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In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet...
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In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet Art and Visual Culture

A special issue of Arts (ISSN 2076-0752).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 May 2025) | Viewed by 3461

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. K. Andrea Rusnock

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Indiana University South Bend, South Bend, IN 46634, USA
Interests: art history; Russian and Soviet art and material culture; world textiles and needlework

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Much has been written in recent decades about the Russian and Soviet Avant-Garde, so much so that it has become de rigueur to include this material in introductory art history texts. However, much less is known in the broader art history world about Russian and Soviet art and visual culture that does not fit that paradigm. The proposed Special Issue seeks to address this lacunae by offering new research on Russian and Soviet art and artists that are often overlooked in academia. At first blush it would seem that painting, icons, postcards, stamps, and the like would have little in common, but this is a mistaken notion, as all these objects represent important components of Russian and Soviet history and culture. Who created these works? Who and/or what entity commissioned them? How were they actually utilized and/or what was their function? How were these objects received by the various audiences for whom they were made? What significance did they have in their society and on that society? The answers to these questions will allow scholars of culture and politics to gain a fuller comprehension of how these facets interconnected in society, thus greatly enriching our understanding of Russian and Soviet art and history.

Prof. Dr. K. Andrea Rusnock
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Arts is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • painting
  • icon
  • postcard
  • postage stamp
  • Russia
  • Soviet
  • artist
  • performance

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Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

19 pages, 3864 KiB  
Article
Through Winter’s Window: The Modernist Potential of Ice, Frost, and Snow in Late Imperial Russian Art
by Louise Hardiman
Arts 2025, 14(4), 91; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14040091 - 7 Aug 2025
Viewed by 320
Abstract
In 1913, the Fabergé workshops in St Petersburg produced the most expensive of their famed Imperial egg commissions, the so-called “Winter Egg,” designed by Alma Pihl. Fashioned from translucent rock crystal and decked in a glittering array of gemstones, the egg followed several [...] Read more.
In 1913, the Fabergé workshops in St Petersburg produced the most expensive of their famed Imperial egg commissions, the so-called “Winter Egg,” designed by Alma Pihl. Fashioned from translucent rock crystal and decked in a glittering array of gemstones, the egg followed several other designs on winter themes by the highly respected jeweller. In this article, Fabergé’s winter-themed creations are the starting point for an exploration of how ice, frost, and snow were portrayed by Russian artists of the late imperial period. Such works both reflected and realised many of the shifts in the art world from the mid-nineteenth century onwards, for example, the renewed focus on making art “national,” the rise of artistic opportunities for women, the erasure of boundaries between fine and applied art, the influx of such European movements as Impressionism and Symbolism, and the development of modernist approaches to content and style. The principal focus is on works by artists associated with the Abramtsevo artistic circle (Abramtsevskii khudozhestvennyi kruzhok). How did representations of ice, snow, and frost participate in the emerging dynamic between the national idea and the decorative, which in turn fed into the move towards abstraction? Why did these subjects appear frequently in art by women? Why was winter often presented through the lens of the imagined and the ludic? These works evidence a new subjectivity that arose from Abramtsevo artists’ greater freedom to render lived experience. The paths open to them when working outside the Academic system permitted creativity to range freely in the forging of a national modern style. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet Art and Visual Culture)
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13 pages, 8252 KiB  
Article
Ephemeral Art as Political Commentary: Russia’s Financial Woes and French Satirical Postcards, 1905–1907
by Alison Rowley
Arts 2025, 14(3), 66; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14030066 - 6 Jun 2025
Viewed by 798
Abstract
This article looks at the ways in which satirical postcards provided political commentary at a pivotal moment in the Franco-Russian alliance. Often overlooked as a medium of communication, turn-of-the-20th-century postcards reflected contemporary cultural values and were an important art form. Here, the focus [...] Read more.
This article looks at the ways in which satirical postcards provided political commentary at a pivotal moment in the Franco-Russian alliance. Often overlooked as a medium of communication, turn-of-the-20th-century postcards reflected contemporary cultural values and were an important art form. Here, the focus is on postcards created by Orens and Mille, two of the best caricaturists of the day, as their work offered scathing critiques of Russia’s constant need for financial assistance from its ally and point to the ways in which the public was growing weary of these demands. Closely examining some of their postcards shows how such sentiments were expressed in visual form while also revealing the power of ephemeral materials as historical sources. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet Art and Visual Culture)
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8 pages, 199 KiB  
Article
Gateway to the East: Decorative Art and Orientalist Imagery in Moscow’s Kazan Station, 1913–1916
by John McCannon
Arts 2025, 14(1), 3; https://doi.org/10.3390/arts14010003 - 2 Jan 2025
Viewed by 1008
Abstract
At the time of its construction, which started in 1913, the architectural design of Moscow’s Kazan Station was considered by many to be out of step with the avant-garde creative energies that pervaded fin-de-siècle Russian culture. The same opinion applied to the artworks [...] Read more.
At the time of its construction, which started in 1913, the architectural design of Moscow’s Kazan Station was considered by many to be out of step with the avant-garde creative energies that pervaded fin-de-siècle Russian culture. The same opinion applied to the artworks that were installed to decorate the station’s interior. In the decades since, art historians have generally shared the judgments levied by those who complained about the station’s supposed deficits in the 1910s. The purpose of this article is to show that, while the designs and décor of Kazan Station were indeed anachronistic—especially considering the high-tech purposes and functions of the industrial-era railroad station—the anachronism, far from reflecting a lack of awareness or innovative ability, resulted from conscious decisions on the part of Alexei Shchusev as architect, Alexandre Benois as the individual who selected artists to work on the station, and the artists themselves, including Nikolai Roerich and Pavel Kuznetsov, namely, those who built and decorated the station deliberately concealed the station’s inherently modernist and utilitarian nature behind a backward-looking, past-oriented façade, both to fulfill their mission of commemorating old Russia’s imperial expansion and subjugation of the East and to assuage the social and cultural anxieties often stirred up in the late 1800s and early 1900s by the construction of infrastructural assets such as railroad stations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue In the Center and on the Periphery: Russian and Soviet Art and Visual Culture)
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