Dialogue on the turns. Vasily Surikov and “modernism”: relationship сonflict

Abstract

The article deals with the peculiarities of the dialogue which occurred at the turn of the 19th century between the creative searches of Surikov and the newest modernist trends in Russia: from Symbolism of the artists of the World of Art (known in Russian as Mir Iskusstva) group and the Blue Rose (Golubaya Roza) circle to the different stages of the Russian avant-garde – from the Jack of Diamonds (Bubnovy Valet) to Suprematism. The composition of the study is based on the counterpoint of two questions – how Surikov perceived “modernism” and how “modernism” perceived Surikov. The concept of “modernism” in this case is interpreted in the extended sense of the creative search to the early 20th century for unconventional art of magical and plastic means of expression that went beyond the limits of the Itinerant (Рeredvizhniki) Movement’s realism. The collision of relationships is viewed through the prism of the stable plastic and emotional features of the artistic poetics of Surikov himself. That is why the author touches the issues of the artists’s personal understanding of the nature of art and the problems of innovation, which worried him until the end of his life and found expression in the decorative, lyrical and expressive features of the late creative period.