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Seminar Description

Mikhail Vrubel, a genius of fin-de-siècle Russian art, interweaves beauty and treachery, capturing disorientation and the threatening nature of the modern world in the manner of the Symbolist and Art Nouveau artists.

The seminar will follow the structure of the recent Vrubel’s retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow as a network of evolving interlinked motifs to showcase the development of his stunning crystalline technique and his inspiration in folk tradition and literature. Russian folk epics and works by Lermontov, Pushkin, Gogol, and Blok will be discussed alongside Vrubel’s art.

Julia Kriventsova Denne studied literature at St. Petersburg University, Russia, and teaches Russian literature and culture in the Chicago area

Materials List

Required:

• Instructor-Distributed Materials

First Reading:

• Please read Gogol’s “The Portrait” for the first meeting