Ilya Repin - the painter

Cafe Society
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In the Pit thread regarding Our President]: (The Trump Administration: The Clusterfuck Continues - #2435 by Smapti)
The F-word - which in English has “linguistic flexibility” - as it can grammatically used as adverb, adjective, noun, verb, interjection, etc (I like the phrase “expletive inflation”) - and how certain uses of it don’t really translate easily into Russian or Ukrainian (very similar Slavic languages).

They certainly have expletives and again the notion of “Them’s fightin’ words” can be translated clearly.

In the thread, DesertDog posted a version of Ilya Repin’s “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks”. According to supposedly historical tableu, these Cossacks had just suffered a loss to the Ottoman’s and their Sultan demanded they surrender. So, as is the tradition amongst Cossacks and their contemptuous disregard for authority, they wrote a letter and Repin’s painting depicts the Motley Crew laughingly taking great pleasure at striving to come up with ever more base vulgarities.

DesertDog had posted the unfinished version (Repin was a major perfectionist - he did this painting twice at least and it took him over a decade and he probably still wasn’t content) that was on display in war-torn Kharkiv in Ukraine (right about on the border with Russia) and that city has gone back and forth between the two several times, so it would be prudent to say it’s not on display but in storage.

This is a larger version:

Both paintings are huge: 203 cm × 358 cm (80 in × 141 in) for the one in Russia for sure. And that is this one:

Ilya may not be one of my favourite painters yet there is a lot to like about some of his works, esp. the one at hand. Many are widely considered masterpieces. He was born in Ukraine near Kharkiv and died in Kuokkala, Viipuri Province, Finland (now Repino, Saint Petersburg, Russia). His works are well-regarded and even beloved by both countries, which share a very common history (Ukraine girls really knock me out … Moscow girls make me sing and shout)

Anyways, a couple of things I noticed between the two versions (the significance I wouldn’t know). In the “final cut” there are staffs (masts?) prominently displaying the Ukraine gold-blue (as in sky and grain) and the “black and orange ribbon of St. George” which supposedly represents fire and gunpower (though I suppose nobody really knows) and were meaningful colours WRT the soldiers of the Eastern Front in the Great War (WWII). I have such a ribbon hanging in front of me from a Victory Day (May 9) prior to 2015. Now it’s sadly been co-opted by paramilitary groups.

And in the “final” version there is a guy with a cross necklace.

So, while I do not recommend trying to see either version in person (war-torn -v- Evil Empire) here is depicted a string of curses that I would like to say to certain Presidents, and I would like certain Presidents to say to other Presidents.

“Видишь, что происходит, когда находишь незнакомца в Альпах!?”

“You see what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!”

  • The Big Lebowski
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The Wiki article I snagged the second edition from says,

During the Russian invasion of eastern Ukraine in March 2022, when the Kharkiv region came under heavy artillery and air fire, the museum staff rushed to remove their artworks from the museum to a safer place. The second version of The Cossacks was amongst the artworks relocated for safety.[2]

That’s what I meant by ‘in storage.’ Can’t say that I blame them. It’s a national treasure.

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Yeah, there is a vast basement to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg where lots of stuff not on display (or to be protected from Aerial bombing) is stored. Dunno what the British Museum would do, yet one of their curators was caught selling their basement stuff on eBay.

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I know during the Second World War, many art pieces from the British Museum were moved out of the city, like to a Welsh quarry.

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Good idea! And likely inclusive of all that stuff Egypt wants back.

I mentioned the “Amber Room” in the Catherine Palace. Russian: Yantarnaya Komnata, German: Bernsteinzimmer (Homer Simpson: Those Germans have a word for everything)

Wiki says some called it the “Eighth wonder of the world” yet in any case, it was a room you want to keep. The Russians tried, yet the old amber was cracking and they really needed to save what they could and fast.

The Germans also knew of this room and brought an expert and they dismantled it in 36 hours. From there I believe it went to Koenigsberg, which was heavily bombarded and thus the original Amber Rooms’ end remains a mystery, till Indiana Jones figures it out.

The Russians rebuilt the so-called “Summer Palace” yet they only had diagrams and pictures of that room and nobody knew what happened to it. To their credit, they did rebuild it as well as they could and my wife and I saw it in 2003 (the year the room was opened). It is Amber.

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In the film Russian Ark, is a segment showing the heroic work done by art curators to protect the masterpieces in the Winter Palace during the Siege of Leningrad. Surely they will have the same respect for other cultures in similar circumstances. Just kidding.

Anyway, Repin was a devoted portraitist of his wife Vera, almost to the same level as in the marriage of Pierre and Marthe Bonnard. My fave of theirs:

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When I first visited Russia in 2009, my now-wife’s parents drove us up to Repino. I had no idea what the name of the town meant, just that it was coastal and nice. We did visit his house, so I figured out he was an artist, and, wow, they preserved that place exactly (I don’'t want to say crime scene) but brushes and everything were right in place, like he’d just stepped out for a moment.

I’ve been to Dostoevsky’s abode and to me it’s like Sagamore Hill - Teddy Roosevelt’s summer place on Long Island.

I’ll reckon his place in Repino remains exactly the same, yet I’m never going back. Not till the Finn’s reclaim it (and will likely not change the name).

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Nitpick: Kharkiv has never been held by the Russians during the war. Russian troops were very close to taking it in the early days of the war, and it was within artillery range of the front lines for most of 2022 until the Kharkiv counteroffensive in the fall saw the Russians fall back to the pre-war border in that sector. It’s still under frequent bombing and missile attack, but it isn’t under any particular threat of being taken.

Also, the Ukrainians really like this painting and have recreated the scene a few times during the war.

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Cool! And good for them. End of the day, Ilya Repin was from Ukraine, and it’s just the crazy/oddness of this conflict that both countries admire and love his work.

My wife, a former English professor at St. Petersburg University, when we’re walking in a crowded park like when we lived in Bath, can easily discern the difference between Russian and Ukrainian accent. Esp. as the Ukrainian people we’d see & hear were likely those with the funds to get right out of Ukraine. I don’t hear much difference at all, so I can only describe it like the slight variance between NYC and Boston accents - yet when I lived in St. Petersburg there wasn’t a sense of rivalry (like between the Yankees and Red Sox) between Ukraine and Russia.

I’m a Mets fan so the Yankees can go find a stranger in the Alps. My wife is Russian and we went to Repino at least a year before we could admire Repin’s stuff. I find it funny that people who stand in long lines at the Louvre to see Mona Lisa walk away saying “It’s so small”. You want big and controversial - Ilya’s your guy. Leonardo did lots of other great stuff, not much to hang on a wall though.

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Too late to add: To me, da Vinci was a scientist who dabbled in art. Yet next (first) time I go to Milan, I would like to see his (huge 460 cm × 880 cm, 180 in × 350 inches) “Last Supper”. Splendid how they all sat on one side of the table while he painted it.

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I love the purpled-faced guy sitting at the table. The rest of his body is barely visible, but Repin managed to make him look like he’s both elated and, well, many sandwiches shy of a picnic.

Here are a couple more of my favourites :

More generally, there are lots of great Ukrainian and Russian painters who are barely known in the West.

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I like the third one.

The first you posted is certainly his most controversial. It’s known as “Ivan the Terrible kills his son” and the anguish on the Tsar’s face is - quite something. That definitely happened, though I reckon whatever Ivan felt about killing his son in a fit of anger is unknown.

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I don’t take this painting as an acurate depiction of the historical event. As you write, it is the almost palpable emotion that strikes me. Repin painted a similarly impressive one of Gogol burning his manuscripts.

As for the second one, I like how mundane but mysterious it is. An unexpected visitor… Who is he? Why do the children seem to react very differently to his arrival? Good news or bad news?

Yes, the movement of the water is amazing in that one.

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Not so controversial but large is Luncheon of the Boating Party. The Peoenix Art Museum had an exhibit on Impressionists some years ago and it was on loan, I spent a half hour on a bench opposite it, enchanted. It was much larger than I had figured, looking at images.

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From Wikipedia:

They Did Not Expect Him is a painting by realist artist Ilya Repin made between 1884 and 1888. It depicts the return of a narodnik from exile and his family’s reaction. The painting is part of Repin’s “Narodniki” series, which includes four other artworks.

A “Narodnik” was an early type of socialist. The fellow, a bit emaciated and worn down, has just come back from exile, and his family is astonished.

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Just after asking my wife about the “unexpected visitor painting”.

It’s clear this household is somewhat upper class - servants, the children’s clothing, piano. The guy arriving would indeed have been involved in the Narodnik / anti-Tsarist movement and would likely have been exiled to Siberia for some years. He doesn’t look too old - yet he is certainly worn down.

The two portraits on the wall: On the left is certainly Taras Shevchenko, as per the wiki " was a Ukrainian poet, writer, artist, public and political figure, folklorist and ethnographer. Died at the age of 47 in St. Petersburg. The other portrait on the right is very likely Nikolai Gogol, the novelist, playwright, also born in Ukraine and died at the age of 43 in Moscow. So kind of neat that it would not be unusual to have portraits of great writers on your wall, esp. Ukranian writers from a Ukranian painter, though Russian Empire so Repin and the two writers would be well known and liked by Russians even today.

The map on the wall would be contemporary to the time of the painting - Finland is part of the Russian Empire though they had something of a colonial status. Sometime prior Russia fought Sweden and Finland was what they got. As for Estonia - it may not have existed as a country at the time. Only perhaps Lithuania would have.

We couldn’t really make out what the larger painting/portrait in the center is of. I see crosses so there is some religious motif. Looks like Jesus, not exactly “hanging” around crosses yet in their presence. Pretty sure I recently read on the Dope that one of his carpentry tasks was (ironically?) making crosses. Yet this painting in the painting we could not identify.

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There’s a Russian painting that I think of when considering the current divide. S. V. Ivanov’s “On the Road - Death of the Migrant

A family’s future is shattered when, in the middle of the empty continent, the father dies. Stranded, they too face almost certain doom. This could just as easily been in western Nebraska as eastern Siberia.

Russia pushed east when the US pushed west, and when the transcontinental railroad was a robber baron boondoggle, the Tsar’s trans-Siberian railroad was, in response, an autocratic beneficence.

But why is the Russian experience different from the American experience? They both have the same overriding theme: living large and treating each other like shit. Why is the Russian myth one of enduring endless suffering while the American one of overcoming insurmountable obstacles? (And in each case as in all others, myth is just a papering-over of failure)

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I recall Ewen McClellan and a buddy riding across Russia on motorcycles some years ago. Up to the Ural Mountains it was no problem - paved roads and frequent villages. Beyond there - even though I recall they went in a “decent” time of year weather wise, Tough to find villagers or Inuit types. This would have been true of much of a motorcycle ride in the 1850’s in the USA and territories, yet California and thar’s gold out there and all. These guys were mired in mud for hundreds of miles before they arrived iin muddy Magadan.

I would like to (some distant day) see Lake Baikal - deepest lake with the most freshwater in the world. Yet to get there and every cardinal direction from there I’d want a Land Rover.

I’m not sure why these folks would be heading that way. Gold and oil were found in Alaska years after “Seward’s Folly” and there’s isn’t/wasn’t much of any life or should I say “way of living” or prospering out in the East.

The three sticks I’ll reckon are some kind of thing to hold meat over a fire or a really small pup-tent if you have a tarp to wrap around it. Any idea what those two things in the foreground are? One seems like a moose-type-antler (yet barbed so don’t mess with any Moose, esp. Russian ones). I doubt they’re weapons. Just I guess, what’s their significance in the painting?

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Ugh, I knew I got my Ewan Wrong it took me a while for Ewan McGregor to pop in my head. He and his friend Charlie Boorman went from London, across Europe, Kazakhstan and rode the “Road of Bones” in Russia which sounds like fun. Then went to the USA (across the frozen Bering Strait?) and to New York and then rode to London. It probably took longer than 80 days as they weren’t racing and stopped along the way.

Also of course I know motorcycles didn’t exist - as we would know them - till Daimler and Waybach made the first in 1865. And it’d be 1901 and a couple more years for Indian and Harley Davidson, respective.

My point was, even before the 1850’s there were well known and traveled routes that you could choose from, say St. Louis and get you over the Rockies (do not attempt during their 5 month winter) and you pretty much had the choice of foggy San Francisco (where they built Candlestick Park) and the other San Francisco. Sure, a living could also be made up north in the Oregon Territory, you could head south and surf some tasty waves in Los Angeles or head down Mexico way to Zihuatanejo…

These unfortunate Russian travelers likely had few accurate maps, likely did encounter mud and rode the “Road of Bones” which must be a scenic joy. And Moose. I’m convinced those are moose antlers. Maybe they caught one and moose is what’s for for dinner. Dunno if Repin went on location to the middle of nowhere Russia to paint this yet I hope our painted travelers made it and had some adventure!

ETA: Asked my wife what she thought the “antlers” were and she said they might be something to eat. She compared them to watermelons. So, umm…yum?

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Ugh again. Missed this was S.V. Ivanov. On what road? This isn’t Route 66 nor is Jack Kerouac even born yet. You’re right - may as well be in Nebraska and would probably be better off.

Couldn’t find or figure out when and where they aimed to be going.

Be better off in the dust bowl in Steinbeck’s, “The Grapes of Wrath” who at least had a car and Highway 61 revisited.

ETA: I know Dylan was talking about the Blues and riding through deep Delta Country for “61” and if Steinbeck didn’t put 66 on the map, he made it famous. Practically a character in the book and Ford movie.