As Dmitri Sarabianov tells us in this lively book, Russia first turned its face to Europe at the beginning of the eighteenth century. By the start of the nineteenth century, European ideas had been assimilated into the rich substratum of Russian culture and a unique amalgam began to emerge. Indigenous subjects became the focus of Russian art. In 1870, the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions, whose members were known as the Wanderers, was founded. Its dual purpose was to educate the people through traveling exhibitions and to work for social reform. At the turn of the century, the dominant mode was Symbolism. But Modernist tendencies and other currents were gaining strength. These diverse aesthetics had to be rethought in 1917, when the Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power. Functional, applied design came to the forefront. It is here, with the close of the most brilliant and innovative period in Russia's artistic life so far, that Professor Sarabianov ends his account of the pivotal years that led to the dazzling abstract, geometrical breakthroughs of Russian art. -- From publisher's description.

Offers a survey of the painting and architecture of Russia

This is the first book to show the development of Russian architecture over the past thousand years as a part of the history of Western architecture. Dmitry Shvidkovsky, Russia’s leading architectural historian, departs from the accepted notion that Russian architecture developed independent of outside cultural influences and demonstrates that, to the contrary, the influence of the West extends back to the tenth century and continues into the present. He offers compelling assessments of all the main masterpieces of Russian architecture and frames a radically new architectural history for Russia. The book systematically analyzes Russian buildings in relation to developments in European art, pointing out where familiar European features are expressed in Russian projects. Special attention is directed toward decorations based on Byzantine models; the heritage of Italian master builders and carvers; the impact of architects and others sent by Elizabeth I; the formation of the Russian Imperial Baroque; the Enlightenment in Russian art; and 19th- and 20th-century European influences. With over 300 specially commissioned photographs of sites throughout Russia and western Europe, this magnificent book is both beautiful and groundbreaking.

The twentieth century in Russia has been a cataclysm of rare proportions, as war, revolution, famine, and massive political terror tested the limits of human endurance. The results of this assault on Russian culture are particularly evident in ruined architectural monuments, some of which are little known even within Russia itself. Over the past two decades William Craft Brumfield, noted historian of Russian architecture, has traveled throughout Russia and photographed many of these neglected, lost buildings, haunting in their ruin. Lost Russia provides a unique view of Brumfield's acclaimed work, which illuminates Russian culture as reflected in these remnants of its distinctive architectural traditions.

Since its initial publication in 1993, A History of Russian Architecture has remained the most comprehensive study of the topic in English, a volume that defines the main components and sources for Russia's architectural traditions in their historical context, from the early medieval period to the present. This edition includes 80 new full-page color separations, many of which are published here for the first time, as well as a new Prologue and elegant photographic essay drawn from the author's research and fieldwork over the past decade in remote areas of the Russian north and Siberia. Subject to influences from east and west, Russian architecture's distinctive approaches to building are documented in four parts of this definitive study: early medieval Rus up to the Mongol invasion in the mid-twelfth century; the revival of architecture in Novgorod and Muscovy from the fourteenth to the seventeenth centuries; Peter the Great's cultural revolution, which extended through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; and the advent of modern, avant-garde, and monumental Soviet architecture. Beautifully illustrated and carefully researched, A History of Russian Architecture provides an invaluable cultural history that will be of interest to scholars and general audiences alike. View the William C. Brumfield Russian Architecture Collection online at http://content.lib.washington.edu/brumfieldweb/index.html

An essential exploration of how Russian ideas about the United States shaped architecture and urban design from the czarist era to the fall of the U.S.S.R. Idealized representations of America, as both an aspiration and a menace, played an important role in shaping Russian architecture and urban design from the American Revolution until the fall of the Soviet Union. Jean-Louis Cohen traces the powerful concept of “Amerikanizm” and its impact on Russia’s built environment from early czarist interest in Revolutionary America, through the spectacular World’s Fairs of the 19th century, to department stores, skyscrapers, and factories built in Russia using American methods during the 20th century. Visions of America also captivated the Russian avant-garde, from El Lissitzky to Moisei Ginzburg, and Cohen explores the ongoing artistic dialogue maintained between the two countries at the mid-century and in the late Soviet era, following a period of strategic competition. This first major study of Amerikanizm in the architecture of Russia makes a timely contribution to our understanding of modern architecture and its broader geopolitics.

This collection of thirteen vignettes addresses several important episodes in the history of Russian temporary architecture and public art, from the royal festivals during the times of Peter the Great up to the recent venues including the Sochi Winter Olympics. The forms and the circumstances of their design were drastically different; however, the projects discussed in the book share a common feature: they have been instrumental in the construction of Russia’s national identity, with its perception of the West - simultaneously, a foe and a paragon - looming high over this process. The book offers a history of multidirectional relationships between diplomacy, propaganda, and architecture.

A German princess who married a decadent and lazy Russian prince, Catherine mobilized support amongst the Russian nobles, playing off of her husband's increasing corruption and abuse of power. She then staged a coup that ended with him being strangled with his own scarf in the halls of the palace, and herself crowned the Empress of Russia. Intelligent and determined, Catherine modeled herself off of her grandfather in-law, Peter the Great, and sought to further modernize and westernize Russia. She believed that the best way to do this was through a ravenous acquisition of art, which Catherine often used as a form of diplomacy with other powers throughout Europe. She was a self-proclaimed "glutton for art" and she would be responsible for the creation of the Hermitage, one of the largest museums in the world, second only to the Louvre. Catherine also spearheaded the further expansion of St. Petersburg, and the magnificent architectural wonder the city became is largely her doing. There are few women in history more fascinating than Catherine the Great, and for the first time, Susan Jaques brings her to life through the prism of art.

From the royal pew of Ivan the Terrible, to Catherine the Great's use of landscape, to the struggles between the Orthodox Church and preservationists in post-Soviet Yaroslavl—across five centuries of Russian history, Russian leaders have used architecture to project unity, identity, and power. Church architecture has inspired national cohesion and justified political control while representing the claims of religion in brick, wood, and stone. The architectural vocabulary of the Soviet state celebrated industrialization, mechanization, and communal life. Buildings and landscapes have expressed utopian urges as well as lofty spiritual goals. Country houses and memorials have encoded their own messages. In Architectures of Russian Identity, James Cracraft and Daniel Rowland gather a group of authors from a wide variety of backgrounds—including history and architectural history, linguistics, literary studies, geography, and political science—to survey the political and symbolic meanings of many different kinds of structures. Fourteen heavily illustrated chapters demonstrate the remarkable fertility of the theme of architecture, broadly defined, for a range of fields dealing with Russia and its surrounding territories. The authors engage key terms in contemporary historiography—identity, nationality, visual culture—and assess the applications of each in Russian contexts.