Artists' Painting Workshops:
Throughout the U.S. the artists have offered week and two week long painting workshops, beginning with background lectures on their approach, drawing exercises, and proceeding to still life, life studies, and plein air painting in a variety of media. (See a schedule of upcoming events and painting workshops.) The Hermitage Group artists offer the painter and student a deep and unique approach to the structure and form of composition in their painting workshops and lectures. Based on the teachings of their mentor, Grigory Yakovlavich Dlugach, this approach explores the creation of "plasticity;" in essence, the creation of multidimensional space on the two dimensional surface. Dlugach believed that supreme "plastic" unity was organic to the works of the Renaissance masters, and he challenged his students to explore the hidden lines and planes of force to be discovered in the paintings housed in the Hermitage Museum. This focus on inner structure provides a fascinating template for the western student of composition as well as for the art history student exploring the genealogy of artistic movements and trends. In the applied workshops and studio activities, courses are individually tailored to experience, age, and length of available time. Each, however, draws from the Hermitage Group's orientation to "Symmetry and Rhythm as a base of Composition." A typical one week workshop might entail: Day One: Still Life plus analysis of Old Master's painting. Participants will begin a painting, either a free composition or interpretation of the selected Master. initial emphasis on basic structure of composition with black and white media to create and explore contrast. Day Two: Continue work on painting, exploration of complementary colors, with critiques and instruction to supplement Hermitage teachers demonstration of hidden lines and planes. Day Three: Life drawing using basic tenets from previous classes. Day Four: Outdoor on location (landscape or cityscape)Demonstrations with emphasis on discovering underlying lines and forces in organic and architectural surfaces. Day Five: Continued outdoor work with final critique and discussion of students perspective on Hermitage Group approach. The Hermitage Group also offers workshops in Russia at the St. Petersburg campus of their St. Petersburg College of Composition (see below) as well as homestay and complete tours in St. Petersburg. Lectures: In the lecture series (either independent or integrated with studio work, The Hermitage Group relates Dlugach's orientation to major historical figures: 1: Russian Icons (A. Rubler) The Hermitage Group artists have taught extensively over the last 4 years throughout the United States. In 1996 Sergei Daniel was a visiting lecturer at Connecticut College offering sections on European Art History and Russian Icons. Also during that year, Vladimir Obatnin gave a series of lectures at the Institute for the Humanities, University of Michigan. The artists have also offered studio courses for advanced painting students at University of Mississippi, Denver Art Students League, as well as workshops sponsored by the Steamboat Springs Arts Council, the Ah Haa School for the Arts (Telluride, Colo), and the Upper Edge Gallery in Aspen. Primary School Activities Perhaps their favorite activity has been their primary school involvement where the artists have worked with children as young as 6, introducting them to the fundamentals of their approach in the context of intercultural exploration. Secondary School Arts and Social Studies In Junior and Senior Highs, The focus of the Hermitage Group teachers varies depending on the class focus and length of time available: Some examples: In Chicago, at the Latin School, the artists first offered a dialog with students about life in Russia for the common citizen, from the perspective of the practicing artist. The conversations included art classes as well as social studies and international relations; subsequently and all day workshop was conducted with art students who were introduced to the fundementals of the artists classical approach. In Oxford Mississippi, the artists met with each art class for two days, offering an hour long introduction to Russian art and history. In Ouray and Telluride Colorado school wide assemblies were convened during which the artists talked about life in Russia today followed by lively question and answer sessions. These large events were followed by workshops for art students. |
THE
ST. PETERSBURG COLLEGE OF COMPOSITION SPCC began in 1989 as one of the first independent art schools in post Soviet Russia. Founded by members of the Hermitage Group of St. Petersburg, the school introduced Russian students to a previously forbidden approach to painting and drawing, one which called upon the techniques of the Old Masters, the revolutionary developments of the Russian avante garde, and the contemporary interpretations of the artists themselves. As painters and teachers for over 25 years, the eight members of the Hermitage Group had been forbidden to exhibit their own work or to teach their approach until the glasnost reforms of the mid 1980's. In part because of the radical departure from state sanctioned art education, and in part because of the underground following the Hermitage Group developed through their clandestine activities as teachers in Soviet art schools, upwards of 200 students were enrolled in the school by 1992. During the summer of '92, the work of the The Hermitage Group was exposed to American audiences for the first time when the group completed a series of exhibitions throughout California. During this trip and two subsequent nationwide tours in 1993 & 1994, dialogues began between the Hermitage Group and arts educators from high schools and colleges throughout the United States. A consensus developed that regardless of one's aesthetic judgement regarding the paintings of these men, the Hermitage Group can provide students with a perspective which is often ignored in American art education, and yet is critically important to an artist's development. As painter and Sonoma State University professor of art Mark Perlman comments, "The Hermitage Group artists offer the art student a window into the structural secrets of the Old Masters that is seldom taught in American colleges and universities." Together with the Hermitage Group artists, Professor Perlman developed a pilot curriculum for American students and in the summer of 1993, a two week intensive workshop was held at their school in St. Petersburg. As a result of the enthusiastic reactions of the students (both high school and college level), the program was expanded for 1994. Currently two and three week intensive workshops are offered with plans underway for a full summer curriculum in painting, drawing, art history, and Russian language. In addition, working artists from the U.S. have collaborated with the Hermitage Group in both Russia and the U.S. The rich cultural heritage of St. Petersburg offers the opportunity for the city to become the school's campus with SPCC offering year round instruction in the full range of visual and performing arts. The U.S. branch of SPCC, Friends of the Hermitage Group, works to build awareness of the artists and their school through exhibitions, lectures and teaching assignments in American communities. In addition it promotes American artist and student trips and art appreciation tours to St. Petersburg. A common criticism of much of the painting emerging from post-Soviet Russia suggests that the work suffers because the artists were not exposed to the dominant influences of the last several decades of western art. Yet it is that very sequestering which presents the American art student with the purity of form, composition and structure which often has been eliminated from U.S. arts education. It is the goal of SPCC to reintroduce these classical elements to arts education in a manner complementary to the contemporary arts education offered in western schools. However, SPCC's goal is not simply to "reintroduce" classical techniques. Rather, as noted art critic Peter Frank comments: "In adhering to an approach that gives equal weight to Modernist and Old Master concepts and methods 'iconoclastic traditionalism' they call it the Hermitage Group distances itself equally from the two styles currently associated in Western eyes with "Russian art." They eschew both the slick, faux-folk manner of their more commercially oriented countrymen and the Western style Pop-conceptualism of the radical artists who emerged just before and during glasnost. In a way, however, the Hermitage Group painters are as post Modernist as their Pop-conceptual compeers: by conflating both the techniques and the subjective concerns of Venetian Mannerism, Dutch Baroque, Barbizon Realism and proto-Bolshevik Cubo-Futurism, the eight St.. Petersburg artists have effected precisely the kind of deliberate anachronism championed by post-Modernist theorists. As such, SPCC intends to be on the cutting edge of contemporary artistic discourse. |
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Copyright
1997 All rights reserved. Hermitage Group, Carmel, California |