Exhibit chronicles Russian era

By DAVID CRISP

The Billings Outpost

Isaak Brodsky is best known today for portraits of Lenin and Stalin at the height of their power. Now his paintings, and those he collected, are giving Billings residents a window on the tremendous changes unleashed by the fall of the Soviet regime.

A remarkable exhibition of 75 works from the Brodsky collection in St. Petersburg is on display at the Yellowstone Art Museum. Many of them have never been seen in the United States before, and their appearance here is an unprecedented coup for the local arts community.

Works in "Art From Russia's Turning Point: Isaak Brodsky and His Collection" span turbulent years in Russian history: the disasters of World War I, the crumbling of the czar's regime, civil war, and the rise of Lenin, then Stalin. Times are turbulent in Russia again, with the communist system in collapse and the economy in ruins, and the exhibition provides a rare look at the response of Russian artists both before and during political turmoil.

"When I walked in last evening for the premiere, what first struck me was the color," said Frederick Skinner of the University of Montana, who moderated a symposium last weekend on the exhibition. Then, he said, he was taken by the humanity of the paintings, the tribute to the Russian spirit they embody.

In a 1990 trip to what was then still Leningrad, Mr. Skinner said, he was amazed by the proliferation of vibrant and creative art in Russia.

Those changing times helped land the Brodsky exhibition for Billings, the result of eight years of effort by Bill Frazier of the Montana Arts Council and by Tair Salakhov, vice president of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Mr. Frazier said the project started at Ruidoso Downs, N.M., where he had gone to judge an art show. Mr. Salakhov befriended him, and they worked out arrangements in a series of trips over the years.

Finally getting the exhibition here was a mammoth undertaking, said Bowen H. Greenwood, marketing coordinator of the Yellowstone Art Museum. Insurance had to be arranged, both for the art and for the Russian curators who accompanied it, and an order had to be entered into the Congressional Record that the art would not be seized while in the United States.

The paintings were flown to New York, then to a Federal Express hub in Memphis, then to Great Falls. From there, they traveled to Billings by truck under police escort.

New frames had to be built by the Toucan Gallery for some of the paintings, and the Art Museum staff had to overcome language barriers in working with the Russian visitors to hang the paintings properly.

The effort seemed to be paying off, at least on opening weekend. About three times the usual attendance visited the museum on opening day, Mr. Greenwood said.

"It's here for two months, and we expect the stream to be very steady," he said. Approximately 175 people filled a room in the Sheraton Hotel for Saturday's symposium, which included a lecture by John Bowlt, an expert on Russian art from the University of Southern California.

According to Mr. Bowlt, Isaak Brodsky excelled in art school under the tutelage of Ilya Repin, the great realist painter. Seven of Mr. Repin's paintings are included in the exhibition, including "Barge Haulers by a Bonfire," one of a series of studies that led to his monumental "Haulers on the Volga."

Also on display is a portrait of Repin by Mr. Brodsky himself, a work that Repin praised for its "simplicity, elegance, harmony and truth, truth above all, and so likable."

Mr. Brodsky's paintings, 11 in all, fill most of the first room of the three-room showing. They span an array of changes in Russian society, from a quiet portrait of a woman sitting on a rug, to the clean lines of "Fallen Leaves," to a severe painting of Lenin, to a heroic view of a Russian industrial worker.

Mr. Brodsky came to be considered tedious and unimaginative by his critics, Mr. Bowlt said. He dismissed the extreme avant-garde in Russian painting, and he eulogized the Soviet revolution, perhaps in part because of the anti-Semitism of the czarist regime.

But Mr. Brodsky also rescued paintings by artists out of favor with the Soviet rulers, Mr. Bowlt said. And he helped needy artists out financially, said Ekaterina Grishina, director of the Russian Academy of Arts.

Mr. Brodsky's official portraits of Stalin and Lenin should be judged more as documents of history than as works of fine art, Mr. Salakhov said through an interpreter. They should be viewed in the same way as the paintings artists make of U.S. presidents, he said.

Certainly, Mr. Brodsky's collection, most of which remains in St. Petersburg, appeals to a broad range of tastes. The works include somber landscapes, compellingly realistic portraits and bright, almost comic, portraits by Kustodiev of merchants, cabmen and waiters.

Also are on display are more troubling works: Fechin's "Cossack with a Goose" mingles the comic and the grotesque in a spectral portrait. Zamirailo's "Fantastic Scene" is a watercolor showing a woman walking through a field of strewn bodies, looking down at heads bobbing up the pathway.

It is tempting, of course, to correlate dates of the paintings with political events, but that is far too simplistic. Grigoriev's disturbing "Sunflowers" (1919) is part of a series about the revolutionary epoch, but it hangs near Somov's "Fireworks" (1922), which is serene, remote and classical in feel.

Then, as now, Mr. Salakhov said, Russian art finds itself at a turning point. The Russian Academy of Arts, founded by Catherine the Great in 1757, tries to maintain tradition without cutting off newer works, he said. But the old stream of funding for the arts has gone, he said, and nothing new has come along to replace it.

Mr. Salakhov wouldn't even attempt to describe the current direction of Russian art. It's too diverse and fragmented to chart its course, he said.

In the meantime, Billings is the only stop for Mr. Brodsky's collection of works covering another time of feverish change. As Mrs. Grishina put it, citing a Russian saying, "It's much better to see one time than to hear 10 times."

The exhibition will be on display through Dec. 31. Museum hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, except for Thursdays, when it is open until 8 p.m. Sunday hours are noon to 5 p.m.

Admission is free to museum members, $7 for adults, $5 for seniors and students and $3 for children.

In conjunction with the exhibition, Museum Director Marianne Lorenz will give a series of lectures at 2 p.m. Sundays, Nov. 8, 15 and 22. Admission is $7 for nonmembers.