Selling Russia's Treasures


Book Description

Selling Russia's Treasures documents one of the great cultural dramas of the twentieth century: the sale, by a cash-hungry Soviet government, of the artistic treasures accumulated by the Russian aristocracy over the centuries and nationalized after the October 1917 revolution. An astonishing variety of objects, from icons and illuminated manuscripts to Fabergé eggs and Old Master paintings, entered the collections of wealthy Westerners like Andrew Mellon and Armand Hammer in the 1920s and 30s. Written by the leading experts in the field and long regarded as the definitive book on the subject, the original Russian edition of Selling Russia's Treasures is sought after scholars and laymen alike. Now, for the first time, it is made available in English, in a revised and expanded edition that includes a new chapter on the secret files of the Hermitage, previously considered lost, as well as new research on the sale of religious art, and of twentieth-century French masterworks from the Museum of New Western Art. Numerous color plates reunite long-dispersed works in a virtual museum that illustrates the powerful blow inflicted on Russia's cultural heritage by these secretive sales, and rare photographs and archival documents help bring this buried history to light.




Beautiful Loot


Book Description

"In what has been called one of the most important pieces of investigative journalism ever undertaken in the art world, Konstantin Akinsha and Grigorii Kozlov tell the story of how the Russians stole millions of art objects from European museums and private collectors in the final days of World War II and hid them away for fifty years. The Nazi confiscation of art from Jewish families and occupied countries has been well documented, but the story of what happened to the art after the Nazis were defeated in 1945 was virtually unknown until recently." "Secret "trophy brigades" were established early in 1945, with specific instructions from Stalin to remove art from Germany and ship it back to the USSR on special trains. This operation began while the fighting was still going on and was conducted at a frenzied pace for several months. It was the most prodigious transport operation of artworks in the history of mankind. Trophies were being removed from Germany as late as 1948." "Works by such masters as Botticelli, El Greco, Goya, Delacroix, Picasso, Velazquez, Matisse, Renoir, Raphael, Rembrandt, Rubens, Titian, and Degas made their way to the Soviet Union." "It was not until the late 1980s, when the Soviet Union began to dissolve, that it was possible to piece together this story. Akinsha and Kozlov were instrumental in revealing it to the West and in forcing Russian authorities to acknowledge the existence of the secret depositories. The Hermitage exhibited its collection of previously hidden Impressionist paintings early in 1995, but the Russians have been adamant in their refusal to return the stolen things, and the fate of the trophy art continues to be hotly debated."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved




Art Treasures of Russia


Book Description




Treasures Into Tractors


Book Description

Sixteen scholars from Russia, Vienna, and the United States explore the fate of Russian art collections and libraries following the Russian Revolution in 1917, the institutions and individuals responsible for their sale, and the prominent collectors, libraries, and museums that acquired them. Unlike the widely publicized controversy surrounding Soviet-Nazi war loot and its restitution, the sales of the interwar period are not well known outside a small scholarly community. This volume reveals the extent of the Soviet government's voluntary ?realization? of Russia's cultural patrimony between 1918 and 1938 and its consequences for both the international art market and the perception of Russian art. The imperial Easter eggs by Fabergé and Old-Master paintings purchased by Andrew Mellon from the State Hermitage and now in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. are the most celebrated works that changed hands. Equally significant are the bibliographic rarities from imperial libraries, icons and liturgical art from churches and monasteries, and antiques, furnishings and fine art from estates, palaces, and private homes. See the review in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/gift-guide/holiday-2009/ggantiques/list.html







The Stalin Cult


Book Description

Between the late 1920s and the early 1950s, one of the most persuasive personality cults of all times saturated Soviet public space with images of Stalin. A torrent of portraits, posters, statues, films, plays, songs, and poems galvanized the Soviet population and inspired leftist activists around the world. In the first book to examine the cultural products and production methods of the Stalin cult, Jan Plamper reconstructs a hidden history linking artists, party patrons, state functionaries, and ultimately Stalin himself in the alchemical project that transformed a pock-marked Georgian into the embodiment of global communism. Departing from interpretations of the Stalin cult as an outgrowth of Russian mysticism or Stalin's psychopathology, Plamper establishes the cult's context within a broader international history of modern personality cults constructed around Napoleon III, Mussolini, Hitler, and Mao. Drawing upon evidence from previously inaccessible Russian archives, Plamper's lavishly illustrated and accessibly written study will appeal to anyone interested in twentieth-century history, visual studies, the politics of representation, dictator biography, socialist realism, and real socialism.




Russian Folk Art


Book Description

Russian Folk Art surveys the traditions, styles, and functions of the many objects made by Russian peasant artists and artisans. Placing the objects within the settings in which folk artists worked -- the peasant household, the village, and the local market -- Alison Hilton discusses the principal media artists employed and the items they produced, from dippers and goblets to clothing and window frames. Emphasizing the balance between time-honored forms and techniques and the creativity of individual artists, the book explores how images and designs helped to form a Russian esthetic identity in the 19th and 20th centuries. Abundantly illustrated with examples from Russian museums, Russian Folk Art is a treasure for anyone interested in Russian culture.




Folk Art in the Soviet Union


Book Description

Offers a regional survey of Russian folk art, including pottery, textiles, wood-carvings, lace, rugs, clothing, and jewelry.




The Total Art of Stalinism


Book Description

From the ruins of communism, Boris Groys emerges to provoke our interest in the aesthetic goals pursued with such catastrophic consequences by its founders. Interpreting totalitarian art and literature in the context of cultural history, this brilliant essay likens totalitarian aims to the modernists’ goal of producing world-transformative art. In this new edition, Groys revisits the debate that the book has stimulated since its first publication.