«Небесная голубизна ангельских одежд» в обзоре «Russian Review»
Osokina, Elena. Nebesnaia golubizna angel'skikh odezhd: Sud'ba proizvedenii drevnerusskoi zhivopisi, 1920–1930-e gody. Moscow: Novoe Literaturnoe Obozrenie, 2018. 664 pp. R1,020.00. ISBN 978-5-4448-0778-1.
This tour de force about “the heavenly blue of angels’ vestments,” in which Elena Osokina explores “the fate of masterpieces of Ancient Russian religious art,” is an in-depth study of the young Soviet state’s sale of icons in the 1920s and 1930s. Currently a professor of the history of Russia and the USSR at the University of South Carolina, Osokina in this work has expanded her 1998 Moscow State University dissertation on trade during the first Soviet Five-Year Plan, focusing in this case on the trade in icons. According to the author, it is being translated into English.
In her foreword, Osokina describes herself as an intellectual detective who studies the irony of the non-market planned economy which started the world market in Russian icons, beginning with the first foreign exhibition that led to the first sale of collections of icons outside of Russia. The purpose of these sales was to gain foreign currencies to aid in industrializing the Soviet economy. The selling off of the Soviet Union’s legacy inheritance from tsarist Russia included not only icons but, as Odom and Salmond have described in Tractors into Treasure (2009), jewelry, furniture, objets d’art, and books.
The book’s seven sections deal with the Revolutionary era’s “birth and death of museums”; the “icon and the museum”; the process by which icons were gathered and selected for export; the first Soviet exhibition of icons in the West; how icons were sold at those exhibitions; an exploration into the varying holdings of the Tret'iakov Gallery; a look at the sellers and buyers of icons (with much space devoted to the American lawyer and diplomat, and former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, Joseph E. Davies; and, finally, addenda comprising over 140 pages. Within these seven parts are thirty-seven chapters which, because of their brevity, excite the reader like a Dan Brown mystery novel would.
The book is replete with incredible detail, including such facts as the time of death of a person killed by a firing squad, and biographical footnotes on minor figures that cover half a page in 8point type. Having access to the Russian archives has allowed the author to document not only inventories of various sales but also to provide information on individual auctions, down to such detail as the number of icons listed, their inventory numbers, dimensions, estimated sale price, and the actual selling price. Often these inventories included information about an icon’s previous owners, plus other information written on the back of the icons.
It is almost impossible to convey in a short review the depth and breadth of information to be found in this book, which will surely become an indispensable source for many a Master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertation.
Raoul N. Smith, Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, MA
Источник: Russian Review. V. 78/ Nr 4. October 2019
This tour de force about “the heavenly blue of angels’ vestments,” in which Elena Osokina explores “the fate of masterpieces of Ancient Russian religious art,” is an in-depth study of the young Soviet state’s sale of icons in the 1920s and 1930s. Currently a professor of the history of Russia and the USSR at the University of South Carolina, Osokina in this work has expanded her 1998 Moscow State University dissertation on trade during the first Soviet Five-Year Plan, focusing in this case on the trade in icons. According to the author, it is being translated into English.
In her foreword, Osokina describes herself as an intellectual detective who studies the irony of the non-market planned economy which started the world market in Russian icons, beginning with the first foreign exhibition that led to the first sale of collections of icons outside of Russia. The purpose of these sales was to gain foreign currencies to aid in industrializing the Soviet economy. The selling off of the Soviet Union’s legacy inheritance from tsarist Russia included not only icons but, as Odom and Salmond have described in Tractors into Treasure (2009), jewelry, furniture, objets d’art, and books.
The book’s seven sections deal with the Revolutionary era’s “birth and death of museums”; the “icon and the museum”; the process by which icons were gathered and selected for export; the first Soviet exhibition of icons in the West; how icons were sold at those exhibitions; an exploration into the varying holdings of the Tret'iakov Gallery; a look at the sellers and buyers of icons (with much space devoted to the American lawyer and diplomat, and former U.S. Ambassador to the USSR, Joseph E. Davies; and, finally, addenda comprising over 140 pages. Within these seven parts are thirty-seven chapters which, because of their brevity, excite the reader like a Dan Brown mystery novel would.
The book is replete with incredible detail, including such facts as the time of death of a person killed by a firing squad, and biographical footnotes on minor figures that cover half a page in 8point type. Having access to the Russian archives has allowed the author to document not only inventories of various sales but also to provide information on individual auctions, down to such detail as the number of icons listed, their inventory numbers, dimensions, estimated sale price, and the actual selling price. Often these inventories included information about an icon’s previous owners, plus other information written on the back of the icons.
It is almost impossible to convey in a short review the depth and breadth of information to be found in this book, which will surely become an indispensable source for many a Master’s thesis or Ph.D. dissertation.
Raoul N. Smith, Museum of Russian Icons, Clinton, MA
Источник: Russian Review. V. 78/ Nr 4. October 2019