Thanks to the fact that my students had a vacation this week, I did, too, so I was able to go to Vespers Wednesday night and to Liturgy Thursday morning :)The church of St. Nicholas v Klennikakh even has a wall fresco of St. Dimitrios, shown here, in the smaller chapel of St. Nicholas.
The chapel looks something like this (but I think this picture was of one of the chapels downstairs....)
After Liturgy, I browsed the magazines in the church bookstore a little. There was an interesting one called "Orthodox Conversation" (Православная Беседа). As I thumbed through the pages, suddenly my eye caught a picture of someone familiar..... but who could it be, on the pages of a Russian magazine......?
Well, if it isn't Nikolai Lokhmatow of Holy Epiphany in Roslindale, Massachusetts, USA! Hello, Nikolai! :)
The picture was taken at the Sretensky Monastery, at, I presume, the Reunification events.
The distance between Moscow and Roslindale seemed to melt away.... Once again, I felt comforted--it's a small world, after all...
Of course, I bought this magazine :)
(I'll try to get a better picture in this spot later--I see the resolution isn't perfect.)
After leaving the church, I took the Metro to work to pick up my paycheck and to do a few other errands. As I arrived at the stop I get off at for work, Novoslobodskaya, I found myself much closer to the far wall of the station that I usually am, so I was able to get this picture of the mural on the wall. Like a lot of the Metro stations, it is left-over soviet art, but this piece is striking....
...because one can't help but notice the resemblance to the Virgin and Christ-Child.... and the Dove for the Holy Spirit...
and the inscription: "Peace in all the earth" is just so much like the Angelic Nativity song: "Peace on Earth," isn't it?
Furthermore, the hammer and sickle and star, though present as a technical necessity, are almost completely hidden.
(You can click on any photo to enlarge it.)
(Here's a better photograph from Wikipedia:)
I wondered.... could the artist have been a secret Christian, fighting to keep Holy Russia alive through his art, or was I just reading too much into it? I decided to look him up, and found the name was "Pavel Korin." Here is the article about him from Wikipedia. Was I right?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavel_Korin
(After the Wikipedia article there is more to the blog entry for today....)
"Pavel Korin was born in the village of Palekh to a family of a professional icon-painter Dmitry Nikolaevich Korin on July 8 [O.S. June 25] 1892. In 1897, when Pavel was only five years old, his father died. In 1903-1907 he studied at the School for Icon Painting at Palekh getting a formal certificate as a professional icon-painter. In 1908 he moved to Moscow and until 1911 worked there at the Icon shop of the Don Monastery.
In 1911 he worked as an apprentice to Mikhail Nesterov on frescoes of The Intercession Church at the Convent of Martha and Mary (Marfo-Mariinsky ) on Bolshaya Ordynka street in Moscow. Nesterov insisted that Korin gain a formal education in easel painting and arranged his admission to the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in 1912. Pavel graduated from that school in 1916, having been a student of Konstantin Korovin and Leonid Pasternak.
In 1916 he worked on frescoes for the mausoleum of Grand Duchess Elizabeth Fyodorovna at The Intercession Church at the Convent of Martha and Mary. In accordance with the wishes of the Grand Duchess, he travelled to Yaroslavl and Rostov to study traditional frescoes of antique Russian churches.
Portrait of sculptor Sergey Konenkov, 1947
In February 1917 he started to work in his attic studio on Arbat Street in Moscow and worked there until 1934.
In 1918-1919 he taught at the 2nd State Art Studios (2-ые ГСХМ). In 1919-1920 he worked at the Anatomic theatre of Moscow State University, as he thought he as a painter needed deeper knowledge of the human anatomy. In the evenings he copied paintings and sculptures of the Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1923 he travelled over Northern Russia, visiting Vologda, Staraya Ladoga, Ferapontov Monastery, Novgorod. In 1926-1931 he worked as an instructor of painting classes for beginners at the Museum of Fine Arts.
In 1926 the Convent of Martha and Mary was closed by the Soviets and all the art there was to be destroyed. Pavel and his brother Alexander managed to smuggle out and save the iconostasis and some of the frescoes. On March 7 of that year he married Praskovya Tikhonovna Petrova, a disciple of the Convent of Martha and Mary.
In 1927 Korin's aquarelle Artist's studio and his oil landscape My Motherland were bought by the Tretyakov gallery, showing some recognition from the Soviets.
In 1931 Korin's studio was visited by Maxim Gorky, who supported Korin since. In 1932 Korin followed Gorky to Sorrento, painted Gorky's portrait and visited Italy and Germany.
In 1931 Korin started to work as the Head of the Restoration Shop of Museum of the Foreign Art (former Museum of Fine Arts later Pushkin Museum). He held this position for until 1959. After this he held the position of the Director of the State Central Art Restoration Works (ГЦРХМ) until his death. As one of the most senior Russian restorers of the time he contributed enormously to the saving and restoration of famous paintings.
In 1933 Korin moved to the studio on Malaya Pirogovka Street in Moscow where he worked until his death. Now the building is Korin's museum.
In the 1940s he painted many portraits of members of the Soviet Intelligentsia (including Leonid Leonidov, Mikhail Nesterov, Alexey Tolstoy, Kachalov and Nadezhda Peshkova (Gorky's daughter in law)). He painted the fresco Match to the Future for the Palace of Soviets in the Moscow Kremlin and a Triptych devoted to Alexander Nevsky.
Farewell to Rus, preparational drawing showing the composition, 1935-1959
In the 1950s Korin worked on mosaics for the Moscow Metro. His mosaics decorate the stations Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya, Arbatskaya (Arbatsko-Pokrovskaya Line) and Novoslobodskaya, and also the Main Hall (Актовый Зал) of Moscow State University. He also won an impressive list of Soviet awards in the 1950s and 1960s:
Stalin Prize - 1954 for mosaics for the station Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya,
Lenin Prize - 1963 for portraits of Martiros Saryan, group portrait of cartoonists Kukryniksy, Italian painter Renato Guttuso
Member of Academy of Arts of Soviet Union - since 1958
Gold medal on World's Fair at Brussels - 1958 for the portrait of Martiros Saryan,
People's Artist of the Russian SFSR 1958
People's Artist of the USSR - 1962 ()
Order of Lenin - 1967
Pavel Korin died in Moscow on November 22, 1967 and was buried in the Novodevichy Cemetery.
Photo of Korin's studio showing the canvas for the Farewell to Rus drawing, 1960s
[edit] Farewell to Rus
The biography of Korin shows an accomplished Soviet painter and a prominent art figure, but the job he had considered the main work of his life was left unfinished. During his student years Korin was impressed by the life of Alexander Ivanov, who spent most of his adult life on creating a single painting The Appearance of Christ before the People (1835-1857). Pavel decided that he should live by Ivanov's example and devote his whole life to a single large painting. He starts with preparing of a very accurate life size copy of Ivanov's masterpiece (1920-1925), the initial name for The Painting was Bless my Soul, Oh Lord (Благослови, душе моя, Господа).
In 1925 Korin witnessed the intercession of Patriarch Tikhon of Moscow in the Cathedral of the Dormition of Moscow Kremlin. All people of importance in the Russian Orthodox Church, usually suppressed by the Soviets, were present. After the event Pavel decided that his magnum opus would be named Requiem, or Requiem for Russia, and would depict the intercession of Patriarch Tikhon and show the Russia that was lost after the October Revolution.
Beggar, Etude for Farewell to Rus, 1933
Korin feverishly paints people present at the burial service for Tikhon, often the last survivors of families of Russian nobility, or dissident priests, soon to be destroyed. Rumors about the dangerous painting soon became a matter of NKVD interest. In 1931 Maxim Gorky advised Korin that the name Requiem for Russia was too strong to be accepted and recommended a change to Русь Уходящая - literally Rus that is going away, but usually translated as Farewell to Rus. Gorky argued that the painting showing the last parade of the Orthodox Church, showing the tragedy and at the same time the misery of all those people who soon will disappear into irrelevancy is an acceptable and even desirable for the Government. Korin agreed with the new name of the painting.
For forty years Korin worked on the painting. He produced dozens of large (more than the life size) well finished paintings that he preferred to name etudes for the Farewell to Rus masterpiece, worked on composition. He ordered a huge canvas, designed a special stretcher for it, spends years coating the canvas with multiple layers of the special underlays. Korin was combining the ancient methods of the icon paintings with the science of art restorations and claimed the painting prepared by his methods should survive hundreds, possibly thousands of years without the need for restoration.
He had not put a single brushstroke on the canvas - forty-two years of the preparational work was not enough for Pavel Korin. It might be considered an extreme case of procrastination, but the huge canvas became a popular art exhibit in the Korin Museum. Many consider it as an art masterpiece in its own right, similar to the Black Square of Kazimir Malevich."
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Amazing, isn't it? I have more first-hand to show and tell about iconography and iconographers here and how the art of iconography was passed down from master to apprentice secretly during soviet times, but it will have to be for another day. Meanwhile....
One of my errands was to mail a card to Kisya and Olga Alexandrovna, who don't have Internet. I finally got up my courage to go into a post office and face the possibility of having to respond to an unintelligible-to-me stream of Russian. As in most places, there was a line. While I was waiting, I looked at the display in the window where the clerk was. (Sorry, this is a pretty bad no-flash cell phone picture.) In the window were all sorts of greeting cards--for the New Year, and yes, even Christmas, birthdays and what-have-you. The reason I took the picture, however, is to be found in the lower right-hand corner: there, among all the greeting cards, was an icon of St. Panteleimon, also for sale! How do you know that you live in an Orthodox country? When you can go buy an icon at the Post Office! :)
That's all for now, folks, it's getting late. Stay tuned and my love to everyone.
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