Olga Davydova

Foundation GRANY Publishing Project

Olga Davydova
The Poetry of Metamorphosis. THE FLOWERS AND ORNAMENTS BY MIKHAIL VRUBEL

#3 2021 (72), Special edition "The Poetry of Metamorphosis. THE FLOWERS AND ORNAMENTS BY MIKHAIL VRUBEL"

One could begin a conversation on Mikhail Vrubel’s decorative and ornamental philosophy with the phrase “Flowers live in honeycombs, their petals picked out by sunset rays.” It is a verbal transposition summarising the images created by the artist, and also a distant echo that introduces a metaphor belonging to Charles Baudelaire into our train of thought, a metaphor that reveals, by chance, the universal nature of art: “Des fleurs se pament dans un coin.” [“Flowers swoon in a corner.”]

Olga Davydova
Broadening Horizons: Maria Yakunchikova and Symbolism

The interaction between an artist and the dominant artistic tendencies of their time - tendencies that reveal the individuality, the soul, of an age - can take different forms. The question of the self-determination of an artistic personality, and its relation to the psychologically sophisticated aesthetics of Symbolism, was one that occupied Maria Yakunchikova over the course of her mature artistic career (from about the end of the 1880s to 1902, the year of her death). A focus on Yakunchikova’s dialogue with spiritual impulses hidden in time is a logical and appropriate approach, on both the internal and external levels, especially considering that she was linked, in one way or another, with the two main phases of the development of Art Nouveau in Russia.

POINT OF VIEW

Olga Davydova
Expressive Lyrics: THE LONELY DREAMS OF BORISOV-MUSATOV. On the 150th Anniversary of the Artist's Birth

#2 2020 (67)

In the history of art, the artist’s oeuvre outlives its creator. The year 2020 has a special symbolic meaning in regard to the creative fate of one of the leading masters of the Russian Art Nouveau, Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905), as it opens and closes the path of the artist’s life with landmark dates: the 150th anniversary of his birth and the 115th anniversary of his death. These anniversaries stimulate us to not only recall and clarify the documentary aspects of the master’s biography, but also to analyse on a new level the ways in which the poetic principles of his creative thinking were manifested in his work. Considered together, the iconographic structure of Borisov-Musatov's artworks and the individual qualities of his artistic language form an authentic artistic universum, which, in accordance with the laws of symbolism, possesses its own Time and Space characteristics.

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Olga Davydova
Yury Repin - the Hermit of Penaty. BALANCING THE TIES OF FAMILY WITH ART AND RELIGION

#1 2019 (62)

Born in 1877, Yury Repin was the third child, and only son of Ilya Repin and Vera Shevtsova. By the first decade of the 20th century he had emerged as an artist in his own right, earning acclaim for his historical paintings and lyrical landscapes, and particularly as a portraitist. As his career progressed, religious themes, especially drawn from the Gospels, gradually became dominant in his work. In 1909, he moved to Kuokkala, where he ran an art school; after the revolution, he remained in exile outside Russia, close company for his father until the latter’s death in 1930. Yury Repin died in Finland in 1954: today, his work is little known, even in art history circles.

Olga Davydova
Poetry of Ornament in Alexander Golovin's Oeuvre

Papers of the International academic conference "ALEXANDER GOLOVIN AND THE CULTURE OF THE SILVER AGE" (14.10.2014 - 15.10.2014, State Tretyakov Gallery)

EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS

Olga Davydova
Alexander Golovin's Art Nouveau: Behind the Curtain of Style

№3 2014 (44)

IN 1934, IN THE GRIP OF POST-REVOLUTIONARY HARDSHIPS, WHEN ART NOUVEAU WAS ALREADY, IRREVERSIBLY, A THING OF THE PAST - PART OF A HAPPY-GO-LUCKY GONE ERA IN WHICH YOUTH HAD LIVED, AND INSPIRED DEBATES ABOUT ART UNFOLDED ON THE PAGES OF THE MAGAZINES "WORLD OF ART" AND "APOLLO", AND A ROMANTIC ARTIST'S STUDIO SOARING ABOVE THE STAGE OF THE MARIINSKY THEATRE WITNESSED "POETIC" DUELS - MIKHAIL KUZMIN WROTE IN HIS DIARY: "SPRINGTIME. EVERYTHING IS IN BLOSSOM, AND THE VIEW FROM THE WINDOW IS LIKE GOLOVIN'S BLIND MAGAZINE COVERS: THE ENTIRE SPACE IS FILLED WITH GREEN ORNAMENTS OF DIFFERENT SHADES OF COLOUR... IT IS A PLEASURE AND JOY TO WATCH HOW THE BUDS ARE OPENING, THE GRASS IS GROWING, ALL IS LIMPID, AND TWIGS ARE ELEGANT (PICTURE VERSUS COLOURATION)".