{"id":760,"date":"2020-02-27T15:26:36","date_gmt":"2020-02-27T15:26:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/?p=760"},"modified":"2020-02-28T03:51:28","modified_gmt":"2020-02-28T03:51:28","slug":"is-artistic-depiction-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/lmcnett\/is-artistic-depiction-reality\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Artistic Depiction Reality?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">What struck me when looking through several of the paintings in this section was a clear focus on the mundane aspects of Russian life.\u00a0 This is a stark contrast from other art that we have looked at thus far, in particular the painting of Ivan, which depicts humanity at its most extreme.\u00a0 Rather, these paintings depict a life that most people could relate to, invoking a more intimate and personal reaction from the viewer.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">However, based on\u00a0 past readings, particularly <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A Journey from Moscow to St. Petersburg<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> as well as historical context regarding the treatment of Russian peasants as well as the institution of serfdom, I couldn\u2019t help but ask myself whether or not these depictions of peasant life were accurate.\u00a0 It seems as though the various artists are romanticizing a life that in reality is one of extreme hardship. In particular, the \u2018Spring, Plowland\u201d painting came across as rather idealized. The woman in the painting appears calm and content with her peasant life.\u00a0 Additionally, the \u201cFortune Telling\u201d painting suggests a life of leisure and comfort in Russia&#8211;far from the reality for most people of the lower class.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I may be looking at these paintings too critically, and there is such beauty found in the aspects of life as depicted, but is this depiction reality?\u00a0 That, I am not so sure of. But, perhaps that is the purpose of \u201cromantic realism\u201d, to blur the line between romance and reality.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>Another small thing I noticed is that many of the peasants depicted are women, while most portraits are of men. Is this a common theme throughout Russian art, or it is just the particular sample of paintings we are looking at? \u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What struck me when looking through several of the paintings in this section was a clear focus on the mundane aspects of Russian life.\u00a0 This is a stark contrast from other art that we have looked at thus far, in particular the painting of Ivan, which depicts humanity at its most extreme.\u00a0 Rather, these paintings [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1024,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-760","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-unit-7-romanticism-and-folk-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1024"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=760"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/760\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=760"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=760"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.bowdoin.edu\/russian-2240-spring-2020\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=760"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}