Mini art form in big trouble
Once upon a time, the small, picturesque Russian village of Palekh gained fame far and wide for producing religious icons.
Then one day, a revolution came and its adherents, growling, “There is no god,” banned such art.
Hundreds of artists eventually learned to adorn lacquer boxes instead, painting scenes from Russian fairy tales or romanticized versions of country life. These delicate miniatures made the village famous anew, especially after foreign collectors plunked down tens of thousands of dollars buying an art form considered uniquely Russian.
Then the fickle wheel of history rotated once more. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the renaissance of the Russian Orthodox Church revived icon painting. The miniature art is now facing extinction.
“It is going to be lost,” said Yevgeny A. Sivyakov, 71, an accomplished miniaturist. “It is a frightening period right now.”
The youngest generation of artists shows little interest, he said. “Everyone speaks of commerce — what is the point of developing lacquer miniatures when good money is being paid for icons, for frescoes?”
Stunning antique icons and miniatures fill the collection of the State Museum of Palekh Art. The boxes are adorned with characters from Russian fairy tales — princes and princesses, the legendary firebird — replacing the Virgin Mary and saints.
Before the miniatures, Palekh icon painting dates to the early 16th century.
The region, 350 kilometres east of Moscow, served as an important trade hub, attracting a community of Old Believers, who hewed to a more traditional form of Russian Orthodoxy. They commissioned so many religious icons that it spawned a local industry.
Over the centuries, the Old Believers stuck with tradition, commissioning original icons rather than prints, explained Mikhail B. Pechkin, an art historian and miniaturist in Kholui.
By the time of the 1917 Russian Revolution, about 300 icon painters inhabited each village. When icons were banned, they floundered about for alternatives, including book illustrations and set designs.
Then Ivan I. Golikov, a painter, stumbled upon a small exhibition in Moscow featuring 18th-century Asian painted lacquer boxes. In December 1924, Golikov founded the Ancient Russian Painting Workshop in Palekh.
Virtually everyone in Palekh will tell you that the Soviet Union earned some $1million annually in hard currency off the boxes, which Western collectors considered a rarity.
Lacquer boxes, as did all things following the Soviet Union’s demise, experienced a period of anarchy. Cheap fakes flooded the market and prices collapsed. Something small — a glasses case, for example — goes for $121 (U.S.) in the Palekh museum store. An imitation in Moscow costs less than $5. Demand for originals has fallen sharply. Few Russians can afford such prices, and foreign collectors died out.