TUMBLEWEED

The Hermitage Museum (The General Staff Building). Until 30 October 2016

The Hermitage exhibits ‘Olympia’ in a broad historical context: it is accompanied by works from the Hermitage collection that allows to explore the depiction of a nude woman in art. Crucial works of this theme are ‘The Birth of Venus’ by Botticelli, ‘Venus of Urbino’ by Titian (Uffizi Gallery) and ‘Sleeping Venus’ by Giorgione (Dresden Gallery), which are represented in the etchings from the State Hermitage collection. These masterpieces gave rise to the most important European art image of beautiful nudity, the gradual transformation of which led to the emergence of ‘Olympia’ three and a half centuries later. The theme of female nudity is represented at the exhibition by an outstanding work ‘Danae’ by Titian, twenty engravings of works of the great Venetian and French artists of XVII-XIX centuries and a picture by Francois Boucher from the State Hermitage collection. The later references to the image of a naked woman made by masters of romanticism and the Salon of Fine Arts make it possible to evaluate Manet’s courage in overcoming the Salon and academic routines and his incredible breakthrough towards the truth of new painting. It is appropriate to identify all the works at the Hermitage exhibition as the genre of nude, judging only by absence of clothes, no matter what characters are depicted.

Manege. 1 St Isaac's Sq. Until 1 November 2016

Optical illusions are at the very core of pictorial art that over the thirty centuries of its existence has always been, in one way or another, ‘deceiving’ the eye of the viewer. Our exhibition Focusfest organized at the outdoor space along the left façade of the Manege Central Exhibition Hall presents some of the most remarkable pieces of the art of illusion. The viewer’s eye is pivotal to the creation of an artwork. It is its key recipient, it evolves with the art and is educated by the development of the art. A classical pictorial illusion known to everyone from early age is the fireplace with a pot at Papa Carlo’s house from The Adventures of Buratino by Alexey Tolstoy. The fireplace only appears to be real, while in fact it conceals a tiny secret passage to the other marvellous reality. Just as Buratino, a contemporary art viewer holds the ‘golden key’ to artistic illusions. Yet, in the world that produces myriads of images per second, the viewer has no resource to reality check all of them, and today, this function is performed by the contemporary art.

St Michael's Castle. 2 Sadovaya St. Until 1 November 2016

Silvester Schedrin (1791–1830) is a prominent master of Russian landscape of romanticism epoch. He was one of the first masters who started making landscapes directly from nature, reflecting the vision of the air and light and the idea of the unity of man and nature. His works were highly praised by the contemporaries and heirs, becoming the classics of the Russian school of landscape painting. From 1818 till the very death Schedrin lived in Italy and sent the works he made there to the motherland. While working in Rome and Naples and their environs Schedrin communicated with local artists and influenced the southern-Italian landscape school (so called Posillipo school)… that united various artists from Italy, Germany and Holland (Antonis Pitloo, Giacinto Gigante and others). The exhibition comprises around 100 pieces of art by Schedrin and painters of Posillipo school from the Russian Museum and other museum collections. The exhibition presents the oeuvre of this brilliant representative of Russian landscape school together with paintings of his European contemporaries – landscape painters.

The Hermitage Museum (The Winter Palace, 3rd Floor). Until 6 November 2016

Korea is a country with long pottery traditions. The art of ceramic-making travelled a long path of improvement and mastery of new techniques. The exhibits presented span a period from ancient times to the works of contemporary craftspeople from recent decades. It thus shows the development of Korean ceramic art from classic examples to innovative artistic creations produced in our own time. The early stage is represented by articles from the period of the three Korean states: Goguryeo (57 BC – AD 668), Baekje (18 BC – AD 660) and Silla (57 BC – AD 668) and also the proto-state of Gaya (AD 41–562) and the state of Unified Silla (668–935). Each of them had its own style of ceramics with distinctive features. The traditions of Korean ceramic art, founded upon a distinctive artistic taste, a subtle understanding of the specifics of pottery shapes, their constructional peculiarities and relationship with the decoration, have found continuation in our own time. The master ceramists of present-day Korea are rethinking the classic forms and the style of the native pottery. The works of modern artists included in the exhibition reflect the profound influence that Korean ceramics still continue to have on art.

The Marble Palace. 5/1 Millionnaya St. Until 7 November 2016

The exhibition familiarizes the public with a significant episode in the history of the Russian avant-garde and artistic life of Petrograd during World War I and first post-revolutionary years. Apartment no. 5 (17, University Embarkment) was a real address of the former Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in Petrograd, where there was a service residence of S.K. Isakov, a stepfather of the brothers Nikolai and Lev Bruni. Owing to the memoirs by the famous art critic and avant-garde theorist N.N. Punin, this address lent its name to the creative community of young artists, poets, writers, musicians and critics, who used to gather here in the mid-1910s. The “core” of the Apartment no. 5 consisted of Lev Bruni, Petr Miturich, Nikolai Tyrsa, Petr Lvov, Nathan Altman and Nikolai Punin, who chose Vladimir Tatlin and Velimir Khlebnikov as their gurus. Later on, the circle of artists expanded, accepting new members – Vladimir Lebedev, Nikolai Lapshin, Alexei Uspensky, Nikolai Kupreyanov. The community arisen at this address soon had gone beyond it, becoming a denotation of the whole tendency/school in the art of Petrograd, which was clearly appreciable until the mid-1920s. 

The Stroganov Palace. 17 Nevsky Prospect. Until 7 November 2016

Russian Museum invites to the personal exhibition of painter and graphic artist Andrey Esionov. That is his first exhibition in St Petersburg, but there already were several exhibitions in Europe and in Moscow – at the Academy of Arts and Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Andrey Esionov is working at the intersection of academic and contemporary art but his works formally exist outside the artistic establishment and nowadays system of Russian art-market. He was born in Tashkent in 1963. At 1990 he graduated from the Department of Paintings of the Tashkent State Theater and Artistic Institute (named after A.N. Ostrovsky) (The Uzbekistan State Institute of Arts and Culture). He didn’t want to perform official orders and follow artistic conjuncture of that time that’s why he wasn’t engaged in painting at the period of 1990-2010. After 20 years of uncreative period he had promptly rushed in the art world and exhibition sphere of Moscow and his works quickly became popular with the viewers and gained evaluation of the experts. The exhibition will include watercolors and sketches of Andrey Esionov. His works are notable for spontaneity and at the same time are very narrative and reflective, while the traditional technique is comprehended as contemporary “media”. Works of Andrey Esionov are noted by awards of Russian Academy of Arts, Moscow Union of Artists and also several prestigious international festivals of art.

St Michael's Castle. 2 Sadovaya St. Until 7 November 2016

The exhibition forms part of the project dedicated to the private art collections that arrived to the Russian Museum in various periods and constitute its treasury. In 1916 the museum acquired the first nine works by Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, whose oeuvre reflects the revival and flourishing of etching in the early XX century Russian art. Later she gifted her works to the museum many times. In 1955 according to the artist’s testament all pieces of art from her collection were delivered to the Russian Museum. The utmost part of it was formed by drawings, paintings, watercolors and etchings by Ostroumova-Lebedeva herself  and prints by the contemporaries and followers of the artist – those who were inspired by her experiments in wood-engraving, one of the oldest etching techniques. The exhibition includes works by G.Vereisky, V.Voinov, N.Kupreyanov, K.Somov and other masters of etching in pre-revolutionary as well as Soviet Russia. A special part of the exhibition is formed by a collection of Japanese prints of XVIII-XIX centuries (Katsushika Hokusai, Andō Hiroshige, Katsukawa Shunshō, Ryūsai Shigeharu and others). Acquaintance of Ostroumova-Lebedeva with the art of Japanese xylography to a great extent influenced the formation of her individual artistic manner.

Rosphoto. 35 Bolshaya Morskaya St. Until 13 November 2016

The current exhibition features more than 80 prints from the original glass plate negatives from the collection of the History Museum of Armenia in Yerevan. These photographs were created in the early 20th century during the archaeological expeditions of the Imperial Archaeological Committee to the ancient towns of Ani (a fortress in the 5–8th centuries, and the capital of Armenia and its largest economic and cultural centre since the 10–13th centuries) and Van (the first capital of the Kingdom of Armenia, founded by the Orontid dynasty in the 6th century BC). The photographs depicting the monuments of Western and Eastern Armenia of the 4–17th centuries are the only evidence of the unique cultural heritage which was fully or partially lost to time and during the dramatic events of the early 20th century. The wonderful idea to unite in one project these splendid visual images of Armenian architectural monuments full of historical and artistic connotations with the deep and vivid poetic images from Osip Mandelstam’s series of poems Armenia belongs to Аnelka Grigoryan, who has worked with these materials for many years in the History Museum of Armenia. The project is timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the famous Russian poet and finalizes the commemorative activities dedicated to the tragic events in the history of the Armenian people.

Rosphoto. 35 Bolshaya Morskaya St. Until 27 November 2016

In the second half of the 1850s the Russian archeologist and collector of Christian relics Peter Ivanovich Sevastianov organized several scientific expeditions to Mount Athos. There he made photographic copies of the old frescoes and systematized them, and took panoramic pictures of the monasteries; the first known photographs of Athos were taken by him. Sevastianov established a photo lab in Svyato-Andreyevsky Skete (St. Andrew Monastery), where the local monks could study photography too. Later he donated the photographic equipment to the monks, thus contributing to the foundation of the first photographic studio on the Holy Mountain. He and his colleagues had created several thousands of pictures, some of which were later displayed at the Imperial Academy of Arts in 1861. Today the photographs by Sevastianov belong to the collections of Moscow and Saint Petersburg-based museums, including the State Historical Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, the State Tretyakov Gallery, the State Russian Museum, the National Library of Russia, the State Hermitage, etc.).

The Hermitage Museum (The General Staff Building). Until 30 November 2016

The exhibition presents more than 400 works of fine and decorative arts, weapons, books and numismatic valuables presented to the Russian rulers starting from Peter I and ending with Nicholas II. The gifts were presented during diplomatic visits and meetings; they commemorated military victories and conclusions of peace; they were given at coronations which were carried out especially solemnly. There was a custom of giving silver or porcelain sets for weddings. Sometimes the offerings were private, they were transferred during travelling. The imperial courts often exchanged gifts for family and calendar holidays, such as Christmas or Easter. Some things embodied additional semantic implication. The Hermitage collection includes gifts of Western and Eastern nations relating to the period when the state capital was moved to St. Petersburg. Many of these works have been exhibited several times at various exhibitions in the museum and abroad. Presented for the first time together, they serve as valuable evidence of the development of relations between Russia, the West and the East from the XVIII to the early XX centuries.

The State Russian Museum. The Benois Wing. Until 4 December 2016

The oeuvre of Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), world-renowned Russian artist will be for the first time presented with special emphasis made on the national origins of his early figurative works and abstract paintings of 1910-s. The exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the artist will comprise his graphic and painterly works alongside with the pieces by his prominent contemporaries (Ivan Bilibin, Elena Polenova, Sergei Malyutin, Mikhail Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Kazimir Malevich, David Burliuk, Alexey Yawlensky, Marianna Verevkina and others). These artists participated with Kandinsky in the Izdebsky Salons and “The Blue Rider” group exhibitions and reflected the symbolism, expressionism and art nouveau trends. The exhibition will also include the examples of traditional Russian folk art (distaffs, birch bark boxes, embroidered towels, toys, carved wooden items) that largely influenced the stylistic and ideological principles of Wassily Kandinsky’s art.

Erarta Museum and Galleries of Contemporary Art. Until 12 December 2016

Ural is the zone of original and unique art activity. The project “Development Zone” is the result of a two-year collaboration between Yekaterinburg Gallery of Modern Art and Erarta Museum in St. Petersburg. It brings together artists of different generations and styles, but same creative mindset: all of them break the boundaries of the ordinary. The exhibition features all possible trends of contemporary media practices: graffiti, video performance, concept-, photo- and video art, and animation. Evgeny Malakhin, the first Yekaterinburg street artist and one of the most interesting figures at the show, is an excellent example. He turns ordinary trash into aesthetic objects, and “mistakes” of photo development into powerful artistic means. The Ural is a place of its own rich mythology, which again and again becomes the subject of reflection for local artists. Zoya Lebedeva, an artist from Izhevsk, reinterprets the Finno-Ugric tradition of weaving: having invented the author’s technique, she weaves symbolic art objects out of herbs and flowers. Yekaterinburg is not the only important location on the Ural’s art map. Another significant cultural center is Nizhny Tagil, the capital of Ural’s neo-avant-garde. The key artist of Nizhny Tagil is Aleksey Konstantinov whose neoplasticism takes a new look at the ideas of Kandinsky, Filonov, and Malevich.

The Hermitage Museum (The General Staff Building). Until 18 December 2016

Alexandre Alexeïeff made his name internationally as an innovative animator and creator of pinscreen animation. But he had started out with books. At the turn of the 1920s and 1930s Alexeïeff, who had made his way from Russia to France soon after the revolution, illustrated several dozen publications that were much admired by contemporaries. His virtuoso aquatints and lithographs introduced elements of cinema, avant-garde photography and photomontage to the world of illustration. It was from printmaking that Alexeïeff came to animation, but he would return to it throughout his life, making use of his experience with animation. His important works – large illustrative cycles to The Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina and Doctor Zhivago, prints to Diary of a Madman, The Queen of Spades and the tales of Edgar Allan Poe – are comprehensively presented.

The Hermitage Museum (The General Staff Building, 1st Floor). Until 31 December 2016

The exhibition presents 74 jewelry items and art objects made of pottery, glass and textile from 1948 to 2013. At the heart of the project lies an idea of “Gifts from America” in that a considerable number of exhibits involve works by artists from the USA (Mark Burns, Jill Bonovitz, Doug Bucci, Paula and Robert Winokur and many others) or those who worked there after emigration (Francoise Grossen, Olaf Skoogfors, Sunkoo Yuh). The exhibition is also made up of works by artists whose creative career has had a telling impact on art development and collecting in the United States (Giorgio Vigna, Helen Britton, Nel Linssen, and Breon O'Casey). The exhibition introduces its audience to a good many key figures in applied art of the latter half of the twentieth century and early twenty-first century. Among them are such well-known artists as George Nakashima, Gijs Bakker, Peter Skubic, Jamie Bennett, Eleanor Moty, Rudolf Staffel and Viola Frey.

Peter and Paul Fortress, Engineer’s House. Until 5 February 2017

Commercial advertisement has always been an inevitable part of city life, but in the mid-19th century, it took on a new meaning, becoming one of the spheres of artistic creativity and inspiring many renowned artists and journalists. Development of this sphere was interfered with the break of WWI, revolution of 1917 and period of war communism. The art of advertising was revived in 1920s under the NEP and continued to advance in 1930-1980s, despite the lack of free trade.The exhibition shows advertising from two points of view: as a historical and art phenomenon, and as a social phenomenon. It features commercial advertisements of pre-revolution and soviet period, including a unique collection of wood and metal St Petersburg shop signs of the late 19th – early 20th century, packages by Russian and foreign companies, designs for shop windows by Vsevolod Sulimo-Samuilo and packaging designs by Tatiana Glebova.

The State Museum of Political History of Russia (Main Building). 2-4 Kuibysheva St. Until February 2017

Russian history just as world history shows strong connection between big politics and everyday life. And food service industry is one of the most important parts of the latter. Russian Empire subjects expected the regime to feed them or to show mercy outginving food. Tradition of offering bread and salt meant not only hospitality but also respect and loyalty towards regime. And on the other hand, plentiful supply of food in the country showed that the ruler had a right to be Vicar of God on earth. Coronation of tzars in Moscow Kremlin was accompanied by grand banquets for elite and free food for ordinary people. For the last time it happened during coronation of Nicholas II in 1896. Under conditions of World War I Russia faced the aggravation of food supply situation. Troubles with bread supply accelerated mass protests in Petrograd in February 1917, which grew into a revolution. Social and economic collapse in autumn 1917 in many respects facilitated a take-over the government by the Bolshevik party.

The Hermitage Museum (Main Building, Blue Bedroom. Until 6 March 2017

Presenting unique clocks and watches made by leading clockmakers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, this exhibition includes table and wall clocks and mechanical pocket watches, as well as some of the instruments that preceded them, which used the sun, moon and stars to tell the time. All come from the collection of the State Hermitage Museum. Initially clocks were highly prized: they were made of expensive or rare materials and were intended mainly for rulers, statesmen and aristocrats. Clocks were first used in Russia from the sixteenth century, but they were later to become collectors’ items. A variety of forms, technical and artistic devices were employed to make the fine objects in this exhibition, which once belonged to Russian rulers Peter the Great, Elizabeth and Catherine II, or to members of St Petersburg’s nobility.

The Hermitage Museum (Main Building) Until 30 April 2017

Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958), a visual artist, theatre artist and author, uses his works to speculate in a loud and tangible manner about life and death, physical and social transformations, as well as about the cruel and intelligent imagination which is present in both animals and humans. For more than thirty-five years Jan Fabre has been one of the most innovative and important figures on the international contemporary art scene. As a visual artist, theatre maker and author he has created a highly personal world with its own rules and laws, as well as its own characters, symbols, and recurring motifs. At the Hermitage halls, this “sketch” will develop into a major art event that is sure to spark a great interest and many debates, which are to be held at another intellectual discussion marathon. The exhibition will come with series of lectures, master classes and round-table discussions. The exposition will air eight films, including the performance film Love is the Power Supreme (2016) featuring the artist, which was filmed in the Winter Palace in June 2016. This work will remain in the collection of The State Hermitage Collection. As a grandson of a famous entomologist, Jan Fabre widely uses the wildlife aesthetics. He uses beetle shells, animal skeletons and horns, as well as stuffed animals and images of animals in various materials. The list of unusual materials goes beyond that and covers blood and BIC blue ink. 

The Hermitage Museum (General Staff Building). Until 31 December 2017

Visitors to the exhibition will see canvases that were hidden from public view inside the Stieglitz Mansion on the English Quay for a hundred years. Built in the middle of the nineteenth century, the mansion was once famed for its elegantly luxurious interiors, packed with works of art. These included a unique painting, Russia’s only monumental canvas by the young Hans Makart, soon to be the most famed artist of all Austria-Hungary: Siesta at the Medici Court (1863–64). A pendant work was produced by Alexander von Wagner and Alexander von Liezen-Mayer, Return from the Hunt (1864). Other works included The Hunt of Diana (1867) by the established Munich professor Moritz von Schwind and landscapes by the Zimmermann brothers, who are all but forgotten today.