I wanted to quick show you this picture that I really liked that I first saw on Lines and Colors, where Charley Parker gives us a good commentary. It is called Barge Haulers on the Volga or The Volga Boatmen and was painted in 1873 by Ilya Repin.
Born in the Ukraine, Repin became an important Russian Realist painter and sculptor with artworks usually making a statement on tensions in the social order. After his death a Repin cult was established which praised the artist for being a progressive. His works were painted in shocking detail which seem to put you in the scene much like a good descriptive book. His were the kinds of paintings which make you feel the heat or shade your eyes from the sun.
He was considered not just a Realist because he could portray a landscape as if you were seeing the actual situation with your own eyes, but because he depicted a real situation in terms of social reality- i.e. the differences in class amongst the subjects. Take Religious Procession in the Region of Kursk, for instance. Here we see all social classes- the raggedy poor and infirm juxtaposed against the finely dressed elite, with the State helping to separate the classes in the form of mounted policemen high and mighty on their “high horses.” The policeman on horseback about to strike the woman is as unnoticed in this painting as any police brutality is. All this while they all can agree on this form of religious worship.
The picture above (click for full resolution) can be seen as commentary on the plight of the peasant class. In amazing detail we see this group of laborers with a lack of supervision- the only hint is the sailors barely visible on the barge itself, who stand and wait.
Clear emphasis is placed on the young one in the center. Though his hands are “working man’s hands,” his spirit has not yet callused as the other men’s have. While the much older workers have a quietness and a just-get-it-done work ethic which comes from a lifetime of hard work, the young lad gazes off open-mouthed and wishes he could be absolutely anywhere else. Meanwhile the old man next to him has learned to mentally escape as he jots down some lines of poetry ignoring the sweltering heat and back-breaking work.
These men are most likely the sailors from the barge or for hire to help tug the ships, but it is not totally clear. They could be prisoners or on a work detail akin to community service. Regardless their situations would be similar. If they are prisoners, no guards’ portraits appear. Either way it reminds me of Van Gogh’s Prison Courtyard where the bourgeois guards in their top hats stand tall and look on at the inmates in their “sunshine call” exercise. The sight of the butterflies fluttering off is similar to the boy’s gaze in the Barge Haulers. It’s the idea of “so close but so far” in both situations.
If Repin had included the top hat elite with the women with their parasols present to enjoy the entertainment, this would indeed have been a more biting social statement. This happened at the battle of the First Bull Run a few years earlier in the states when the rich were delighted to view the battle and watch the lower class young men get slaughtered.
The elite, the wealthy statesmen, and the “haves and have mores” are indeed very much detached from the reality of the lower classes. “Send them all a $600 check and a sack of potatoes,” they say, and everything will be fine. Let them eat cakes.
None of that will ever change. But on the bright side we will always have things to make fun of in our paintings and editorials.
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