Moscow: Treasures and Traditions

The richness of Moscow's artistic legacy and the effects of various political, social and religious changes on the city's creative climate over the past 500 years are recorded here in 12 insightful essays by American and Soviet curators and academics, and in more than 180 brilliant color photographs and illustrations. Lincoln chronicles the capital's cultural heritage from the 1300s, when Moscow's princes appropriated art belonging to formerly independent territories as a symbol of the city's burgeoning political power. Olga G. Gordeeva examines the influence of European and Oriental styles on the traditional clothing of Moscow. The most interesting essay is John E. Bowlt's piece on Russian art from 1910--when a group of artists including Kandinsky and Malevich began to apply radically new concepts like neoprimitivism to their work--until the present, when artists are allowed to shun the socialist realist method that had been forced upon them for decades. Also included are essays on metalwork, jewelry, porcelain and armor. This book is being published in conjunction with a traveling exhibition organized by the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S.S.R. Ministry of Culture. (Aug.)