Intro to Levitan

Omsk Life Omsk! Rough industrial Omsk! Omsk of the oil factories, rocket factory, and many others. But Omsk is not a city of one thing, but a city of contrasts. The center is ornate and even delicate, with theaters, museums, and cafes, and a superb place to walk along the rivers for many kilometers. Omsk has the largest collection of art in all of Siberia, with 30,000 art pieces. Omsk is a city of over 1 million, but the downtown has kept its provincial backward charm of a Gogol novel. This is especially seen in the main theater, where the actors, when they come out into the audience, reek of cheap vodka.In Omsk, the dacha is only 5 km away, and we can be sitting on the veranda with snacks and a guitar while the banya is heating up—all in a 10-minute drive. And this makes me wonder at the self-satisfied Moscow residents who, in all my years of teaching, have never been to a single museum or performance at one of the main theaters. I've never heard anything like, "We visited the Hermitage for an examination of Byzantine artifacts," for example. No, in talking to my students, I hear that they wouldn't dream of facing the tourist crowds on a weekend or throwing 7000 rubles to the wind of a ticket at one of the main theaters. It's then that I realize that the motives for action in life are mainly based on whether it creates envy in others rather than in really getting anything from the city.In light of that, Omsk is a place where I've simply lived for more than 20 years. I'm not comparing it or ranking it; I'm just showing Omsk and what I find fascinating here to myself. It's wonderful to be able to walk into any of the museums on a Sunday and just purchase a ticket and go right into the collection. I have been many times to the Hermitage in St. Petersburg since 1987, but there is so much to look at and so much splendor that after 1½ hours, the only dream is to get out into the fresh air and see something alive. Feasting your eyes on marble, gold, and paintings does not warm the soul, you see. My favorite museum in St. Petersburg actually is the Russian Museum at the Mihailovsky Palace, as it is somehow much more accessible, and the sleek classical building is not competing so much for your attention as the Hermitage. In fact, the Hermitage is the best work of art, and the problem is that it throws the artwork inside it into 2nd place.But back to Omsk! The collection of art in the permanent collection is charming and has samples of Russia's best. In light of that, my goal is to examine Levitan's works in the Omsk Vrubel museum. First, let's look at Levitan himself. Levitan, like many artists, had a difficult life. For one, he came from a poor Jewish family from Lithuania, apparently. His parents died when he was a teenager in Moscow, but his father had already put him into an art school, and his talent was noticed. As a teenager, he faced rough poverty and even homelessness. However, his extraordinary talent was noticed at age 16 even, and he was allowed to continue at the school free.His painting of an evening standing at a small, lonesome depot gained him money to live on and rent a room. Then after a while, his fame exploded. What is so unique about his art? Well, it catches the beauty in ordinary places, for one. Chekhov, by the way, was Levitan's closest companion, and his short stories also run on a theme of provincial life and inward longing unrealized. Levitan did not paint aristocrats in a park in St. Petersburg. I myself grew up in the Allegheny mountain area of central New York state, just south of the Finger Lakes. Rich waterfalls, canyons, lakes, and the splendid views at the tops of hills, layer after layer of blue, could be seen from the window of my parents car, for in America, everything is seen from a car window. However, as with Leivitan's paintings, I later feel that same sense of longing and tension from a typical flat countryside in Russian Siberia, with the birch groves and meadows spreading out everywhere and the calm sweep of the Irtysh River flanking the Achersky Monastery, for example. So Levitan makes sense for everyone, but a Russian especially feels that it hits a nerve.Levitan's own personal life was a non-stop disaster of relationships, intrigues, and scandals, love triangles, suicide attempts, and depression. His remarkably handsome face and delicate sensitivity to the poetic beauty of life seemed to give him boundless chances with the Russian liberal ladies of the intelligentsia. As with Chekhov, fame brought a jaded happiness and lifestyle. But this happens so often with fame, does it not! We can be glad at our own mediocrity, I suppose!Now, my goal is to go to the Omsk Vrubel Museum and look at the paintings directly!

Видео Intro to Levitan автора Omsk Life / Омская Жизнь