A Groundbreaking New History of Russian Art
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Picturing Russia's Men: Masculinity and Modernity in Nineteenth-Century Painting
Allison Leigh A vital new approach to the study of masculinity within art history, the book investigates the dissatisfaction that developed from the breakdown in prevailing conceptions of manhood outside of the usual Western European context. Drawing on a wide variety of source material, including previously untranslated letters and journals, the book explores the deep structures of masculinity to reveal the conflicting desires and aspirations of men in the period. |
Winner of the Heldt Prize for Best Book
in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies
(2021)
in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women’s and Gender Studies
(2021)
"Beautifully illustrated, full of incisive new readings of familiar paintings, Picturing Russia's Men excavates the innumerable ways in which the institutions of academy, army, and family shaped the male artist’s identity and output. With its blend of close reading, theoretical sophistication, and wide-ranging research, this fine study brilliantly dispels the common misperception that there is little more to be said about Russian painting of the nineteenth century."
Wendy Salmond, Professor of Art History, Chapman University, USA
Wendy Salmond, Professor of Art History, Chapman University, USA
"Engaging with a remarkable spectrum of behaviours, expectations, violations, and stereotypes, this book generates new understanding of masculinity and modernity by considering paintings as revelatory, questioning, and even constitutive of what it meant to be a man during a turbulent half-century of imperial rule."
Rosalind P. Blakesley, Professor of Russian and European Art, University of Cambridge, UK
Rosalind P. Blakesley, Professor of Russian and European Art, University of Cambridge, UK
"An important and eye-opening contribution to the Slavic field and our studies of modernism in Russia. Through an examination of male portraiture, it traces the breakdown, between 1825 and 1881, of various myths surrounding masculinity—from the solid heroic code of virtuous, courageous manhood to the ambiguities of doubt-ridden individualism."
Elizabeth Valkenier, Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, Columbia University, USA
Elizabeth Valkenier, Adjunct Associate Professor of Art History, Columbia University, USA
Read the Introduction
About the Author
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Allison Leigh is an art historian, professor, curator, and critic. She received her Ph.D. from Rutgers University and now teaches in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. She was previously a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art in New York City. She has written numerous essays on Russian art and masculinity and recently won the Barbara Heldt Prize for the Best Article in Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Women's and Gender Studies for her article "Il’ia Repin in Paris: Mediating French Modernism.” She currently resides in Lafayette, Louisiana. |
