European University Institute Library

When art makes news, writing culture and identity in imperial Russia, Katia Dianina

eng

Includes bibliographical references and index

illustrations

index present

non fiction

When art makes news

bibliography

788276151

Katia Dianina

writing culture and identity in imperial Russia

From the time the word kul'tura entered the Russian language in the early nineteenth century, Russian arts and letters have thrived on controversy. At any given time several versions of culture have coexisted in the Russian public sphere. The question of what makes something or someone distinctly Russian was at the core of cultural debates in nineteenth-century Russia and continues to preoccupy Russian society to the present day. When Art Makes News examines the development of a public discourse on national self-representation in nineteenth-century Russia, as it was styled by the visual arts and in popular journalism. Katia Dianina tells the story of the missing link between high art and public culture, revealing that art became the talk of the nation in the second half of the nineteenth century in the pages of mass-circulation press. At the heart of Dianina's study is a paradox: how did culture become the national idea in a country where few were educated enough to appreciate it? Dianina questions the traditional assumptions that culture in tsarist Russia was built primarily from the top down and classical literature alone was responsible for imagining the national community. When Art Makes News will appeal to all those interested in Russian culture, as well as scholars and students in museum and exhibition studies --, Provided by Publisher

The predicament of Russian culture -- National culture: a conceptual reading -- What's in a term -- An interdisciplinary paradigm for the study of Russian culture -- The evolution of cultural discourse -- A crisis of culture -- Launching the discourse: international exhibitions and Russian texts -- "The great exhibition and the little one" -- Writing the Crystal Palace: Russian readings and misreadings -- The discovery of the Russian style, circa 1851 -- The Russian School of Art at the International Exhibition, 1862 -- Art and society: gathering culture, writing identity -- Defining Russia culturally: the national question and its representations -- The museum age in Russia -- The newspaper boom of the 1860s -- The feuilleton, or Russian culture "lite" -- Russian art as controversy -- Discursive practices -- Institutions and debates: negotiating art and power -- The millennium monument, 1862 -- The imperial Hermitage -- Narratives of the Academy of Fine Arts -- The Russian art world in the news: painting and controversy -- "Realism and nationality": the rise of a Russian realist aesthetics -- Art in motion: the itinerant exhibitions and the Tretiakov Gallery of Art -- Art for the public: the Russian Museum of Alexander III -- Built out of words: history and stylization -- Culture in the Russian style -- Moscow, the seat of national culture -- "A festival of public activity": the birth of the Historical Museum, 1872-1883 -- National revival writ large: from a cult of antiquity to a souvenir identity -- The Russian cult of antiquity -- Reinventing tradition in Abramtsevo, Talashkino, and beyond -- Tales of a national revival: the Snow Maiden and Lefty -- The triumph of Berendeevka: the making of Russian souvenir identity, Paris 1900 -- Epilogue. The world of art in the news: culture wars at the turn of the century