Friday Day

Friday was a full day. The exams weren’t too bad, or maybe I was just too tired to realize all of my mistakes (I never can tell how well I’m going to do on Russian tests). So we had two hours of class and two hours of exams and then a little reception thing where we got our certificates, gave our teachers flowers, and ate cake, cookies, and other yummy things. It was a nice time and our teachers really seemed to like us and be proud of us. My class definitely won over Elena in the end (the scary Russian teacher I spoke of earlier). She actually turned out to be a pretty cool lady, and was insanely funny (once you stopped being scared of her or upset when she made fun of you). I’m really happy with our teachers and think we learned a lot given the relatively short amount of time we spent here. The teachers all thought our group was really smart (go figure) and got along really well, maybe because we did so much more than just take language classes together (like the other college groups there), with our culture class and our many trips. Our Brown professors were also amazing and allowed us to have a fantastic time here (helping us with things both big and small). We’re planning a big party for them when we get back to Brown. Pictures!





David reading his poetry--and starving to death


Sonya gave us all little pins and cards she made. When she first met me she said she thought I looked exactly like how she’d imagined Margarita in Bulgakov’s Master and Margarita, hence the cat. Haha. I’ll take that as a compliment I guess.



Pics from the Nevsky Inst. since it was my last time there:


Class:




On a marshrootkee to the Hermitage!


After our little reception we went over to the Hermitage where we met our Rembrandt scholar (Roman Grigoriev), who heads one of the departments there. It was fun because we got to go upstairs where all their workspaces are and where vall the materials are stored which are not on display. We were worried we might have some trouble getting in because of the whole stuff stolen from the hermitage blow up a few days earlier.

So we went through some doors, through some corriders filled with paintings, prints, and other random art in storage. We went up some stairs and through some more workspaces and then sat around this large oval table that our scholar told us used to belong to the imperial family. If the Revolution may have destroyed part of the imperial palace and been hard on art (Socialist Realism…shudder), at least it was good for the museum, by essentially robbing private collectors and nationalizing all their art. At that point the museum acquired three times more objects than they had previously.



He was a really interesting man, if pretty arrogant and condescending at times. We got to see some amazing stuff and prints that were worth 3 million. The Hermitage has something like a half a million prints, the first were collected by Peter. So Rembrandt is pretty much seen as the father of art history, he made lots of reference books, did tons of research, and 6 dictionaries on art history, he also wrote and edited ten volumes on Russian folk prints. A lot of these things are still used today by art historians.



So we got to look at a bunch of his prints (which are rarely on display because they can only be exposed to any kind of light for a very short amount of time) and how Rembrandt made them and how to tell if a print was made by Rembrandt/his studio or if someone else just used his copper plates. He was a great marketer of his art and in developing a circle of collectors who supported him. He experimented a lot with different papers to print on, and used something like 2,000 different types of paper imported from all over. He also was of course a painter, but we were focusing on his prints. It was awesome to look at some of these close up and see all the delicate lines and fine shading. It was neat to see different prints of the same image that brought out more or else detail or emphasized different aspects of the print. For example in his Three Crosses, in one of the prints you could hardly even make out the third figure. One is seen as a connoisseur of printing you do consecutive states of your prints from darker to lighter, and to Rembrandt each of these states or stages was considered a work of art in its own right (not like photography where you just may work through those stages to get the perfect tonal value).



We talked some about why it was at times difficult to tell an original Rembrandt and how much it really mattered, because in this day and age it is important that a work be by the artist himself, whereas in the 17thc or whatever there was no idea of individual artist (except for the super super greats), there was the system of workshop (of gilds). No one signed their name on their works, except if you were at the level of “master” and had your own workshop, no matter who actually made the print or whatever, the name “Rembrandt” would be put on it—like a brand stamp. Collectors at that time did not care one way or another whether Rembrandt with his own hands had made the print, only that it came from his workshop and had his name on it.

Three Crosses:


After our lecture I walked with David, Lydia, and Alisa back toward the subway station and stopped at the souvenir stands by the Church of Spilled Blood with Lydia and David. Lydia and I bought some hideous matrioshka earrings because they were too funny (so I did buy some afterall!).

This picture doesn't bring out their ridiculousness:


I then went home, did a little more packing, and then headed out to go meet up with pretty much everyone (minus Alex and Tania because they had meals planned with their host families and Tania was hoping to have some luck with Gleb…).