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Iconography of Lubok - Russian Popular Prints
XVII - XX Century

presented by

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Dragana Vasiljevic

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ICONOGRAPHY OF LUBOK - RUSSIAN POPULAR PRINTS
XVII - XX CENTURY

By

Dragana Vasiljevié

A THESIS

Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for the degree of

MASTER OF ARTS

Department of Art

1995

ABSTRACT

ICONOGRAPHY OF LUBOK - RUSSIAN FOLK PRINTS
XVII - XX CENTURY

By

Dragana Vasiljevic'

When perusing Russian art, one often stumbles across the term lubok. It
seems that there is no painter who, in one way or another, was not influenced
by Iubok prints. I was thus challenged to find out what was the lubok, where it
came from and what was its importance for Russian art of the twentieth century.
Lubok, Iubki or lubky is a peasant illustrated woodcut or broadside, hand-painted
and sold at fairs and markets. It typically combines illustration with text and its
subject matter illustrates anything from religion and folklore, to political events
and social issues of the day. Lubok is a sort of a newspaper, satire sheet, book
for entertainment, song-book, comic strip or love-advice book. Early lubki were
predominantly religious, while later were allegorical or fantastic, and often drew
upon the established figures of Russian folklore. From the eighteenth century
onward, Iubki began to represent realistic figures from all strata of the society. In
V the nineteenth and twentieth century it influenced Russian graphic design and it
remained the source of inspiration for the artists throughout the twentieth century.
Why it was used as an archetype for the political poster, both in the Tsaristic
and Bolshevik period, and why lubok was so attractive to modern artists, is the

question I try to answer.

To the memory of my grandfather Branislav Vasiljevic'.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I want to express my gratitude to the people and institutions who helped
me in pursuing my Master’s degree and writing this thesis. Being an historian
I mention them not in order of importance, but in chronological order of their
appearance in my life.

First I want to thank to my grandfather Branislav Vasiljevié for the in-
heritance of his rich library; to my grandmother Ljubica Vasiljevié for being my
first teacher and for her mastery in story telling. Many of the old Slavic stories
and tales that she told me I rediscovered in Russian Lubok. I am thankful to my
uncles Aleksandar and Dragoslav Vasiljevié, the former one for introducing me to
the world of history and to the latter, an Art historian himself, for introducing
me to the world of ideas; to my parents Ljubomir and Zorka Vasiljevié for being
patient with my extended studies.

I am indebted to my professors at the Department of Art History at the
University of Belgrade from which I got profound knowledge of History and Art
History. My thanks go especially to my professor Sreten Petkovié for being not
only my professor, but also my teacher in matters of life more important than
Art.

The person responsible for my love of Russian Art is Milica Djordjevié, an
Art historian from Belgrade, who placed the book of unofficial Russian Art in my
hands. The discovery of these beautiful paintings led to my interest in Russian
Art in general.

I am thankful to Bill Schall for helping me through the administrative

and beaurocratic labyrinth of enrolling at Michigan State University.

iv

This thesis would not have seen the light of day were it not for the encour-
agement of my advisor, Professor Eldon Van Liere. His enthusiasm and discrete
guidance made me feel as though I were the only author of this thesis. He pro-
vided me with a very supportive and rich atmosphere in which he introduced me
to many new ideas. He gave me freedom in my intellectual pursuit and never tried
to impose his opinions on me. Like in the good old times of Renaissance learning,
studying under Professor Van Liere was the experience of an exciting workshop
of the master and apprentice. Professor Van Liere is and will always be a fine
example and role model in my future teaching career.

I am thankful to the members of my thesis committee, Professors R.
Silverman and S. Madigan for their comments on my thesis. I had many fruitful
discussions with Professor Silverman about Art and propaganda.

I want to express my thanks to Dr. J. Simpson for allowing me to make
slides in the slide library and for making life in this department easier; to the
faculty of the Department of Art for their intellectual stimulation. The fact that
I was not allowed to take Russian but French as a second foreign language, I
consider a minor error of judgement. While learning French was a challenge it did
not help in my research of Russian Art as much as Russian language would have.

Last, but not least I am indebted to my husband Branislav Djordjevié for
being the technical executor of this thesis. As an Art historian I was comupter
illiterate, but thanks to his patience I learned to accept the help of modern tech-

nology. He shared with me joys, excitements and frustrations of graduate studies.

Contents

Abstract .................................. ii
Acknowledgments ............................ iv
1 Introduction 1
2 Iconography of Lubok 6
2.1 Religious lubok: Koren’s bible .................... 6
2.2 Secular and religious Parables .................... 16
2.3 The reign of Peter the Great ..................... 20
2.4 Secular morality, skaska and poetry ................. 24
2.5 Festivals and clowns ......................... 31
3 Influence of lubok in XX century art 38
3.1 Lubok with patriotic message .................... 40
3.2 Lubok in Bolshevik era ........................ 43
4 Conclusion 52
Figures ................................... 55
Bibliography ............................... 108

vi

List of Figures

2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7
2.8
2.9
2.10
2.11
2.12
2.13
2.14
2.15
2.16
2.17
2.18
2.19

Creation of Animals ......................... 56
The Seventh Day ........................... 57
Expulsion from Paradise ....................... 58
Adam and Eve are Given Cloths ................... 59
The Life of Adam and Eve in the World .............. 60
The Lamentation Over Abel and His Burial ............ 61

The Birth of Enoh. Death of Cain. The Son of Cain Builds the City 62

The Dreadful Parable of the Great Mirror ............. 63
The Punishment of Money-Grubbers ................ 64
The Pure Soul ............................. 65
St. John ................................ 66
The Holly Trinity ........................... 67
The Barber Wants to Cut the Old Believer’s Whiskers ...... 68
The Cat of Kazan ........................... 69
The Cat of Kazan ........................... 70
The Witch-Lady (Baba Yaga going to figh the crocodile) ..... . 71
Alexander the Great Fighting a Battle with King Porus ...... 72
The Foolish Wife and the Cat .................... 73
The Lesson to Foolish Husbands and Smart Wives ......... 74

vii

2.20
2.21
2.22

2.23
2.24

2.25
2.26
2.27
2.28
2.29
2.30
2.31
3.32
3.33
3.34
3.35
3.36
3.37

3.38
3.39
3.40

Muzhich (the peasant) ........................
Shemiaka’s Court ...........................
The Crinoline or How, When the Opportunity Present Itself, to
Use It to Replace a Hot-Air Balloon .................
The Balloon ..............................
Ariel Journey: or How They Fly Up the Chimney and the Creditors
Are Amazed ..............................
The Bull That Didn’t Want to Be a Bull and Became a Buthcher
The Industrious Bear .........................
Romance: Toward Evening One Bad Autumn ...........
The Cossacks Set Off To War at Midnight .............
Erema, Foma and Paramushka ....................
Farmos, Red-Nose ...........................
Maslenitsa ...............................
Kustodiev Boris, The Fair ......................
Kustodiev Boris, Shrove-Tide ....................
Goncharova Natalia, St. George ...................
Goncharova Natalia, Costume Design ................
Goncharova Natalia, The Tsar’s Palace ...............
Malevich Kazimir, What a Bloom, What a Blast, the Germans Are
Making at Lorna ...........................
Malevich Kazimir, Look, 0 Look, Near the Vitula River .....

Mayakovsky Vladimir, Can Rabbit Fight the Lion ..........

Mayakovsky Vladimir, Hey Sultan Sitting in the Porte, Don’t Spoil
Your Mug With Such a Fight ....................

viii

75
76

77
78

79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91

92

93

94

95

3.41
3.42
3.43
3.44
3.45
3.46
3.47
3.48
3.49

3.50
3.51
3.52

French, American, English and French Social Pyramids ...... 96

Radakov Alexander, The Autocratic System ............ 97
Cheriomnikh M., The Story of The Round Bagel .......... 98
Lebedev V., Peasant, We Gave You The Land ........... 99
Moor Dmitry, The Soviet Turnip .................. 100
Radakov Alexander, The Illiterate is Like a Blind Man ...... 101
Kruglikova Elisaveta, Women! Learn Your Letters ......... 102
Radakov Alexander, Illiterate People... Literate People ...... 103

Radakov Alexander, The Life of The Literate, The Life of The

Illiterate ................................ 104
Lebedeva Maria, The Future Has No Fear Of Past Horrors . . . . 105
Shchekotikhina—Pototskaya Alexandra, Motherhood ........ 106
Vyechegzhanina-Chekhonina Lydia, Bim and Burn ......... 107

Chapter 1

Introduction

My first interest for Russian art was provoked by an underground-published book-
let on unofficial Soviet art, with which I became acquainted in my early youth.
While reading about Russian and Soviet art, I often stumbled across the term
lubok. It seemed that there was no painter who, one way or another, was not in-
fluenced by lubok. The available literature mentioned lubok occasionally and only
in passing. As the time passed I became intrigued to find out more about lubok,
where it came from, and how it influenced professional artists. This thesis is an
attempt to trace Iubok’s history, understand its iconography and explore its links
with the twentieth century Russian art. Therefore, in the first part of my thesis I
will focus on the iconography and try to categorize the prints according to their
subject matter. The categorization may appear as oversimplified, and it certainly
will not please the Russian scholars, but it will serve to give a clear picture of
lubok’s influence on modern Russian art.

Introduced in the country in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth
century, by German merchants, lubok was first used by the clergy to combat

Roman-Catholic missionaries. Soon, it was adopted by the peasants, quickly

Russiffied and used as illustrated chronicals of the time. Lubok, Lubki, or Lubky
is a peasant illustrated woodcut, or broadside, hand-painted and sold at fairs
and markets. It decorated peasant huts and taverns and was used as a cheap
substitute for icons. It typically combines illustration with text, and its subject
matter illustrates anything from religion and folklore to political developments
and social issues of the day. Lubok is a type of a newspaper, satire sheet, book
for entertainment, comic strip, song book, guide to polite manners, or love-advice
book. One might consider it a forerunner of Russian comics. Its iconography
reflects the traditional Russian culture, habits, oral literature, proverbs, peasant
life, historical events and religion. This is a folk art, made by farmers and often
unsigned and anonymous, 1 and not of a particularly high artistic quality. It
should be considered as a common expression of folk wisdom, in the form of an
illustrated proverb. The term ”Lubochnyi” (lub-like) was employed in nineteenth
century in a disparaging way to signify anything crudely made, but it was also
used in the specialist literature to designate popular print.

The origin of the word Lubki is not known. According to some scholars
it is derived from the lime-tree block (”lub” or ”lipovaya kora”) from which it
was printed. 2 According to others, the word derives from lime tree bark basket
(”lubochnye koroby”) from which the pictures were offered for sale. 3 It could be
that the word derived from the Lubyanskaya square in Moscow, where many of
those pictures were sold. 4 Of course, it could well be exactly Opposite - that the

Moscow square got its name after the Iubki market there.

 

1As is always the case with Icons .

2 O.Yu. Shmidt et al., eds.:Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya, lst ed., 65 vols.,Moscow
1926-1948, vol.37, col.446.

3 Yu. Ovsyannikov: Lubok: Russkie Narodnye Kartinki XVII-XVIII vv., Sovetskii
Khudozhnik, Moscow, 1968, pp.5-6.

4 V. Bakhtin and D. Moldavsky: Russkii Lubok XVII-XIX vv., Gosudarstvennoe Izda—
telstvo Izobrazitelnogo Iskusstva, Moscow-Leningrad, 1962, p.1.

I believe the word Iubki must be connected with the word ”lub” (”lipovaya
kora”), a layer of wood found under the bark of the lime tree, for this simple
reason: Russian forests were rich with lime trees. The lime tree was widely used
in peasant Russia as a source for foot-wear, roofing, basketry and writting tablets.
In general, wood was the chief material used for building housing, churches and
furniture, without the use of metal nails. Wood also conditioned the production
of decorative arts. Often an entire village would specialize in one specific craft,
whether furniture, ”babushke” (dolls) or lubok-printmaking.

In the literature lubok is named interchangeably as: ”narodnyi”, ”pop—
ular”, or ”folk” print. ”Narodnyi” is probably the closest to its meaning, but
is untranslatable in English. Literally, it means ”national”, but it has another
meaning in Russian language. It is associated with the arts and crafts of peasants
who preserved the old national and folk tradition. In Russian scholarly literature
the word ”narodnyi” also applies to the oral literature that was passed from gen-
eration to generation, before it was recorded in written form. Therefore, I will
also use the terms ”narodnyi”, ”popular” and ”folk”, interchangeably.

Lubki were printed in black ink on paper and were colored by hand. Colors
were made from personal recipes, mixing honey, milk and eggs. The ink, a mixture
of soot and burnt sienna dissolved in boiled linseed-oil, was spread by a leather
squeegee over this block, onto which a sheet of moistened paper was laid, and the
whole was pressed. The resulting prints were given to the village women, to apply
color by hand. The were limited to three or four colors, usually reds, purples,
yellows and greens.

Lubki were made by peasants and commissioned by peasants. For a long

time, apart from the icons, lubki were the main decoration on the walls of village

 

 

huts, taverns and inns. As their subject matter was connected to traditional Rus-
sian culture, they became very popular and were purchased not just by peasants,
but by merchants and grand boyars (nobility) and were even displayed in the
palaces of Peter the Great and his father Tsar Aleksei Mihailovich. They became
so popular that skilled people started businesses with Iubki. By the second half of
the nineteenth century, the printing houses of private entrepreneurs reproduced
Iubki using lithographic techniques. In the printing house of ID. Sytin in Moscow
alone, the production was over fifty million lubok per year. 5

Until 1727, most broadsides were wood-cuts, because copper was exceed-
ingly scarce and because all engravers were busy working for Peter the Great, who
wanted to popularize his reforms and make them comprehensible to all citizens of
the Russian state. In addition, copper and other metals were scarce because they
were all used to create Peter’s powerful navy and defense system.

With the mass production by city dwellers, lubok switched their subject
matter from peasant life and popular folklore to the themes and topics of the
urban population. Early, peasant made lubki, were allegorical or fantastic with
an emphasis on figures of Russian folklore mythology, such as the witch-lady
”Baba-Yaga”. Later lubki, particularly from eighteen century onward, represented
realistic figures from the social world, such as the members of the officer class or
the court, as well as hunting, pastoral love and other scenes.

Russian lubki with secular themes of the second half of the seventeenth
century were to become associated with the Moscow marketplace toward the end of
the century. Relatively inexpensive, they probably were an inexpensive substitute

for the icon. The early prints were large, carefully executed wood-cuts in native

 

5 White Stephen: The Bolshevik Poster, Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
1988, p.2

 

style, inspired by peasant wood carvings. As the nobility and upper middle class
took up West European art by the second half of the seventeenth century, lubki
found their market with the lesser nobility and merchants. Although lubki were
produced in many locations in Russia during the seventeen and first half of the
eighteen centuries, by the end of eighteen century they were firmly associated
with Moscow. From mid of the the eighteen century on, they were produced
mostly in the Ahmetov factory, which employed its own engravers. 6 Peddlers
would buy lubki in great numbers and resell them at fairs and regional markets.
A number of carelessly executed metal engravings appeared around 1760. They
were cheaper, because more copies could be printed from a metal plate. These
lubki were made for the lower urban classes. Toward the end of the eighteenth
century, peasants became the main customers again, and the prevailing themes
were mostly rural. At the same time chap-books were created by binding together
a series of illustrations, each with a bit of text. Throughout the nineteenth century,
Iubki were firmly linked to the peasantry. In two centuries, they traveled through

the society from top to bottom, to be ”rediscovered” in twentieth century.

 

6 Mariia Andreevna Alekseeva, ”Torgovlia graviurami v Moskve i kontrol za nei v kontse
XVII-XVIII vv.”, in Narodnaia Graviura i Fol’klor v Rossii XVIII-XIX vv., Moscow:
Sovetskii Khudozhnik, 1976, pp.140-158.

 

“‘1‘- =-.- '

Chapter 2

Iconography of Lubok

2.1 Religious lubok: Koren’s bible

Russia was introduced to Christianity in the ninth century by the work of two
monks from Constantinople, Cyril and Methodius. SS. Cyril and Methodius in-
vented an alphabet based on Greek manuscula and adapted it for the Slavic lan-
guage. They brought the Bible not only to Russians, but to all Slavic nations
throughout Europe. The alphabet was named Cyrillic after the monk Cyrill. 1
Since Cyril and Methodius came from Byzantine Empire, the Christianity they
introduced to Russians was Orthodox Christianity, which is practiced by the Rus-
sians to this day. The Church, clergy and Church art came under the strong
spiritual influence of Byzantine civilization. Clergy wore long robes and beards
in imitation of the times of Christ. Russian men, imitating the priests, wore long
beards, considering them a symbol of muzhik (husband, man). This tradition

became problematic in the time of Peter the Great’s reforms.

 

leornik, Francis: Byzantine Missions among the Slavs: SS. Constantine-Cyril and
Methodius, New Brunswick, N .J ., 1970

 

The first city to become Christian was Kiev in the Ukraine. In the four-
teenth century, the territory of Ukraine was divided in two parts. West Ukraine
was taken by the Poles, and the people there were pressured to convert to Catholi-
cism. Eastern Ukrainians, closer to Russia, remained Orthodox. Many Ukrainians
found a Solomonic solution: they remained Orthodox in devotion and tradition,
but recognized the Roman Pope as a sovereign archbishop. They are called Uni-
ates, and they caused a strong animosity to arise between the Eastern Orthodox
and Roman Catholic Christians in Ukraine.

Lubok prints first took root in the Ukraine in the Kiev Monastery of the
Coves. Orthodox clergy of Kiev and Lvov employed these popular prints as one
of the means to combat Polish Catholicism. These early prints were essentially
paper icons hung on the walls or iconostases of country churches and peasant
houses. While being of paper made them available to far more than true icons,
they were, at the same time, ephemeral which explains why only few of them have
survived. 2

Preserved at the Bodleian Library at Oxford is the only extant copy of
a chap-book of twelve hand-painted woodcuts, one for each month of the year,
executed by Kiev engraver Pamva Berynda in 1628 and 1629. British scholars G.
Barnicot and G. Simmons 3 call this publication a ”calendar”. To describe this
work as merely a ”calendar” is an oversimplification, as actually this chap-book
served as a formidable weapon against Catholicism, reminding its owners of the
holy saints of the faith of their forbears. The second in artistry to Berynda was

the industrious Ilia the Monk, who worked for both Kiev and Lvov presses, and

 

2Causey, Susan, Ed.:'l\‘adition and Revolution in Russian Art - Catalogue of the
”Leningrad in Manchester” exhibition, Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester 1990, p. 74

3Yuri Ovsyannikov: ”The Lubok - 17th-18th Century Russian Broadsides, Sovietsky
Khudozhnik, Moscow 1968, p.7

 

who, between 1645 and 1649, cut 132 of the planned 150 blocks for a broadside
Bible - akin to the 1475 German Bible. These woodcuts are concise, simple, yet
very expressive. It is interesting to note that whereas in Germany the broadside
preceded the chap-book, in the Ukraine the reverse was the case. This is due to
the fact that two centuries separate the German development of prints from that
in Ukraine.

Among the Moscow lubok, there is a group of 36 woodcuts by Vasili Koren,
who adapted Diirer’s engravings for his purpose. The images are from the Book
of Genesis and the Apocalypse, which together are recognized as the first printed
Bible in pictures, aimed at the poor. This is a unique example of a popular
publication for which we know the identity of both the engraver and the artist
from whose drawings the engraver worked.

The Koren’s Bible (”Bibliya Korenya”) named after its artist, was
in possession of Count Feodor Andreyevich Tolstoy. On the first page of the
book is ex Iibris with the inventory number 1593. The Bible is kept today at the
Rare Books Department of the ME. Saltyukov-Schedrin Public Library in Sankt
Petersburg. It consists of the Book of Genesis (20 folios) and the Apocalypse
(16 folios, incomplete). It is printed on Dutch paper of the second half of the
seventeenth century from wooden blocks, with both pictures and text cut on them,
and is painted by hand in watercolors. The binding, made in the first quarter of
the nineteenth century, is of brown leather with gold tooling. The size of the
book over the binding is 41 x 33 x 2.5 cm, the size of the prints varies from 33 to
39 cm vertically and 26.5 to 30.5 cm horizontally. It was acquired by the Public
Library in 1830 with the collection of Count Tolstoy, a noted Moscow collector of

old manuscripts and incunabula. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,

f“.:' a

 

 

the Bible was owned by peasants, possibly by tradesmen in the Volga and Moscow
area. ‘

The Koren’s Bible is the first Russian Bible for the poor, an illustrated
book for illiterates. It provides answers to vital questions of the time: about the
beginning and the end of the world, the structure of the Universe, and the rela—
tionships between God, Satan and Man. It was created at the time of passionate
religious and political struggles, early in the reign of Peter I. It was the time when
the Church was losing its prestige, due to the schism between the Old Believers
and New Believers, and the emergence of sectarianism and secularism, i.e. athe-
ism. The Koren’s Bible asserts the medieval system of the Universe, as opposed
to Copernicus’ heliocentric theory of the world. The general mood of people was
one of extreme confusion, resulting from Peter’s forceful imposition of reforms. A
sudden flood of foreigners (merchants, engineers, artists, etc.) was followed by an
enormous number of foreign books, Bibles in particular, with Protestant and Ro-
man Catholic interpretations of Creation, Original Sin and Apocalypse. Confused
with these weird (to them) interpretations of Holy Scriptures, common Russian
man looked for something that would be guaranteed Orthodox, and he found the
answers in Koren’s Bible. 5

The illustrations of the Creation of the World and Adam and Eve are in
accord with Russian iconography and popular folklore (Figures 1-5). The Creator
is depicted as an Angel in a modest garment of brown, earthly colors. The facial
features are simple. The Creator looks approachable to any man, and there is

nothing frightening or abstract in his appearance, as it is found in the Piscator

 

‘Sakovich A.G.: Narodnaya Gravirovanaya Kniga Vasiliya Korenya, 1692-1696,
Iskusstvo, Moskva 1983, p.166
5 ibid., p.168

 

...l

 

10

Bible or Italian books of Genesis. 6 It illustrates the way in which an ordinary
people conceives God. Russians were a very religious and traditional people, one
might say conservative in keeping with tradition. They tended to explain all events
in their life as a matter of the will of God. Their understanding of God is different
from that of Western Christians. They see Him as someone who is there to help
and lead, and not to frighten or punish. God is a friend, though omnipotent, but
still a friend whom a farmer can talk to and be on ”per-tn”. 7

This closeness and fellowship with God is expressed in visual language in
Creation. Even the animals from the ”Fifth Day of Creation” (Figure 2.1),
have friendly expressions, and their eyes are the eyes of humans, looking directly
at the viewer. In the ”Seventh Day”, (Figure 2.2), God takes a break and He
rests in bed laying His head on pillows, and covers His body with a blanket, more
like a human then an absolute ruler of the Universe.

Adam and Eve, created in the image of God, are rendered after the image
of God in Koren’s Bible. After ”The Expulsion from Paradise”, (figure 2.3)
Adam and Eve are given robes to cover themselves with (figure 2.4), and are sent
to the outside world to spend their lives. There is nothing frightening in these
images. After repenting for their sin of deeming themselves equal to God, they
have been forgiven, and are protected both by God and a Cherubim. In the folio
”Adam’s and Eve’s Life in the World” (figure 2.5), their life is portrayed
as almost in Paradise. Eve, as a respected Madonna, is nursing little Abel in a
structure that resembles a cave or a barn. Adam is resting across from her, while

Cain is playing with a lamb. In the background, Cain and Abel are shown as

 

6ibid., pp.168-l70.

7In Russian, there are two forms of ”you”, similar to French, or the Old English. One is
formal for talking to a stranger or someone of higher rank: ”VI”, which is the English ”YOU”,
and the other is informal, used among friends and family: ”TI”, which is Old English ”THOU”.
'Iiaditionally, people in Russia would address a priest or even an archbishop with ”TI”.

 

11

a shepherd and a farmer, respectively. The whole composition is reminiscent of
the Birth of Christ, where Eve is Mary and Adam is Joseph. Cain and Abel are
placed in the upper part of the composition, thus occupying the place of ”Good
Shepherds”. 8 Idyllic composition is accomplished with flowers growing between
Adam and Eve.

From the Life of Adam and Eve, the focus is shifted to the sin of Cain,
a man unhallowed, godless, who brought to earth envy, murder and perjury. To
make it clear, he was given the image of a typical Russian plowman, a negative
hero from the oral folklore tradition. The book asserts that city, in which Adam,
Eve, Cain and Abel live, is evil. To emphasize this, Cain is dressed in urban garb,
while Abel wears poor rags. Again, in the Lamentation and Burial of Abel,
figure 2.6) we have an iconography similar to that in the ”Lamentation and Burial
of Christ”. In the lower part of the picture Adam and Eve lament over the dead
Abel’s body, like Mary and St. John over the dead Christ. Eve is even dressed
like Mary, with her head and shoulders covered with a scarf. Abel lays down with
his hands crossed, like the dead Christ. In the upper part of the composition, the
parents are burying Abel. The rendering of the sequence of events is of Byzantine
tradition. What happened first is placed in the first, lower foreground, and what
happened later is placed in the upper part of the composition, but all figures are
of the same size.

The last folio is the. ”Birth of Enoh, Death of Cain and the Son of
Cain Builds the City” (figure 2.7). The text incorporated in the picture tells
the story according to the Old Testament. Adam and Eve, depicted as an elderly

couple, sit under a construction that is reminiscent of an elaborate tent, with their

 

8In Orthodox iconography, ”Good Shepherds” are the first witnesses of the Birth of Christ,
rather than the ”Three Kings”.

 

12

grandchild in Eve’s lap. Both are dressed as well-off city people. Her costume is
in Byzantine medieval style, while he wears Western clothes, (a combination of
a style of a harlequin and a knight). Adam has a hat resembling a turban, or a
Renaissance cap with two big feathers. The collar of his coat is in the shape of
petals of a bright, orange color, the same color as his pants. He embraces Eve
with one hand, and both are engaged in casual conversation.

The city Cain’s son is building, is seen in the foreground, while the com-
pleted city is in the background, in the upper part of the composition. The city
consists of walls, towers and ports, built of brick and concrete, nothing like Russian
towns and cities. The architectural style is foreign, too.

The whole ”Book of Genesis” in Koren’s Bible treats the problem of
’good’ and ’evil’, God and Satan. The history of the first people in the world shows
that man sees God as being the Father of all people, and sin is understood in a
specifically Orthodox manner. While Western thought is focused on Damnation,
Eastern is focused on Salvation. Once repentant, Eve is forgiven and saved. While
Cain, who turns his face away from God, lives a life in which, as a consequence,
God turns Himself away from Cain. The emphasis is not on Punishment, as this
idea is virtually of no importance in Eastern Christianity, but rather on free will
of man and his responsibility to take the consequences of his deeds. The difference
may appear subtle and of no importance, but for Russian man it was essential. 9
Thus, Adam and Eve are neither horrified nor trying to justify themselves by
pointing to the snake in the ”Expulsion from Paradise”. They are aware of

their rejection of God, and they accept the consequences, repenting at the same

 

9The problem of guilt and punishment is best explained by Dostoyevsky in his Crime and
Punishment. There he contrasts the Western and Eastern Christian understanding of the
problem.

13

time for what they did. They go into the world in peace, and Adam is making
a gesture as he is waving to God his farewell. In the next folio, the angel is
giving them animal leather to cover their nakedness, something that is not seen
in Western iconography.

Shifting the emphasis from Eve’s sin to Cain’s crime introduces the prob-
lem of innocence and knowledge, chastity and vanity. While in chastity, Adam and
Eve are in Paradise, nude and innocent; in vanity, they live in a city, dressed in
strange, foreign costumes. In the whole ”Book of Genesis” God is never depicted
as angry, not even surprised. This is an illustration of the Russian Orthodox be-
lief that God is never angry, not one who is ready to punish and to frighten His
creatures, but rather one who is loving and forgiving. God does not abandon man
and does not want to punish him, but rather man is the one who is using his free
will to depart from God and suffer all the consequences. Even then God is always
there, waiting with care for his people to sincerely repent, because He does not
want to impose His will upon the free will He gave as a gift to his Creatures. This
Russian, authentically Orthodox relationship to God, was somewhat disturbed
and confused with the spreading of Western books and Bibles throughout Russia,
with illustrations that were showing God as an angry and threatening supreme
Creator of the Universe, with no mercy and love, very remote from people, and
non-reachable for ordinary folk. The publishing of the vast number of religious
books, of which this is one of the first, came as a reaction to Western books.

Yet the triumph of Evil over Righteousness at the beginning of the world
is not its final victory. People who have scofl'ed‘at God’s intentions are bearing the
consequences for it, as described in the ”Apocalypse”, which comes immediately

after Koren’s ”Book of Genesis”, concluding it and putting an end to mankind’s

 

14

destinies. However, Koren’s ”Apocalypse”, unlike the West European ”Last
Judgements”, is a victory of Good against Evil, the triumph of Salvation against
Damnation.

Russian artists used Western engravings in their own creative way. They
took from them the compositional canon and added their own style and iconog-
raphy, including a large portion of Russian apocrypha. Western engravings were
a canon, not a model, and Russian engravings were not mere copies, but rather
an interpretation or translation. Furthermore, there was no notion of ’copying’ in
the Middle Ages, since all topics and compositions were known to all artists, and
were commonly used as a groundwork. The challenge was to give an individual
and recognizable accent within the given frame. This attitude existed in the West
until the seventeenth century. Borrowing from other masters was not considered
reprehensible, but rather desirable. 1° Both the ”Genesis” and the ”Apocalypse”
of Koren’s Bible belong to that tradition.

Rendering of the ”Book of Apocalypse” had started earlier than of the
”Book of Genesis”, and in its essence is more traditional. It is based on the first
Moscow printed Bible from 1663 which depended on the compositional schemas to
be found in the many versions of Luther’s ”Apocalypse” made between 1520 and
1530, which were based in turn on the woodcuts of Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans
Holbein the Younger and others. All these versions make a common basis for the
illustrations of Apocalypse in West European engravings of the sixteenth century.
This tradition is already known in Russia in seventeenth century, thanks to the
Bible of Borcht (1582), which came to Russia not later than the beginning of

the seventeenth century and became influential in fresco painting. 11

 

10In music, a theme is borrowed for making variations on it, even nowadays
llSakovich, A.G.: Narodnaya Gravirovanaya Kniga Vasiliya Korenya, 1692—1696,

 

15

One has to be cautious when dealing with Western influences in Russian
art, for there was always the dominant thought directed toward the preservation of
the tradition, particularly the Orthodox one. Foreign ideas were accepted, but not
blindly. After careful examinations, those ideas would most often be Russiflied,
especially in the Lubok market, where success depended on acceptability of foreign
ideas and styles. As we have seen, the Koren’s Bible borrowed elements of style
from Western woodcuts, but applied these to traditional Russian iconography.
Therefore, the Koren’s Bible should be considered as an reaction, rather than
a reflection, of Western art and Western ideas. 12

However, it should be noted that the Church authorities repeatedly banned
publication of religious lubki since they considered the pictures as too often depart—
ing from canonical norms, so that most of the surviving prints from this period
are those with secular subjects and themes.

Prints for popular consumption have always been executed in an ”old
fashioned” manner — one that has proven its effectiveness in communicating. A
style that inherently reflects stability, i.e. an unchanging character, is something
that one can always count on. Lubok fashion is far less volatile than in works
produced for a sophisticated, more secular audience, where changing fashion is
far more imoportant. Lubok style changes inevitably but slowly, and always long
after it was fashionably new.

In the Koren’s Bible the style is strikingly similar to woodblock prints
produced in the early history of this medium, as it developed in Germany in the

fourteenth century. This was late medieval phenomenon which here continues in

the 1600’s in Russia. These artists are not trying to impress with an extraordinary

 

Iskusstvo, Moskva 1983, p.168
l2Baldina, Olga: Russkie Narodnie Kartinki, Molodaya Gvardiya, Moskow 1972, p.77

16

skill, as did Diirer, for example. The style is one that predates him.

Contours are kept clear and descriptively simple - features of faces are
schematized and interchangeable. The representation of an individual character
is of no concern. A simple diagonal hatching is used to create some sense of
shadow, but this too is kept simple. No complex cross - hatching or other graphic
complexities, are exploited, for the expectation is that hand coloring will be added
to enrich the whole eflect. The style is one that is two hundred years old and
therefore easily comprehended. What is important is the story and the style is in

service of the iconography.

2.2 Secular and religious Parables

The second group of Lubki are those which illustrate parables of secular or religious
character, but always with a pedagogical and dogmatic moral.

”The Dreadful Parable of the Great Mirror”, (Figure 2.8), from
the second half of seventeenth century, includes a text that tells us about a young
woman who died without confessing her sins. ’3 Her confessor prayed for her
soul, and she appeared to him in a vision sitting astride a fiery beast, symbol of
untamed passions. Her hands are being gnawed by dogs, her breasts sucked by
serpents, her eyes eaten by toads, her ears pierced by arrows and her lips burnt
with fire. She explains to her confessor how each of her punishment reflects her life.
The arrows pierce her ears because she has ”listened to the song of devils”. Dogs
gnaw her arms because ”they have caressed the forbidden”, and the serpents suck

her breasts because of her ”lustful” life. The scene is contrasted with a bucolic

 

13Causey, Susan., Ed.: 'IYadition and Revolution in Russian Art - Catalogue of the
”Leningrad in Manchester” exhibition, Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester 1990, p.63.

 

 

17

landscape and a city in the background. The white areas of women’s body and
the sky are simply left uncolored. This style has medieval quality, but the sense of
decorative pattering and fanciful naivité seems more idiomatically Russian than
the previous example.

The next Lubok, ”The Punishment of Money-Grubbers” (Figure
2.9), is taken from the same collection of stories ”The Great Mirror”, but dates
from the late eighteenth century and is a copper engraving. Here pious monk
has a terrible vision, and asks an angel for an explanation. He sees a man lying
in flames with a tree growing from his stomach and figures hanging from the
branches. The Angel explains the meaning of this to him: The man is the father
of all money-grubbers and bribe-takers, and the figures hanging on the branches
are his children and grandchildren. They are just about to be consumed by the
giant mouth of Hell whose one big eye frightfully stares at them. Actually, the
man is already in Hell’s mouth. The text does not explain why this monk has
such a terrible vision, but we know from the Christian tradition that the ”World
rests on monks”. Monks live in seclusion, but are connected spiritually with the
whole world and all people’s sins, and through praying seek the salvation of all
humankind. Therefore, the Angel just shows him the scene, protecting him and
holding him gently by the hand, leading him through life. Being an engraving,
the line quality and the shading is much more subtle than the woodcut, but the
style is still archaic and medieval in character. 1‘

”The Pure Soul” (figure 2.10), is personified as a beautiful young
women. She stands ”higher than the Sun and the Moon before God”. She

waters the flames of Hell with her tears and tames the passions (symbolized by

 

“rm, p.74.

 

18

a lion and a dragon) with her meekness. Diagonally from her, in the lower, right
corner is the nude figure of a broodery sinful soul, sitting in a dark cave: a demon
waits to pounce. Jesus Christ, as king of heaven surrounded by clouds, is above
the whole scene. The text tells that the pure soul is like a young virgin. There
is an inscription above the young woman’s head, a feature found on icons, with a
typical Byzantine abbreviation: DSA CISTA (soul pure). ‘5 Her garment is in the
style of a Byzantine princess, she wears the crown, has a halo, and has a lily in her
hand, all symbols of Virgin Mary, Theotokos. If this is the case, then this lubok
is inspired both by the Western images and Byzantine iconography, since the lily
flower is Mary’s symbol in Western iconography, while in Byzantine iconography
she would have a spindle instead. The text on the right-hand side consists of
prayers for sinful souls. The traditional costume here is similar to those one finds
in the Byzantine works, and reveals a strong sense of tradition that enforces the
Orthodox point of view. This is seen in the icon tradition as well. The represen-
tation of the landscape is an arrangement of abstract pattering with little interest
of observational reality. It is interesting to note here that the previous example
seems to use woodblock prints of European original, but here the drapery patterns
of Byzantine icons are exploited and the linear schematic nature of these is really
quite suited to woodcuts.

”Saint John (Ioann)” (figure 2.11), was a holy hermit from Kiev who
died in 1160. He was known as ”the long-suffering”, having lived for thirty years
in a cave. The lubok is composed of three scenes, with text below each one. The
text is not in Russian but in Old-Church Slavonic, and tells us that St. John

had suffered so much because of his lecherous passions and that he sought refugee

 

15am, p.74.

19

at the grave of St. Anthony, where he spent thirty years, naked, buried up to
his chest, and in constant prayer. During these thirty years, he experienced the
flames from the bottom of Hades, and even the flame-snake came to devour him.
His prayers were finally heard by God, and the thunder killed the Devil. Then he
heard the voice of God telling him: ”Oh, John, oh John, here you will get the help
because of your sufferings. Nobody is given to stand more than he can endure.”
He was released from all sufferings by two angels, who are depicted in the upper
scene.

Here, still another technique was found to present an old and expected
style. While this looks like a woodcut, it is, in fact, a lithograph. This modern
technique served to speed up production and allowed for thousands of copies.
These were in such high demand that any means that would produce quantity
inexpensively was exploited. The means might be modern, but the style remained
old fashioned.

”The Holy 'D‘inity” (figure 2.12),is represented in Russian art, not by
the images of God - the Father, Christ - the Son, and the Holy Spirit (symbolized
by a dove), but instead by three Angels sitting at the table. In the foreground, a
boy is slaughtering an ox for the meal and in the background is an abbreviated
inscription which is typical of the traditional Russian icon. The faces, the drapery,
the postures of Angels and the table setting is in the Byzantine style, while the
surroundings (and the table-cloth) are somewhat abstract. It is neither icon nor
lubok, but with characteristics of both.

This non-canonical treatment of religious themes was not acceptable to
the Church. The Church’s uneasy feelings toward this popular manifestation of

faith were expressed in numerous attempts at censorship, the first dating from

20

1674. The Church was concerned in particular with the way in which the lubok
artists went beyond the canonical images of the Byzantine tradition, and freely
interpreted biblical and holy images for commercial profit. Despite extensive
censorship, the religious lubok of the sort exemplified here, remained popular well

into the nineteenth century. 16

2.3 The reign of Peter the Great

Many of Iubki illustrate the reign of Peter the Great. To better understand their
sometimes complex iconography, one has to understand the great change Peter the
Great brought to Russia, and its consequences. The reforms introduced by Peter
the Great are seen in the West as something progressive and thus could have pos-
itive results. But for Russians, these reforms were the cause of many difficulties
and upheavals. Most segments of Russian society didn’t want reforms and were
not ready for speed with which they were instituted. People thought of Peter the
Great as an anarchist, because he broke with the traditional order of things. He
confiscated the land from monasteries, forced aristocrats to learn and to speak for-
eign languages, secularized education, invited many foreign business people, and
created entire new settlements of foreigners in Moscow and Petrograd. By decree,
he made Russians drink coffee instead of tea, a traditional Russian beverage, and
worse of all, made Russians shave their beards and change their traditional cos-
tumes. As strange as it may seem, the latter was one of the biggest obstacles in
his reforms - the forcible change of the outward appearance of people: hair, beard

and clothes. A beard was not seen as simply a male symbol, but as a part of

 

“5 ibid., p.71. See also Baldina, Olga: Russkie Kartinki, Molodaya Gvardiya: Moscow 1972,
pp.75-77

21

the early Christian tradition. That feeling became even stronger after the fall of
Constantinople, when Moscow became the ”Third Rome” as a legal continuation
of the Byzantine empire. So to deprive Russians from their traditional ”rubashka”
(long shirt without collar) and beard, seemed to them as the first important sign
that they were going to be deprived of all their tradition, history and religion.
Furthermore, the reforms came suddenly and forcibly, imposed but never really
understood. The literature of the time is full of comic scenes describing people
who don’t know how to behave in their new Western cloths, but are still trying
to be ”Europeans”. A man wearing three gloves, one for each hand and the third
to keep in his hand, became the topic of mockery in many anecdotes.

In lubok ”The Barber Wants to Cut the Old Believer’s Whiskers”
(figure 2.13), the barber is dressed in contemporary German costume trying to
shave the beard of an Old Believer. The Old Believer is called in text ”schismatic”.
”Old Believers” refer to yet another upheavel in Russian history, one that precedes
Peter’s reforms. ’7 Patriarch Nicon in the first half of seventeenth century thought
that the time had come to revise the existing liturgy and the Holly Books bringing
them closer to their original Greek sources. Both the liturgy and religion books in
Russia were overly simplified and infused with a great deal of Slavic, non-Christian
folklore. This attempt at reform was seen as heretical by many, and it caused a
schism in 1667 into Old Believers (Slavic) and New Believers (Greek-Orthodox).
The Old Believers were persecuted and withdrew into the vast areas of Siberia
(many of them still exist today). Peter’s decree of 1705, stating that all men
must wear European costumes and shave off their beards, met with the greatest

resistance among the Old Believers, who regarded it as yet another attack on their

 

17The Concise Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, Edited by E.A.Livingstone,
Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1977, p. 36 7.

 

22

beliefs. The victim in this lubok accepted the European suit, but doesn’t want
to give up his beard. There is evidence to suggest that this print was sanctioned
by Peter himself. If this is so, this is the case of lubok used as a propaganda tool
against Peter the Great.

”The Cat of Kazan” (Figure 2.14) is a satire on Peter the Great, par-
odying his appearance with long mustaches and the pompous titles he assumed
as a result of his military victories. 1” The inscription reads: ”The cat of Kazan,
having the spirit of Astrakhan and sense of Siberia, lived gloriously, ate agreeably
and lived sweetly.” The compliments are obviously meant ironically. The former
khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and Siberia all became part of Moscovite Russia in
the late sixteenth century, during the reign of Ivan the Terrible, who is probably
being linked to Peter as his only predecessor of comparable stature. The picture
of the cat obviously undermines the greatness of Peter the Great. In this case
again, the propaganda does not serve the King. It is interesting to note here that
the print is made from four separate sheets and the design elements do not match
well.

The dead cat in the following lubok has a title which also identifies it
as the ”The Cat of Kazan” (figure 2.15), and this too contains an underlying
political satire. ’9 The burial of the cat by its enemies, the mice, is one of the most
popular lubok subjects and recurs in many versions, this being one of the earliest.
The weak and injured mice are shown to triumph in the end over their implacable
foe. To be on the safe side, however, they have tied the cat’s paws and bound
it to the sledge. This lubok was thought at first to be a satirical commentary of

the funeral of Pope Pius V or Pope Gregory XIII, or even of Ivan the Terrible.

 

18Baldina, Olga: Russkie Narodnie Kartinki, Molodaya Gvardia, Moscow 1972, p.80.
l9ibid., p.81.

 

23

Dmitrii Rovinskii, collector and author of the standard work on lubok, was the
first to notice a number of details: the sledge is pulled by eight mice, the number
of horses in Peter’s funeral procession; it is accompanied by musicians and it was
Peter who introduced music to the funeral; one mouse is shown smoking a pipe and
tobacco and these had first been allowed to be sold openly during Peter’s reign.
Some mice in the funeral procession represent territories that Peter wrested from
Sweden, which can be read in the text accompanying the print.

Another similar in technique and manner is ”The Witch Lady Going
on to Fight the Crocodile” (Figure 2.16), the later being the attribute often
bestowed on the emperor by the Old Believers. Further to make everything ab-
solutely clear, a sailing ship is depicted (Peter founded the Russian Navy), while
the Witch Lady is clad in Estonian national costume, and Catherine I, Peter’s
wife was born in Estonia. These personages, the cat, the crocodile and the Witch
Lady, figure in other broadsides as well, such as the Witch Lady compelling a bold
man to dance to her piping and fighting bearded crocodile. 20

Both prints are similar in technique and in style, which indicates that
they might have been produced by one hand, either Vasilii Koren or his pupil.
It is very likely that both prints were subsidized by the Church in its campaign
against Peter’s secularization of society. However, there is no written evidence to
support this hypothesis, except that Vasilii Koren was a fresco painter and thus
closely associated with Church. At that time it was still customary for a monk to
be simultaneously a fresco and icon painter. If this is the case, he self consciously
exploits naive and even crude manner.

Not all prints of Peter’s time are satirical and critical of his reign. Many

 

2oibid., pp.89—95.

 

 

24

prints approved and glorified his reign. In the ”Alexander the Great Fighting
a Battle with King Porus” (Figure 2.17) people could easily recognize Peter
in the image of Alexander the Great. 2’ Alexander the Great has Peter’s bulging
eyes and eyebrows grown together, and Alexander wears the wig and contemporary
Western costume of Peter’s time, both introduced by Peter’s reforms. Further,
the banners of Alexander’s army have a Christian cross, while the banners of the
enemy are neutral, without any symbol. This lubok could be an allusion on victory

over Swedish king Charles XII, whom Peter defeated at Poltava. 22

2.4 Secular morality, skaska and poetry

There are many lubok that illustrate poetry and skaska. Skaska is a short story
with a moral and has its roots in the oral tradition which has its origins in ancient
Slavic pre-Christian times. Lubki prints illustrating poems or skaska kept a widely
dispersed population in touch with contemporary life, and also familiarized people
with literature, both written and oral.

The unfaithful or foolish wife is a common theme in skaska and is illus-
trated by ”The Foolish Wife and the Cat” (Figure 2.18). The text tells about
a woman who put some meat for dinner in a thin dish in the oven and went to
chat with a neighbor. Upon returning she found the dish melted and the meat
destroyed. She lied to her husband that the cat ate the meat, and thus cleared
herself of blame. Deducing what actually happened, the husband decided to pun-

ish the cat. He tied the cat to women’s back and start beating it. The cat claws

 

“rind, p.67.

22Alekseeva, P.M.A.: Torgovlia Graviurami v Moskve i Kontrol za Nei v Kontse
XVII—XVIII vv., in Narodnaya i Fol’lclor v Rossii X VIII—XIX vv., Sovetskii Khudozhnik:
Moscow 1976, pp.l40—158.

 

25

the wife’s back, and thus ”justice” was accomplished. Here the style is very much
in the Byzantine iconic tradition. While the figures are secular, the drapery pat-
terns and the costumes are those one expects to be worn by church clergy. By
1820, when this was produced, the influence of French Enlightenment had been
widespread in Russia. Such a secular use of standardized religious forms could be
seen as an attempt to undermine Orthodox religion.

”The Lesson to Foolish Husbands and Smart Wives” (Figure 2.19),
illustrates the skaska about a well-off couple who lived in a village and had a horse
and an ox. The wife told her husband to sell the animals and for the money they
got she bought new clothes and enjoyed the music and goat-dancing. When winter
came and the husband had to go to the forest to bring wood for fire, he yoked
his wife into the sledge in place of the horse she has sold. A group of villagers
are pointing out to each other the foolish husband and wife. The text below the
image is ironically calling the wife smart and husband foolish, whereas both are
obviously foolish. Here the style is broad and strongly patterned with costumes
that are clearly contemporary rural. Clarity and naivete is direct and without
reference to Byzantine style.

Often skaska presents a moral in simple language by contrasting right and
wrong. The print ”Muzhichek” (peasant) (Figure 2.20) depicts two houses, one
of a lazy and another of a hardworking peasant. The hardworking peasant has
a tidy house, his fields are plowed and he celebrates the sale of his crop. The
house of the lazy peasant is awry, his horses are running free, and his fields are
not harvested. There are numerous versions of this skaska. Lubki of similar style
were used much later in Bolshevik propaganda posters. Stacked compositions as

we have seen are typical as is the case here. The removal of the walls of the two

 

26

houses is a naive means of getting information across to the viewer.

A famous skaska is ”Shemiaka’s court”, illustrated in figure 2.21. It
refers to the fifteenth century prince Dmitrii Shemiaka, but it actually refers to any
unjust court. The lubok is rendered in the form of comics with the text following
every scene. There are twelve scenes, each depicting the troubles of a peasant. It
illustrates the story of a ”criminal” peasant who was brought before the court for
three crimes, which he unintentionally commited. The last crime was jumping off
a bridge to kill himself, but landing on someone else and killing him instead. The
judge, believing he is being bribed, renders comic judgments favoring the peasant.
The style is akin to that of the Western middle ages; there is no perspective, figures
are too short, and the background is plain. The engraving is intentionally crude,
similar like in Koren’s Bible. Figures are dressed in medieval Western costumes
rather then traditional Russian ones.

Around 1860, satirical Iubki appeared in large numbers, satirizing the
fashion and life styles of nobility and upper middle class: tall coiffures, extravagant
dress, loose behavior, gambling, indebtedness and general extravagance. In most
of these prints either the text or the illustration, or both, are borrowed from French
sources, but several use epigrams by the writer Alexander Sumarokov. The most
popular subject was the foolishness of the merchant class and its newly adopted
life style, especially their fashionably dressed wifes. Both conservative merchants
and provincial nobility wanted to imitate the life style of aristocracy. Lubki expose
that life style as frivolous, extravagant and immoral. The satire of these prints is
neither sharp, nor subtle, it is too heavy-handed to be funny. 23

”The Crinoline, or How, When the Opportunity Present Itself,

 

23Causey, Susan., Ed.: 'h‘adition and Revolution in Russian Art, Catalogue of the
”Leningrad in Manchester” exhibition, Cornerhouse: Manchester, 1990, pp.90—92.

 

27

to Use It to Replace a Hot-Air Balloon” (Figure 2.22) is an example of a
sharp satire. In the text, a merchant complains to an acquaintance that his wife
in her crinoline dress has been carried away by the wind, along with a young man
who was trying to save her. The lubok is alluding to modern marriage and the
lack of faithfulness. The title underlines the relation of modern times (crinoline)
to the breaking of tradition (”when the opportunity presents itself”).

A similar print is ”The Balloon” (Figure 2.23). The ”balloon” carries
gentlemen who investigate with binoculars the inside of the balloon which is ac-
tually a women in a crinoline. The text tells about the husband who is proud of
his fashionable wife. Cuckoldry became a prominent subject of prints as genre
tales became popular in literature. In Russia too, as was the case in the West,
the genre was generally linked to the merchant milieu. Merchants were seen as
having a greater concern about cuckoldry then the others. The reason for this
could be found either in the life style of urban people, where a wife was freer
in her comings and goings, or in the merchant’s concern about inheritance and
legitimacy. Cuckoldry prints are clearly a way of purging men’s fears of being
betrayed by their wives and laughed at by their fellows. In Russian prints wives
outwit their husbands mercilessly.

The print ”Aerial Journey: or How They Fly Up the Chimney
and the Creditors are Amazed” (Figure 2.24) depicts a ruined merchant and
contractor escaping through the chimney of a house. The text and the objects
they carry explain the reason for their financial collapse: women, drinking and
gambling. The first man carries a bottle and the man in the rear holds some
playing cards. A German creditor who has just arrived to collect his debts shouts

at them to return, but a passerby explains that this is useless. Actually this is

 

28

the illustration of the Russian phrase ”to fly out of the chimney”, meaning to go
bankrupt. Not only the image, but the title itself is playful.

The problem of drinking and gambling attracted much attention. Prints
treating these problems are always simple and clear in their visual language. There
is no symbolic or hidden meaning that needs to be deciphered, as was the case
with Iubki treating the reign of Peter the Great. The tendency to create humor
with a social or political subject was the consequence of the influence of the 18th
century Enlightement and became the habit of mind. In the nineteenth century,
for instance, parodies of an earlier period came to be interpreted as political satire.
Prints dealing with crime also made a shift from comic interpretation to serious
treatment; the same happened with prints dealing with foreigners. The message
of prints from the nineteenth century is no longer the mockery of bad habits, but
rather pointing out wrongdoings. 2"

Animals are often employed in Russian lubok. They appear in different
contexts, satirical or fantastic, in fable or tale, and always exemplify a moral of
some kind. They stand for man in a world that has inverted natural order, thus
drawing attention to the moral point. 25

”The Bull Didn’t Want to be a Bull and Became a Butcher” (Fig-
ure 2.25), illustrates the world turned upside down in which a butcher is butchered
by a bull. This comic and satirical device was common to many European folk
traditions, Epinal in France for instance. Its origin is in the medieval festival of
Twelfth Night when masters and their servants switched roles for the day. The

text includes ”the hunter hunted” and ”sheep who sheared the shepherd”. This

 

“Alekseeva, P.M.A.: Torgovlia Graviurami v Moskve i Kontrol za Nei v Kontse
XVII-XVIII vv., in Narodnaya i Fol’lclor v Rossii X VIII—XIX vv., Sovetskii Khudozhnik:
Moscow 1976, pp.160—162.

25Causey, Susan, Ed.:'h‘adition and Revolution in Russian Art - Catalogue of the
”Leningrad in Manchester” exhibition, Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester 1990, p. 79.

29

kind of print was very popular in the nineteenth century.

Curiously these popular moral themes became a part of everyday language
among the intelligentsia. Philosophy was discussed and approached from many
different points of view as can be seen in the literature of the time. A well-
educated person was welcomed and accepted in all circles of higher society and
was expected to be able to talk about any given issue, be it philosophy, religion,
history or literature. Any given topic was thoroughly analyzed and relativized.
So, for example in Dostoyevsky’s ”Crime and Punishment”, Raskolnikoff, a young
and poor intellectual, kills an old, rich lady for her money. In doing so he thinks
he serves justice by correcting the existing order of the society. This inverts the
roles of a criminal and a victim. As time goes by, Raskolnikoff starts to feel
the pricks of conscience and realizes that changing the world would be the same
as to give a bull the role of a butcher and make a man into the bull. In this
graphic illustration of a medieval theme, we get the glimpse of the typical themes
of Russian society of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The myths and
superstitions Goya depicted in his Los Capriccios at the end of the eighteen
century, reflect a similar point of view. That Goya would turn to prints to make
his comments, holds something of the same didactic motivation that drove these
artists and publishers to get images out in quantity and influence as many people
as possible.

The bear is another popular themes of the time. ”The Industrious
Bear” (Figure 2.26) portrays a big bear and a man. The animal tries to imitate
man and attempts to make a yoke. Since he does not have the skills or the patience
to master them, he repeatedly breaks the wood with his brute strength. He tries

and tries but he fails in his effort. Then he meets a peasant and asks him for advice.

 

30

The peasant tells him that the effort is not enough, but the understanding and
the knowledge of technique to make a yoke. There is a Slavic proverb that says:
”Mind is ruling, and strength does nothing but rolls logs”. An English equivalent
might be: ”Wisdom is better than strength” or ”Mind triumphs over matter”.

In all lubok concerning folk tales and proverbs a bear is not rendered as
a fierce animal, but rather as a near human character that is gruff and clumsy,
but with a placid and comic nature. In modern Russian, words used to describe a
person who tries to perform beyond his or her competence would be ”bear” and
”log”. 26

At social gatherings and fairs, and church festivities, people sang and
danced to celebrate whatever the occasion was. Those songs have their stories,
and the text is more important than melody itself. In cities, however, among
”gradzani” (city dwellers), another kind of song would entertain people. It is
called ”Romance” and is similar to French chansons of 1940’s and 1950’s. The
text of ”Romance” was written by famous Russian poets, and the music was com-
posed for those already existing poems. These were quickly adopted by peasants
and converted to folk songs. Thus we have a mixture of rural and urban tradition
in both folk song and ”Romance” which was quickly adopted by Lubok and in
turn helped popularize the writings of major poets such as Alexander Pushkin on
whose poem ”Romance”, the print ”Toward Evening One Bad Autumn...”
was based. (Figure 2.27). The poem was published in 1814 and was adapted
by the lubok publisher in 1832. The image illustrates the story of an unhappy
girl who abandoned her illegitimate child outside a stranger’s house one autumn

night. The text does not blame the girl, but sympathizes with her and blames the

 

26”A log puts glasses on and thinks it is a professor!”

”‘l

 

31

irresponsible father. She worked as a servant in his household in the city (seen
in the background) and was abused by the lord. She talks about her ”stradanie”
(suffering, martyrdom) and her child that is not a bastard, but a victim. 27 Icono-
graphically, the child is represented very much as Christ the Child, as seen in
Russian icons. This ”Romance” was so popular that it was published in over
thirty different versions.

A number of lubok illustrated farewell songs, for example the ”The Cos-
sacks Set ofl' to War at Midnight” (Figure 2.28). Earlier prints of this kind
appeared in the eighteenth century, but they became very popular in nineteenth
century, particularly during Crimean War in 1856, when the government sup-
ported the publishing of these prints as a means of supporting the war effort. 2”
The image shows a soldier leaving for war and asking his mother to look after his
bride as if she were her own daughter.

There is a curious aspect of lubok in the nineteenth century. While these
images proliferate maintaining a naive character, the means of propaganda are
very modern and sophisticated. Religious, moralities, fables, etc. that were found
in early examples could easily be seen as propaganda of a sort, but progressively

the agendas to which these prints serve became more complex and more strident.

2.5 Festivals and clowns

The tradition of medieval popular humor is evident in Iubki in the first two-thirds
of the eighteenth century. In the last third of the century a more modern humor,

satirical and didactic arose. Ignorance of the sources and cultural context of

 

271 am indebted to Mrs. Evgeniya Pekker for the translation of this poem.
28Denisov, V.: Voina i Lubok, Izdanie Novogo Zhurnala Dlya Vsekh, 1916, p.31.

32

Iubki often make it difficult for the modern viewer to appreciate their wittiness.
Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great were often addressed by crude parodying
pamphlets, typical of the old Russian popular culture, which was in their times
still homogeneous culture.

Festivals were present in Russian life since pre-Christian times. In pagan
Slavic times, people believed in nature gods. Perun was the God of thunder and
storm, and Vesna, Goddess of Spring. After adopting Christianity, the Church
christianized much of pagan Slavic tradition. Perun became St. Iliah and Vesna
became a personal female name. Many pagan Slavic folk dances continued to be
performed until the late nineteenth century, such as ”dodole”, the dance of nude
young girls to invite tharain. In medieval times it was performed during festivals
linked to agriculture and the change of seasons.

Festivals were celebrated approximately three months of the year. The
festive life was everything that ordinary life was not - hence the popular saying
”that’s not life, that’s Maslenitsa”. It was feast as opposed to scarcity, it was
free and easy social equality as opposed to strict social hierachy, it was a time of
insubordination.

Popular humor found its expression in the behavior of holy fools, and in
the performances of minstrels. It was preserved in the character and activities of
popular festivals, especially carnivals and continued in numerous parodic works of
the seventeenth century, so called ”demokraticheskaia satira” (democratic satire).
The surviving manuscripts that date back to medieval times, include parodic or
comic versions of judicial proceedings, healing manuals, ”alphabets” and wills.
Another example of this old Russian humor are amateur theatrical interludes,

still found in the early eighteenth century. Seventeenth century ”demokmtich-

 

33

eskaia satira”, the festive life and popular theatrical life show up prominently in
eighteenth century lubok.

”Demokraticheskaia satire”, festivals and popular theaters all have their
symbols and representatives in clowns, fools and ”skomrakhi”. These have their
origins with the pagan priests of Kievan Russia who presided over ritual festivities
and, after the conversion to Christianity, were gradually reduced to the role of
entertainers. They played music, particularly gusle (a stringed instrument) and
sang humorous songs that always told a story. Their performances were theatrical
for those stories were concise histories of Russia, but in rhythmical verses.

The Iubki illustrating music and dance are peopled by fools and clowns,
most often in pairs: Farnos and Petrushka. Farnos was a Russian clown that
came to be identified with Petrushka, the puppet theater character, borrowed
from Italian Punchinello. 29 In festival prints, one can often sense the competition
with Western forms of music introduced to upper class in the eighteenth century.
These prints are witness to the struggle between Western and old Russian music
and dance. After the first half of the eighteenth century, no new prints deal with
music or dance, which is one of indications of the decline of the festive old Russia.

Frequent characters of Iubki of the early eighteenth century are the clown
pair Foma and Erema. They came from humorous songs of Russian minstrels
and also through theater interludes. Comic interludes were played between the
scene changes in the komedialni dom, the first Moscow public theatre, open to the
lesser ranks of society by Peter the Great in 1704. Interludes came to the theatre
directly from the clowning and tent theatricals of popular festivals, and were often

played by the same person.

 

29Baldina, Olga: Russkie Narodnie Kartinki, Molodaya Gvardia, Moscow 1972, pp.118-
122.

 

34

”Erema, Foma and Paramushka” (Figure 2.29) is a shortened version
of an interlude text known in manuscript form. Its text is in syllabic verse, typical
of interludes. Foma and Erema perform as pair and whatever Foma does Erema

somehow counterbalances or mirrors in the next line.

”Erema bought a net, Foma - a seine

Erema works the oars, Foma catches only crabs.
Erema falls into the water,

Foma went to the bottom;

Both stubbornly refused to come up.

’Pancake’, said Erema

’Pirogi’, insisted Foma

’Were pecked up by the sparrows’.” 30

This kind of thing could be improvised, one line suggesting the next,
especially since the rhymes often relied on parallel verb endings. Interludes came
out of unstructured marketplace and festival clownings. Lubki derived generally
from written or printed sources. Marketplace and festival clowning probably made
their way into Iubki through the interludes, which sometimes had written text.
Both lubki and street theater often had similar messages, and both could be often
found on street markets and festivals.

Fools and clowns are always shown in festive costumes. ”Farmos, Red-
Nose” (Figure 2.30) is shown dancing in many prints. He often rides a pig as do
the musicians who escort ”Maslenitsa”. All popular holiday entertainments such
as goat riding, stick-horse riding, card playing, drinking and feast-fighting, are

found in lubki with clowns. Mayhem, beatings and clumsy accidents are part of

 

30For the translation of these verses I am indebted to Evgeniya Pekker.

 

35

the fun. Scatalogical humor abounds: Gonos tries to drive away the mosquitoes; a
peasant looks under a goat’s tail and gets an eyeful. Remunerative labor is always
mocked: Foma and Erema can not catch hares or fish, or even shave shingles.
The clowns and fools of the later half of the century are nowhere near so engaging
visually; these fools are not in festive costume and their grotesque faces are merely
ugly. Their ugliness was supposed to be comic. Mayhem and scatalogical humor
still abound, but real festival clowns are fewer. The early nineteenth century
seemed to look differently upon clowns and fools. What was previously presented
ceremoniously as a sort of counter—ritual is now a dirty joke.

Among many festival activities performed outdoors, ”Maslenitsa” is the
only specific festival that remains today. 31 It is performed in February in the last
week before the Eastern Lent starts. The name comes from ”maslo” (lard) and is
associated with food eaten before ”veliki post” (Great Lent). This custom is not
exclusively Russian, but Slavic in general, and can be found still today in all Slavic
countries. ”Maslenitsa” is the only Winter festival and is a week long. Winter is
the wedding season which starts on January the 7th (the Orthodox Christmas)
and lasts until the beginning of Great Lent. Newly married couples were especially
honored, while young pairs who failed to get married before ”Maslenitsa” were
subject to many jokes. Thus, Maslenitsa is also linked with marriage.

In lubok ”Maslenitsa” (Figure 2.31), she is represented as a pretty girl
accompanied by Semik, a handsome youth. They are placed in close relationship,
exchanging tender words and gestures. Semik’s greeting to Maslenitsa, featured
in the lubok, is a popular refrain repeated by children. The language is figurative

but it clearly expresses the meaning of Maslenitsa:

 

31The explanation about ”Maslenitsa” was privately communicated to me by Mr. Goran
Debelnogich.

 

36

”There was honor and praise when Maslenitsa
invited Semik to be her guest: ’Sincerely

I call you my friend, not despising my womb.
You are a burning coal, a stone blooming amid
spring nights.’

Semik, not to be slow, took her by the arm
and sincerely called her ’My soul, my
Maslenitsa, you are little quail - bones,

Your paper-thin body, your sugary lips, your
sweet speech, rosy beauty, your light-brown
bride; sister of thirty brothers, granddaughter
of forty grandmothers, daughter of four mothers,

sweetheart, pet, you are my little quail-hen.’”

Maslenitsa is thus beautiful but delicate and melts away like the snow and
ice of winter. She calls Semik her friend and links him with images of the heat
that is destructive to her. Many activities of Maslenitsa are depicted on lubki.
She enters Moscow accompanied by music makers astride pigs. She is welcomed
in people’s homes and greeted with hard-cooked eggs, omelets, bline wine and
beer, traditional food for the holidays. She celebrates the holiday with people and
then leaves the city in sledges, again sad, as the text tells us, knowing that she
will soon melt into water.

Semik, the first spring holiday was actually the day for honoring the souls
of departed ones. None of the activity associated specifically with Semik is're-
flected in the lubok illustrating Semik and Maslenitsa. The remembrance of souls

comes in the last week of Lent, before Easter, and is kept strictly apart from the

 

37

symbolism of Maslenitsa.

After 1851 all lubok prints were submitted to the censor. A censor was
typically a person of a high education whose main concern was artistic evaluation
of all materials entering the public library. (The same kind of censorship existed in
the Austro—Hungarian empire and France at the time.) One copy of every public
lubok was sent to the public library in Petersburg. There it was marked with the
date of approval, the censor’s name and the name and address of the workshop
concerned. The public library also acquired colored examples of individual nine-
teenth century lubki. One would expect that with censorship Iubki would cease to
exist. In reality, toward the end of the nineteenth century, they began to be pro-
duced and reproduced in large numbers, but their aesthetic quality deteriorated

sharply. 32

Y
” 2Causey, Susan, Ed.:'I\'adition and Revolution in Russian Art - Catalogue of the
eningrad in Manchester” exhibition, Cornerhouse Publications, Manchester 1990, p. 71

Chapter 3

Influence of lubok in XX century

art

The Russian artist was aware of Western art since Peter the Great’s time, and
despite indigenous tradition, he developed in the same direction as the French
artist. The radical change of aesthetic values in the West in the second half
of the nineteenth century had its effect on Russian art as well. The turmoil
provoked by the renewal of art was shared both by Western and Russian artists.
Russian modernists broke with what they considered the oversolemn and salon
oriented art of the nineteenth century. The concept of lubok - their bright colors,
shallow space, metaphorical and allegorical language - was the bridge between
nineteenth century realism and the dynamic, modern art of the twentieth century.
It helped the Russian artist to break out of academism that imitated life, into the
art that explained life. All these changes were revealed in two cultural capitals:
Moscow and Petersburg. In provincial areas the traditional life was still being
lived: lubok were made and sold at country fairs, the shop signs were produced

by local craftsmen which held great attraction for artists at the beginning of the

38

39

twentieth century.

Boris Kustodiev (1876-1927), a member of the group The World of Art,
was one of the painters who looked for inspiration in lubok tradition. The son of
a successful provincial merchant, he never forgot the atmosphere of countryside
festivals and celebrations. Cheerful festivals, luxury and eccentricity of the old
Russian merchant class, fairy-tales, sunshine and abundance are all reflected in his
canvases. Considered to be among the best Russian colorists, he drew heavily for
his inspiration from lubok. One can say that he ”cultivated” lubok and transfered it
into official art. Even when painted for Bolsheviks, he carried his idealized view of
petite-bourgeois with similar face. Whether landscapes or propaganda paintings,
he maintained the lubok atmosphere, both in its spirit and bright colorfulness
(Figures 3.32 and 3.33). 1

The early twentieth century provoked the intense interest of Russian
artists for popular and traditional arts. Both Chagall and Kandinski were influ-
enced by lubok design and colors. Theater designers launched this interest which
was modeled after Peredvizhniki (the Wanderers) who declined both academism
and modernism. 2 Mikhail Larionov (1881-1964) and Natalya Goncharova (1881-
1962) were painters inspired by embroidery from Siberia, traditional pastry forms,
children’s toys, and lubok. 3 They founded ”new primitivism” and organized an
exhibition ”Icon Originals and Lubok” in 1913. Goncharova’s interest in lubok
is reflected in series of prints ”Mystical Images of War” (Figure 3.34), with
Saint George painted in typical lubok style. She also made costume designs of an

apostle, for the play ”Liturgie” (figure 3.35). The lubok influenced Goncharova,

 

lEtkind, Mark Grigorievich: Boris Kustodiev, Harry N. Abrams, INC., Publisher, New
York, Aurora Publisher, Leningrad 1983, pp.7-8.

2Gray, Camilla: The Russian Experiment in Art 1863—1922, Harry N. Abrams, INC.,
New York 1962, pp.9-36.

3ibid., pp.95-110.

40

Kustodiev and Larionov in their creation of scenery for theater and ballet. Staging
of operas, particularly historic ones, was also inspired by lubok (Figure 3.36). Po-
ets and writers, such as Demian Bedni and Sergei Esenin, were inspired by simple
verses that accompanied Iubki. It is known from the testimony of Mayakovski’s
sister Lyudmila that among his favorite occupations in his youth was the studying

of Rovinsky’s vast and still unsurpassed collection of lubok prints. 4

3.1 Lubok with patriotic message

At the outbreak of the Russo-Japonese war in 1905 and later during the First
World War, the government sponsored a new publishing house ”Contemporary
Lubok” to produce patriotic lubki and postcards, as part of the war effort. 5
During the first month of the war it produced twenty such lubki with the text
taken from newspapers, although these were often printed carelessly. In August
1914 a group of politically left-oriented young artists, started to work for the
government and produced propaganda in support of war. Among them were
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Kazimir Malyevich, David Burliuk, Vasilii Chekrygin and
Aristarkh Lentulov, who after the Bolshevik revolution switched to work for the
Soviet government and became prominent poster designers. What is characteristic
for this group of artists is that they did not copy the lubok style directly, but chose
to use Iubok’s distinctive features in their own way. They took possession of Iubki’s
concept - the unity of text and context, clear form and bright color.

In 1914 Kazimir Malyevich designed the poster ”What a Boom, What

a Blast... the Germans Made at Lorna”, (Figure 3.37). It shows a Russian

 

4Baldina Olga: ”Ruskie Narodnie Kartinki”, Moscow, Melodia Gvardia, l972,pp.l60—202
£5White, Stephen: The Bolshevik Poster, Yale University Press, New Haven and London
1988, p.3.

41

peasant flailing the German troops, reaping them as he would do the harvest. In
reality, Lorna north-east of Warsaw, was to be a major reverse for the Russians.
The title was particularly inappropriate, for it was a lack of artillery that caused
the Russian defeat there, but the government was keen to raise morale. Like
many times in human history, when facts did not match reality, they were simply
ignored. To achieve direct communication with a viewer Malyevich used the known
language of lubok: simple drawing, bold outline, and prime colors - red, blue and
yellow. Russian soldier is represented as a giant peasant, while figures of German
soldiers are schematized and simplified. The war and the current political events
dictated the content of lubok. Romances, funny tales, or myths are not present
any more, but patriotic and national themes.

From the same series is Malyevich’s poster ”Look, 0 Look Near the
Vistula, the Germans are Blown Out”, (Figure 3.38). Warsaw was part of
Russian Poland and the battles for Warsaw in 1914 saw an important victory for
the Russian forces, though they were soon pushed back. The Grand Duke Nicholas
decided to try to hold Warsaw, and after defeating German forces, he was able
to sweep south across the Vistula River. The print shows bloated German Kaiser
surprised by Russian resistance. The German Keiser is caricaturized with his
rather dull facial features and with a big belly.

Poet and painter Vladimir Mayakovsky designed the poster ”Can Rabbit
Fight the Lion”, (Figure 3.39), with verses playing on words ”Lvov” (the name
of a place in Poland) and ”lvov” (lion), predicting that if the rabbit dares to
challenge the lion, it will be pushed back behind Krakov, like a flock of ”rakov”

(crab fish). 6 The drawing is simple, reminiscent of lubok images of historical

 

6For the translation of the text I am indebted to Mr. Serguei Bezborodnikov.

42

heroes, triumphing over the enemy.

The First World War started after the assassination of Grand Duke Fer-
dinand in Sarajevo, then part of Austro-Hungarian empire. Austro—Hungary de-
clared war on the Kingdom of Serbia, involving Turkey on its side. Turkey blocked
the Strait of the Bosphorus and the Dardanelles and thus the main supply route
into Russia. This jeopardized the Russian border and in 1914 Russia declared
war on Turkey. Mayakovsky issued the poster ”Hey, Sultan, Sitting in the
Porte, Don’t Spoil Your Mug with such a Fight” (figure 3.40). The image
shows two caricaturized Turks sitting indolent and fat, while the defiant Cossack
is warning them not to block the Strait or advance further.

Lubki attracted artists because of their appeal to many classes of people.
The sophisticated style of Western magazine illustrations, influential in Russian
prints between 1905 and 1914, was sharply criticized by Larionov, Mayakovsky,
Goncharova and other painters from the same circle. They thought that the use
of symbolism and complex imagery might not be accessible to a wide range of
people. They wanted the language, both visual and textual, to be simple and
comprehensible.

It is interesting to note here that contemporary critics considered the style
to be too ”garish and loud”. 7 They did recognize the decorative qualities of these
works however. On the artist’s part, the lubok was seen as a means to break with
realism and a tool to ensure easy communication. Modern art was in search of

new and different concepts, and it could easily find one in traditional lubok form.

 

7Denisov V.: ”Voina i lubok, Petrograd: Izdanie Novogo Zhurnala Dlya Vsekh, 1916, p.
31

43

3.2 Lubok in Bolshevik era

The years between 1905 and 1918 are probably the most dramatic period in all
of Russian history. The First World War was fatal for the society and existing
social system. The second half of nineteenth century was marked by stability
and peace. There were no wars, revolutions or dramatic reforms. The economy
developed and, by the beginning of the twentieth century, the country was the
biggest exporter on the world market. The tsars Alexey III and Nicholas I were
democratic rulers whose reign reflected the Russian idea of monarchism based on
the idea of benevolent tsar. Flourishing democracy allowed numerous political
parties to become active, including those dangerous for the society. By the end
of the First World War inthe disastrous year 1917, the revolution took place.
When we look at posters just prior to the Bolshevik period, we find the most
prominent scene to be the social pyramid. The social pyramid (Figure 3.41), was
the basic theme in the political iconography of other countries as well. In Russia
the social pyramid goes back to medieval times, when the tsar was seen as the
spiritual father responsible for material issues of society, and right after him was
the Church and the Clergy responsible for the spiritual needs of the society. 6

In Radakov’s ”Autocratic System” (Figure 3.42) we see the classical
pyramid with a lubki—like horizontal division that incorporates the text. On the
top is the monarch under whose throne the inscription reads: ”We are ruling”.
Below him are priests and bishops, fat and lubriciously entertained by a half nude

women from the left-hand side, while served by the poor widow from the right-

 

6Ostrogorski Vasili: ”Otnoshenie cerkvi i gosudarstva v Vizantii” (The relationship
between the Church and State in Byzantium), Seminarium Kondakovianum 1931, pp. 121-132.;
Ostrogorski Vasili: ”Die byzantinische Staatenhierarchie”, Seminarium Kondakovianum
No.8 1936, pp. 41-46

44

hand side. The accompanied text reads: ”We pray for you”. The lower level of
the pyramid shows a fat judge who with his right hand takes money from a rich
merchant and with his left hand gives handcuffs to poor peasants. His text is:
”We judge you”. Below him is a general who is attached to aristocracy by his
right-hand side, while his left hand is giving the order to police to harass citizens.
The text reads: ”We protect you”. Below them is the group of generals, priests
and merchants sitting at the table on the left-hand side of the pyramid. Their
dining table is covered with plenty of food and a bags ful of! money are behind
the table. From the right-hand side approaches a group of impoverished hungry
people, taking the alms. The accompanying text reads: ”We lead you”. The
bottom level of pyramid shows a worker, a peasant and a soldier, all burdened
with the work they have to do to support the pyramid. Their text reads: ”And
YOU work!”.

The pyramid is horizontally and vertically divided. Everything that is on
the right-hand side of the representatives of the society side is negative: money,
corruption, vanity, while the oppressed citizens are all on the opposite side. Need-
less to say, the political parties on the left were promising change and justice when
they came to power.

Toward the end of the First World War, the October Revolution started
followed by absolute chaos. The civil war started immediately, spread fast and
lasted until 1922. Lenin’s new goverment was not easily accepted, and it took
many years to crush the opposition. The war, first with the White Army (Tsaris-
tic soldiers wore white uniforms) and later with the international Western army,
was followed by famine, illness, and lack of fuel. Lenin and the circle around him

were educated individuals and they knew that propaganda is a powerful tool in a

45

political struggle. Immediately, they launched an enormous production of propa-
ganda posters employing the finest painters and graphic designers who had been
prominent before the Revolution. Propaganda art was financed by the govern-
ment and extended beyond posters to porcelain, textiles and fashion. The artists
themselves responding enthusiastically, seeing in the Revolution a new possibility
to express themselves. Poster art had a unique possibility because of its immedi-
acy; it explained the case of Revolution, agitated for the values of the new society,
emphasized the benefits of literacy and called for the exchange of goods between
town and countryside. Above all, it mocked the Revolution’s enemies: the capi-
talist and the White Army. A representative of the White Army movement, A.
Drozdov, noted that the work produced by the corresponding department of gen-
eral Denikin’s Volunteer (White) Army ”seemed pathetic in comparison with the
Bolshevik’s splendid posters, and this although such artists as Ivan Bilibin and
Evgenii Lanserey were working in our art section”. 9

The influence of lubok upon the political poster was very direct. Every-
thing that was needed for a brief, compact communication of a message lubok
already had: its laconic drawing, bright and garish colors, concise story, and ac-
companying text, be it allegorical or direct. And most importantly - lubok style
was known to people, it was familiar and recognizable language, comprehensible
to everyone, including illiterates.

Posters were everywhere: on walls, on pillars, in offices and in public
transportation. They were of all size and quality. With the shortage of food and
goods, all the shops were empty. There was nothing to be put in shop windows.

Mayakovsky, Cheremnykh and Milutin, friends and painters realized that those

 

9Polonskii V.:”Ruskii revolucionarni plakat”, Moscow, 1925, p.53

46

shop windows could be used for the display of posters. Civil war was at its peak,
and the news from the front arrived rapidly. The Russian Telegraph Agency
(ROSTA) was established as the official Soviet news agency. News items were
cabled, and the painters employed there had immediate access. The posters were
hand-painted and they were made and completed within two hours. Still wet
they were placed in shop windows. Thus the news was often displayed before
the newspapers were released. Mayakovsky, being a poet and painter, was an
inexhaustible source of verses. Because ROSTA window posters were produced in
large quantity on poor quality paper and hand painted with cheap paint, just six
hundred survived, preserved today in the State Library in Petrograd.

There are numerous posters treating the problems of food shortage and
the black market. Cheriomnik in his ROSTA window poster (Figure 3.43) tells
a story of an old lady who didn’t want to give a bagel to a hungry Red Army
soldier. The soldier asked her for the bagel and told her that if he went hungry
to war he would be weak and thus an easy trophy for the well fed White Army
soldiers. She didn’t believe him and angrily went to the town market to sell her
bagels. A White Army soldier came and ate all her bagels and the woman in one
bite. Then he was justly punished (hanged) and a good peasant came and brought
bread and flour to the Red Army. Vladimir Lebedev, in his poster ”Peasant,
We Gave You the Land...” (Figure 3.44) agitates farmers to work hard and
give their crop to feed the hungry cities. Here, not only the drawing, but also the
design of the letters imitates lubok.

With the appearance of food and goods, the shop owners wouldn’t lend the
painters the space in shop windows, and ROSTA window posters ceased to exist.

The new posters continued to apply lubki visual language calling the attention of

47

people not only in cities, but in remote provinces as well.

Dmitri Stakhievich Moor (real name: Orlov) is considered the father of the
Bolshevik poster. Moor has written that he wanted ”the language of the artist to
resound as resonantly as the speech of a political orator. ‘6 In ”Soviet Turnip”,
(figure 3.45) he combines lubok and a very well known childrens story. Throughout
the Slavic world, every child knows the story of an old man who wanted to pluck
the turnip, but he couldn’t do it by himself. He called his wife but it did not help.
Their son came to assistance, but without any result. Then a dog, a cat, a rabbit
and a bird came to help, but couldn’t take out the turnip. Finally, a mouse came
and with joint forces they plucked the turnip out. In ”Soviet 'Dlrnip” however
the old man is a capitalist, his wife is a kulak (a rich and hated Russian peasant)
and their son is a counter-revolutionary. With every attempt the turnip goes out
a bit, and finally, when the whole turnip is plucked out, it appears as a Soviet
soldier who blows them all up.

Lubok style posters that refer to illiteracy were a popular means of pro-
paganda. It is estimated that about sixty percent of the Russian population was
illiterate before 1918. The Soviet government made a big effort in popularizing
education and teaching people how to read and write. In Radakov’s poster ”The
Illiterate is Like a Blind Man” (Figure 3.46), we see a man with scarf on his
eyes who walks toward the abyss. The textreads: ”Everywhere there are unpleas-
ant surprises and unhappiness”. The print uses only three colors, red, blue and
white, and has a design of typical folk craft. The man is dressed in traditional
farmers cloths.

Elisaveta Kruglikova was a book designer, but was also involved in posters.

 

10Causey Susan, Ed.: ”Tradition and Revolution in Russian Art” Catalogue of the
”Leningrad in Manchester” exhibition, 1990, p.101.

48

In ”Woman, learn to read!” (figure 3.47). She depicts a little girl who stud-
ies how to read and complains to her mother: ”Oh, mama! If you could read,
you could help me!” The message couldn’t be clearer and was very appealing to
mothers who, if not for themselves, would learn the alphabet for the sake of their
children.

When addressing peasants, Bolshevik posters directly applied lubok iconog-
raphy. Radakov’s poster ”The Life of the Illiterate, the Life of the Liter-
ate”, (Figure 3.48), depicts a poor couple whose animals are starving, and whose
farm is unproductive. They are not even able to protect themselves from natural
disaster - lightning strikes their house. The lower scene shows a prosperous, well-
fed couple whose cattle is healthy, fields are giving a good harvest and their house
is protected by installing a lightning rod. The text explains that literate people
can find in books all kind of advice from how to buy the best cattle and fertilizer
to how to cure the sick child.

In a similar style is his other poster also entitled ”The Life of Illiter-
ate, the Life of Literate”, (Figure 3.49). The story tells about a poor illiter-
ate peasant who wasn’t even able to buy things in town, and the rich, literate
one, who maintains his household well, and before his death gives a written will
to his son and wife. The problem with this type of poster was that the artist
blindly followed the concept of lubok, which in this case happened to be politi-
cally counter-productive. Radak depicts in the last scene the moment when the
rich person hands his will to his family, while in reality the law abolished the
right of inheritance for all, but the very poor. Also the benefits of education
are represented as enabling people to become rich and prosperous, which was in

accordance with lubok tradition, but was not in accordance with the Bolshevik

 

49

ideology. The artists were criticized for propagating ”selfish, self-oriented individ-
uals, who wanted to gain more money and to work only for their own benefit”. 11
Such political mistakes were often made in Soviet posters between 1918 and 1922,
because most artists were not Communists, and worked for government only to
make their living and not for the ideological reasons.

Similar thing happened with artists who prior to Revolution worked in
porcelain factories. The factory that made porcelain for the Tsar’s family and
the artists employed there were the best that could be found in Russia before
the Revolution. After the Communists took over, the artists maintained their job
and continued to work in their own style, adding here and there a red star or a
hammer and sickle on cups and saucers, to please the expectations of the new
regime. Traditional sources of inspiration for porcelain decoration were in lubok
and icon painting, and were in the long tradition of Russian graphic design. 12

The plate designed by Maria Lebedeva in 1922 has an inscription that
reads: ”The Future has No Fear of Past Horrors” (Figure 3.50). It depicts
an elderly women doing laundry and driving away a black cat. Crows and black
cats are associated with witches, sorcery and superstition. The plate was meant
to confront the presumed superstition, but this message is not quite transparent
from the given inscription. This is an example of the assortment of misdirected
political slogans, often seen in posters of that period.

Alexandra Shchekotikhina - Pototskaya, in her famous plate ”Mother-
hood” (Figure 3.51) relies very much on old Russian folk tradition and lubok

prints. She came from a family of Old Believers whose traditional craft was icon

 

11Sosnovsky L.: Plakatnaya Agitatsiia, in ” Vestnilc Agitatsii i Propagandy, No.1, 1920, p.11
11’Lobanov, Nina: Revolutionary Ceramics: Soviet Porcelain 1917—1927, John Cal-
mann and King Ltd., London 1990, pp.11-29.

50

painting, book illumination and embroidery. Her familiarity with icons becomes
clear in the plate ”Motherhood”. There is no distance and perspective in her
design, which is characteristic for both icon painting and lubok prints.

”The Smiling Clown” on the plate rendered by Lydia Vyechegzhanina
(Figure 3.52) is a portrait of one of two famous clowns always appearing as a
pair: Bim and Burn. The famous clown couple had the same role in the society
of their time as their predecessors Erema and Foma had in theirs. Bim and Burn
were granted permission by the Soviet authorities to satirize the shortcomings of
the system, thus providing a safety valve for people’s frustrations. They were the
subjects of posters, newspaper magazines and many anecdotes. The circus they
performed in was crowded every night. Their jokes were the talk of Moscow, and
through word of mouth, in short time, the whole city knew the latest insults these
two clowns had uttered. People not only repeated their jokes, but added their
own comments, thus expressing their anger toward the regime. According to one
historian of the period, ”anyone who wished to air a dangerous mot, now prefaced
it with: ’Have you heard what Bim said yesterday?’, and with this introduction
anyone could with impunity give vent to the boldest contempt for the Soviets”.
’3 Court jesters have always been the part of Russian society (and Western
European, as well). Peter the Great allowed certain designated individuals to
speak the unthinkable, in a later period Erema and Foma were the popular folk
equivalent, while in Soviet period this role was given to Bim and Burn.

With the needs and necessities for propaganda art, one would expect that
lubok style would flourish under the Soviets, and it did at the start. However, it

did not last long, and the reasons for that are many. Artists did try to imitate

 

13Fiiléip-Miller Rene: The Mind and Face of Bolshevism, Harper and Row: London 1965,
p.275

51

lubok, but at the same time they treated it as a poster. From the other side,
social conditions changed too much, particularly with the elimination of illiteracy
and the improvement of communications. In April 1932, Stalin introduced his
famous decree ”On Literature and Art”, with which he banned Modernism and
introduced Social Realism as an official art. 1"

The boldness, energy, humor and popular appeal of lubok has nonetheless
remained among the most important elements of Russian graphic artistry, and it

was among the most important of sources from which the political poster of the

early post-revolutionary years took its origin.

 

l"Swanson, Grosvenor Vern: Hidden Treasures: Russian and Soviet Impressionism
1930—1970’s, FFCA Publishing Company, 1994, pp.13-24.

Chapter 4

Conclusion

Russia is a country whose geographic location determined its historical and cul-
tural development. Being in Europe as well as in Asia, with its territorial vastness,
Russian society was self-sufficient but also open to foreign influences. Tradition
and modernism were always confronted in the cultural life of Russia, creating an
exciting intellectual environment beneficial for the development of art. Russian
art was influenced by the three major streams: traditional Slavic pre-Christian
art, Byzantine medieval, and European art. All three streams merged together
creating an art of distinctively Russian feature. Lubok prints, both in their form
and iconography, reflected the influences of those three streams. While Russian
art does not have its origins in the lubok, the lubok is certainly a preserver of
artistic traditions.

Tradition is a particular characteristic of Russia. A product of the coun-
try’s geography and the need to unify its remote provinces, tradition is crystallized
in the iconography of lubok. The iconography of lubok changes according to the
changes of the society. It portrays the history of the society from the seventeenth

century to modern times, seen through the eyes of common man. The folk artist

52

53

portrays current events, always giving his comments both by drawing and accom-
panied text. Often on the edge of caricature, the drawing of lubok is clear and
sharp, leaving no space for calculation. The artist mercilessly defines the charac-
ters of every strata of the society. Sharp satire does not spare any one, from a
lazy peasant to Peter the Great. Lubok touches everything - from everyday life
to the matters of state. Being so easily recognizable and accepted by the peo-
ple, lubok is seen as an excellent tool of propaganda. It found its place in the
propaganda poster, both in Monarchist and Soviet Russia. The boldness, energy,
humor and popular appeal of lubok remained among the most important elements
in the Russian graphic art tradition. It was one of the most important sources
from which the political poster of the early post-revolutionary years took its ori-
gin. However, it would be incorrect to conclude that the importance of lubok lays
only in its political context. The celebrated nineteenth century master Ilya Repin
is reported to have told his students that those who wished to create a major
popular work should seek their inspiration in ”lubok creations, and of the most
primitive character.” 1 The artist Vasily Kandinsky, in a recently published letter,
described the lubok as a ”marvel” and wrote that his dream was to have a ”print
of the Last Judgement, as old as possible and primitive with serpent, devils, high
priest, etc.” 2

The beginning of the twentieth century had seen a change in Russian art.
The artist was looking for new form and new concepts. The search for a different
concept was occuring in French art at the same time. Picasso and Matisse searched

for the inspiration in African art, while Goncharova and Malyevich looked in

 

lBalrhtin V. and Moldavsky D.: Ruskii Lubok XVII-XIX V., Moscow-Leningrad: Gosu-
darstvennoe Izdatelstvo Izobrazitelnogo Iskustva, 1962, p. 12

2V.V. Kandinski to NJ. Kulbin, 12 December 1911, in Pamyatniki Kultury: novye otkritiya.
Ezhegodnik 1980, Nauka, Leningrad 1981, pp. 407-408

54

Russian native traditions. What the European artist found in African masks, the
Russian artist found in lubok. Everything that modern art, from the beginning
of the century, was looking for, lubok already had and readily offered: inventive
composition, clear graphic design, breaking of forms, breaking of narration, laconic
drawing and bright colors.

The lubok form penetrated both official and unofficial Soviet art. The
revival of lubok style is seen today in Russia in graphic as well as in the interior
design. Contemporary Russian critics complain that the fashion of lubok went too
far. Following the fashionable trends, many are decorating their homes, introduc-
ing new ”lubochny primitivism”. 3 The originality of lubok can be destroyed by its

own popularity.

 

3Baldina, Olga: Russkie Narodnie Kartinki, Molodaya Gvardiya: Moscow 1972, pp.198-
6202.

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Figure 2.23: The Balloon, 1860, Colored Litography, without meassures

79

 

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Figure 2.24: Ariel Journey: or How They Fly Up the Chimney ,and the
Creditors Are Amazed, 1858, Pétr Sharapov workshop, copper engraving.

x345

 

 

 

 

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Figure 2.25: The Bull That Didn’t Want to Be a Bull and Became a
Buthcher, second half of 18th c., copper engraving, 37.1 x 29

81

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Figure 2. 27: Romance: Toward Evening One Bad Autumn, 1857, copper
engraving, 28 x 34. 6

83

 

 

 

Figure 2.28: The Cossacks Set Off To War at Midnight, 1895, Ivan Sytin
cooperative workshop, chromo—litograph, 24 x 36.5

84

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85

 

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86

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Figure 2.31: Maslenitsa, mid 18th c., without date, technique and meassures

87

 

Fi§§r5e 3.32: Kustodiev Boris, The Fair, 1906, pencil and gouache on paper, 66.5
x .

88

 

Figure 3.33: Kustodiev Boris, Shrove-Tide, 1919, oil on canvas, 88 x 105

89

 

Figure 3.34: Goncharova Natalia, St. George, 1914, lithography, 30 x 23

90

   

Figure 3. 35: Goncharova Natalia, Costume Design for an Apostle to the
Diaghilev’ s ballet’ ’Liturgie”, 1915, gouache on paper, 64 x 39

91

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Figure 3.36: Goncharova Natalia, The Tsar’s Palace, stage design for Rimsky-
Korsakov’s opera ”The Golden Cock”, collage, gouache on paper, 65 x 97

 

 

 

 

Figure 3.37: Malevich Kazimir, What a Bloom, What a Blast, the Germans
Ar; Making at Loma, 1914, Contemporary Lubok Press, color-lithography, 38
x 5

 

 

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Figure 3.38: Malevich Kazimir, Look, 0 Look, Near the Vitula River, 1914,
Contemporary Lubok Press, chromo—lithography, 51.4 x 33.5

94

 

 

 

Figure 3. 39: Mayakovsky Vladimir, Can Rabbit Fight the Lion, 1914, without
technique, 38 x 56

 

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Figure 3.40: Mayakovsky Vladimir, Hey Sultan Sitting in the Porte, Don’t
Spoil Your Mug With Such a Fight, 1914, Contemporary Lubok Press,
chromo—litography, 33 x 52

   

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Figure 3.41: French, American, English and Hench Social Pyramids

97

 

    
   
 

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nique'and meassures

98

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Figure 3.43: Cheriomnikh M., The Story of The Round Bagel, 1920,ROSTA
windows, color lithograph, 148 x 76

99

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Figure 3.46: Radakov Alexander, The Illiterate is Like a Blind Man, 1920,
co or lithography, 95 x 65

 

102

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103

 

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Figure 3.48: Radakov Alexander, Illiterate People... Literate People, 1920,
In ography, 80.5 x 57.2

104

 

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Fi ure 3.49: Radakov Alexander, The Life of Th L't t '
Ilfiterate, 1920, colore lithography, 51 x 69 e l era e, The Life Of The

 

105

 

 

Figure 3.50: Lebedeva Maria, The Riture Has No Fear Of Past Horrors, d.

30.2

106

 

(Figure 3.51: Shchekotikhina-Pototskaya Alexandra, Motherhood, without date,
. 26.7

107

   

 

Figure 3.52: Vyechegzhanina-Chekhonina Lydia, Bim and Bum,without date,
(1. 23.5

 

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