The urban landscape of St. Petersburg by artists of the academic school of the 2000s and 2020s.

Mezhinskaya Vladislava Ruslanovna ORCID: 0009-0001-0621-7505 Postgraduate student; Department of Russian Art; St. Petersburg Ilya Repin Academy of Fine Arts 192076, Russia, Saint Petersburg, Nevsky district, Rybatsky ave., 18 room 2, sq. 970 vladislava.mezhinskaya@yandex.ru

The central streets, embankments and canals of St. Petersburg captivate with their brilliant architectural structures, romantic views at any time of the day, as well as scenes from the simple "private" life of local residents: from lovers' walks and festive enthusiasm to busy everyday highways. The originality and beauty of the Northern Capital are reflected in the architectural monuments, intertwined with the modern rhythm of life. The city constantly attracts attention, offering to comprehend its complex relationships with people. In the picturesque landscapes with views of St. Petersburg, both the external aesthetic decoration and the people themselves who exist in it were and still are important. In the paintings of representatives of the academic school, one can see how the urban landscape has changed over the past decades: the creation of the image of the city reaches special perfection not only in traditional forms, but also in scenes from the life of citizens. Compared to the works of the Leningrad school at the end of the twentieth century, the landscape of modern artists has changed a lot: the differences become obvious if we analyze their compositional structure, artistic and technical means used by the painters to create an emotionally filled image of St. Petersburg.

The peculiarities of the urban landscape development in modern painting are associated with a number of observations of the appearance of the city, which has developed in the works of popular urbanists, writers, and philosophers. Henri Lefebvre's concept of social construction of space is fundamental: his approach to space focuses on the idea that space is not neutral or inert, but is a dynamic social product formed by social relations and practices ^[12]. Kevin Lynch, an American researcher on the study of the image of the city, wrote that the city is a complex living organism, specific in its understanding. "Everything is perceived not by itself, but in relation to the environment, to the chains of events associated with it, to the memory of previous experiences" ^{[11, p. 15]}. Thus, when contemplating the environment, a person sees not only architecture, but also more complex connections with it. Italo Calvino's book Invisible Cities (1972) often describes urban spaces as living entities.: as places where people's memories and experiences are stored, which makes them look like living organisms that accumulate and store information ^{[10, p. 222]}. It is impossible not to agree with the opinion of G. Gornova that "as a subject of communication, a person makes the city "his own", inhabits it, introduces objectified forms of urban culture into his personal life world, adds a human dimension to the city" ^[4]. Thus, in the relationship between man and the city, there is an unexpected, spontaneous endowment of space with an important vital meaning.

Peter Weil often discussed the topic of the city and its cultural significance in his works. In his book "The Genius of the Place" (1999), he explores how the urban environment is shaped by creative people who are able to convey the emotional state of the city and its unique atmosphere, in other words, its "soul" ^[2]. The writer strives to prove that the individual perception of a city is formed from personal experience: each creator captures special changes in urban space, and in this process, as a rule, he overcomes his cultural isolation and comprehends the diversity of the world, enters into a dialogue with it, pushing the boundaries of his subjective semantic space.

"The city as a multifaceted historical and cultural phenomenon ... determines the typological diversity of the genre "urban landscape" ^[1]. "In works of art, a city can be real, ideal, fantastic, it can be a symbol and a sign, it can be the main character and the background, it can be material, substantial, or, on the contrary, ghostly, blurred, a reason for expressing subtle movements of the soul, it can be shown panoramically or through a snatched, large-scale fragment, with from a formal or unsightly side, it can be rendered topographically accurately or become a means of formal play, a tourist souvenir, or a way of philosophical reflection on existence" ^[13]. In the visual arts, in particular in painting, several types of urban landscape are usually distinguished: architectural landscapes, urban, industrial (industrial landscapes) and urban scenes. "The genre of landscape painting itself implies an emphasis on the environment. At the same time, a number of artists "agree" with this fact, while others, of whom there are still not so many, introduce a vivid personal aspect, making the personality the main figure in the painting" ^[5]. Based on this, the latter type of landscape represents the greatest degree of closeness between a person and the meaning of the city: when he was interested not so much in the architecture of the city as in the relationship between people and the city. Urban scenes represent a special phenomenon when an essentially landscape image develops into a genre one: human figures cease to be just a staff. The bustle of the streets, the multitude of architectural forms, the variety of colors and shades – all this is intertwined in a single plot picture. Observing the subtle changes in urban nuances allows talented craftsmen to capture moments of disappearing and elusive existence. Thus, urban scenes give the artist more opportunities to express his feeling of the living breath of the city in colors.

In the Leningrad school of painting, landscape occupied a special position as a genre that allows the artist to simultaneously remain within the limits of strict depiction and reveal a personal, sensual and intonational attitude to the world. In this context, landscape became a form of philosophical observation, a means of conveying not only the external appearance, but also the inner state — be it anxiety, melancholy, loneliness or the quiet joy of everyday life.

A.I. Strukova ^[14] and I.N. Karasik ^[8] paid special attention to this aspect. The art critic M. Y. German, in his monograph on the work of A. Rusakov, applies the concept of the "Leningrad school" exclusively in the context of landscape painting of the 1930s ^[3]. Moreover, in his opinion, the artists of that time did not form a single artistic association, their work was united by the common atmosphere of the Petrograd-Leningrad art culture. This clarification convincingly emphasizes that the landscape in their work served not only as an image of the urban environment, but also as a way of conveying personal experiences and moods.

One of the reasons for the stability of this genre in Leningrad art was the reliance on the academic painting tradition. In addition, the academic school contributed to the deepening of philosophical and emotional perception of the landscape. The thing is that many famous landscape painters of the Leningrad school (A.E. Karev, A.P. Korovyakov, V.V. Proshkin, G.A. Savinov and others) were trained at the Academy of Fine Arts, which formed in them a high culture of pictorial thinking and a desire for harmony of form and content. The academic approach offered artists a special toolkit for understanding the urban environment: it allowed them to maintain a balance between objective fixation and subjective interpretation in the landscape. Academic painting, an important component of Leningrad art, fostered the accuracy of drawing, attentive attitude to the tonal model and composition. For many decades, the Academy of Fine Arts has taught that art helps to see and perceive beauty in everyday life. Many academic artists and teachers (such as Yu. M. Nepintsev, V. M. Oreshnikov, V. I. Reikhet, V.V. Sokolov) responded to the changing world around them through images of various landscapes: natural or urban. The hours for studying the landscape were set aside as part of the plein-air, which made it possible to study the surrounding world from nature, which is impossible within the classroom hours. The workshops taught how to convey the essence of the urban landscape, reproducing not only the architectural details, but also the atmosphere as a whole. To do this, it was necessary to turn a simple observation of the life of the city into a personal experience, to bring your own unique point of view to the work. The ideas of harmony, the search and identification of the rhythm of vertical and horizontal lines of buildings and streets, the interweaving of which forms the urban fabric, played an important role here. Attention to the human figure was important in order to achieve clarity of emotional impression and sometimes break the monotony.

It is in this intense confrontation between tradition and personal experience that the phenomenon of the Leningrad academic landscape of the second half of the 20th century develops. Landscape became not just a genre of depicting the environment, but a form of individual expression through which the artist sought to express not only the appearance of a city or nature, but also his own experience of space and time.

In his scientific work "Leningrad Landscape Painting of the 1960s– 1980s: the transformation of a problematic field of research", A.Y. Tsvetkova analyzes the features of Leningrad landscape painting of this period: the researcher also focuses on the need to rethink traditional approaches to the analysis of Leningrad landscape painting ^[16]. The researcher draws attention to such characteristics as the departure from ideologically loaded imagery, the strengthening of the lyrical and personal principle and the development of the chamber format. The personal principle that Tsvetkova writes about is manifested both in the choice of subjects and in the ways of depicting the city, which in 20th-century St. Petersburg painting becomes both a landscape and an inner state.

Recently, there have not been many exhibitions showing Leningrad art.: "Leningrad-Petersburg. Painting. Dialogue of Epochs" (2024, Zurab Tsereteli Art Gallery), "Light and Air. Traditions of Impressionism in Soviet Painting" (2023-2024, St. Petersburg Museum of Art). Nevertheless, these expositions allowed us to look at how stable artistic images of Leningrad, a city that became not only the theme, but also the hero of landscape painting, developed at the end of the 20th century. The longest-running exhibition project was "Leningrad Landscape. Painting of the 1950s and 1980s" (2022-2024, Museum of the History of St. Petersburg). The museum's halls featured landscapes by artists who represent significant figures of Leningrad (Soviet) painting in the second half of the 20th century. Their work demonstrates a variety of approaches to depicting the city and reflects the features of late Soviet realism: some authors show Leningrad as a space of light and silence, others capture the city as a place of human life. Based on the collected works, the following can be seen: during the 20th century, certain iconographic traditions of depicting the city developed in St. Petersburg art. St. Petersburg captured the attention of artists with its architectural appearance (N. Fomin's "Sovetskaya Hotel" (1982); I. Uralov's "Yubileyny Sports Palace" (1982)), and the pulsation of the daytime city (V. Borisov's "On Vasilyevsky Island" (1997), "Arch of the General Staff" (1991); A. Bliok's "On Malaya Sadovaya" (1981)), street entertainment (N. Lomakin "Winter" (1950-1980), "New Quarters" (1981)). Soviet artists were most interested in rendering the characteristic contrasting colorful effects of earth and sky (N. Baskakov "After the Rain" (1984); L. Ronchevskaya "White Night" (1983)). Quite often, the image of Soviet Leningrad was created through the interaction of architectural monuments with dynamic urban life. Even then, artists were interested in the interaction between people surrounded by a landscape.

In her scientific works, S.M. Gracheva analyzes the boundaries and horizons of realism in modern St. Petersburg painting, and notes that artists, relying on the academic school, strive to update the artistic language without abandoning the principles of imagery and picturesqueness ^[6]. In her publications, L. A. Skobkina analyzes how academic traditions influence modern artistic thinking and how they are integrated into new art forms ^[15]. R. Bakhtiyarov analyzes how the academic school contributed to the development of the individual style of artists, while maintaining high standards of fine art ^[7]. Works dedicated to exhibitions and artists associated with the academic tradition, published in various catalogs and collections, such as the St. Petersburg Art History Notebooks. These materials emphasize that the modern academic landscape retains continuity with the classical school, but is developing towards a more intonational and subjective utterance.

So, the leading problem of the modern academic landscape is the ability to combine the reliability of observation with the poetry of the image, creating works in which the visual environment acts not only as the subject of the image, but also as a carrier of meanings.

In modern academic painting, the urban landscape is also largely associated with the image of the center of St. Petersburg: its central streets, embankments and canals. That is, the basis for the formation of a landscape image is certainly objective factors such as the geography of the city, its climatic and landscape features. But still, some artists don't explore architecture so much as everyday urban scenes, which allow for a better understanding of the connection between the city and its inhabitants. The painters contemplate what is happening next to the action scene. In the paintings of academic artists, the vision of the city is subjective, they reflect different facets of urban diversity. Various techniques and techniques of painting help artists in this.

Andrian Gorlanov (b. 1964), Kirill Malkov (b. 1965) and Ivan Tupeyko (b.1995) strive to capture the noisy energy of street life. In 2020-2024, these landscape artists held their own solo exhibitions of landscapes, and are also regular participants in the annual large exhibition "On the Sunny Side" at the St. Petersburg Union of Artists. Their works are vivid examples of plein-air painting, which is characterized by energetic writing. It is important for these artists to convey the exact state of nature, a sense of the dynamics and movement of urban life. The painters achieve this feeling by working out the details in detail.

To. Malkov often paints canals and boulevards, and in these images the master boldly uses perspective, showing mainly panoramas of the city filled with romantic admiration for the resplendent city. In his painting Nevsky Prospekt, the composition is clearly divided into two registers. In lowercase, the flow of people is moving along the central artery of the city: everyone is rushing about their daily business or idly strolling along the city streets. A motley spontaneous crowd obscures the architecture.

Landscape by A. Gorlanov "Lavra. Morning Hours" (2020) has an airiness sparkling with fractional multicolored strokes, indicating people in the foreground while the monument itself remains behind. "In the canals of the northern capital, the majestic spaces of classicism, the elegant and austere lines of the Baroque and the complex forms of eclecticism of the historical center, one can hear the breath of the city and feel its warmth" ^{[9, 43]}.

In the paintings "Victory Day" (2022), "Metro" (2021) by I. Tupeyko, famous points of the city are depicted in the rapid rhythm of the flow of people. The artist creates this dynamic by including the use of different types of spots in the painting to create textured and detailed strokes on the canvas. In the works of the authors reviewed, we saw the dynamics and flavor of modern St. Petersburg: we see a city that cannot exist without crowded streets and intersections, without modern interchanges and underpasses.

These few paintings clearly show that, unlike Soviet artists, modern authors do not rely at all on a clear reproduction of the architectural appearance: they tend to convey rather the impression of the monument through the morning light and the rhythms of the crowd. If in Leningrad painting the dominant tonal lyrical landscape was observed (where the key is color unity, a soft transition between earth and sky, airiness), then in modern authors boldly work with a sparkling texture of paint, a fractional stroke, creating a glow effect. This fact shows that the painters are close to the strategy of Impressionism in order to show the fragmented, fast environment of a modern city.

We will continue to consider the work of other painters, prominent representatives of landscape in modern St. Petersburg painting: Anton Makarov, Peter Tyutrin and Stanislav Miroshnikov. Their significance lies in the fact that they preserve the academic accuracy of the form, but give it a psychological saturation, creating images on the verge of the real and the metaphorical.

Anton Makarov's painting Nevsky Prospekt uses a more generalized and formal pictorial language, and enhances the role of color in creating an image of a dynamic urban space. The artist depicts the liveliness of the avenue, capturing everything that is happening around the Anichkov Bridge. The artist is most fascinated by playing with shadows and chiaroscuro effects, without unnecessary details and focusing on the individual characteristics of each character. The contours of buildings and even cars in the foreground are vaguely represented. The restrained color of the sketch in the gamut emphasizes the mundanity of what is happening. The images are fragmentary in nature, but despite such limited compositions, they are characterized by an accurate rendering of the state of nature and emotional saturation due to color relations and textured painterly brushstroke. If in the above-mentioned examples of Soviet painting (meaning, first of all, the paintings of N. Fomin and I. Uralov) the architecture had precise monumental outlines, and the buildings themselves acted as full-fledged heroes of the composition, then in modern painting the buildings are depicted as a dissolved part of the urban stream.

The serene tranquility of the canal embankments is depicted in the paintings of Peter Tyutrin (b. 1978). He captures St. Petersburg from different angles, mainly its inside and nooks, sometimes violating the usual point of view. The paintings are painted from such an angle, as if the author is just walking along his favorite streets and showing us the places that are most dear to him. The architecture here serves as a stage set, where life is bustling: citizens communicate with each other, idly walk. In the first landscape, the canal embankment fence directs the viewer's gaze to the two figures of lovers. Everything around them is flooded with sunlight. In this work, St. Petersburg feels warm, sincere, welcoming and completely calm. The painting "Morning after the Ball" (2019) depicts the embankment of the canal and the lonely figure of a girl in a white dress, in which she resembles an angel. The romantic holiday adventure is over, and the heroine finds herself in the silence of the morning city, which slowly and gradually flares up with colors, and with them dreams of a new path in life. Tyutrin's architecture serves not as the center of a composition, but as a backdrop to personal stories, which radically distinguishes him from the works of Fomin and Uralov, V. Borisov, A. Bliok. Tyutrin's daytime Petersburg appears as an intimate, almost intimate space filled with warm light and human stories. The rhythm here is slow, "internal". This contrasts with the solemn and luminous presentation in Soviet painting.

The image of the night city and white nights has always occupied a special place among St. Petersburg urban views and sketches. The majestic panoramas of S. Miroshnikov (1985-2025) in his execution are strict and accurate in drawing, they differ in richness and density of color. In the film "Northern Night" (2021), for S. Miroshnikov, the dark part of the day became a period when a person is left alone with the city and the feeling of loneliness and melancholy become aggravated. In this painting, there is again an image of a girl on an empty embankment. The hectic day has disappeared into the darkness of the night, and at this moment on the embankments you can always meet longing dreamers who are looking for harmony in the sound of the waters, the light of lanterns - in the elusive lines and spots. Stanislav Miroshnikov, in fact, also continues the storyline as in Tyutrin's painting: romantic or melancholic scenes where a person is not just a part of the environment, but the center of an individual story, which indicates a shift in focus from society to personality. His heroine on the embankment is almost a symbol of loneliness, in dialogue not with society, but with the city and herself.

Comparing the works of the three authors and recalling the examples of paintings by Leningrad artists, the following should be noted: in the works of Soviet painters, color ratios are aimed at accurate perception of the environment and realistic rendering of the "weather"; the color palette in paintings by modern artists is often close to the emotional state and reflects the search for deep intense shades (or, conversely, melancholic). In this use of color, there is a connection with symbolism and expressionism.

In the urban landscapes of modern academic artists, the image of St. Petersburg and its atmosphere is presented in many ways. Despite the fact that the paintings show different facets of the landscape's moods, this contrast turns out to be non-conflicting. A single continuous line of perception of the city can be traced through all the paintings: pure contemplation and enjoyment of what is seen. There are practically no outlines of huge architectural monuments in the images, which usually create a sense of the monumentality of the depicted cultural capital.

Soviet and modern Petersburg landscape painting, despite the differences in the artistic era and cultural attitudes, are interconnected by the continuity of visual themes and motifs. Soviet painting is characterized by an attitude towards an objective fixation of the urban environment based on realistic depiction. Architecture in such works is a full—fledged hero. The space of the city is organized, static and at the same time filled with life.

In contrast, the modern landscape painters of St. Petersburg offer a personal, intonation-rich interpretation of the urban environment. Urban landscapes by modern authors demonstrate the simplicity of compositions, but at the same time each image has a freshness of impression: artists often intuitively grasp special features in a familiar picture that impress the viewer and leave a mark in his memory. The peculiarity of the urban landscape in the paintings of academic artists is the choice of point of view and composition, emphasizing certain elements of urban space. The human figure acquires an independent expressiveness, often turns out to be the central carrier of mood. Thus, the city ceases to be an external object — it becomes a space of inner living, a field for emotional projection.

If in Soviet painting color was most often a tool for describing the visual world and fixing the objective state of nature (humidity, twilight, reflections, heat), then in modern St. Petersburg painting color becomes a carrier of subjective perception, psycho—emotional content, and sometimes symbolic load. It helps to express a personal attitude to the city, mood, memory, or a sense of presence in a particular moment.

Academic artists help the viewer to see the urban landscape anew: the St. Petersburg urban landscape is mobile and changeable depending on the human condition. In the landscapes of the academicians, St. Petersburg is not a space that suppresses a person, but rather the opposite: a space formed by heroes and characters.