It is hardly necessary for anyone to prove the well-known truth that art is a reflection of reality, passed through the consciousness of a person and enriched by his perception of the world. But … all people see the world around them in their own way, and what is also very important, often they also work to order. And what is more important in this case: the artist's own vision, the vision of the customer who buys his skill, or … just the money that is paid to the maestro for the work? That is, it is obvious that art can lie, just as a person himself is lying. Another thing is that this lie can have different reasons and, accordingly, it can be condemned to a greater or lesser extent. Moreover, it should be noted that, willingly or unwillingly, the artists have always lied. That is why their works, no matter how "vital" they may look, must always be treated very, very suspiciously, or at least not just take anything for granted. The only exception can be landscapes and still lifes, because the same historical sculptures or canvases for the most part show us something completely different from what was or is actually happening! We have already considered the column of Emperor Trajan as a historical source. But now the time has come for painting, especially since this topic has also been raised here.
Well, I would like to start with a painting by the famous Polish artist Jan Matejko, the author of the epic painting "The Battle of Grunwald", written by him in 1876 and now in the National Museum in Warsaw. He painted this picture for three years, and the banker from Warsaw David Rosenblum paid 45 thousand gold pieces for it and bought it even before it was finished!
The painting is indeed very large, almost nine meters long, and certainly impressive. And our Russian painter I. E. Repin spoke about her like this:
"A mass of overwhelming material in the Battle of Grunwald." In all corners of the picture there is so much interesting, lively, screaming that you simply fatigue with your eyes and head, perceiving the whole mass of this colossal work. There is no empty space: both in the background and in the distance - everywhere new situations, compositions, movements, types, expressions open up. It is striking how the endless picture of the universe is."
And this is really so, but it was too much of a mess on the canvas. Different episodes of the battle, which took place at different times and by no means in one place, were merged together. But one can still somehow agree with this, bearing in mind that this is, so to speak, a historical allegory. Moreover, the picture in the sky depicts the kneeling Saint Stanislav - the heavenly patron of Poland, who prays to God for the granting of victory to the Poles.
But the horses on the canvas are clearly small, and yet these are knightly horses, destriers, specially bred to carry riders in full knightly armor. And you look at the horse under Prince Vitovt, in the very center of the canvas. And why is the knight Marcin from Wrocimovits on his right with a characteristic helmet … of the 16th century, and not the beginning of the fifteenth? Or, say, Zavisha Cherny, a knight from Gabrovo. Probably the most famous knight of the Polish kingdom, who always wore black attire. But on the canvas he is in clothes of a different color. Is the black paint out? And for some reason he took the spear clearly tournament, and not fighting! The Master of the Teutonic Order dies at all at the hands of a half-naked warrior, dressed for some reason in a lion's skin, and in the distance, in the background, the back "wings" of the Polish "winged hussars" are clearly visible, again, much like a later time, which are simply not here could be! It is clear that art critics will tell me that this painting is "a typical example of romantic nationalism" and they will be right. But why couldn't all this be drawn with full historical accuracy and without any "romantic" fantasies ?! Moreover, almost everything is known about this battle, and in the samples of armor and weapons in the then Polish museums, there was by no means a shortage! So, looking at this picture, you really are a little “tired of your head”, and I want to ask the author, why is this so?
But to answer the same question "why is this?" Repin's "Barge Haulers on the Volga" will be pretty easy. After all, the author clearly wanted to present a single phenomenon on a mass scale, and since he was a talented person, he did it. Meanwhile, this picture, although it does not contain direct fiction, really shows their work is not at all the same as it actually is, and the fact that this really is how you can find out if you read the monograph by I. A. Shubin "The Volga and the Volga Shipping, published in the USSR back in 1927.
And now it turns out that the real barge haulers worked in a completely different way. They did not walk up the Volga, resting their feet on the ground, and that would have been impossible. Even if you take the left bank or the right one, you won't be able to go far along the water! The Coriolis force washes away the right bank! And so on the barges, the upper deck was arranged even - we are talking about barges that went upward by self-propelled, because there were still floatable and towing barges. At the stern she had a large drum. A rope was wound on the drum, to which three anchors clung at once.
As it was necessary to go up the river, people got into a boat, took a rope with an anchor and floated on it upstream, and there they dropped the anchor. After him another and a third, while the rope was enough. And here the barge haulers had to work. They attached to the rope with their ropes and then walked along the deck from bow to stern. The rope gave a slack, and it was reeled up on a drum. That is, the barge haulers went back, and the deck under their feet went forward - this is how these ships were moving!
Thus, the barge floated up to the first anchor, which was raised, and after that the second and then the third were also raised. It turns out that the barge seemed to be crawling along a rope against the current. Of course, this work was not easy, like any physical labor, but by no means the way Repin showed it! In addition, every burlak artel, hiring a job, agreed on food. And this is how much they were given only one food: bread in no way less than two pounds per person per day, meat - half a pound, and fish - "how much they will eat" (and fish were by no means considered fish!), And how much oil was scrupulously calculated. sugar, salt, tea, tobacco, cereals - all this was stipulated and fixed by the corresponding document. In addition, a barrel of red caviar could have stood on the deck. Whoever wanted - could come up, cut off a top of his loaf of bread and eat with spoons as much as you want. After lunch it was supposed to sleep for two hours, it was considered a sin to work. And only if the pilot drunkenly put the barge aground, only then the artel had to go into the water, as Repin wrote, and pull the barge off the shallow. And then … before that, they again agreed on how much they would do it for, and the merchant also supplied them with vodka for this! And a good barge haulers could earn so much money for the working summer season that he could not work in winter, and neither his family nor he himself was in poverty. That was common, typical! And what is in Repin's painting is one-of-a-kind - a rarity! And why he wrote everything in this way is also understandable: in order to arouse pity in the audience for the working people. The Russian intelligentsia at that time had such a fashion - to sympathize with those who are engaged in physical labor, and Ilya Efimovich was far from alone in showing their suffering as "pityingly" as possible!
Against the background of this kind of symbolic works, battle canvases by Soviet artists depicting the "Battle on the Ice" with the drowning of "knight-dogs" in the ice-holes look like a normal phenomenon. But here the artist P. D. Korin very talentedly and just as falsely portrayed Prince Alexander himself in his famous triptych ("Northern Ballad", "Alexander Nevsky", "Old Skaz") and named "Alexander Nevsky" by him. It is clear that the point here, as always, is in the "little things", but these little things are significant. The crosshair of the sword is "not that", the armor on the prince is not from that era, like the armor on his legs. Among Western knights, leggings with hooks were noted only at the end of the 13th century. And on his triptych - the middle, and the prince and in sabatons in the latest fashion, and embossed knee pads on him, and this, judging by the effigies, did not even have the knights of Britain. And the yushman on the prince's torso (there is one in the Armory), and at all from the 16th century, could not appear in 1242. “While working on the triptych, the artist consulted with historians, employees of the Historical Museum, where he painted chain mail, armor, helmet - all the equipment of the protagonist, whose image he recreated on canvas in just three weeks,” - written on one of the modern Internet sites. But this is just a "figure of speech". Because it’s easy to make sure that either he consulted the wrong historians, or he looked at the wrong armor in the museum, or he didn’t care at all. Although from the point of view of the skill of the execution, of course, there are no complaints about it!
Today a new galaxy of modern painters has grown up in our country, and their outright blunders have become much less than before. Less … but for some reason they have not completely disappeared until now. It is enough to look at the canvas of the artist V. I. Nesterenko "Deliverance from Troubles", written by him in 2010. “The historical plot demanded a unique performance, where life-size horsemen, archers and knights immerse us in the atmosphere of the seventeenth century. The painting is made in the traditions of Russian and European realism, evoking associations with classic battle works. " Well written, isn't it? Well - the picture is indeed very large - an eight-meter canvas, on which the artist worked for four whole years. And unlike the Battle of Grunwald, here the horses of what size, and the armor, and ammunition are written out so carefully and, one might say, lovingly, that it is just right to study the history of the then military affairs using them. However, only its material part, because everything else in this picture is nothing more than a set of absurdities, one more incongruous than the other!
So, it is known for certain what moment is depicted on this canvas, namely the attack on the Poles by 300 mounted noble militiamen, together with Minin, who galloped at the enemy, moreover, the word "mounted" must be emphasized. On the canvas, we see horsemen interspersed with infantrymen, and judging by the poses in which they are depicted and in what gallop Minin's comrades-in-arms rush to the enemy, the question involuntarily arises, how did they all end up here at the same time ?! Left archers: some with a reed, some with a musket, and they are not running, but standing. But right there next to them the cavalry gallops and it is not clear how the Poles allowed the enemies on foot so close to them, while the cavalry, through the passages left in advance for them, did not otherwise reach them at the most decisive moment. Moreover, directly behind the riders, we again see infantrymen shooting at the enemy. What, they, together with their horses, ran to the position of the Poles, and then got into a pose and shoot? It turns out that way, but this is not all … The Poles in the right corner are shown by some ridiculous crowd: horsemen mixed with infantry, but this could not be by definition, since infantry and cavalry never mixed. The Polish hussars had to either stand in front and meet the attack with blow for blow, but not with their spears raised to the sky (well, they are not fools, in fact!). Or go under the protection of pikemen and musketeers. Moreover, the former must stop the enemy's cavalry with a picket fence, and the latter must shoot over their heads with muskets. And here the artist portrayed a gang, not a gang, but a crowd of some "clumsy" in Polish armor, which is clearly not worth the trouble to beat. That is, he would draw only Russian horsemen led by Minin and the Poles demoralized by the attack. And that's it! But no, for some reason the artist was also drawn to the infantry …
It is clear that there are many banners in the picture, turned to face the viewer - after all, they have images of Orthodox saints. And why the banner is in Minin's hands, and why he stretched out his arms in such a sacrificial way is also understandable - these are all symbols. But … take such a banner and ride a horse with it at a gallop. You will see that it will develop in the direction of movement, and not at all as shown in the picture. Strong wind? But why, then, did the Polish flag hang in the very center of the canvas? The symbolism is understandable. But isn't there too much of it here?
It is also surprising (and this oddity is also present in the painting by Jan Matejko) how archers act on their canvases for both artists. In Matejko's case, a man with a bow is trying to shoot from it directly in the crowd, and is aiming somewhere upward, which clearly speaks of his weak mind. V. I. Nesterenko, again, only two are shooting directly at the target, while the others are somewhere in the sky. Yes, that was how they fired, but by no means those who were in the forefront of the cavalry galloping at the enemy. These were already choosing their targets right in front of them, and why should everyone understand that: why kill someone in the distance, if the enemy is under your nose? So, although the picture at first glance makes a strong impression, the author just wants to say in the words of K. S. Stanislavsky: "I don't believe it!" I don’t believe it, and that's it!
Of course, they may object to me that there is, they say, symbolism, that the author wanted to show pathos, heroism, unity of the people … But if pathos and symbolism dominate everything else here, then why then write out bells on the harness so carefully? The link that most people do not know this is clearly from our recent past. Like, for the ignorant it will do, and the most important thing is the idea! But it won't do! Today it just won't do, because outside the window is the age of the Internet and people are beginning to listen a little to the opinion of experts, including historians, and are offended when, say, they are shown a "spreading cranberry" together in a picture! In addition, this simply belittles the heroism of our ancestors, and in fact, in theory, the artist should strive for the opposite! And, by the way, we have someone to learn from battle painting and sculpture! Do you know from whom? North Koreans! Here is where that monument, that battle canvas, the accuracy in details is just amazing. If the commander has a Mauser in his hand, it's a K-96, and if a ZB-26 machine gun is drawn, then, yes - it really is it to the very last detail. And for some reason they can, but we again have some difficulties and fantasies with this. It is clear that one cannot do without explicit symbols in sculpture. “Motherland” on the top of Mamayev Kurgan with a revolver in hand would have looked just silly, but this is just the case when symbolism is more important than realism.
But why the artist S. Prisekin in his painting "The Battle of the Ice" drew a sword with a "flaming" blade and a crossbow with a "Nuremberg gate" - it is not clear! The first is a fantasy suitable for illustration in a fairy tale about Kashchei the Immortal, and the second simply did not exist in 1242! There are also cuirasses, and halberds of the 17th century, and helmets of the wrong era. And everything is written out very carefully! Why?! Why draw something that did not really exist, when any idea and symbol can be fully expressed through things that are real and well known to specialists. Let them then become known to everyone, right?
So the symbols are symbols, but no one canceled the truth of life, and I really want our artists who encroach on historical painting in their patriotic impulses not to forget about it, but to consult with good specialists!
