Video: "Bathing the Red Horse": why the everyday painting was called a harbinger of future changes
2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55
Painting by Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin "Bathing the Red Horse", written in 1912, caused a lot of controversy among contemporaries. Some were indignant that horses of this color did not exist, others tried to explain its symbolic content, and still others saw in it a harbinger of future changes in the country. When the First World War began, the artist exclaimed: "So that's why I wrote Bathing the Red Horse!" So what does the picture, which was originally conceived as an everyday one, hide in itself?
Your creative path Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin started with icon painting. In his hometown of Khvalynsk (Saratov province), he met icon painters, whose works made a strong impression on him. In the early 1910s, Petrov-Vodkin began to move away from religious themes, more and more inclined towards monumental and decorative works. But the influence of icon painting is seen in many of his works.
In the painting "Bathing the Red Horse" many find images that are traditional for icon painting. The boy on horseback resembles George the Victorious. Petrov-Vodkin uses a spherical perspective to depict objects from above and from the side. The painting is dominated by three classic colors for icon painting: red, blue, yellow.
Initially, the picture was conceived as a household one. Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin recalled: “In the village there was a chestnut horse, old, broken on all legs, but with a good face. I started to write in general bathing. I had three options. In the process of work, I made more and more demands of purely pictorial meaning, which would equalize the form and content and would give the picture a social significance."
It is also noteworthy that a year before the creation of the canvas, Sergei Kolmykov, a student of Petrov-Vodkin, showed the artist his painting entitled "Bathing Red Horses." The mentor criticized the student's work, but perhaps it was she who inspired Petrov-Vodkin to write his own version of "horses". After a while, Kolmykov insisted that it was he who was depicted in the painting by Petrov-Vodkin. Although Kuzma Sergeevich in a letter to his brother said: "I am writing a picture: I put you on a horse …". Most art critics adhere to the version that a character on a horse is a collective image-symbol.
On the canvas, the foreground is almost entirely occupied by a horse. Against the background of the lake, painted in cold colors, the color of the horse seems very bright. In Russian literature, the image of a horse symbolizes the indomitable element, the Russian spirit. Suffice it to recall Gogol's "bird-three" or Blok's "steppe mare". Most likely, the author of the canvas himself did not realize what a symbol his horse would become against the background of the new "red" Russia. And the young rider is unable to keep his steed.
The picture, which was shown at the World of Art exhibition in 1912, was a success. Many saw the coming changes in it, especially since it hung over the door of the hall. Critic Vsevolod Dmitriev compared Bathing of the Red Horse with "a banner around which one can rally."
Petrov-Vodkin's painting in the painting of the early 20th century became a challenge no less strong than "Black Square" by Kazimir Malevich.
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