Icon and Devotion: Sacred Spaces in Imperial Russia

by Oleg Tarasov, R. R. Milner-Gulland

Overview

Icon and Devotion offers the first extensive presentation in English of the making and meaning of Russian icons. The craft of icon-making is set into the context of forms of worship that emerged in the Russian Orthodox Church in the mid-seventeenth century. Oleg Tarasov shows how icons have held a special place in Russian consciousness because they represented idealized images of Holy Russia. He also looks closely at how and why icons were made. Wonder-working saints and the leaders of such religious schisms as the Old Believers appear in these pages, which are illustrated in halftones with miniature paintings, lithographs and engravings never before published in the English-speaking world.

By tracing the artistic vocabulary, techniques and working methods of icon painters, Tarasov shows how icons have been integral to the history of Russian art, influenced by folk and mainstream currents alike. As well as articulating the specifically Russian piety they invoke, he analyzes the significance of icons in the cultural life of modern Russia in the context of popular prints and poster design.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781861895509
Publisher:	Reaktion Books, Limited
Publication date:	01/03/2004
Series:	non-series
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	416
File size:	34 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

Oleg Tarasov is Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Cultural History of the Institute of Slavic Studies (Russian Academy of Sciences), Moscow. He has written extensively on icons, painting and cultural history.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Robin Milner-Gulland
Introduction
PART ONE: THE ICON AND THE WORLD
1. Venerated Image: The Sacred in the Everyday
—The Burden of Numbers
—The Details of Ritual
—Miracles
2. Dispute about Signs, Dispute about Faith
—The Ambivalence of Symbols
—The Complications of Renaming: A Tract Concerning the New Devotion
3. In a World without Grace
—The Shadow of Antichrist
—The Sacralization of the Icon Painter
—The Theology of the People
PART TWO: THE ICON AND POPULAR CULTURE
4. East and West
—Face and Countenance
—Landscape
—Word, Emblem, Heraldry
—The Portrait Icon
5. The Middle Ages Delayed
—Concealed Montage
—Myth and Mystification: Self-Awareness in the Icon-painting Experience
6. Icons and Popular Art
—The Aesthetics of Sensibility
—The Spirit of Religious Tradition
—The Projection of Signs: Icon, Lubok, the Avant-garde
References and Editorial Notes
Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

Although they follow similar constructs from country to country, religious icons have a special importance in Russian culture. Tarasov, senior research fellow at the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow, presents an in-depth look at the history of the icon in Russian civilization and art. The foreword, introduction, and beginning chapters provide an excellent overview of the role played by the icon in society and in the home, as described in the Domostroy, or Book of Household Management, which presents the home as a model of the universe with holy images in the main corner. Muskovite culture viewed itself as the Third Rome, with the presence of grace and the existence of a collective religious memory taken for granted as metaphysical realities. Though at times in Russia's history change in the face of devout beliefs led to schism, the national religious consciousness persevered into contemporary art, where its influence can be seen in the form of sharp foreshortenings, dynamic poses, rhythmic qualities, reverse perspective, and the synthesis of representational and verbal realms, all standard in traditional religious depictions. Even as Russian art was transformed after the revolution, it continued to be imbued with Russian piety. This volume assumes some basic knowledge in the area and is thus recommended for specialty libraries in art history and Russian studies.-Nadine Dalton Speidel, Cuyahoga Cty. P.L., Parma, OH Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Invaluable. . . . This remarkable book should be required reading for anyone with a desire to understand imperial Russian culture at a more than superficial level.

Slavonica

Richly illustrated, making available much popular iconographic material generally unfamiliar to Western readers. . . . A fascinating contribution to the cultural history of Russia."

Times Literary Supplement