“Ghosts of Hellas”: reception of ancient polychromy in the program cycle by V.D. Polenov

Abstract

The term “programmaticism” in modern art-historical discourse carries different meanings and connotations than those associated with the concept of a “program”; it is relevant and requires definition within the conceptual and terminological apparatus of art history. Today, the term “programmatic” does not refer to the correspondence of a work to a given written text (as was common in the 18th and 19th centuries), but rather to the presence of a non-verbal program implicit in the structure of the work itself, which is subsequently to be verbalized.

A number of works by V.D. Polenov with the general title “Ghosts of Hellas” have not previously been considered a cycle. Leading experts on the artist’s work, E.V. Paston and T.L. Karpova, identify in these paintings a series of authorial replicas based on the compositional solution of the set design for the opera of the same name. This opera was composed by Polenov, based on a libretto by S.I. and S.S. Mamontov, and staged at the Great Hall of the Moscow Conservatory. The article proposes a hypothesis according to which these easel works are viewed as a pictorial cycle — an artistic project possessing a programmatic quality. A comparative analysis of the compositional structure, based on the classical pyramidal principle, reveals distinctive features in Polenov’s spatial arrangements. These become evident when compared with V. M. Vasnetsov’s “Knight at the Crossroads” and its various versions. Vasnetsov’s works demonstrate the invariance of the pyramidal spatial structure, serving as a textbook example of authorial repetition. At the same time, Polenov’s compositions exhibit polyvariance in the spatial organization of the depicted objects (mountain, sea, temple, statue, altar, and stele); as spatial relations shift, so too does the system of compositional accents and their figurative-symbolic interpretation.

The non-verbal program implicit in Polenov’s cycle is a polemic with contemporary art and architecture theorists (G. Semper, J. Hittorf) about ancient polychromy. Polenov’s approach to the problem of polychromy is closer to the position of A. Furtwängler, for whom the ‘white marble’ of architecture and sculpture was an objective value. Sharing this position, Polenov proposes his own original model for the reconstruction of ancient polychromy, based on a plein-air approach and utilizing the achievements of impressionism and divisionism. Polenov’s colouristic genius was well capable of accomplishing this paradoxical task: creating a ghostly object illuminated by a real sun and performing architectural reconstruction through plein-air painting. This gives us reason to consider “Ghosts of Hellas” as a programmatic cycle, and in the sense of the concept that implies that a work possessing this quality goes beyond itself, generating and broadcasting meanings that exceed both its plot and its figurative and symbolic content. In Polenov’s cycle, this transcendent essence is the relationship between the real antiquity that has been made accessible through scientific reconstruction and Antiquity as a Hellenistic paradigm of European culture; the phenomenon and the idea of Antiquity.