2025 № 4 (55)
Metropolitan and Regional Art in Russia, 2000–2025
UDC 73; 75
BBC 85.103(2)6
DOI: 10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-354-383
For cit.: Yakimovich A.K. Metropolitan and Regional Art in Russia, 2000–2025. Hudozhestvennaya kul’tura [Art & Culture Studies], 2025, no. 4, pp. 354-383. https://doi.org/10.51678/2226-0072-2025-4-354-383. (In Russian)
Yakimovich Alexander K.
D. Sc. (in Art History), Academician of the Russian Academy of Arts, Honored Artist of the Russian Federation, Chief Researcher, Research Institute of Theory and History of Fine Arts of the Russian Academy of Arts, 21 Prechistenka Str., Moscow, 119034, Russia
https://orcid.org/0009-0007-2626-6367
Metropolitan and Regional Art in Russia, 2000–2025
Abstract. The issue of metropolitan and ‘provincial’ qualities in art belongs to the ground problems of art studies. No doubt that an attempt to classify and interpret new visual artworks created in Moscow and St. Petersburg, on the one hand, and those made in the rest of the Russian territory, on the other hand, will increase our understanding of the contemporary situation. Traditional stylistic criteria will hardly be relevant in this case because the vast space between the Baltic Sea and the Pacific Ocean displays a multistylistic diversity and a postmodernist plurality in arts. Some significant differentiation has to be expected in their contents (meanings and messages). On the level of meanings, we can recognize that artworks coming from Moscow and St. Petersburg are marked by sharpness and dramatism, and by meaningful contrasts of eschatological type (e.g. artworks by S. Gavrilyachenko, K. Voronova, and Yu. Malinina). Regional artists such as A. Parshkov, H. Povaieva, N. Rybakov, and E. Bobrova demonstrate another basic trend, namely they enjoy a kind of New Cosmism and turn to images of natural forces and processes, vital impulses, and Universal energies.
Keywords: metropolitan art, regional art, ‘Russian Cosmism’ in art, eschatological meanings, energies of the Universe as artistic problem
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Received 11.09.2025
Accepted 16.10.2025
