,\u27 he was responding not only to Shekhtel\u27s architectural experiment, but also to the self-presentation of a state under intense pressure to \u27move a traditional society onto new historical tracks.\u27https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_books/1020/thumbnail.jp

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This paper investigates the material culture of icons on the International Space Station as part of a complex web of interactions between cosmonauts and the Russian Orthodox Church, reflecting contemporary terrestrial political and social affairs. An analysis of photographs from the International Space Station (ISS) demonstrated that a particular area of the Zvezda module is used for the display of icons, both Orthodox and secular, including the Mother of God of Kazan and Yuri Gagarin. The Orthodox icons are frequently sent to space and returned to Earth at the request of church clerics. In this process, the icons become part of an economy of belief that spans Earth and space. This practice stands in contrast to the prohibition against displaying political/religious imagery in the U.S.-controlled modules of ISS. The icons mark certain areas of ISS as bounded sacred spaces or hierotopies, separated from the limitless outer space beyond the space station walls.

The explicit goal of the International Space Station Archaeological Project (ISSAP) is to provide an understanding of material culture as a key component of life in space, on par with the research by biomedical and psychological scholars that has been ongoing since the 1960s. We take as our inspiration a phrase first used in the National Academy of Sciences report Human Factors in Long-Duration Spaceflight, which described a crewed spacecraft as “a microsociety in a miniworld” (Lindsley 1972, 23). One of our primary methods is the cataloguing of people and elements of material culture (objects and built spaces) from photographs taken during ISS missions, or “Expeditions,” as they are known (Walsh and Gorman 2021). We use photos because we are unable to visit ISS and observe it directly as archaeologists. The data for this study consists of a series of 48 historic photographs dating between November 2000 (Expedition 1, the beginning of habitation of ISS) and April 2014 (Expedition 39) which depict life in the Russian Zvezda module. This survey forms the first systematic investigation of the material culture of a space habitat. The photographs provide an extraordinary window on the lives, activities, beliefs, and interests of ISS crew. In this study, we focus on practices of visual display. The items crew members use to adorn the station walls alter the visual experience of the interior, provide a personal and earthly touch in the space machine environment, and say something about the values of the crew. It is also a material practice which sheds light on the evolution of a space culture. We catalogued 414 instances of 75 unique items on display in the 48 photographs. All of the images were accessed from NASA’s Johnson Space Center public Flickr account (NASA 2020). Each photo was chosen because it showed some change in the configuration of items in the aft space of Zvezda, relative to earlier images. The locations of the items were also recorded, so that their appearance, disappearance, movement, and relationships to other items and the general area could be assessed. Related Publications Lindsley, Donald B. 1972. \\u27Summary and Major Recommendations.\\u27 In Human Factors in Long-Duration Spaceflight. National Research Council. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press, pp. 15-30. https://doi.org/10.17226/12387, Salmond, Wendy, Justin St. P. Walsh and Alice C. Gorman 2020, \\u27Eternity in Low Earth Orbit: Icons on the International Space Station\\u27, Religions, vol. 11, p. 611, https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11110611.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_data/1003/thumbnail.jp

Changing hands one last time, in the 1950s, for many years the icons at BJU lived as it were incognito, the details of their glamorous origins largely forgotten. Reuniting this core group-the cream of the Hammers\u27 imperial icons--with others that passed into American museums in the 1930s allows us to appreciate the full significance of Armand and Victor Hammer\u27s foray into marketing icons Americans.Viewed in isolation, most of their imperial icons are perhaps no mo than a poignant reminder of the vast destruction and dislocation of Orthodox culture during the Soviet Cultural Revolution. Taken together, however, they paint a vivid picture of an historical moment in which Russian icons underwent the tortuous transformation from devotional object to collectible work of art.https://digitalcommons.chapman.edu/art_books/1012/thumbnail.jp

This essay examines Russian artist Viktor Vasnetsov’s search for a new kind of prayer icon in the closing decades of the nineteenth century: a hybrid of icon and painting that would reconcile Russia’s historic contradictions and launch a renaissance of national culture and faith. Beginning with his icons for the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands] Church at Abramtsevo in 1880-81, for two decades Vasnetsov was hailed as an innovator, the four icons he sent to the Paris “Exposition Universelle” of 1900 marking the culmination of his vision. After 1900, his religious painting polarized elite Russian society and was bitterly attacked in advanced art circles. Yet Vasnetsov’s new icons were increasingly linked with popular culture and the many copies made of them in the late Imperial period suggest that his hybrid image spoke to a generation seeking a resolution to the dilemma of how modern Orthodox worshippers should pray.

The goal of this article is to make a preliminary survey of the liturgical embroideries made or commissioned by the Empress Alexandra Fedorovna and her sister Grand Duchess Elizaveta Fedorovna. It suggests that the sisters’ needlework for sacred purposes was invested with a significance not seen in elite Russian society since the late seventeenth century. At a time when the arts of Orthodoxy were undergoing a state-sponsored renaissance, the wife and sister-in-law of the Nicholas ii were the last in a long line of royal women seeking to assert their piety and their power through traditional women’s work. In the closing years of the empire, to make and to donate sacred textiles was a way to emulate ancestral women, while providing modern women with examples of piety, industriousness, and patriotism.

Sergei Konenkov was one of the 20th century's most distinguished Russian artists. After spending over 20 years in the United States, he returned to the Soviet Union in 1945 to become a respected member of the Soviet art world. The mentor to an entire generation of Soviet sculptors, he was renowned for his personal charisma and artistic versatility. This collection of essays, interviews and personal reminiscences is an appraisal of his work. The contributors view Konenkov's work within a variety of cultural, artistic and philosophical contexts. Particular attention is paid to his awareness of both indigenous Russian traditions and European innovations. They trace the many stages of his artistic development as he explored and experimented with techniques borrowed from Realism, Symbolism, salon portraiture, African wood carving, Socialist Realism and Surrealism. The many different historical sources that inspired Konenkov's artistic expression, from Orthodox Christianity and the folklore of the Russian peasantry to the Egyptian pyramids and pre-classical antiquity are also discussed. The contributors also explore the relationship of Konenkov's life and ideology to art, and the effects of expatriation on creativity. Illustrated with dozens of photographs of Konenkov's art, this study of one of the most enigmatic and fascinating artists of the modern period will accompany an exhibition at The Jane Voorhees Zinnerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, New Jersey.