Art Attack Ateneum! ILYA REPIN: Portraits of Intelligentsia, Familia, Reina & Tsar

02-29.08.2021 ATENEUM, Helsinki 

 

ILYA REPIN (1844–1930) is prominently known as a master of psychological portrayals of people and depictions of Russian folk life, based on the liberation of serfs in 1861, as well as the intelligentsia of the era, and the rise and fall of the emperor’s absolute power and the transition to Soviet Communism in 1918. ATENEUM Finnish National Gallery has been promoting the enormous REPIN curtain on the exterior wall since April, yet due to the soft lockdown regulation and the upcoming constant UEFA football events, not until this August have I visited REPIN exhibition, which displays more than 140 masterpieces, realised by the ATENEUM and PETIT PALAIS (Musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris/Paris Musées), in collaboration with the State Tretyakov Gallery and the State Russian Museum. 

 

REPIN exhibition masters the whole third-floor galleries at ATENEUM, where Gallery 3.1 to 3.13 spanning more than 60 years of REPIN’s lifetime, categorizes into Studies & Paris, Repin the Draughtsman, Early Folk Scenes, Artist Portraits, Later Drawings, Family, Social Criticism, The Full Spectrum of Russian Culture, Portraits of Intelligentsia and Aristocracy, Challenges of the New Century, Time in Terijoki and Finland—the exhibition opens up Gallery 3.1, with width 230 x height 322 meters—Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom (1876), which Repin made his academician. Based on the Novgorod epic poem (East Slavic Bylina), Repin painted this monumental canvas work when he was a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts in France. Being an advocate for realism, Repin was aspiring to achieve maximum authenticity, studying maps of the sea world, sketching the sea-life of Normandy and touring Crystal Palace in London for the realization of Sadko, while from the comparative points of view, that literary painting conveys a touch of Art Nouveau, much exquisite in the comparison than his later {Social Criticism} or {Challenges of the New Century} era. 

 

Having been trough the turbulence of revolutions, ILYA REPIN was a prolific draughtsman of his time, Barge Haulers on the Volga 1870-73, the horizontal composition with sepia hues, depicts 11 men, juvenile or elder, hollow or fatigue, physically are at the point of collapse from exhaustion, oppressed by heavy, hot weather. This 131.5 x281 cm oil on canvas is a condemnation of profit from inhumane labor, immediately outstands after the fairy tale of Sadko in the Underwater Kingdom at Gallery 3.1, plunges head first into the very heart of the viewers’ interests and human labours’ oppressive reality.

 

Due to Repin’s continuous infatuations, his marriage with Vera Shevtsova (1855-1918) turned to the split end. Nevertheless, the portraits of four children of Repin and Shevtsova, at Gallery 3.6, pass on uncountable innocent smiles and whimsical moments, some of the family portraits, the monotone of background and the focal light focusing on the subject being gazed, are highly similar to Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring (1665). By joining the art academy group Peredvizhniki, The Wanderers, the access enable to forge the deep friendship with those distinctive individuals, Repin nearly precisely, and always honestly, captures the likeness of his sitters and the truth emotions of intelligentsia and aristocracy, from pianist Sophie Menter, Author Leo Tolstoy to Countess Natalia Golovina, conveying a believable and intimate sense of they were inside.

The success of portrait works among the intelligentsia promotes Repin into the core of political circles of Russian Emperor, yet he followed keenly the social movements of his day that sought to increase the civil rights and curtail the power of the emperor. Even though Repin supported liberal reforms, as his themes in paintings, however, the assassination of Alexander II turned the artist away from radicalism. At Gallery 3.8 {Social Criticism}, the touch and the techniques on canvas of Annual Memorial Meeting Near the Wall of the Communards of the Cemetery of Père Lachaise in Paris (1883) reminds me of the impressionism masterpiece The Rue Montorgueil 30th of June 1878 by Claude Monet (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), and Repin’s Before the Confessions (1879-85) rediscover the focal lightening of any Rembrandt’s self-portraits. Repin recorded the emotional tension between revolutionaries and the complacent populace is palpable in his paintings, which are also ambiguous in that it is difficult to tell whether whth which side the artist himself stands for, just as Vincent Van Gogh commented on Rembrandt—that the painting goes so deep into the mysterious that there are no words in any language—a genre of literary justice called ‘Repin criticism’. 

 

At Gallery 3.9 {The Full Spectrum of Russian Culture} the enormous paintings such as Zaporozhian Cossacks Writing a Mocking Letter to the Turkish Sultan (1880-91; 203 x 358cm), was received with unalloyed enthusiasm, whereas Religious Procession in the Kursk Governorate (1881-83; 175 x280cm) awakened resentment. The environment of Kursk shows a seething, huddled mass attending the annual Eastern Orthodox religious procession, which carries the icon Our Lady of Kursk. Using the horizontal composition, behind the Orthodox priests, follow a crowd of peasants, beggars and cripples, police, military officers and provincial elite. The painting is a continuation of Repin’s social criticism and highlights perceived abuses by both church and state of Russia. According to art critic Vladimir Stasov, this painting presented viewers with “Russia in all her glory and everyday misery”. The most interesting is, that right next to the huge scale of Kursk, the curator of ATENEUM displays a zoom portrait of a disabled young man, who is, the exact the same character at the front row of fellowship of Religious Procession in the Kursk Governorate, as if the curators try to show to the viewers, that under Repin’s lenses, the unknown citizen still tells a part of difficult history by his own way. 

The decline of the Russian emperor’s authority ultimately led to the revolutions in 1917, and the new trend of neo-romantic art society began undermining Repin’s position as a pioneer of realism. Repin responded to those challenges by renewing his style in a more spontaneous direction, making use at times of intense impressionistic brush strokes and thick layering to convey emotional impact. At Gallery 3.11, Demonstration on October 17, 1905 (1907-11) owns surprisingly similarity of Georges Seurat ‘s (1859-91) neo-impressionism technique—that some tiny juxtaposed dots of multi-colored paint allow the viewer’s eye to blend colors optically, rather than having the colors physically blended on the canvas.

 

The final years of Repin’s timeline resides at Terijoki, Finland where the artist remained an émigré and forged ties with the local art world. From Gallery 3.9 to 3.13, where exhibit most of Repin’s social circles in Finland, and in recognition of which a gala dinner in his honour was held in Helsinki. The viewers even witness several unfinished, under process paintings deliver the unconditional circumstances that even the great master must give in—the death. Repin remained eternally in the yard of his studio home in Kuokkala, near Jyväskylä, Finland. 

 

REPIN Exhibition follows the artist’s timeline to express the chronicle of art creation of a master, and the information panel of each painting is in detailed knowledge. Among the larger galleries, the tiny hallways creatively display Repin’s sketches, showing the different media and styles that Repin adapted. The very unfortunate were, that due to the limited opening time, the queuing and the reservation regulation differ day by day, at my last attempt in late August, by showing the museum card did not allow my entrance. Secondly, REPIN exhibition perhaps is not the ideal occasion to take the kids aged under 15, the infant in some parents’ arms will only cause the most unpleasant experience to every single individual in the quiet gallery.