Lubok

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"The mice bury the cat", a Lubok from 1760. The text above the cat reads: "The cat of Kazan, the mind of Astrakhan, the wisdom of Siberia" (a parody of the full title of the Russian tsar ). This sheet was mistaken for a caricature launched by his opponents of the funeral of Peter the Great . Today folklorists assume that it is a satirical inversion in the sense of "turning the world upside down".

A Lubok ( Russian Лубок , plural Lubki, German linden wood panel) is a Russian folk picture sheet with a satirical, informative, patriotic or socially critical character. The popular prints , mainly produced as single-sheet prints, were widespread in Russia from the middle of the 17th century to the beginning of the 20th century and were cut or etched from the people by anonymous artists and mostly colored by hand afterwards . In addition to the images, the folk prints were often provided with short stories explaining the representations. The reduced text and the striking design characterize this art form.

description

The original Lubki were single-leaf woodcuts . The word Lubok (from Russian Луб , German linden bast) referred to the boards made of linden wood from which the wooden sticks for printing the leaves were made. Later the woodcuts were mostly replaced by copperplate engravings or etchings , techniques that made more detailed and complex prints possible. After printing on paper, the images were hand-colored with lean tempera . While the prints were usually very simple and unadorned, the use of tempera made the end product surprisingly light and featured vibrant colors and lines. The strong coloring of the first early woodcuts was lost to a certain extent with the transition to more detailed engravings. The Polish scientist Alexander Boguslawski took the view that the Lubok style was “a combination of Russian icon painting and the ideas and themes of Western European woodcuts”.

The folklorist and lawyer Dmitri Rowinski is known for his work on cataloging the Lubki. His system is very detailed and extensive. Its main categories are as follows: Gospel icons and illustrations ; the virtues and vices of women; Teaching, writing and numbers; Calendars and almanacs; easy reading; Novels, sagas and legends; Stories of the Passion of Christ , the Last Judgment, and the sufferings of the martyrs ; Folk festivals including Maslenitsa Festival Week, puppet comedies, drunkenness, music, dance and amateur shows; Jokes and satires relating to Ivan the Terrible and Peter I ; Satires from foreign sources, popular prayers, and government newsletters, including proclamations and news. Many Lubki can be classified into several of these categories.

  • A whale in the White Sea . Russian Lubok, 1760.

  • The meal of the upright and the unbeliever. Lubok from the 18th century.

  • A Muschik makes Lapti (footwear in Russia in the 18th and 19th centuries). Lubok from the 18th century.

  • The bear and the goat are having fun. Lubok, first half of the 19th century, colored copper engraving, 45 × 36 cm.

  • Alexander Apsit (1880–1943), satirical propaganda poster about European countries

  • Alexander Apsit (1880–1943), satirical propaganda poster about European countries

history

Lubok representations became a popular genre of folk art in Russia in the latter half of the 17th century . The first Lubki emerged in the Ukraine around 1625 . The beginnings of the Lubok were shaped by suggestions from northern German Hanseatic cities as well as Dutch , Italian and French woodcuts and etchings from the first decades of the 15th century. Originally, the Lubok was only used to decorate the tsarist and aristocratic palaces and as “teaching and visual material.” Its growing popularity in Russia resulted from the possibility of using this new technology to print duplicates inexpensively and relatively easily. The Lubok leaves were bought at fairs, bazaars and marketplaces by citizens from the lower and middle classes. This type of art was very popular among broad sections of the population because the Lubki represented an inexpensive opportunity to acquire works of art for decoration in houses and restaurants.

Lubki in the Patriotic War against Napoleon

The satire played an important role in the Russian Lubki from the time of the Patriotic War . Lubki on the Rostopchin affair are considered the prototype of the political poster.

Lubok leaves were used to portray Napoleon in a satirical way, while the Russian peasants were portrayed as heroes of war. These representations were intended to motivate the Russian people to fight against the French troops by trying to "... redefine Russian national identity in the Napoleonic era."

The Lubki were a way for the Russians to mock the French enemy and at the same time to demonstrate Russia's "Russianism". “These war clubs mocked Napoleon and presented French culture as degenerate”. The Lubki became a means of strengthening belief in victory over the French invaders and of depicting the terrible destruction that Napoleon and his army had wrought in Russia. In order to strengthen the Russians' will to win, the Lubki showed “that the experiences of the invasion and the subsequent Russian winter had discouraged Napoleon and his troops and illustrated this by depicting the inferiority of French officers and soldiers in confrontation with peasants Cossacks ”. All of these different depictions of Russian heroes helped to strengthen and spread belief in Russian identity.

In 1850 the tsarist censorship banned the distribution of popular picture sheets and their further reproduction. This was followed by an order for the destruction of engraved plates and in 1851 the decree to collect and destroy all old uncensored Lubki, as well as the prohibition of the printing and distribution of songs and joke rhymes on Lubok sheets.

Lubki in the Russo-Japanese War

Rosta-Fenster by Alexei Radakow : “The illiterate is like a blind man. Misfortune and failure await him everywhere. "

The Russo-Japanese War from 1904 to 1905 began on February 8, 1904 in Port Arthur with a surprise attack by the Japanese Navy . At the time, Russia was a major European power with a broad industrial base and a regular army of 1.1 million soldiers. Japan , with few natural resources and little heavy industry, had an army of only 200,000 men. Due to the significant imbalance in the military balance of power, Russia had assumed it would keep the upper hand in this war. Lubki caricatured the overconfidence of the Russian military with images like "a Cossack beats a Japanese officer and a Russian seaman hits a Japanese seaman in the face" because the censorship laws at the time did not allow satirical magazines to be published. These Lubok bows were made anonymously in Moscow and St. Petersburg and accompanied most of the Russo-Japanese War as a commentary.

Also because of Russian arrogance, “the Japanese generals were able to foresee the actions of their opponent during the battle and to assess how he would react under certain circumstances. This knowledge enabled them to trap him and defeat an outnumbered enemy ”. After the capitulation of Port Arthur in January 1905, the defeat of Russia loomed. The Russian government stopped the production of more satirical Lubki with its censorship laws. A total of around 300 Lubki were created between 1904 and 1905.

Poster art in the Soviet Union

During the First World War , the Lubok tradition revived in a modernized form. After the October Revolution , the Lubki played an important role in revolutionary agitation because of their focus on the lower social classes. In the period immediately after the revolution, especially in the Russian provinces, many slogans, appeals and posters were painted by amateur artists in the style of the Lubki. In establishing ubiquitous propaganda in the Soviet Union , the communists were able to draw on the visual culture of the Lubok that had grown over the past centuries. The Soviet propaganda posters known as the Rosta Window , which were issued by the telegraph agency ROSTA , later the TASS news agency , on political, military and economic issues, stood in this tradition.

Popular belief and folk festivals

The Baba Jaga (riding a pig) in a scuffle with the crocodile

Popular beliefs and other religious beliefs are a common theme of the Lubki . Some of the woodblock prints relate to sorcery and create links with pagan cosmology . Certain Lubki depict scenes of the Last Judgment and the underworld. Wolves, horses, reindeer and other animals are seen in the woodcuts as helpers of the magicians.

Another topic of the Lubki is the depiction of the fight of the Baba Yaga against the reptilian guardian of the underworld. The Baba Jaga is dressed in elaborate costumes with embroidery and is sometimes shown as a good and sometimes as an evil figure. She is also often depicted riding a pig . Pig riding was an integral part of Maslenitsa (Russian Carnival before Lent). On other Lubki, a personification of Maslenitsa riding a pig opens the festivities for the week of fasting in Moscow with a move into the city. But there is also a Lubok, which shows an entrance into the underworld, which leads through the mouth of the Baba Jaga - deformed as a pig's snout.

reception

Lubok Today , 1914, Galerie Gmurzynska, Cologne. Patriotic Lubok after the outbreak of war. The texts are attributed to Vladimir Mayakovsky

The Lubok was a popular picture sheet because it was made for the people and was based on the taste of the people. However, it was not formed by the village culture itself. As evidence of folk culture , the Lubki represented links between town and country. The work of many artists of the Russian avant-garde of the early 20th century was influenced by the Lubki. The picture sheets provided ideas for the work of Natalija Goncharova , Michail Larionow and Kasimir Malewitsch , the representatives of Russian neo-primitivism . Artists like Kandinsky , Chagall and El Lissitzky were inspired by the motifs on the picture sheets and their bright colors.

"I felt as if I were climbing to heaven through the birch trees, the snow, the clouds of smoke, with these fat women, these bearded peasants who are constantly making the cross."

- Marc Chagall

Lenin wanted the popular Lubki, whom he despised, to be replaced by cheap reproductions of classical works of art. The political posters of artists such as Vladimir Mayakovsky and Alexander Apsit , who is considered the founder of Soviet poster art, were heavily influenced by the Lubki. For example, on his early poster “A Year of Proletarian Dictatorship”, Apsit used the motif of a snake-like monster to depict capitalism , which in the Lubok traditionally represented the dangers of alcoholism .

With the pictures and the explanatory text, the Lubki show features of modern comics , but can only be seen as a forerunner of the development of the comic , as the continuous plot is missing. A continuous development of sequential pictorial narratives from the Byzantine Empire ( Chludow Psalter ) through Romanesque book illumination of the 12th century in Northern Germany ( Gospel of Heinrich the Lion ) to the modern comic with the Lubki as an important intermediate step is incomprehensible due to a lack of examples.

Lacquer miniatures from Fedoskino and other Russian lacquer miniatures often had and still have motifs in the Lubok style.

See also

literature

  • Elena Igorewna Itkina: The Russian folk picture sheet . In: Wolfgang Till (Ed.): Lubok. The Russian folk picture sheet. Städtisches Reiss-Museum Mannheim, September 23 to October 27, 1985. Münchner Stadtmuseum, November 8, 1985 to January 6, 1986 . Stadtmuseum, Munich 1985, pp. 9-19. (Exhibition catalog)
  • Walter Kosglich : The Russian folk picture sheet (from religion to theater) . Sagner, Munich 1989 (= Slavic Articles, No. 251), ISBN 3-87690-452-8 .
  • Yuri Lotman : The Artistic Nature of the Russian Folk Picture Sheets . In: Wolfgang Till (Ed.): Lubok. The Russian folk picture sheet. Städtisches Reiss-Museum Mannheim, September 23 to October 27, 1985. Münchner Stadtmuseum, November 8, 1985 to January 6, 1986 . Self-rel. Münchener Stadtmuseum, Munich 1985, pp. 21–34. (Exhibition catalog)
  • Stephen Michael Norris: Russian Images of War. The Lubok and Wartime Culture, 1812-1917 . University of Virginia, Charlottesville (Virginia / USA) 2002, dissertation. (English)
  • Stephen Michael Norris: A War of Images. Russian Popular Prints, Wartime Culture, an National Identity 1812–1945 . Northern Illinois University Press, DeKalb (Illinois / USA) 2006, ISBN 0-87580-363-6 . (English; German review in H-Soz-u-Kult, July 25, 2007, PDF file)
  • Paul Roth : The Lubok. From the paper icon to the ROSTA window . In: Journalism . 1973, No. 18, ISSN  0033-4006 , pp. 147-159.
  • Dmitri Alexandrowitsch Rowinski: Russian folk picture sheets . 1881, posthumously 1900.
  • Wulfhild goal: The Russian folk picture sheet in pictures and text. A cultural and art-historical intermediate . 3., rework. Ed., Lang, Frankfurt am Main a. a. 1999, ISBN 3-631-35657-9 .

Web links

Commons : Lubok  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Alexander Boguslawski: Russian Lubok (Popular Prints). (accessed January 29, 2007).
  2. ↑ Hubertus F. Jahn: Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I. Cornell University Press: Ithaca and London 1995, p. 12, ISBN 0-8014-3131-X
  3. ↑ a b Russian Lubok. Russia the Great project . (accessed January 29, 2007).
  4. ^ Dianne Ecklund Farrell: Medieval Popular Humor in Russian Eighteenth Century Lubki . Slavic Review, Vol. 50, 1991, p. 552, ISSN  0037-6779 , doi: 10.2307 / 2499852 .
  5. ↑ Alexei Golowerda: Lubok (The People's Picture Sheet ) . Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz
  6. ^ A b Dianne Ecklund Farrell: The Origins of Russian Popular Prints and Their Social Milieu in the Early Eighteenth Century. The Journal of Popular Culture 17, 1983, ISSN  0022-3840 , doi : 10.1111 / j.0022-3840.1983.1701_9.x .
  7. ↑ a b Angela Rustemeyer, Diana Siebert: Digitalisat, pp. 19-20 Everyday history of the lower classes in the Russian Empire (1861-1914). Annotated bibliography of contemporary titles and report on the research . Steiner Verlag, Stuttgart 1997 (= sources and studies on the history of Eastern Europe, vol. 46), ISBN 3-515-06866-X , pp. 19-20.
  8. ↑ Hubertus F. Jahn: Patriotic Culture in Russia During World War I. Cornell University Press, Ithaca and London 1995, p. 12
  9. ↑ The Lubok, a Russian folk picture sheet . Poster server russianposter.ru, Lotman Institute for Russian and Soviet Culture, Ruhr University Bochum.
  10. ↑ a b c Stephen Norris: Images of 1812: Ivan Terebenev and the Russian Wartime Lubki. National Identities, Vol. 7, 2005, pp. 1-15, ISSN  1460-8944
  11. ^ A b Albro Walk: Russo-Japanese War's Greatest Land Battle. Military History June 21, 2005, pp. 58-65.
  12. ^ Mark Bryant: The Floating World at War. History Today 56.6 (2006): 58-59, ISSN  0018-2753
  13. ^ Dianne Ecklund Farrell: Shamanic Elements in Some Early Eighteenth Century Russian Woodcuts. Slavic Review, Vol. 54, 1993, pp. 725-744
  14. ↑ James von Geldern: Bolshevik Festivals, 1917–1920 . Studies on the History of Society and Culture 15. Berkeley et al. a .: University of California Press, 1993, ISBN 0-520-07690-7 .
  15. ↑ Alexander Apsit life and work. Poster server russianposter.ru, Lotman Institute for Russian and Soviet Culture, Ruhr University Bochum.
This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 21, 2008 .