To impress: a panorama of Russian Impressionism shown in Moscow

More than 150 works from all over the country - from 75 museums and private collections. Everything is painting, focused on one single direction and covering a relatively short period of time - about a quarter of a century. However, we cannot speak of monotony. Nor of wholeness. The exhibition "Picturing the Air. Russian Impressionism", opened at the Museum of Russian Impressionism, demonstrates an impressive panorama of this artistic phenomenon of the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. "Izvestia was among the first to evaluate the project.

Contemplation instead of analysis

When the Museum of Russian Impressionism (MRI) appeared in Moscow nine years ago, its very name caused a lot of skeptical comments among art connoisseurs: "Was there such a current?" The newly established institution rightly noted that the term was coined by Dmitry Sarabianov, a classic of Russian art history, back in the Soviet era. But to say that the concept has taken root, it is possible (and that with a certain tension) only today - largely due to the active work of the MPI.

The point, of course, is not that the term itself is bad - not at all. It's just that very few artists of the first row in Russia we boldly, without reservations call impressionists. Unless Konstantin Korovin? At the same time tribute to the fashionable trend at some point gave almost all who lived and worked in the late XIX and the first decade of the XX century. There is a clear influence of the French style in the late painting of the realist-peredvizhnik Ilya Repin, and in the early art of the avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov; Degas motifs are evident in the ballet series of Zinaida Serebryakova, and the findings of Paul Cezanne and became the foundation for a whole pleiad of masters of the new generation (even the concept of "Cezannism" appeared).

Actually, the new exhibition at the Museum of Russian Impressionism demonstrates just how ubiquitous and diverse this movement was. And there is no desire to present its evolution or to build a clear chronology. The paintings are grouped according to very conventional themes, they can be viewed in any order, and the textual accompaniment is minimal. The curator Natalia Sviridova (she is also the chief curator of MPI) has created from the exhibits collected in various parts of the country not so much a narrative as an environment where everything is filled with beauty and disposes not to reflection and analysis, but to contemplation.

From Paris to the Russian countryside

This is actually in keeping with the nature of Impressionism, an art that is peaceful, meditative and light (even when depicting night scenes). You look, for example, at the paintings of Nikolai Feshin - and experience almost physical pleasure from the play of highlights, the roundelay of spontaneous strokes, the alternation of smooth and rough surfaces of the paint layer. And, of course, from the subjects themselves. The painting "Christmas Tree" depicts a woman in an armchair, contemplating with satisfaction a newly decorated fir tree (the floor is covered with unclaimed toys). Is it possible to think that this thing, full of domestic comfort and well-being, created in the dramatic 1917?

Or take Konstantin Gorbatov's "Street of a Provincial City". 1920, the height of the Civil War. The road going away in the foreground is in a horrifying state: it is a solid mud with traces of tracks from passing carts. But the painter does not bemoan this, on the contrary, he paints both the puddles and the provincial architecture in such a way that you admire it all.

Escapism? Absolutely. It seems to be the very essence of the Russian branch of Impressionism. After the social pathos of the Peredvizhniki, the search for abstract beauty came to the fore. Society, sensing the coming changes, wanted to hide from external turmoil; artists sought salvation in formal experiments.

Nikolai Meshcherin's image is formed from a multitude of strokes of different shades. The color seems to split into components - hence the name of the technique: divisionism. In France, something similar was done by post-impressionists such as Georges Sera and Paul Signac. But Meshcherin paints in this manner not Parisian boulevards at all, but the Russian countryside.

A carriage for us, a carriage: vintage carriages are now on Red Square

Priceless tsar's vehicles exhibited at the Historical Museum

And Mikhail Larionov, who in 1908 had not yet become a leader of the avant-garde, depicts buffaloes and camels in a multitude of vertical strokes - and in this one can already read the future deliberate crudity of his subjects (remember that three years later he created the association "Donkey's Tail"). In the manner itself there is no provocation, and even the color scheme is still quite "French". Except that there is a certain sense of incompleteness - as if the artist has made only the first approach, planning to continue the work further. But sketching is a characteristic feature of Impressionism. And this is especially true of Korovin. There are a number of his works at the exhibition, and it is not always clear whether we are looking at the final version or a spontaneous oil sketch.

The Joy of Being

Igor Grabar's "Under the Birch Trees" cannot be overlooked here: a large canvas depicts three teenagers - two girls and a boy. But while the landscape around them is carefully painted, and the figures of the children too, there are no faces at all. And this is not a conceptual gesture (like Malevich, Leporskaya and so on decades later), but a coincidence of circumstances: the artist postponed the completion of the work several times, and in the end the models grew up. Then Grabar left the idea altogether.

Had this painting been realistic, the lack of faces would have been fatal. But in the case of Impressionism, the situation is different. It is not about a person at all. But it is for man. Few styles are so popular with the public. The exhibition "Picturing the Air" was created to please and delight. Perhaps that is why there are no graphics at all among the more than 150 exhibits: works on paper set up for thoughtful consideration, they do not attract from afar. And the peculiarities of the style are most evident in oil paintings.

Another thing is that endless rows of spectacular canvases argue with each other, compete for the viewer's attention, and the result is oil on oil. Whether there is a problem with this is debatable. In the end, it seems that the museum does not seek to set accents, to bring to some conclusion. Only to immerse the visitor in the boundless, full-sounding beauty. To help them feel the joy of being, generously spilled in this art. Maybe it's right. Today we need it no less than we did at the beginning of the 20th century.