Russian Lubok is a graphic type of folk art that arose in the era of Peter the Great. Sheets with bright funny pictures were printed in hundreds of thousands and were extremely cheap. They never depicted sorrow or sadness, funny or informative stories with simple understandable images were accompanied by laconic inscriptions and were peculiar comics of the 17th – 19th centuries. In each hut, similar pictures hung on the walls, they were very dear to them, and they were waiting impatiently for shrimp, distributors of luboks.
Origin of the term
At the end of the 17th century, prints from wooden boards were called German or Frisky amusing sheets, by analogy with prints, the technique of which came to Russia from Western lands. Representatives of southern Europe, mainly Italians, have long been called in Flags in Russia, all other Europeans were called Germans. Later, prints with more serious content and realistic image were called Fryazh sheets, and traditional Russian lubok was called folk art with simplified, brightly colored graphics and intelligibly capacious images.
There are two suggestions why the funny sheets were called popular prints. Perhaps the first impression boards were made from bast - the lower layer of the tree bark, most often linden. Boxes were made from the same material - containers for bulk products or home belongings. They were often painted with picturesque patterns with primitive images of people and animals. Over time, boards intended to work with a cutter began to be called forehead.
Execution technique
Each stage of work on Russian lubok had its own name and was performed by different masters.
- Initially, a contour drawing was created on paper, and the denominators were applied with a pencil to the prepared board. Such a process was called a sign.
- Then the carvers set to work. They made indentations with sharp tools, leaving thin walls along the outline of the picture. This delicate painstaking work required special qualifications. Ready-to-print base boards were sold to the breeder. The first woodcutters and then copper engravers lived in Izmailovo, a village near Moscow.
- The board was smeared with dark paint and with a sheet of cheap gray paper superimposed on it, it was placed under the press. Thin walls from the board left a black outline drawing, and the places of the cut-out recesses kept the paper unpainted. Such sheets were called sutures.
- Paintings with contour prints were taken to flower designers - village artisans involved in painting simple paintings. This work was done by women, often children. Each of them painted up to a thousand sheets per week. Artists did paints themselves. Raspberry color was obtained from boiled sandalwood with the addition of alum, blue tint gave lapis lazuli, various transparent tones were extracted from processed plants and tree bark. In the XVIII century, with the advent of lithography, the profession of flower designers almost disappeared.
Due to wear and tear, boards were often copied, this was called a translation. Initially, the board was cut from linden, then they began to use pear and maple.
The emergence of funny pictures
The first printing press was called the Fryaz mill and was installed in the Court (Upper) printing house at the end of the 17th century. Then other printing houses appeared. Boards for printing were cut copper. There is an assumption that Russian printers were first made by professional printers, installing the simplest machines in their homes. Printing craftsmen lived in the area of ​​the modern Stretenki and Lubyanka streets, here, near the church walls, they sold amusing Fryazh sheets, which immediately began to be in demand. In this area, by the beginning of the 18th century, popular prints acquired their characteristic style. Soon, other places of their distribution appeared, such as the Vegetable row, and then the Spassky bridge.
Funny pictures at Peter
Wishing to please the sovereign, draftsmen for amusing sheets came up with amusing plots. For example, the battle of Alexander the Great with the Indian king Por, in which the Greek ancient commander was given a clear portrait resemblance to Peter I. Or the plot of a black and white print about Ilya Muromets and the Nightingale the Robber, where the Russian hero with the appearance and clothes corresponded to the image of the sovereign, and the robber in Swedish military uniform portrayed Charles XII. Peter I himself may have ordered some plots of Russian lubok, for example, a sheet reflecting the sovereign's reformist instructions from 1705: a Russian merchant dressed in European clothes is preparing to shave his beard.
The printers received orders from opponents of the Petrine reforms, however, the content of seditious lubok was veiled by allegorical images. After the king’s death, a well-known leaf spread with the scene of the cat’s mice burial, which contained many hints that the cat is the late sovereign, and the happy mice are the lands conquered by Peter.
The flourishing of lubok in the 18th century
Starting in 1727, after the death of Empress Catherine I, the print issue in Russia fell sharply. Most printing houses, including St. Petersburg, were closed. And the printers, who were left without work, reoriented to the production of popular prints, using printing copper boards, most of which remained after the closure of enterprises. Since that time, the heyday of the Russian folk lubok began.
By the middle of the century lithographic machines appeared in Russia, which made it possible to multiply the number of copies many times, to get color printing, and a better and more detailed image. The first factory with 20 machines belonged to the Moscow merchants Akhmetyev. Competition among laborers increased, subjects became more diverse. Pictures were created for the main consumers - the townspeople, therefore they reflected city life and life. Peasant themes appeared only in the next century.
Lubok production in the 19th century
Since the middle of the century, 13 large lithographic printing houses have been operating in Moscow, along with the main products that produced popular prints. By the end of the century, I. Sytin’s enterprise was considered the most prominent in the production and distribution of these products, which produced annually about two million calendars, one and a half million sheets with biblical subjects, 900 thousand pictures with secular subjects. Morozov's lithography annually produced about 1.4 million luboks, the Golyshev factory - about 300 thousand, the circulation of other industries was smaller. The cheapest sheets were sold for half a penny, the most expensive pictures cost 25 cents.
Theme
The chronicle plots of the 17th century were chronicles, oral and manuscript legends, and epics. By the middle of the 18th century, Russian painted lubok with images of buffoons, jesters, noble life, and court fashion became popular. There were many satirical sheets. In 30 - 40 years, the most popular content of popular prints was the image of folk city festivals, festivals, entertainment, fist fights, fairs. Some sheets contained several thematic pictures, for example, the Lubok “Meeting and seeing off Maslenitsa” consisted of 27 drawings depicting the fun of Muscovites from different parts of the city. Since the second half of the century, redistributions from German and French calendars and almanacs spread.
From the beginning of the 19th century, literary subjects of the works of Goethe, Châteaubriand, François René, and other writers popular at that time appeared in popular prints. Since the 1820s, the Russian style has entered into fashion, which has been expressed in print in the village theme. At the expense of the peasants, the demand for popular prints also increased. The themes of spiritual-religious, military-patriotic content, portraits of the royal family, illustrations with quotes for fairy tales, songs, fables, sayings remained popular.
Lubok XX - XXI centuries
In the graphic design of flyers, posters, newspaper illustrations, signs of the beginning of the last century, popular style was often used. This is due to the fact that pictures remained the most popular type of informational product for the illiterate rural and urban population. The genre was later characterized by art historians as an element of Russian Art Nouveau.
Lubok influenced the formation of the political and propaganda poster of the first quarter of the 20th century. At the end of the summer of 1914, the publishing company Today's Lubok was organized, the task of which was to issue satirical posters and postcards. Accurate short texts were written by Vladimir Mayakovsky, who worked on the images together with the artists Kazimir Malevich, Larionov, Chekrygin, Lentulov, Burlyukov and Gorsky. Until the 1930s, popular print was often present in advertising posters and design. For a century, the style has been used in Soviet caricature, illustrations for children's and satirical caricatures.
It is impossible to call Russian lubok a modern form of fine art, which is very popular. Such graphics are extremely rarely used for an ironic poster, design of fairs or thematic exhibitions. There are few illustrators and caricaturists working in this direction, but on the Internet, their bright witty work on the topic of the day attracts the attention of netizens.
"We draw in the style of Russian lubok"
In 2016, under the title, the publishing house “Hobbitek” published a book by Nina Velichko, addressed to everyone who is interested in folk art. The work contains articles of entertaining and informative nature. Based on the works of old masters, the author teaches the features of popular prints, explains how to draw a picture inscribed in a frame in stages, portray people, trees, flowers, houses, display stylized letters and other elements. Thanks to the fascinating material, the technique and properties of popular prints, it’s not at all difficult to master in order to independently create vivid entertaining pictures.
In Moscow on Sretenka there is a museum of Russian lubok and naive art. The foundation of the exposition is a rich collection of the director of this institution Viktor Penzin. The exposition of popular prints, starting from the XVIII century and ending with our days, causes considerable interest of visitors. It is no coincidence that the museum is located in the area of ​​Pechatnikov Lane and Lubyanka, where more than three centuries ago those same printing workers who were at the forefront of the history of Russian lubok lived. Here the style of Fryzhsky funny pictures was born, and sheets for sale were hung on the fence of the local church. Perhaps the expositions, books and the demonstration of pictures on the Internet will revive interest in Russian popular print, and it will again become fashionable, as has happened repeatedly with other types of folk art.