- handmade Russian folk pictures, which are a rich and expressive layer of the history, culture and art of the Russian state. These once popular images, characterized by simplicity and accessibility of images, speak eloquently about the life and worldview of ordinary people of the past.
Lubok appeared in Rus' in the 16th century. Scientists are still arguing about the origin of the name "lubok". Some say that it came from the word "bast", the old Russian name for linden, on the boards of which pictures were cut out. Others argue that it is associated with bast boxes in which they were carried. And the Moscow legend says that it all began with the Lubyanka, the street where the masters of popular art lived.
The drawings were drawn on boards sawn in a special way and were called "fryazhsky sheets", then "funny sheets" and "prostoviki". Initially, they were dominated by religious plots, after which the lubok became a convenient and inexpensive way to disseminate information, moral and instructive stories and propaganda. As time went on, the technique of lubok changed. In the 19th century, wood gave way to metal and the work became more elegant. The subjects were the lives of saints, epics and songs, fables and portraits of the imperial family, scenes from the life of peasants, fairy tales and novels, knowledge about distant countries and historical events.
Expensive popular prints adorned the royal chambers and boyars' towers. Ordinary people bought up inexpensive (at a price of half a penny) black and white popular prints at fairs, preferring comic drawings. Many representatives of high society refused to call the creations of self-taught folk artists art. But nowadays, Russian folk print adorns the collections of major museums.
For the New York Public Library, the most "fruitful" period for collecting large and rare books with engravings from Eastern Europe fell on the decade from 1925 to 1935. Then the Soviet government nationalized and sold abroad the contents of the imperial palace libraries. The New York Public Library alone contains items from nine imperial libraries, as well as publications belonging to 30 members of the imperial family. The library acquired them on the spot (and at a good price), having seconded Yarmolinsky Avraam Tsalevich (1890-1975), the curator of the Slavic department from 1917 to 1955, to replenish the book collections. He came to Soviet Russia in 1923 and returned to the States in 1924. Valuable exhibits from the fund of the imperial palace libraries were also acquired by the US Library of Congress and Harvard University. Bookiner Hans Kraus wrote:
« These [Russian palace] collections, so little known and highly valued in the West, contained incredible materials. Such rare Eastern European works have never been seen in this hemisphere. Book collectors served zealously for kings and queens. In addition to the purchased books, their collections were replenished with numerous editions received as a gift, printed on special paper, with luxurious bindings, in silk or morocco and with the imperial coat of arms.("The Rare Book Saga", 1978, pp. 90-91.)
A significant part of the lubok library collection is occupied by works from the collection of the outstanding cultural figure of the Russian Empire, Dmitry Alexandrovich Rovinsky (1824-1895). He was an exceptionally versatile person. The Privy Councillor, lawyer and reformer of the judiciary loved art with all his heart. With his own efforts, he bought materials and published illustrated books, including Russian Folk Paintings, Russian Engravers and Their Works, Dictionary of Russian Engraved Portraits, Reliable Portraits of Moscow Sovereigns, Materials for Russian Iconography and other collections. Having spent most of his fortune, Rovinsky assembled one of the finest private collections of Russian and Western European graphics. After his death, the exhibits were dispersed among various museums, libraries and other cultural institutions in Russia. In the West, remarkable series of volumes have been preserved, which he often published in extremely small print runs.
From the New York Public Library website where the album is published "Russian folk lubok of the 1860-1870s", submitted almost 200 images, we have selected 87 of the most interesting.
Accident, 1867.
New Song, 1870.
The industrious bear, 1868.
Sea sirens, 1866.
How merchants walk, 1870.
This is how Yaroslavl sex workers work in Moscow, have fun with beauties, 1870.
Funeral of a cat with rats and mice, 1866.
The slanderer and the snake, 1869.
The Little Humpbacked Horse, 1870.
Flew into the chimney, 1872.
In Maryina Grove, 1868.
There is no place in Petersburg, he goes to the village to deceive fools, 1870.
The most remarkable of giants, runners and freaks Serpo Didlo, 1866.
Zhidovskaya karchma, 1868.
Big nose spore with hard frost, 1870.
Kashchei and his desire, 1867.
Sneaky, 1867.
Fiction in faces, 1868.
The newest card oracle, 1868.
Reforging old for young, 1871.
Brave warrior Anika, 1868.
Strong and brave hero Anika warrior, 1865.
Strong and brave Bova Korolevich strikes Polkan the hero, 1867.
Strong and glorious brave warrior Anika, 1868.
The glorious strong and brave Bova Korolevich strikes the hero Polkan, 1868.
Glorious strong and brave knight Yeruslan Lazarevich, 1868.
Strong brave hero Ilya Muromets, 1868.
The strong mighty Bova Korolevich defeats the hero Polkan, Yeruslan Lazarevich defeats the three-headed snake, 1867.
Strong glorious brave hero Ivan Tsarevich 1868.
Peasant and Death, 1868.
Predatory wolves attacking passers-by, 1868.
How a lioness raised the king's son, 1868.
Rebuke of the headman with the steward, 1870.
Truth and Lies, 1871.
Crinoline, 1866.
Smoking a cigar, 1867.
Fishing on the lake, 1870.
Mamaev battle on the Kulikovo field in 1380, 1868.
Husband amuses his wife, 1868.
Bribery usurer, 1870.
British attack on the Solovetsky Monastery, 1868.
The crossing of Russian troops across the Danube on March 11, 1854, 1869.
Song "What are you sleeping little man", 1871.
A song about how a wife drank beer and forgot to feed her husband, 1866.
Song "Return home from Peter the squandered innkeeper", 1870.
Presentation of bread and salt to the sovereign in Moscow, 1865.
Near Odessa April 10, 1854, 1864.
Lean housekeeping, 1870.
Raek, 1970.
Romance, 1867.
Russian peasant wedding, 1865.
Shamil Iman of Chechnya and Dagestan, 1870.
The Tale of How the Craftsman Cheated the Devil, 1867.
Miserly, 1866.
Steps of the Human Age, 1866.
Baiting a snake and a tiger, 1868.
Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible, 1868.
Come on, Mishenka Ivanovich, 1867.
Nonsense for the laughter of the people for fun. How animals and birds bury a hunter, 1865.
Village, 1970.
General Toptygin, 1868.
Ah, mistress, 1870.
English milord, brave knight Guak, brave knight Fransil Ventsian, hero Bova Korolevich, hero Yeruslan Lazarevich, 1861.
His Imperial Highness the Heir Tsarevich Grand Duke Alexander Alexandrovich and Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Maria Feodorovna, 1871.
Mountain landscape, 1870.
Charlemagne and the snake, 1870.
Turkish troika hurrying with a report to the Turkish Sultan about the occupation of Kars by Russian troops, 1870
Life for Tsar Ivan Susanin, 1866.
Daniel the Long Giant, 1868.
Katenka, 1867.
A woman beat a peasant, 1867.
A woman beat a peasant, 1867.
Our fellow is flattered by money, 1867.
Song "I am a gypsy fellow ...", 1867.
Song "The girls were walking along the shore...", 1867.
The song "A man plowed arable land", 1867.
Little Russian song, 1868.
According to Vladimir cranberries, peddler baluster, 1867.
Farewell, 1867.
Dowry painting, 1867.
Russian song "Do not scold me, dear...", 1867.
Russian village song "Father Gave Me", 1867.
"Elephant and Pug", 1867.
Gypsy, 1867.
Railway. Sbitenchik's story about the railroad, 1868.
Lubok is a special kind of fine art with its characteristic figurative capacity. This is the so-called. a folklore picture with a caption, a very special kind of graphic art, characterized by simplicity of execution and conciseness.
The name comes from boards of special sawing, which were called bast (deck). On them back in the 15th century. wrote plans, drawings, drawings. Then the so-called. “Fryazh sheets”, and later small paper pictures were simply called lubok (popular folk picture).
In Russia, folk pictures became widespread in the 17th-20th centuries. They were cheap (even low-income segments of the population could buy them) and often served as a decorative design.
Lubok sheets performed the social and entertaining role of a newspaper or primer. They are the prototype of modern calendars, posters, comics and posters.
Many already know about the deplorable situation in the field of education that prevailed in the 17th-18th centuries. in Russia (see). Lubok, along with other goals, was called upon to perform an educational function, introducing the illiterate segments of the population to reading.
The Russian lubok differs from the rest in its consistency of composition, and, for example, Chinese or Indian lubok sheets, in their bright colors.
Lubok Marina Rusanova.
Lubok - folk pictures on popular subjects with explanatory text, which could be used as proverbs, simple poems or short stories. Often popular prints were deliberately decorative and even grotesque. Due to their cheapness, they were in great demand even among the poorest segments of the population. Looking at these pictures, you are surprised to notice that many of them are relevant today.
Today it is not known exactly how and why he called these pictures “lubok”. According to one version, the name of the pictures was due to the fact that they were cut out on linden boards. According to another, these pictures were sold in ofeni-peddlers in bast boxes. And someone claims that the name came from Lubyanka - a Moscow street where the masters of making these paintings lived. But one way or another, it was luboks - folk humorous pictures that were sold at fairs from the 17th to the beginning of the 20th century, that were considered the most popular and most massive type of artistic creativity in Rus'.
Pictures were sold at 1-2 kopecks per piece or in batches of 100 pieces for a ruble. In Moscow, one could buy lubok near the walls of the Kremlin - on the bridge at the Spassky Gates, where all sorts of people crowded from early morning until dark. For royal use, “amusing” sheets were sold in the Vegetable Row.
Lubok is a print or engraving that is obtained on paper from a wooden block. At first, popular prints were only black and white. Boyar mansions and royal chambers were decorated with them, and only later the pictures became colored, and their production became mass-produced.
Later, the pictures began to be painted. This was done by women near Vladimir and near Moscow, using the hare's paws. Sometimes such pictures were somewhat reminiscent of a modern coloring book for kids - hasty, inept, and sometimes illogical in color. But among the popular prints that have come down to us, scientists today distinguish many pictures with unexpectedly fresh and unique combinations.
If representatives of the upper strata of society were not serious about the popular print and refused to recognize these pictures as art, they were very popular among the peasant people. Although sometimes self-taught commoners drew them on the cheapest gray paper. In those distant times, no one cared about the careful preservation of popular prints - it never occurred to anyone that in a couple of centuries these pictures would be considered masterpieces of Russian folk art. Modern art historians believe that the lubok has absorbed the history of ancient Rus', folk humor, and the natural talent of the Russian people. They contain the origins of both colorful literary illustrativeness and lively caricature.
1888
As time went on, the technology of making lubok changed significantly. In the 19th century, drawings were no longer made on wood, but on metal plates. This allowed lubok craftsmen to produce more subtle and elegant paintings. The colors of the “fun” pictures have become richer and much brighter.
Lubok pictures for a long time were the main spiritual food for the common people, a source of news (since there are critically few newspapers) and knowledge. And the popular print was not expensive and spread throughout the country, despite the vast Russian distances. On the lubok one could find pictures of pseudo-scientific subjects, and satirical writings, and types of cities with descriptions, and arithmetic, and primers, and palmistry with cosmography. Calendars with useful household information were also popular.
ON THE. Nekrasov. Moscow. Lithograph T-va I.D. Sytina and Co. Moscow. Lithograph T-va I.D. Sytina and Co. 1902
INTERESTING FACT
Vladimir Ivanovich Dahl, the author of the Explanatory Dictionary of the Living Great Russian Language, had the largest collection of popular prints. In his collection were all, without exception, released at that time.
For those who are interested in the topic of Russian lubok, we have prepared a continuation -. Particular attention should be paid to the texts.
Here you will find personified dogma, prayer, getya (legend), moralizing, parable, fairy tale, proverb, song, in a word, everything that was in the spirit, temper and taste of our commoner. THEM. Snegirev
There are words whose meaning is lost over time or distorted irretrievably. In the time of Pushkin, a square was called a rally ground, not a drinking woman, but a teacher in a women's gymnasium, was called a "bruise", scores were settled not in a fight, but in a shop with the help of a mechanical device - an abacus. The word "lubok" also changed its meaning - now it means a rough, clumsy, vulgar craft. And once the sheets, hand-printed from clichés carved on lime boards, were folk literature.
Lubok "The Battle of Baba Yaga with a Crocodile"
Before the reforms of Peter the Great, books in Rus' remained an expensive hobby. The Book Chamber in Moscow published the Gospels, the lives of the saints, manuals on military affairs, medical and historical treatises, and spiritual literature. The cost of one book reached 5-6 rubles (for comparison: a duck cost 3 kopecks, and a pood of honey - 41 kopecks). An educated person could read 50-100 books in his life, but as a rule he was limited to the Psalter and Domostroy. However, there were more literate people than rich ones - "Azbuka" cost one penny and sold no worse than hare pies. The first issue (2900 pieces) sold out in a year - and no wonder. The ability to read and write provided a person with a piece of bread, merchants and officials from numerous orders were literate. It was they who turned out to be the consumers of an exotic product - the colorfully colored “fryazh sheets” that came to Russia from neighboring Poland.
The first "nianhua" - printed pictures of religious or moral content appeared in the 8th century in China - with their help, the teachings of the Buddha were conveyed to the illiterate people. Manufacturing technology has not changed much over the centuries - a drawing was cut out on a board, wooden, stone or metal, a black print was made from it, which was then more or less accurately painted by hand with bright colors.
In the 15th century, with the ubiquitous merchants, the lubok reached Europe and gained immense popularity in a matter of decades. "Shameful pictures" with obscene captions and scenes from the Bible with instructive texts were equally in good demand. Preachers and rebels of all stripes instantly appreciated the widest possibilities of popular propaganda, printing caricatures of the Pope and his minions, calls for rebellion and brief theses of new teachings.
Lubok turned out to be ideal for the mass production of icons and pictures of spiritual content, accessible even to poor people. Russian printers and artisans readily adopted new technologies. The oldest printed lubok found from the 17th century is "Archangel Michael - Governor of the Heavenly Powers". Copies of famous Vladimir and Suzdal icons, images-parables were popular. Sim prays, Ham sows wheat, Japhet has power, Death owns all».
Lubok "Archangel Michael - governor of heavenly forces"
The passion for colorful pictures quickly became widespread - they were eagerly bought up by merchants, boyars, officials, and townspeople. Young Peter I had more than 100 popular prints, according to which the deacon Zotov taught the future autocrat to read. Following spiritual popular prints, secular prints quickly appeared. At best, Ilya Muromets, defeating enemies, the heroes Yeruslana Lazarevichi and the wise birds of Alkonost. At worst, there are retellings of Petrushka's jokes and obscene pictures - the jester Farnos defends himself from mosquitoes, emitting gases, Paramoshka (one of the frequent heroes of popular prints) rides over Moscow on an object that is categorically not intended for flying, and so on.
By the middle of the 17th century, European borrowings either left plots and graphics or adapted to local realities. Russian lubok acquired its own artistic language, recognizable style, compositional uniformity. Art critics of the 19th century called it primitive - but Paleolithic rock paintings are just as primitive. The lubok artist did not set himself the task of accurately reproducing the proportions or achieving a portrait resemblance. He needed to create a graphic cry, an emotional message that everyone could understand. So that, looking at the picture, the viewer immediately laughed or burst into tears, began to pray, repent or ask the question “who in Rus' has a good life”. Yuri Lotman compared the Russian lubok with the space of a theater, a square nativity scene - it was not for nothing that the artists used not only the plots of Petrushka, but also rich, figurative paradise verse. " This bird of paradise Alkonost abides near paradise, once it happens on the Euphrates river, but when it emits a certain voice, then it doesn’t feel itself, and who ... announces joy to them».
Very quickly, the popular popular print became topical, responding to political, military and religious events with the speed of the media, highlighting the problems of society with the “searchlight of perestroika”. Bright pictures with malicious captions exposed drunkards and gamblers, tobacco smokers and lovers of dressing up, old husbands taking young wives, mocked the boyars, who were forced to cut their beards, and with the help of allegories, even the tsar-father himself. And nimble peddlers with bast boxes over their shoulders delivered amusing pictures to the most remote corners of Russia.
In 1674, Patriarch Joachim forbade buying "sheets of heretics, Luthers and Calvins" and making paper prints of revered icons. This did not knock down the popular trade, on the contrary, not only printed, but also drawn popular prints of spiritual and frankly destructive content began to appear. The schismatics, following the example of the Lutherans, conveyed their ideas to fellow believers, including with the help of popular pictures. Nameless artists embodied people's dreams, picked up "fashion trends" as modern journalists would put it. They managed to embody the poetry of Russian epics and fairy tales, the longing for the mythical "city of Jerusalem", the hopelessness of death and the hope for eternal life with the most meager visual means.
Tsar Peter I, a practical man, could not ignore such a means of influencing his subjects. In 1721, a decree was issued prohibiting the sale of popular prints that were not printed in state printing houses. Elegant ladies in dresses with “slaps” and gentlemen in powdered wigs and European-style camisoles immediately appeared on the amusing pictures. Paper portraits of crowned persons began to enjoy great popularity ... however, they were made so carelessly that in 1744 it was also forbidden to depict the imperial family on luboks.
By the middle of the 18th century, the high society of Russian society had finally become completely literate. Accessible books, newspapers and almanacs appeared, the habit of reading - even the dream book of the maiden Lenormand or "Russian Invalid" - fell in love with aging ladies and retired officers. From palaces and towers, lubok finally moved to merchant storehouses, craft workshops and peasant huts, becoming entertainment for the common people. The technique of making pictures improved, instead of rough wooden boards, masters learned how to make prints from thinly cut copper engravings.
Moral popular prints, transcriptions of old manuscripts, reprints of especially topical or sensational articles from newspapers about catching a whale in the White Sea or the arrival of a Persian elephant in St. Petersburg became popular. During the war of 1812, the Russo-Turkish and Russo-Japanese wars, angry caricatures of the invaders scattered like hot cakes. The demand for lubok is best illustrated by numbers - in 1893, 4,491,300 copies were printed in Russia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, the lubok from the folk one finally became the author's one, designed for a poorly educated and semi-literate village dweller. Booksellers made millions on sugary pseudo-folk-style pictures, simplified transcriptions of popular fiction and Russian epics (copyright on texts had not yet been stuttered). Peasant artels earned decent money by coloring pictures "on the noses." Lubok became a profitable business and practically lost its originality of folk culture. It is no wonder that the venerable artists from the Academy wrinkled their aristocratic noses in disgust at one glance at the battle between Yeruslan Lazarevich and Tsar Polkan or the funeral of a cat (the most tenacious popular print plot).
It seemed that colorful pictures were immortal, but the revolution and the liquidation of illiteracy that followed it killed the popular print without resorting to censorship. The place of spiritual and amusing literature was taken by party literature, the place of icons and portraits of kings was taken by pictures cut out from magazines. Traces of graphic boldness, noisy and bright popular popular satire can be seen in the posters of the 20s and the work of Soviet cartoonists, in illustrations for Afanasyev's fairy tales and Russian epics. The mice buried the cat... but his death was imaginary.
Modern lubok is Rublev's angel on a box of sweets, a kokoshnik and a miniskirt at a fashion show, an army of "valentines" instead of a minute of love, "Orthodox" conspiracies from damage and the evil eye. Mass culture, designed for an uneducated, inattentive consumer looking for vivid emotions, simplification to the limit, blatant vulgarity.
Who and why called them "bast" - is not known. Maybe because the pictures were carved on linden boards (and the linden was then called bast), maybe because they were sold in bast boxes by the shipbuilders, or, according to the Moscow legend, then everything started from the Lubyanka - the street where the craftsmen lived. the manufacture of luboks.
It was the humorous folk pictures sold at fairs back in the 17th century until the beginning of the 20th that were considered the most massive type of fine art in Rus', although they were not taken seriously, since in the upper strata of society they categorically refused to recognize as art what common people, self-taught people created , often on gray paper, to the delight of the peasant people. Of course, few people then cared about the careful preservation of popular prints, because at that time it never occurred to anyone that the pictures that had survived to this day would become a true treasure, a real masterpiece of Russian folk art, which embodied not only folk humor and the history of ancient Russia, but also the natural talent of Russian artists, the origins of live caricature craftsmanship and colorful literary illustrativeness.
Lubok is an engraving, or print, obtained on paper from a wooden flare. Initially, the pictures were black and white and served to decorate the royal chambers and boyar mansions, but later their production became more widespread and already in color. Black-and-white prints were painted with hare feet by women near Moscow and Vladimir. Often such popular prints looked like a modern coloring of a small child, inept, hasty, illogical in color. However, among them there are a lot of pictures that scientists consider especially valuable, talking about the innate sense of color of artists, which allowed them to create completely unexpected, fresh combinations that are unacceptable with careful, detailed coloring, and therefore unique.
The subject of folk pictures is very diverse: it covers the themes of religious and moralizing, folk epic and fairy tales, historical and medical, always accompanied by an instructive or humorous text, telling about the customs and life of that time, containing folk wisdom, humor, and sometimes masterfully disguised cruel political satire.
Over time, the technique of lubok also changed. In the 19th century, the drawing began to be made not on wood, but on metal, which allowed the craftsmen to create more elegant works. The color scheme of popular prints has also changed, becoming even brighter and richer, often turning into a fantastic, unexpected riot of color. For a long time, popular prints were the spiritual food of ordinary working people, a source of knowledge and news, since there were very few newspapers, and popular prints were popular, cheap and spread throughout the country, overcoming unimaginable distances. By the end of the century, lubok creativity had exhausted itself - new pictures made in factories appeared.
Russian lubok are the creations of nameless folk craftsmen. Rapidly developing under the stigma of mediocrity and bad taste, marked by a highly educated part of Russian society, today it is recognized as a special value, it is the subject of gathering and careful study of many scientists not only in Russia, but also in foreign countries, taking its rightful place on the walls of fine art museums next to the works of the greatest masters of the past.
The mice of the cat bury their enemy and see them off - a satire on |
