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Forms and Genres of Russian Art
The Watercolour
This film is devoted to one of the classic painting techniques - watercolour. An artist working in this technique uses special brushes and special paper. There are various methods of watercolour painting. What is the secret of watercolour? : What gives it its wonderful qualities? That is what this film is about.
The Landscape
If the object of the artist's attention is the natural world, the resulting painting is called a landscape. What is the purpose of creating images of the natural world? In what different ways can they be interesting? Might the artist be attracted by the idea of using the landscape motif as a means to express feelings, thoughts or even some philosophical idea? The film gives answers to these questions and more besides.
The Still Life
A still life is a depiction of the world of objects that surround us human beings. The film allows us to witness the magical transformation of apparently ordinary objects into a living, poetic image and to grasp how the distinctive character of a still life depends above all on the artist's attitude to the objects depicted.
The Drawing. (Film 1)
Drawing became a part of human life at the dawn of our existence. This film examines drawing as one of the forms of depiction, more specifically artistic depiction. The young viewers learn how the technical qualities of the materials used - pencil, charcoal, pen and ink or pastel - determine the character and artistic expressiveness of the drawing.
The Drawing. (Film 2)
This film continues our discussion of the drawing. It explains how the uniqueness of a drawing depends on more than just the technique employed. The image gains a special "flavour" from the age in which the artist lived, the character and temperament of the artist himself and the tasks that he was pursuing.
The Portrait
Portraiture is the branch of the fine arts devoted to the depiction of the human being. Like a mirror, a portrait reflects not only the individual nature of the sitter, but also the personality of the artist, and the era - the time when the portrait was created. This film explains the portrait's power of attraction, the nature of portrait likeness and the variety of different portraits.
The Artist and Time. (Film 1)
Examining painted images from the past, we arrive at a remarkable discovery - every era has its own character, its own unique way of expressing itself. The portrait genre informs us with complete candour about the times in which people lived. In this film we "travel through time" from the appearance of the first Russian portraits in the eighteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century.
The Artist and Time. (Film 2)
Russia's history looks out at us from painted portraits. In this film we trace the development of portraiture from the works produced in this genre by the Itinerants to the present day, taking in the bold avant-garde portrait, the polished images of the totalitarian regime and the depictions of our own contemporaries.
Folk Art
The viewers learn that the museum's stocks include not only works specially created by artists, but also the creations of many unknown folk craftsmen. The film gives a detailed introduction to the vivid, rich world of Russian folk art through its various manifestations - the architecture of the Russian countryside, the decoration of the peasant home, everyday articles, clothing, toys and wooden sculpture.
Sculpture (Film 1)
This film introduces the young viewers to sculpture as one of the forms of fine art. Sculpture is an artistic depiction in three dimensions. The film describes the variety of different genres within sculpture: monumental sculpture, bas-relief, the sculptural portrait. We look at the distinctive qualities of depictions in marble and bronze, wood-carving and stone-carving.
Sculpture (Film 2)
This film examines the different materials that artists use for making sculptures: plaster, wood, bronze, marble; and the various instruments that sculptors might use in the course of their work.
The Print. (Film 1)
Here viewers are introduced to one of the forms of creating a depiction on a flat surface - when an image is transferred from the original by printing onto paper. This film gives an introduction to two techniques - the woodcut and engraving on metal. It describes the process of preparing and printing an image, as well as the particular character of each technique.
The Print. (Film 2)
As time went on artists devised further techniques for creating prints. These included linocut, etching and the monotype. The film explains the differences in the images produced using as examples works by outstanding Russian print-makers of the eighteenth to twentieth centuries.
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