Report on the Open Seminar “Itinerant Artists and the landscape of the Russo-Japanese border”
2013/01/26
On Saturday 26th of January, 2012, the “Itinerant Artists and the landscape of the Russo-Japanese border” open seminar was held. This was the first lecture associated with Global COE's 8th Museum exhibition entitled “Unknown Kamchatka and Kuril Islands- Russian images of the borderland”. The talk was given by Natalia Kiriukhina (Member of the Sakhalin branch of the Russian Society of Arts), who, in conversation with the exhibition’s planner Yako Hisashi, provided an overview of the Arts situation on the Kurils.
Herself an artist and teacher of fine arts, Ms. Kiriukhina provided an overview of the system of fine arts education in Sakhalin and the Russian Far East, summarized the activities of artists and collectives in the region since Soviet times and analyzed some paintings of the Kurils and Sakhalin. In particular, she emphasized the mesmerizing effect that the beauty of Shikotan and Etorofu had had on artists in the Soviet period. During the Soviet period artists came to the Kurils not only from Moscow but all parts of the Union, and a large number of paintings have been left depicting the fascination in which these natural landscapes were held. Thanks to her analysis of these paintings, the large audience was able to catch a glimpse of the ‘near, yet distant’ lands of the Kurils.
Herself an artist and teacher of fine arts, Ms. Kiriukhina provided an overview of the system of fine arts education in Sakhalin and the Russian Far East, summarized the activities of artists and collectives in the region since Soviet times and analyzed some paintings of the Kurils and Sakhalin. In particular, she emphasized the mesmerizing effect that the beauty of Shikotan and Etorofu had had on artists in the Soviet period. During the Soviet period artists came to the Kurils not only from Moscow but all parts of the Union, and a large number of paintings have been left depicting the fascination in which these natural landscapes were held. Thanks to her analysis of these paintings, the large audience was able to catch a glimpse of the ‘near, yet distant’ lands of the Kurils.
