«Public Images of Sentiment» for Peasants: Lubok Pictures in the Context of Ukrainian Cultural Experience

The purpose of the research is  to analyze the Ukrainian lubok pictures of the end of the XIXth — the beginning of the XXth centuries as a part of a popular culture and as a communication channel of re-actualization of the Ukrainian cultural experience among the peasantry. The methodology of the research is based on application of the interdisciplinary approach at the intersection of peasant, art, and popular culture studies, and ethnology. The analysis of lubok phenomenon is carried out within the concept of lubok culture as a cross-cultural communication boundary. The Scientific Novelty. For the first time the attention was drawn to the Ukrainian pictorial lubok as “popular images of sentiment” (C. Geertz), “naive” visual imagery of which concealed layers of synthetic scope of the Ukrainian popular culture of the XVIth — the XXth centuries. In the article there has been revealed coexistence of the remains of early-modern and contemporary popular visual art in the XIXth century and its influence on cultural consciousness of the peasantry. The Conclusions. At the the end of the XIXth — the beginning of the XXth the origins of the mass visual art with the Ukrainian lubok pictures being its part date back to the birth of popular icon-painting, engraving and related artistic practices of the XVIth — the XVIIth centuries. Modifications of “popular images of sentiment” reflect changes in a socio-cultural situation. Tradition of visual images reproduction was transformed at the end of the XVIIIth — the beginning of the XIXth centuries. Reduction in the system of images postured as Ukrainian as well as emphasis on their ethnographic and rustic component limits the understanding of “authentic Ukrainian” as a pre-modern, hierarchically subordinated phenomenon. At the same time popular artistic images give the opportunity to keep public field for actualization, sensory and emotional appropriation of the Ukrainian-centric narrative; the possibility of self-identification of the peasants with a community for whom the reproducible cultural codes were known and common opened a window for a dialogue with the past contributing to its incorporation into the fabric of current culture.

Source: Volоshenko V. (2022). «Public Images of Sentiment» for Peasants: Lubok Pictures in the Context of Ukrainian Cultural Experience. East European Historical Bulletin. 22: 54–63

Source web-site: http://eehb.dspu.edu.ua/article/view/253725/251424