Picturing Russia's Men, a richly illustrated monograph, explores how the ideals of masculine virtue and stringent gender standards impacted the lives and shaped creative works of the constellation of nineteenth century Russia's most appreciated artists. Allison Leigh's innovative approach examines art production through masculinity studies in order to reveal how gender stereotypes and conflicting desires were reflected in artists’ practices and aspirations and how they formed nineteenth century Russian art as we know it. Leigh's primary focus is on the “short” nineteenth century, the period between 1825, the aftermath of the Decembrist rebellion, and 1881, the year of Alexander II's assassination. It encompasses the most important shifts in Russian imperial history, but contrasts with the common term, “long nineteenth century,” which encapsulates the historic period from 1789 to 1914 in western Europe. This alternative periodization “echoes the rise of Russia's earliest modern art movements, namely, romanticism and realism” (20). The book includes three parts, each divided into two chapters, which Leigh defines as “microhistories of the masculine.” She analyzes several micronarrative case studies and dissects individual biographies to explore how “both gender norms and the ways men negotiated, upheld, or transgressed them—often all three—over the course of a lifetime” (21).
The first part, “Autocratic Masculinity,” is devoted to Karl Briullov and Pavel Fedotov. “A military-style education,” subordination and rigidity were the basis of a hierarchical social order and were commonly reflected in the patriarchal, oppressive relationship between fathers and sons (39). Leigh examines Briullov's unfinished self-portraits and concludes that his inability to complete the self-portraits resulted from the artist's complex relationship with his father. Fedotov's transformation from a military officer to an artist and his contradictory experiences of masculinity is the subject of second chapter. Leigh views Fedotov's paintings of masculine worlds, such as his friends in the regiment or men playing cards, as tokens of the artist's belonging to a conventional manhood. Fedotov's “failure as a captain, as an artist, and as a man” and his shifts from “one set of norms to another” resulted in a tragic fiasco to meet societal expectations and lead to a breakdown (92).
The second part, “Homosociality and Homoeroticism,” features chapters about Alexander Ivanov and the Artel of Artists. Ivanov's life and art are seen through the prism of his self-asserted homosexual identity. Male nudes, homoerotic ephebes and androgynous figures in his works suggest that “sexuality and its investment in real bodies are mobile, existing in a state of flux that goes against heteronormative assumptions about male desire” (117). The Artel of Artists was formed as a result of the revolt of fourteen students who exited the Academy of Arts due to their rejection of a proposed subject matter for the Major Gold Medal competition. Leigh assesses the “unique sense of comradely and brotherly solidarity that characterized the protest from its inception” and the “fraternal dynamic” (150) that the Artel featured as a united corporation. This masculine brotherhood expressed the “spirit of the 1860s,” a time of liberal reforms, and also highlighted “anxieties unique to Russian conceptions of masculinity” (153). She focuses on the Artel's everyday life and artworks and photographs in which the members of the Artel were portrayed as a group and as individuals.
The third part, “Modern Women and Their Wounded Men,” addresses Ivan Kramskoi and Ilia Repin's lives and their art. Leigh examines Kramskoi's masculinity and modern gender expectations explored through his bonds with his wife, Sofia, whom he painted throughout his life, his understanding of fatherhood and the ideals of the “kind father” (202). The artist's masculinity is “illustrated by his involvement in his family as well as his interest in the women that made up the Petersburg demimonde” (193). Leigh explores Kramskoi's most recognizable painting, the Unknown Woman, in parallel to the artist's financial difficulties and incapability to sustain his family. The final chapter is devoted to Repin and masculine vulnerabilities. Here, the author investigates Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, the most iconic Repin's work, and surveys his personal life of an adulterer and a man of patriarchal values. To conclude, she presents Repin's male models—the writer Vsevolod Garshin and his emotional fragility and depression, and the composer Modest Musorgskii and his mental instability—as additional micronarratives of masculine vulnerability.
Picturing Russia's Men is a significant and timely contribution to the scholarship. Interpreting nineteenth-century art and society through the “microhistories of the masculine” enables future explorations of the long nineteenth century, an understudied period of east European art. A pleasure to read, this book is highly recommended for courses in Slavic studies, art history, and gender studies, and will be certainly appreciated by general readers.
