PHOTOS BY ANDREY SAMATUGA
Final exams -- that tornado-season at the end of the school year when students spend more time than they would like, taking in more caffeine than is good for them, so they can absorb more information than any right-thinking individual would normally consider necessary.
Final exams -- you spend stress-laden weeks preparing for an ordeal that lasts hours, but at least the general public isn't invited to look over your shoulder. Or is it?
For students at the St Petersburg State Academy of Fine and Applied Arts, the final exam isn't just a matter of sitting down to multiple-choice questions.
From June 15-20, graduation candidates at the academy defended their portfolios in a combined examination and exhibition. Every year this examination is an open house to which the general public is welcome, and in which the city's professional artists and craftsmen always take an appraising interest.
The portfolios, ranging from easel-painting to automotive design, are usually centered on a specific commission arranged through the academy's departments, and often for a public project.
The academy was originally founded by Baron Alexander Stieglitz in 1879 as the School of Technical Drawing. Stieglitz donated the then phenomenal sum of one million roubles, and had buildings constructed specifically to house the school. Its original purpose was to provide qualified draftsmen for the city's burgeoning industries of the late 19th century, including the Faberge studios. The school's departments expanded to include decorative and fine arts, as well as such technically serviceable crafts as glass-blowing, metalworking, interior design and architecture.
In the Soviet era, the School was renamed after the sculptor Vera Mukhina, not out of any connection with the school, but because her statue "The Worker and the Peasant," originally designed for the Paris Fair of 1937, proved such an impressive symbol of the Soviet work ethic. The statue now stands near the Exhibition of Economic Achievement in Moscow.
The academy's main building on Solyanoy Pereulok is next to a museum which contained artwork donated by Stieglitz. These were later appropriated by the Hermitage, notably a set of 17th century Flemish tapestries. The Council Hall, where the tapestries had hung, served as a projection-room and lecture hall.
Yelena Korneva hopes her work may be chosen to grace the Council Hall.
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Yelena Korneva's graduation portfolio -- she was a student at the Department of Monumental Painting -- is designed to decorate walls which have long stood conspicuously bare. Korneva has painted a nocturnal set of the Four Seasons, and if the graduating committee approves, her work will hang where the work of Flemish masters had hung before.
The Department of Glass produces work for both utility and decoration: glassware, vases, ornaments, blown glass and stained glass. Vadim Lebedev has prepared stained-glass windows and doors to the order of a private residence in town.
One of the staircases at the academy boasted a stained-glass window which was shattered during the blockade. Yevgeny Ivanov has created a twelve-pane, 5-square-meter window to take its place. The new window, called "The Spirit of Creativity," is not stained, but has images of winged muses and the attributes of various departments (brushes, palettes, drafting-triangles, compass, etc) frosted into the glass with a sand-blast.
Detail from "The Spirit of Creativity" by Yevgeny Ivanov. (pictured top of page)
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In the Department of Ceramics, Natalia Dyatilova has produced a group of icons, to form part of the main icon-stand of a rebuilt church in Kem, on the White Sea. The town of Kem has strong emotional connotations for Russians. It is the mainland harbor closest to the Solovetskie Islands. The islands are home both to a 16th century monastery and to one of the most terrible prisons of the Stalinist era. Only a handful of prisoners ever returned alive.
Although ceramic icons are a novelty, Dyatilova's work follows Orthodox traditions. The spirit of her work harmonizes with traditional iconography, rather than reinterpreting it in a modern fashion.
The Department of Textiles encompasses the design, painting and printing of fabric, weaving and tapestry, wall-hangings and stage-curtains. Yelena Pavshukova wove a tapestry which will decorate the Valaam Monastery, on an island on Lake Ladoga. Pavshukova's tapestry is a fantastic impression of the landscape and grounds of the monastery, seen as one of the holiest sanctuaries in Russia.
Tatyana Sklerenko has created a lyrically pastoral tapestry in celebration of nature. At first the eye focuses on details in the landscape, and on the shrewdly-wrought effect of depth. It then quickly becomes apparent that the whole is framed by the outline of a cow, a reference to its importance as a divine symbol in many world religions.
In the Department of Interior Design, the instructor gives the student an actual location in the city. It is then the student's task to use that space for a genuine commission. Natalia Yegorova, Aleksei Tikhanov, Yuri Agafanov and others have laid out, designed and furnished a restaurant to occupy a glass-canopied three-storey courtyard in the Kochubey Mansion, on Konnogvardeisky Boulevard. Agafanov landscaped the location to recreate a Mediterranean atmosphere. Tikhanov explained that the intention was to preserve the building's traditional style, while at the same time making a new and personal statement.
Elya Nizamova, a student from Kazan, has designed the concert hall and vestibule for the conservatory in her native city. The existing conservatory building owes much to Art Nouveau, and incorporates traditional Tartar folk motifs. Nizamova's work harmonizes with this plan, particularly with a lavish and richly ornate oriental ceiling.
Under the tutelage of his advisor Felix Romanovsky, Igor Shulman has designed a conference hall and recreation club for a business center in a building already constructed on the Apothecary's Island.
The graduating committee will make its decision this month, and the academy will hold another exhibition of the most successfully graded portfolios in the fall.