Splint
Due to its intelligibility and focus on the “broad masses,” the popular print was used as a means of propaganda (for example, “flying leaflets” during the Peasant War and the Reformation in Germany, popular prints during the French Revolution).
In Germany, picture factories were located in Cologne, Munich, Neuruppin; in France - in the city of Troyes. In Europe, books and pictures with obscene content are widespread, for example, “Tableau de l’amur conjual” (Picture conjugal love). “Seductive and immoral pictures” were imported to Russia from France and Holland.
German amusing sheets were sold in Vegetable Row, and later on Spassky Bridge.
Censorship and bans
The plots and drawings were borrowed from foreign Almanacs and Calendars. At the beginning of the 19th century, plots were borrowed from the novels and stories of Goethe, Radcliffe, Cotten, Chateaubriand and other writers.
Types of splints
- Spiritual and religious - In the Byzantine style. Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, moral teachings, songs, etc.
- Philosophical.
- Legal - depictions of trials and legal actions. The following subjects were often encountered: “Shemyakin trial” and “Ruff Ershovich Shchetinnikov”.
- Historical - “Touching stories” from the chronicles. Image historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
- Fairy tales - magical tales, heroic tales, “Tales of Daring People”, everyday tales.
- Holidays - images of saints.
- Cavalry - popular prints with images of horsemen.
- Joker - amusing popular prints, satires, caricatures, babbles.
Production of splints
One of the first Russian figure factories arose in Moscow in mid-17th century I century. The factory belonged to the merchants Akhmetyev. There were 20 machines at the factory.
19th century
Major General Alexander Seslavin. Historical popular print from the 19th century
IN mid-19th centuries, large figured printing houses operate in Moscow: Akhmetyev, Loginova, Shchurov, Chizhov, Kudryakov, Rudnev, Florov, Lavrentieva, Sharapova, Kirilova, Morozov, Streltsov, Yakovleva.
Sytin's first lithographic popular prints were called: Peter the Great raises a healthy cup for his teachers; how Suvorov plays grandmas with the village children; how our Slavic ancestors were baptized in the Dnieper and overthrew the idol of Perun. Sytin began to involve professional artists in the production of popular prints. For signatures on popular prints they used folk songs, poetry famous poets. In 1882, an art exhibition took place in Moscow. Lubki Sytin received a diploma and a bronze medal at the exhibition.
I. D. Sytin collected boards from which popular prints were printed for about 20 years. The collection, worth several tens of thousands of rubles, was destroyed during a fire in Sytin's printing house during the 1905 Revolution.
The evolution of the development of Russian popular print
See also
Notes
Literature
- Lubok, M., 1968
- Folk picture of the 17th-19th centuries, collection. art., ed. Dmitry Bulanin, 1996
- Rovinsky D. A., Russian folk pictures, St. Petersburg, 1881
- Anatoly Rogov“Pantry of Joy”, Moscow, ed. Enlightenment, 1982
- Ivan Snegirev Popular prints of the Russian people in the Moscow world. Moscow. In University type, 1861
- Mikhail Nikitin. On the history of the study of Russian popular print // Soviet art history. 1986. Issue 20. P.399-419
- Yurkov S. From the popular print to the “Jack of Diamonds”: grotesque and anti-behavior in the “primitive” culture // Yurkov S. E. Under the sign of the grotesque: anti-behavior in Russian culture (XI-early XX centuries). SPb., 2003, p. 177-187
- Splint- article from the Great Soviet Encyclopedia
Links
| Portal "Russian Empire" | |
| Splint on Wikimedia Commons | |
| Project "Art" |
- Russian hand-drawn popular print of the late 18th - early 19th centuries From the collection of the State Historical Museum
Lubok is, in fact, an engraving printed from a wooden base, and later from a metal one. The origin of lubok comes from China, from where it later reached Europe. Of course, in each country this type of art had its own name and characteristics.
Where the name “lubok” came from is not known for certain. There are many versions: they remember the linden (bast) boards on which the first pictures were cut out, and the bast boxes of traders who sold bast prints at fairs, and Muscovites are completely sure that the bast prints came from the Lubyanka. Nevertheless, lubok is the most popular art of the Russian people from the 17th to the 20th centuries.
At first black and white and “elite”, which served to decorate the royal and boyar chambers, later Russian lubok became widespread and colored. The black and white print was painted by women, and they used hare's feet instead of brushes. These “coloring books” were often clumsy and sloppy, but among them there are also real small masterpieces with harmoniously selected colors.
The subjects of the popular print were distinguished by a rich variety: this and folk epic, and fairy tales, and moral teachings, these are “notes” on history, law and medicine, these are religious topics - and everything is well seasoned with humorous captions telling about the morals of their time. For the people, these were both news sheets and educational sources. Lubki often traveled vast distances, passing from hand to hand.
Popular prints were printed on cheap paper by self-taught people, and they were wildly popular among the peasants. Although the highest nobility did not recognize popular art as art and no one was specifically concerned with preserving these drawings for posterity, moreover, the authorities and the church elite tried every now and then to ban it. This popular print is now considered a real treasure, preserving the history of Rus' and folk humor, nurturing true caricature talents and becoming the source of book illustration. And, of course, the popular print is the direct ancestor of modern comics.
Graphics
Splint- a type of graphics, an image with a caption, characterized by simplicity and accessibility of images. It was made using the techniques of woodcuts, copper engravings, lithographs and was supplemented with hand coloring.
Popular prints are characterized by simplicity of technique and laconism of visual means. Often the popular print contains a detailed narrative with explanatory inscriptions and additional (explanatory, complementary) images to the main one.
The most ancient popular prints are known in China. Until the 8th century, they were drawn by hand. Starting from the 8th century, the first popular prints made in wood engraving are known. Lubok appeared in Europe in the 15th century. Early European popular prints are characterized by the woodcut technique. Copper engraving and lithography are added later.
Due to its intelligibility and focus on the “broad masses,” the popular print was used as a means of propaganda (for example, “flying leaflets” during the Peasant War and the Reformation in Germany, popular prints during the French Revolution).
In Germany, factories for the production of pictures were located in Cologne, Munich, Neuruppin; in France - in the city of Troyes. In Europe, books and pictures with obscene content are widespread, for example, “Tableau de l'amur conjual” (Picture of Married Love). “Seductive and immoral pictures” were imported to Russia from France and Holland.
Russian lubok of the 18th century is distinguished by its consistent composition.
Eastern lubok (China, India) is distinguished by its bright colors.
IN late XIX century, the popular print was revived in the form of comics.
IN Russia XVI century - early 17th century, prints were sold that were called "Fryazh sheets", or “German amusing sheets”. In Russia, drawings were printed on specially sawn boards. The boards were called lube (where the deck comes from). Drawings, drawings, and plans have been written on luba since the 15th century. In the 17th century, painted bast boxes became widespread. Later, paper pictures were called lubok, lubok picture.
Initially plots for popular prints there were handwritten legends, life books, “fatherly writings,” and oral legends.
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IN Russian state The first popular prints (which existed as works of anonymous authors) were printed at the beginning of the 17th century in the printing house of the Kiev Pechersk Lavra. The craftsmen hand-cut both the picture and the text on a smooth-planed, polished linden board, leaving the text and the lines of the drawing convex. Next, using a special leather pillow - matzo - black paint was applied to the drawing from a mixture of burnt hay, soot and boiled linseed oil. A sheet of damp paper was placed on top of the board and the whole thing was pressed together into the press of the printing press. The resulting print was then hand-colored in one or more colors (this type of work, often assigned to women, was in some areas called “nose-daubing”—coloring based on contours).
The earliest popular print found in the East Slavic region is considered to be the icon of the Dormition of the Virgin Mary from 1614–1624.
In Moscow, the distribution of popular prints began from the royal court. In 1635, for the 7-year-old Tsarevich Alexei Mikhailovich, so-called “printed sheets” were purchased in the Vegetable Row on Red Square, after which the fashion for them came to the boyar mansions, and from there to the middle and lower strata of the townspeople, where the popular print gained recognition and popularity around the 1660s.
At the end of the 17th century, a Fryazhsky printing mill was installed in the Upper (Court) printing house for printing Fryazhian sheets. In 1680, craftsman Afanasy Zverev cut “all sorts of Fryazhian cuttings” on copper boards for the Tsar.
Among the main genres of popular prints, at first there was only the religious one. In the wake of the beginning of the split of the Russian Orthodox Church into Old Believers and Nikonians, both opposing sides began to print their own sheets and their own paper icons. Images of saints on paper sheets were sold in abundance at the Spassky Gate of the Kremlin and in the Vegetable Row of the Moscow market.
In 1674, Patriarch Joachim, in a special decree on people, “by cutting on boards, they print on paper sheets of holy icons images... which do not have the slightest resemblance to the original faces, but only cause reproach and dishonor,” he banned the production of popular print sheets “not for the veneration of images of saints, but for beauty”. At this he commanded “so that icons of saints are not printed on paper sheets and sold in rows”. However, by that time, not far from Red Square, on the corner of Sretenka and modern. On Rozhdestvensky Boulevard, the Pechatnaya Sloboda was already founded, where not only printers lived, but also carvers of popular prints. The name of this craft even gave the name to one of the central streets of Moscow - Lubyanka, as well as the neighboring square. Later, the areas of settlement of popular print craftsmen multiplied; a church near Moscow, now located within the city, “Assumption in Pechatniki” retained the name of the production (as did “Trinity in Sheets” in the composition architectural ensemble Sretensky Monastery).
Among the artists who worked on the production of engraving bases for these popular prints were the famous masters of the Kiev-Lvov typographic school of the 17th century. – Pamva Berynda, Leonty Zemka, Vasily Koren, Hieromonk Elijah. Prints of their works were hand-colored in four colors: red, purple, yellow, green. Thematically, all the popular prints they created were of religious content, but biblical heroes were often depicted on them in Russian folk clothes(like Cain plowing the ground on Vasily Koren’s popular print).
Gradually, among popular prints, in addition to religious subjects (scenes from the lives of saints and the Gospel), illustrations for Russian fairy tales, epics, translated knightly novels (about Bova Korolevich, Eruslan Lazarevich), and historical tales (about the founding of Moscow, the Battle of Kulikovo) appeared.
Thanks to such printed “amusing sheets”, details of peasant labor and life of pre-Petrine times are now being reconstructed (“Old Agathon weaves bast shoes, and his wife Arina spins threads”), scenes of plowing, harvesting, logging, baking pancakes, rituals of the family cycle - births, weddings , funeral. Thanks to them, the history of everyday Russian life was filled real images household utensils and hut furnishings. Ethnographers still use these sources, restoring lost scripts for folk festivals, round dances, fair events, details and tools of rituals (for example, fortune telling). Some images of Russian popular prints of the 17th century. came into use for a long time, including the image of the “ladder of life”, on which each decade corresponds to a certain “step” (“The first step of this life is played in a carefree game...”).
At the same time, the obvious shortcomings of the early popular prints - the lack of spatial perspective, their naivety - were compensated for by the accuracy of the graphic silhouette, the balance of the composition, the laconicism and maximum simplicity of the image.
Peter I saw the popular print as a powerful means of propaganda. In 1711, he founded a special engraving chamber in St. Petersburg, where he gathered the best Russian draftsmen who had been trained by Western masters. In 1721, he issued a decree ordering supervision of the production of popular prints of royalty, with the requirement that popular prints should not be released from state control. From 1724, popular prints in St. Petersburg, by his decree, began to be printed from copper plates using the woodcut method. These were panoramas of the city, images of victorious battles, portraits of the king and his entourage. In Moscow, however, printing from wooden boards continued. Products were no longer sold only “on Spassky Bridge”, but also in all major “rows and on the streets”; popular prints were transported to many provincial cities.
A decree of March 20, 1721 prohibited the sale “on Spassky Bridge and in other places in Moscow, composed by people of various ranks... prints (sheets) printed arbitrarily, except for the printing house”. The Izugraphic Chamber was created in Moscow. The Chamber issued permission to print popular prints “unwillingly, except for the printing house.” Over time, this decree was no longer enforced. Appeared large number low-quality images of Saints. Therefore, by decree of October 18, 1744, it was ordered “to submit the drawings in advance to the diocesan bishops for approval”.
The decree of January 21, 1723 demanded “Imperial personages can be skillfully painted, as evidenced by the good skill of the painters, with all danger and diligent care.”. Therefore, in popular prints there are no images of reigning persons.
Initially, the subjects for popular prints were handwritten tales, life books, “fatherly writings,” oral tales, articles from translated newspapers (for example, “Chimes”), etc.
Thematically, St. Petersburg and Moscow popular prints began to differ noticeably. Those made in St. Petersburg resembled official prints, while those in Moscow were mocking and sometimes not very decent depictions of the adventures of silly heroes (Savoska, Paramoshka, Thomas and Erem), favorite folk festivals and amusements (Bear with a Goat, Daring Fellows - Glorious Fighters, Bear Hunter stabbing, Hare hunting). Such pictures entertained rather than edified or taught the viewer.
Variety of themes of Russian popular prints of the 18th century. continued to grow. An evangelical theme was added to them (for example, the Parable of the Prodigal Son), while the church authorities tried not to let the publication of such sheets out of their control. In 1744, the Holy Synod issued instructions on the need to carefully check all popular prints of religious content, which was the church’s reaction to the lack of control visual styles and subjects of popular prints. Thus, on one of them a repentant sinner was depicted at a coffin with a skeleton. The caption read “I cry and sob when I think about death!”, but the image was framed by a cheerful multi-colored wreath, leading the viewer to think not about the frailty of existence, but about its joy. On such popular prints, even demons were depicted as good-natured, like trained bears; they did not frighten, but rather made people laugh.
At the same time, in Moscow, deprived of the title of capital by Peter, anti-government popular prints began to spread. Among them are images of a cheeky cat with a huge mustache, similar in appearance to Tsar Peter, the Chukhon Baba Yaga - an allusion to the native of Chukhonia (Livonia or Estonia) Catherine I. The court criticized the plot of Shemyakin judicial practice and red tape, which were never overcome in the century after the introduction of the Council Code (since 1649). Thus, the popular satirical popular print laid the foundation for Russian political caricature and visual satire.
From the first half of the 18th century. The existence of calendar (Bruce's calendar) began, with the second - biographical (Biography of the famous fabulist Aesop) popular prints.
In St. Petersburg they published in the form of popular prints geographical maps, plans, drawings. In all cities and provinces, sheets of Moscow production, reproducing everyday and educational maxims on love theme (Ah, black eye, kiss at least once, take the rich one, he will reproach. Take a good one, a lot of people will know it. If you take the smart one, he won’t let you say a word...). Elderly buyers preferred edifying pictures about the benefits of moral family life(I am obligated to take care of my wife and children during the rest period).
Humorous and satirical sheets with literary texts containing short stories or fairy tales have gained real popularity. On them, the viewer could find something that had never happened in life: “a fireproof man,” “the peasant girl Marfa Kirillova, who stayed under the snow for 33 years and remained unharmed,” strange creatures with clawed paws, a snake tail and a human bearded face, allegedly “found in Spain on the banks of the Uler River on January 27, 1775.”
The “folk grotesque” is considered to be the incredible things and all sorts of miracles depicted on popular prints of that time. Thus, it was in popular prints that old women and elders, once inside the mill, turned into young women and brave men, wild animals hunted down hunters, children swaddled and cradled their parents. Popular print “shifters” are known - a bull that became a man and hung a butcher by the leg on a hook, and a horse that chases its rider. Among the “shifters” on the gender theme are lonely women looking for “nobody’s” men in the trees, who somehow ended up there; strong women who take men's pants, who fight with each other for gentlemen that no one gets.
Based on illustrations for translated adventure stories, song lyrics, aphoristic expressions, anecdotes, “oracle predictions” and interpretations of dream books in popular prints of the 18th century. one can judge the moral, moral and religious ideals of the people of that time. Russian popular prints condemned revelry, drunkenness, adultery, ill-gotten wealth, and praised the defenders of the Fatherland. In St. Petersburg, pictures with stories about remarkable events in the world were sold in large quantities. Thus, the whale caught in the White Sea, the miracle of the forest and the miracle of the sea repeated the reports of the newspaper “St. Petersburg Vedomosti”. During the successful battles of the Seven Years' War (1756–1763), pictures were created with images of domestic mounted and foot grenadiers, with portraits of famous commanders. Many popular prints with scenes of victorious battles appeared during the period Russian-Turkish wars 1768–1774 and 1787–1791. Thus, the St. Petersburg lubok became a kind of illustrated newspaper for a wide circle of illiterate readers.
Epic heroes in popular prints they were often depicted at the moment of their triumph over an opponent. Tsar Alexander the Great - during his victory over the Indian king Porus, Eruslan Lazarevich - who defeated the seven-headed dragon. Ilya of Muromets was depicted as having struck the Nightingale the Robber with an arrow, and Ilya resembled Tsar Peter I, and the Nightingale resembled the Swedish king Charles XII, who was crushed by him. Popular print series about a Russian soldier defeating all enemies were also very popular.
Wandering from workshop to workshop, the ideas and themes of popular prints acquired innovations while maintaining their originality. By the end of the 18th century, the main distinctive feature popular print sheets - an inextricable unity of graphics and text. Sometimes the inscriptions began to be included in the composition of the drawing, making up part of it, more often they turned into the background, and sometimes they simply bordered the image. Typical for popular prints was the division of the plot into separate “frames” (similar to hagiographic “stamps” on ancient Russian icons), accompanied by corresponding text. Sometimes, as on icons, the text was located inside the stamps. The graphic monumentality of flat figures surrounded by lush decorative elements - grass, flowers and various small details, forcing modern viewers to recall the classic frescoes of Yaroslavl and Kostroma masters 17th century, lasted as the basis of the popular style until the very end of the 18th century.
In 1822, the young Moscow scientist I. Snegirev began collecting and studying folk pictures, but when he invited members of the Society Russian literature their report on them, they doubted whether it could be subject to scientific consideration “such a vulgar and vulgar subject as is left to the lot of the rabble”. A different title was proposed for the report on popular prints – On Common Folk Images. Evaluation of this type folk art turned out to be quite gloomy: “The bruise of a popular print is rude and even ugly, but the commoner has become accustomed to it, as with the usual cut of his gray caftan or with a fur coat made from homemade sheepskin.”. However, Snegirev had followers, among them was D.A. Rovinsky, who became the largest collector of popular prints and then donated his collection to the Rumyantsev Museum in Moscow.
Thematically, criticism of rich, greedy, vain people began to occupy an increasingly significant place in popular literature. The sheets known since the 18th century, The Frantic and the Corrupt Frantic, The Briber-Usurer, The Rich Man's Dream, took on a new meaning. Lubki graphically criticized officials, landowners, and representatives of the clergy (petition of the Kalyazin monks).
In 1822, police censorship was introduced for the printing of popular prints. Some popular prints were banned and the boards were destroyed. In 1826, by censorship regulations, all prints (and not just popular prints) were subject to review by censorship.
In 1839, during the period of strict censorship regulations (called “cast iron” by contemporaries), popular print publications were also subject to censorship. However, the government’s attempts to stop their production did not bring any results, among them was the order of the Moscow authorities in 1851 to transfer all the copper boards in the “old capital” to bells. When it became clear to the authorities that it was impossible to ban the development of this form of folk art, a struggle began to turn lubok into an instrument of exclusively state and church propaganda. At the same time, the schismatic (Old Believer) lubok was banned by Nicholas I in 1855, and the monasteries themselves on Vyg and Lex were closed by the same decree. Lubok editions of short lives of Russian saints, paper icons, views of monasteries, Gospels in pictures began to be printed on a single basis approved by the church authorities and were distributed free of charge among the people “to strengthen the faith.”
In the last third of the 19th century, when chromolithography (printing in several colors) appeared, which further reduced the cost of popular print production, strict censorship control was established over each picture. The new popular print began to focus on official art and the themes it posed. The true, old popular print as a form of fine folk art has almost ceased to exist.
Popular sheets as independent graphic works ceased to be produced in Russia in 1918, when all printing became state-owned and came under unified ideological control. However, the genre of lubok, that is, sheets with pictures understandable to the common people, influenced the creativity of many Soviet artists. His influence can be found in the history-making fine arts posters of the 1920s “Windows of ROSTA”. It was this influence that made popular the early Soviet posters, made in the spirit of popular prints - “Capital” by V.I. Denis (1919), which criticized the imperialist oligarchy, as well as “Have you signed up as a volunteer?” and “Wrangel is still alive” by D.S. Moore, calling for the defense of the Fatherland. Mayakovsky and M. Cheremnykh specifically looked for opportunities to strengthen artistic expressiveness these “Soviet lubok” (Soviet propaganda art). Images of popular print sheets were used in the poetic works of Demyan Bedny, S. Yesenin, S. Gorodetsky.
During the Great Patriotic War, lubok as a type of folk graphics was again used by the Kukryniksy. Evil caricatures of fascist leaders (Hitler, Goebbels) were accompanied by texts of poignant front-line ditties that ridiculed “squinty Hitler” and his henchmen.
Types of splints
- Spiritual and religious- In the Byzantine style. Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, moral teachings, songs, etc.
- Philosophical- about the existence of life, relationships between people, about the nature of things, about the universe, etc.
- Legal- images of trials and judicial actions, sentences, torture, executions, etc.
- Historical- “Touching stories” from the chronicles. Image of historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
- Fabulous- fairy tales of magic, heroic tales, “Tales of Daring People”, everyday tales.
- Holidays- holiday pictures, images of saints.
- Joker- funny popular prints, satires, caricatures, babbles.
- Secret, dirty- about love pleasures, perversion, sodomy, dissent and other depravity.
Technology for making splints
Engravers were called “Fryazhian carving masters” (in contrast to Russian “ordinary” woodcarvers). In Moscow at the end of the 16th century, the first engraver was supposedly Andronik Timofeev Nevezha.
Signing was called drawing and painting. Around the 16th (or 17th) century, marking was divided into marking and engraving. The flag bearer drew the design, and the engraver cut it out on a board or metal.
Copying boards was called translation. The boards were initially linden, then maple, pear and palm.
The lubok was made in the following way: the artist made a pencil drawing on a linden board (lubo), then using a knife to make indentations using this drawing in those places that should remain white. A board smeared with paint under a press left black outlines of the picture on the paper. Printed in this way on cheap gray paper were called simple paintings. The simpletons were taken to special artels. In the 19th century, in villages near Moscow and Vladimir, there were special artels that were engaged in coloring popular prints. Women and children were busy painting popular prints. Later, a more advanced method of producing popular prints appeared, and engravers appeared. Using a thin cutter on copper plates, they engraved the design with hatching, with all the small details, which was impossible to do on a linden board. The method of coloring the paintings remained the same. The artel workers accepted orders from popular publishers to color hundreds of thousands of copies. One person painted up to one thousand popular prints per week - they paid one ruble for such work. The profession was called florist. The profession disappeared after the advent of lithographic machines.
Types of splints
- ?Spiritual and religious - In the Byzantine style.
- ?Icon type images. Lives of saints, parables, moral teachings, songs, etc.
- ?Philosophical.
- ?Legal - depictions of trials and legal actions. The following subjects were often encountered: “Shemyakin trial” and “Ruff Ershovich Shchetinnikov”.
- ?Historical - “Touching stories” from the chronicles. Image of historical events, battles, cities. Topographic maps.
- ?Fairy tales - magical tales, heroic tales, “Tales of Daring People”, everyday tales.
- ?Holidays - images of saints.
- ?Cavalry - popular prints with images of horsemen.
- ?Caroler - amusing popular prints, satires, caricatures, babbles.
Popular prints
The first thing that catches your eye when you carefully examine the Russian folk pictures, this is a completely different attitude towards other types of art than in the engraving genre that has become independent. The connection between popular print and theater is especially organic.
The artistic space of the popular print sheet is organized in a special way, orienting viewers to spatial experiences not of a pictorial and graphic type, but of a theatrical type. This is indicated, first of all, by the motif of the footlights and theatrical curtains-drapes that form the frame of many engraved sheets. Thus, the sheets of the comedy by Simeon of Polotsk “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” - a popular print book engraved by the master M. Nekhoroshevsky - reproduce a scene with actors, framed by the wings: on top - by a theatrical outline, and below - by a ramp with lighting bowls. The row of spectators' heads, depicted below, on the border between the drawing and the text, eliminates any doubt that the engraving reproduces the theatrical space.
The depiction of a scene creates a fundamentally different artistic effect than a drawing, which the viewer relates directly to some reality. Being the image of an image, it creates a heightened measure of conventionality. The image, becoming a sign of a sign, transports the viewer into a special, playful “reality”.
We do not find such a complete and demonstrative revelation of the theatrical nature of the image as in “The Parable of the Prodigal Son” in other sheets. However, the fair-booth-theatrical essence of the popular print is repeatedly revealed in the design of the picture frame, often stylized as a curtain or backstage.
However, theatrical framing is not the only or even the main sign of the special “playful” nature of popular prints. Among the most significant, one should point out the attraction of the splint to the mask. It is no coincidence that the mask of a comic character from Italian comedy through Callot's engravings, which also have a dual graphic-theatrical nature (although it is possible that the direct influence of the Italian theater, which systematically toured St. Petersburg in the mid-18th century and was one of the powerful conductors of Baroque culture in Russia), took such deep roots in Russian lubok . We are talking specifically about a special theatrical world, and not just about reproducing conventional types of Callot's engravings. Russian lubok does not simply imitate a type of mask or clothing, but reproduces clownish behavior. This reveals the audience’s orientation towards the dynamic perception of the popular print.
A large place in Russian popular prints is occupied by satire on the life and customs of that time.
In a painted popular print, the main thing is the emotional impact, the important components of which are color, skillful ornament, and patterning, although the artists themselves probably considered the plot to be the main thing for themselves.
Amusing and festive subjects and images were the most common in Russian popular print throughout the two and a half centuries of its existence, and some sheets even lived throughout this entire period without aging or repeating themselves in dozens of new versions: buffoons sitting on pigs, goats and roosters with hooters and bagpipes, they are also mummers in taverns, “The bear and the goat are chilling, having fun with their music”, Maslenitsa festivities, bear performances, songs, fables, the adventures of the jesters Thomas and Erema.
Everyday subjects are quite popular in popular prints. They present folk entertainment in Moscow during the seventh week and Maslenitsa, with drunkenness, gluttony, dancing, skating and fist fights, drunkenness and tavern revelry. Images of singing and dancing to the sounds of folk instruments.
There is, for example, such a huge popular print - “The Meal of the Pious and the Wicked” (Appendix A, Fig. 8). It is glued together from four parts and depicts a two-story quaint tower in cross-section, in which two companies are eating. One is upstairs, in the small room, and the people there have lean faces, boring poses - these are pious ones. So pious that the cunning angel ran away from them down to the wicked, seated at a long carved table. These people have a real feast, real fun. In the entryway, a violinist and a bagpiper are playing, mischievous devils are spinning.
The mood of “The Meal” is sunny, playful, and therefore it is not immediately noticeable that the entire composition of the lubok and its fancy tower are almost entirely repeated by many Russian icons of the Novgorod-Stroganov type, which almost always depict the same fabulous, richly decorated chambers in section. And the characters in it are interpreted in an iconographic way, and the main details are the same, and even the appearance of the devils. But the task of the popular print is the opposite of that of any icon: to cheer a person.
The common people have a special attitude towards big holidays with festivities and games. In Russia, one hundred and forty days were considered holidays, more than a third of the year, and the largest of them, with festivities and games, came from pagan times. The Church, without overcoming them, simply “tied” each one to one of its Christian dates. In the old days, buffoons ruled at such festivals.
“At the games, a person seemed to be freed from the shackles that bound him in everyday life, and became free, became himself, forgetting the king and God, and with them everything that they tried to instill in him in the church with such enviable consistency.”
Lubok in his countless “Festivities”, “Jesters” and “Buffoons” brought the same thing to the common Russian person.
The so-called portraits of epic and fairy-tale literary characters were illuminated with special love: Ilya Muromets (Appendix A, Fig. 9), Alyosha Popovich (Appendix A, Fig. 6), Eruslan Lazarevich, Bova Korolevich, Tsar Saltan Saltanovich, brave knights Franzil Vintsian , Petra Golden Keys, Queens Magilena and Druzhnevna.
Such “portraits” were extremely popular among the people and were produced in huge quantities, and in only two versions: heroes, generals and kings riding on rearing horses with spears and swords in their hands either rushed towards the enemy, or were already crushing him, and the knights and princesses most often stood facing the viewer, both in their hands and near there were flowers at his feet, and sometimes palaces could be seen behind him. Each hero is brightly painted and patterned. The colorful richness and pattern are extraordinary, and at the same time everything is subtly harmonized.
Unknown artists made lubok portraits a repository of deeply popular aesthetic ideals, a repository of a deeply popular understanding of the strength, dignity and beauty of man and the beauty of fine art. They made them the main educators of the artistic tastes of the working masses.
These popular prints clearly show how sensitive folk artists were always to the successes of other arts, including urban ones, and how they did not hesitate to borrow from them everything that helped make their own works even brighter and more expressive. They dressed most of the heroes of these “portraits” according to the then urban fashion, which was very elegant. The most advantageous elements of Baroque and Classicism were used in the compositions, furnishings and ornaments, without disturbing the traditional character of the popular prints.
Educational popular prints were distinguished by great depth and breadth for those times. On four full sheets, compiled together, it was narrated, for example, about “States and lands and noble islands and in which parts live what people and their faiths, and customs, and that in which land will be born...”
One reading in this work was enough for a dozen evenings, but there are still numerous pictures to look at; what kind of Asia, Africa, Europe or the fourth part they are, which is called New America, not in distant years, the Germans were found from the Spanish and French with illiterate people, and with gold and silver ore, and from these islands those Germans became greatly enriched and built cities and called the fourth part a new land and added it to those three parts ... "
And there were popular prints about individual cities. About the choice of brides. About how they affect a person different colors. About famous battles of past centuries, about Patriotic War 1812. About Russian holidays and rituals. About how the hardware went. About all kinds of animals and birds. About the benefits of steam rooms.
This interesting fact is known: Andrei Timofeevich Bolotov in his “Notes” tells an episode from his childhood: having arrived home in the village, he wanted to explain to his illiterate mother what he had learned from history; for this purpose, the boy painted for her “on a whole sheet of paper, Bova the prince or an ancient knight on a horse in his full armor and in military armor.”
Popular prints with views of churches and images of saints were published by monasteries and distributed among pilgrims.
The government used popular prints for widespread propaganda.
Belief in fortune telling in Russia was almost as strong in wide circles population, as in ancient Rus', and popular prints in the form of various fortune-telling books, dream books, and calendars were in wide circulation.
The Russian lubok was not only a magnificent original art, not only decorated the homes of the common people and made him happy, but also served him as a truly extensive encyclopedia, from where he drew all his basic knowledge, which was quite significant for his time.
They valued popular prints very much. In Nekrasov’s work “Who Lives Well in Rus'” about Yakim Nogoy
There was an incident with him: pictures
He bought it for his son
Hung them on the walls
And he himself is no less than a boy
I loved looking at them.
God's disfavor has come
The village caught fire -
And it was at Yakimushka’s
accumulated over a century
Thirty-five rubles.
I’d rather take the rubles,
And first he showed pictures
He started tearing it off the wall...
And then the hut collapsed...
… “Oh, brother Yakim! Not cheap
The pictures worked!
But to a new hut
Hung them up, I suppose?
Hung it up - there are new ones -
Yakim said - and fell silent...
There was never any grief, crying or whining in the Russian popular print. He only dedicated, only amused and denounced. He always denounced them mischievously and sarcastically, with a sense of great moral superiority over those who considered themselves masters of life. He strengthened the people’s faith in their strength, in the joy of life and inevitable victory by all means available to him. ordinary people over all evil and untruth.
Thus, everyday popular prints preserved the features of Russian for subsequent generations. life XVIII century in its holidays and everyday life, keeping not only general outlines, but even a number of small details. The thoughts of the artist and writer could find complete expression here, unfettered by any shackles.
Ofeni and their role in the spread of lubok
Ofeni - traveling merchants - carried the pictures around villages and towns. They sold only printed goods. Some had horses, but most walked along Russian roads. Ofeni reached the Pacific Ocean, to Guryev, to the Caucasus and the mouth of the Pechora. And all with one bast box over their shoulders and a strong stick in their hands. From this box, made of wooden bast, it is as if the pictures also began to be called. And others claim that from Moscow Lubyanka Street, where there was once a large trade in wooden (bast) products, and then there was a tavern in which the women made their deals with the owners of the seals.
In villages, ofeni were usually welcomed as the most welcome guests. They didn’t take money for “grub” and lodging, they knew that they would reward them with pictures. And they will rest, lay out their goods on the table and on the benches, and in a day or two the whole village, young and old, will be in such a hut. And each of them has their own conversation.
The ABC book and fairy tales will be shown to the children, the letters will be explained: “az”, “buki”, “vedi”, “verb”, “good”... The price for a colorful picture was not much - half a penny, but you can also bring a couple of eggs or dried mushrooms , or a bit of homespun canvas - everyone took ofeni.
Here you will find personified a dogma, a prayer, a getya (legend), a moral teaching, a parable, a fairy tale, a proverb, a song, in a word, everything that suits the spirit, disposition and taste of our common people. THEM. Snegirev
There are words whose meaning is lost or distorted irrevocably over time. In the time of Pushkin, the square was called a stadium; it was not called a “bruise”. drinking woman, but a teacher in a girls' gymnasium, the scores were settled not in a fight, but in a bench with the help of a mechanical device - an abacus. The word “lubok” has also changed its meaning – now it means a rough, tacky, vulgar craft. And once upon a time, hand-printed sheets of cliches carved on linden boards were folk literature.
Lubok "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 Gospels, lives of saints, military manuals, 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 pound of honey cost 41 kopecks). An educated person could read 50–100 books in his life, but as a rule he limited himself to the Psalter and Domostroy. However, there were more literate people than rich people - “Azbuka” cost one kopeck and sold no worse than hare pies. The first issue (2,900 pieces) sold out within 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 consumers of an exotic product - colorfully painted “Fryazh sheets” that came to Russia from neighboring Poland.
The first "nianhua" - printed pictures 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. The manufacturing technology has not changed much over the centuries - a design was cut out on a board, wooden, stone or metal, a black print was made from it, which was then more or less carefully painted by hand with bright colors.
In the 15th century, with ubiquitous traders, lubok reached Europe and in a matter of decades gained enormous popularity. “Disgraceful pictures” with obscene captions and scenes from the Bible with instructive texts were in equally good demand. Preachers and rebels of all stripes immediately appreciated the broad possibilities of popular propaganda, printing caricatures of the Pope and his minions, calls for rebellion and short 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 craftsmen willingly adopted new technologies. The oldest printed popular print from the 17th century found is “Archangel Michael - Governor of the Heavenly Powers.” Copies of famous Vladimir and Suzdal icons and parable images were popular. Here he prays, Ham sows wheat, Japheth has power, Death rules over everyone.».
Lubok "Archangel Michael - Governor of the 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, from which clerk Zotov taught the future autocrat to read. Following spiritual popular prints, secular ones quickly appeared. IN best case scenario– Ilya Muromtsy, defeating enemies, heroes Eruslan Lazarevich and wise birds Alkonost. At worst, there are adaptations of Parsley's jokes and obscene pictures - the jester Farnos defends himself from mosquitoes by emitting gases, Paramoshka (one of the frequent heroes of popular prints) rides over Moscow on an object that is absolutely not intended for flying, and so on.
By the middle of the 17th century, European borrowings either disappeared from plots and graphics or were adapted to local realities. Russian popular print has found its artistic language, recognizable style, compositional uniformity. Art historians of the 19th century called it primitive - but Paleolithic rock paintings are just as primitive. The popular print artist did not set himself the task of accurately reproducing proportions or achieving 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 laughs or bursts into tears, begins to pray, repent or wonder “who lives well in Rus'.” Yuri Lotman compared the Russian popular print with the space of a theater, a public nativity scene - it is not without reason that the artists used not only the subjects of Petrushka, but also the rich, imaginative verse of heaven. " This bird of paradise, Alkonost, resides near paradise, and once hangs out on the Euphrates River, but when it emits a certain voice, then it does not even feel itself, but who... proclaims joy to them».
Very quickly, the popular popular print became topical, responding to political, military and religious events with the speed of the media, shining the “searchlight of perestroika” on the problems of society. Bright pictures with malicious captions exposed drunkards and fans gambling, tobacco smokers and lovers of dressing up, old husbands taking young wives, they mocked the boyars who were forced to cut their beards, and with the help of allegories, they mocked the Tsar-Father himself. And nimble peddlers carrying bast boxes over their shoulders delivered funny pictures to the most remote corners of Russia.
In 1674, Patriarch Joachim prohibited the purchase of “sheets of heretics, Luthers and Calvins” and the making of paper prints of revered icons. This did not cripple the popular print trade; on the contrary, not only printed, but also drawn popular prints with spiritual and frankly destructive content began to appear. The schismatics, following the example of the Lutherans, conveyed their ideas to their fellow believers, including with the help of popular pictures. Nameless artists embodied people's dreams and picked up “fashion trends,” as modern journalists would put it. They managed, using the most meager visual means, to embody the poetry of Russian epics and fairy tales, longing for the mythical “city of Jerusalem,” the hopelessness of death and hope for eternal life.
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. The funny pictures immediately showed elegant ladies in dresses with flip-flops and gentlemen in powdered wigs and European-style camisoles. Paper portraits of crowned heads began to enjoy enormous popularity... however, they were made so carelessly that in 1744 depicting the imperial family on popular prints was also banned.
By the middle of the 18th century high society Russian society has finally become completely literate. Available books, newspapers and almanacs appeared, the habit of reading - even the dream book of the Lenormand maiden or "The Russian Invalid" - appealed to aging ladies and retired officers. From palaces and mansions, lubok finally moved to merchant storehouses, craft workshops and peasant huts, becoming entertainment for the common people. The technique of making pictures has improved; instead of using rough wooden boards, craftsmen have learned to make prints from thinly cut copper engravings.
Moral popular prints, adaptations of ancient manuscripts, and reprints of particularly topical or sensational newspaper articles 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 Russian-Turkish and Russian-Japanese wars, evil caricatures of the invaders sold like hot cakes. The demand for popular prints is best demonstrated by numbers: in 1893, 4,491,300 copies were printed in Russia.
At the beginning of the 20th century, lubok from folk art finally became original, designed for poorly educated and illiterate villagers. Booksellers made millions from sugary pictures in a pseudo-folk style, simplified adaptations of popular fiction and Russian epics (there was no mention of copyright for texts at that time). Peasant artels earned decent money by coloring pictures “on the noses.” Lubok became profitable business– and practically lost the 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 of Eruslan Lazarevich with Tsar Polkan or the funeral of a cat (the most enduring popular print plot).
It seemed that colorful pictures were immortal, but the revolution and the subsequent elimination of illiteracy killed popular prints without resorting to censorship. Party literature took the place of spiritual and amusing literature, and pictures cut out from magazines took the place of icons and portraits of kings. Traces of graphic boldness, loud and bright popular satire can be seen in the posters of the 20s and the work of Soviet caricaturists, in illustrations for Afanasyev’s fairy tales and Russian epics. The mice buried the cat... but his death was imaginary.
Modern popular print is Rublev’s angel on a box of chocolates, a kokoshnik and a miniskirt at a fashion show, an army of “Valentines” instead of a moment of love, “Orthodox” conspiracies against damage and the evil eye. Popular culture, designed for an uneducated, inattentive consumer seeking bright emotions, simplified to the limit, blatant vulgarity.