The Russian painters and their styles exemplify the struggle we\u2019ve discussed throughout the course to establish a unique Russian identity, and the confusion and idealistic and stylistic disagreement between prominent artists. Alexander Ivanov still hung onto the tradition of Neoclassicism. Rubens and Van Dyck, the \u201cold masters\u201d, were held up as ideals (with comparisons to Karl Bruillov\u2019s and Orest Kiprensky\u2019s works.) Many of the artists studied traveled abroad to learn and improve, often to Italy. This follows the tradition of Westernization since Peter\u2019s time, the borrowing of Western Europe\u2019s styles and ideas, and perhaps a sense of inferiority or insecurity about Russia\u2019s own culture.<\/p>\n
It also shows a slight increase in social mobility; Vasily Tropinin and Orest Kiprensky were both born serfs, but Kiprensky was freed and educated, while Tropinin pursued education on his own, attending drawing classes in secret. Alexei Venetsianov was from a merchant family, not a serf, chose to depict peasant life, and taught paintings to serfs and people from poor families. Although he did not always meet with approval, his choices still demonstrate perhaps a trend of more people taking note of the serfs\u2019 lives and struggles, and trying to give them a chance to have better lives.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Russian painters and their styles exemplify the struggle we\u2019ve discussed throughout the course to establish a unique Russian identity, and the confusion and idealistic and stylistic disagreement between prominent artists. Alexander Ivanov still hung onto the tradition of Neoclassicism. Rubens and Van Dyck, the \u201cold masters\u201d, were held up as ideals (with comparisons to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":375,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[74,78,77],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-7-romanticism-and-folk-culture","tag-art","tag-painting","tag-serfdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/375"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-fall-2016\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}