Abstract This article examines questions related to dilettantism, typically defined in negative terms as engagement in an activity without proper professional training. However, this concept can also prompt a positive association, connoting freedom from inertia, ossified techniques, and professional stereotypes and clichés. The present article contends that dilettantism is especially necessary in transitional periods of art history. At such moments, innovations may arise more readily in intimate and amateur circles, rather than in professional contexts. Such a circle developed in the 1870s-90s among the community of artists who gathered around the prominent industrialist and philanthropist Savva Mamontov, a man of diverse talents, who astutely intuited new trends in art. This group of artists came to be known as the Abramtsevo artistic circle, after the name of Mamontov’s country estate located just outside of Moscow, where the vast majority of their artistic activities took place. In Abramtsevo’s informal, creative atmosphere ideas for new aesthetic projects spontaneously materialized across a range of different artistic spheres—theater, architecture, decorative, and applied arts—in which members of the circle were essentially amateurs. But it is precisely in these areas that the artists would make their most significant contributions. Thus, the first seeds of a novel understanding of theatrical production as a single immersive entity were initially sown on the amateur stage of the Abramtsevo estate and subsequently fully blossomed in Mamontov’s Private Opera (1885-91; 1896-99), which played a foundational role in the development of Russian musical theater. The Church of the Spas nerukotvornyi [Savior Not Made by Human Hands], built by members of the Abramtsevo circle (1881-82), became the first exemplar of the Neo-Russian style in the history of Russian architecture, an important constituent of stil modern or Russian Art Nouveau. The activities of the kustar workshops in Abramtsevo—the carpentry workshop (1885) and the Abramtsevo ceramic studio (1890)—made a significant contribution to the development of the applied arts and industrial design in Russia, leading to their “rebirth” on a national level.

Just over an hour's drive from Moscow's urban sprawl, not far from the important Orthodox site of Sergiev Posad, lies the peaceful enclave and former country estate of Abramtsevo, now a state-run art and literature museum.Guarded by verdant native forest, criss-crossed by woodland paths, and blessed with myriad views, the place retains a natural charm and sanctity; among a cluster of mainly nineteenth-century buildings, a diminutive white church stands proud at its heart (fig.1).Beside the church, simple crosses (fig.2) mark the burial places of members of the Mamontov family, the last owners of the estate before the Bolshevik Revolution.Savva Ivanovich Mamontov (1841-1918) and Elizaveta Grigorievna Mamontova (née Sapozhnikova) (1847-1908)-each one a highly determined and talented artistic "entrepreneur"-had spent many happy years here with their five children (whose initials, tellingly, spell out "S A V V A").Indeed, despite its prominence and almost mythical status in the history of late nineteenth-century Russian art, Abramtsevo is as much about the people as the place.In seeking to illuminate "Abramtsevo and Its Legacies," this volume is dedicated to exploring both.

Abstract This article examines the role of the revival of majolica in the search for a national art. It argues that the reinvention of majolica and the reform of the kustar art industry were intimately linked with the rise of ethnographic research and the revitalization of vernacular culture. The Abramtsevo circle became a nucleus for both. The endeavor to revive national heritage and to encourage the handicraft industry was spearheaded by private patronage, which had largely originated from the new urban elite in Moscow. The works made in the ceramics workshop in Abramtsevo were a significant manifestation of the Neo-Russian style and emblematized the typical “Russian” handicraft objects. This article posits that the revival of majolica pursued two main goals: the manufacture of high-quality products to stimulate the art market and the creation of national “Russian” art through the use of vernacular forms. The invention of a national style was publicized at international exhibitions and through reproduction in art magazines. The painter Mikhail Vrubel, who worked in the Abramtsevo ceramics workshop from 1890 until around 1900, became a key figure in the revival of majolica.

Abstract The article describes German sculptor Georg Kolbe’s two direct engagements with Russia and its culture in the early twentieth century. The first, brief but fruitful, encounter, in 1912, the same year that Kolbe’s bronze sculpture Tänzerin (Female Dancer) was purchased by the National Gallery, was with Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes, who had returned for a second visit to Berlin. Kolbe received Vaslav Nijinsky and Tamara Karsavina in his studio; photographs and drawings of the two star dancers served as inspiration for works such as Tänzer (Dancer) and the Heinrich Heine monument in Frankfurt am Main, and also strengthened Kolbe’s interest in modern dance. The second opportunity came in 1932, when Kolbe, as a successful and established sculptor, was invited to tour the Soviet Union. In 1933, Kolbe published a brief account of his travels under the title “In einem anderen Land” (In another country); his observations, enriched with picturesque details, convey a feeling of empathy for the host country and its inhabitants. Only once does Kolbe admit to a certain discomfort with regard to the atmosphere in the Stalinist Soviet Union.

Abstract Although we have some first-hand accounts of visits by American drama critics and theater directors to the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s, with one or two exceptions we do not know much about how American visual artists gained first-hand knowledge of the works of the Russian avant-garde at this time. Tracing the surprisingly rich history of American exhibitions of Russian art in the first half of the twentieth century, this paper examines the influence of Berlin and Vienna in shaping American exhibitions and also shows how curatorial decisions often determined which artists were associated with which movements, even when these associations would later be contradicted by historical facts. Indeed, style may be said to have played a subservient role as curators strove to associate the avant-garde with spirituality or to gain public support for starving Russian artists. Nevertheless, these exhibitions did bring significant works to the attention of American artists and the American public, revealing the significance of certain artists as well as collectors and curators in shaping the American understanding of the Russian avant-garde.

Abstract This paper focuses on the provenance, conservation history, and critical fortuna of some selected Western European paintings that were placed in Saint Petersburg between 1850 and 1917. In my research, I link archival information with scientific bibliography and material data for three purposes: Firstly, I compare the two stays in Russia, in 1861 and 1862, by the German expert Gustav Friedrich Waagen with the 1865 visit to St. Petersburg of the Italian connoisseur Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle. Secondly, I investigate Cavalcaselle’s alleged meeting with the Russian expert Fedor Antonovich Bruni regarding the technique, fruition, and state of conservation of the paintings Saint Sebastian Barbarigo by Titian, Apollo and Marsyas Litta by Bronzino, and Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John, now attributed to Pontormo. Thirdly, I explore to what extend Duke of Leuchtenberg’s art gallery, Nikolai Dmitrievich Bykov’s collection, and some other private collections, among them those of Princess Kotchubey, Counts Buturlin and Stroganov, and Armenian general Lazarev, were accessible to Western scholars. The research results will enable art historians, curators, and restorers to fill in some blanks in the provenance research and conservation history of these Western masterpieces that used to enrich the Saint Petersburg art scene before the October Revolution.

This current volume of Experiment, Volume 20, entitled “Kinetic Los Angeles: Russian Émigrés in the City of Self-Transformation” (Guest Editor, Lorin Johnson) is dedicated to the contributions of Russian artists who lived and worked in Los Angeles in the fields of dance performance, visual arts, and film, exploring how the city was influenced by their presence as well as the reasons that drew them to Southern California. While many of the essays focus on the émigré community that gathered in Los Angeles during the 1930s-1940s, the investigation of “Russianness” in the city is not confined to those decades. Each essay in this volume is accompanied by photographs and illustrations which help to tell this story, many of which are previously unpublished and recently discovered in private collections and archives in the U.S. and abroad. Contributors include: Kenneth Archer, John Bowlt, Donald Bradburn, Elizabeth Durst, Lynn Garafola, Karen Goodman, Millicent Hodson, Lorin Johnson (Guest Editor), Mark Konecny, Debra Levine and Oleg Minin.