History of Visual Culture

These club sessions are not traditional art history lectures. Participants look at slides, discuss what they see, and gradually build a visual historical timeline—stretching from cave paintings to contemporary art.

The club leader, Elena Popova, is an artist who deeply understands how vital it is for teenagers to look at a variety of works, compare them, notice details, and learn how to truly see.

Tentative Syllabus:

• The Origins: From Caves to the Christianization of Rus — Paleolithic to the 11th century
• Pre-Mongol Rus: Icons and White-Stone Churches — 11th–13th centuries
• Rus Under the Yoke and the Revival of Moscow — 14th–15th centuries
• Rublev and Dionysius
• Ivan the Terrible and "Russian Uzorochye" (Ornamentalism)

— 16th century

• The Time of Troubles and Moscow Baroque — 17th century
• Peter The Great: A Revolution of Taste — early 18th century
• Elizabeth and Catherine: Russian Portraiture and Classicism — mid-to-late 18th century
• Romanticism and the Age of Nicholas I — early 19th century
• The Peredvizhniki (The Wanderers): The Realism Rebellion — second half of the 19th century
• The Silver Age: Symbolism and the "World of Art" (Mir Iskusstva) — late 19th to early 20th century
• Ballets Russes and Art Nouveau — 1900s–1910s
• The Avant-Garde I: The Rebellion of Form — Larionov, Goncharova, and Cubo-Futurism
• The Avant-Garde II: Suprematism and Constructivism — Malevich, Rodchenko, and Tatlin
• Socialist Realism and the Soviet Empire Style — 1930s–1950s
• From the Thaw to the Present Day: Nonconformists and Contemporary Art

While the primary focus is on Russian culture, it is always explored within a global historical and artistic context.