Introduction to the Lubok: History, Terminology, & Definitions
OA distinctly Russian source of the illustrated children's book lies in the Russian lubok (singular), or lubki (plural), usually defined as an "illustrated broadside" or "popular print." Like other European countries, Russia had a rich tradition of cheap print and literature for the people. Often called "street literature" in English, these broadsides, chapbooks, and other ephemera served as a precursor to the popular press: Britain had its broadside ballads, Germany its Bilderbogen, and France its Épinal prints (Shepard 1973; Collison 1973; Hürlimann 1967, 152–55). The Russian lubok shares some characteristics with such Western "street literature," yet also contains a uniquely Russian flavor, and greatly influenced the early twentieth-century Russian children's book.
Scholars have long argued over the exact meaning of the Russian word lubok, but one likely explanation is that the word lub refers to the linden tree's inner bark (cortex) (known in English as "bast"), which was used to create the linden-wood blocks on which images were engraved, and/or to the wood-blocks themselves. According to this theory, the word lubok refers to prints made from those engravings. The numerous competing hypotheses include the notion that the term lubok was derived from the bast-baskets from which lubki were sold, or even that the word is related to the location of the market where they were sold, Lubyanka Street.
The roots of the Russian lubok lie in the early days of woodcut-engraving, which emerged first in the West, flourishing in the epoch of Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528), and then in Russia by the mid-seventeenth century. By the eighteenth century Russian lubki were highly prevalent, influenced by different styles simultaneously: a Muscovite folk-art woodcut style, Byzantine-style icons, secularized metal engraving, and diverse Western trends. This comingling of traditions created the unique style that distinguished the Russian lubok from its Western equivalents.
For most of its history, the lubok was not a professionally produced art form in the twentieth-century sense, for the prints were usually anonymous, created by unknown craftsmen and self-taught artists. Alekseeva persuasively argues that the lubok could be considered a hybrid form, not purely folk art, but linked to that tradition: "The lubok borrowed from both folk and professional art, and developed independently according to its own internal laws" (1996, 12). The audience for the lubki evolved over the centuries: although they were originally aimed at the upper-class elite, by the nineteenth century lubki were particularly popular amongst the rural peasantry, whose cottages were abundantly decorated with them. In 1810, Nikolai Strakhov defined the lubki as "a library for the people" (quoted in Nekrylova 2002, 11), and Brooks notes that the lubki "were often the first printed materials to enter the homes of the common people" (1985, 62–63).
The lubok often served as a kind of illustrated newspaper. Its topics ranged widely, including religion, literature, and politics, and it overlapped with other genres such as poetry, fables, satire, devotional manuals, songs, and almanacs. The earliest lubki were woodcuts, but in the eighteenth century copper engraving became more common, allowing the lubok to acquire a much wider audience, since printing of multiple copies was much easier from a metal plate. In the late nineteenth century, lithography took over as the principal means of reproduction, which allowed the printing of thousands of copies; this lowered the price, and increased the audience exponentially. Eventually the lubki began to be viewed disparagingly by the upper ranks of society, who saw them as coarse or vulgar, appreciated only by the lower classes.
(Sources for the above terminology & history of the lubok: Alekseeva 1996, 3–10; Mishina 1996, 15–28; Nekrylova 2002, 10; Rudakova 2015, 3–10; Hilton 1995, 109; Ovsiannikov 1968, 5–10; Farrell 1980, 1–46; White 1988, 2.)
Characteristics & Style of the Lubok
The lubok was characterized by numerous stylistic features that later proved influential on twentieth-century painters and illustrators. Simultaneously monumental and decorative, laconic and highly detailed, static and dynamic, the lubok was a contradictory art form, characterized by high-contrast, brash colors and a "deliberately crude stroke" (Ovsiannikov 1968, 6). Its ornate design and red-orange hues transmitted a "fantastic, festive, joyful mood" that evoked the world of both the epic and the fairytale (Alekseeva 1996, 9–11). With its spatial ambiguity, omission of shadows, and flattened, schematic figures defined by thick black contours, the lubok evoked a medieval sensibility. It also freely mixed multiple perspectives, showing objects from conflicting points of view, or combining episodes from different times into a single plane (Parton 1993, 7, 27, 82–84; Alekseeva 1996, 10).
Another salient feature of the lubok was its festive humor, akin to the medieval "festive folk laughter" that Mikhail Bakhtin later defined as "carnivalesque." Ambivalent in nature, folk laughter is both "cheerful" and "derisive" (Bakhtin 1990, 17; Bakhtin 1984, 11–12). Nekrylova likens the playful nature of the lubok to folk theater and slapstick booths at country fairs (2002, 13); the Western equivalent would include both commedia dell'arte and Punch-and-Judy shows. One can also see a theatrical communality in the way the lubki were read and absorbed by the lower classes, as Strakhov noted in the nineteenth century: "In the evenings illiterate people gather round to look at them, while those who are literate read them out loud and explain what they mean" (quoted in Nekrylova 2002, 11).
In the twentieth century, the fate of the lubok changed dramatically. While the adjective lubochnyi (lubok-like) had become a pejorative term in the nineteenth century, by the early twentieth century it came to be used as a synonym for "bright, colorful, folk art" (Mishina 1996, 26–27), and the lubki were treasured by young artists seeking to transform Russian art. Members of both Mir Iskusstva ("The World of Art") and the radical avant-garde embraced the lubok as a native, primitivist alternative to the classical traditions of Western art. Lubok-inspired designs greatly influenced the set designs and choreography for Diaghilev's ballets, for instance; the eminent choreographer and dancer Mikhail (Michel) Fokine later said: "In dances, poses, groups, and gestures I tried to convey the style of the Russian lubok" (quoted in Sytova 1984, 15).
In 1913, the Neo-Primitivist Alexander Shevchenko also singled out the lubok as a source for new Russian art: "The simple, unsophisticated beauty of the lubok, the severity of the primitive . . . that is our password and our slogan" (45). The lubok heavily influenced radical artists such as Mikhail Larionov, Natalya Goncharova, Vasily Kandinsky, and Kazimir Malevich early in their careers (Sytova 1984, 15; Norris 2006, 165, 239nn4–6). Larionov himself organized two exhibitions of lubki in 1913 (Kovtun 1996a, 180). These exhibits "represented the first time that a significant member of Russia's artistic community showcased popular prints as a serious artistic endeavor" and "can be considered a milestone in the lubok's history" (Norris 2006, 164).
The Lubok & the Neo-Russian Style of Ivan Bilibin: Tsar Saltan
Ivan Bilibin (1876–1942), whose early work, as we have seen, exhibits an affinity with both Art Nouveau and Russian folk art, began collecting lubki during his expeditions to the Russian North from 1902–1904 (Golynets 1981, 8). Bilibin later recalled that he had first seen lubki while visiting peasant huts, where he viewed them in their authentic state: "I first saw Russian folk prints (the so-called lubki) when on location; they were sooty and dirty, pasted up to the walls with bread. It was then that I began collecting them." He described his own work of these years as "an old Russian style, derived from folk prints and old lubok-fairytales, but merely refined" (Bilibin 1970, 59; Bilibin quoted in Golynets 1988, 11).
Golynets notes numerous examples of Bilibin's compositional style that evoke the lubok: "The large figures are presented in stately, set poses" and the artist "emphasizes the two-dimensional flatness of the page" through his "division of space into planes" (Golynets 1981, 11; Golynets 1988, 11). On page 6 of Bilibin's illustrations to Alexander Pushkin's Tsar Saltan (1905), for instance, the stately, monumental figures are lined up in a row towards the front of the frame, with an ornamental border beneath them underscoring the flat, decorative quality of the page. On page 17, meanwhile, the drunken figure sprawled on the floor evokes the atmosphere of nineteenth-century lubki, where the theme of drunkenness was common (Farrell 1980, 143–47).
The Lubki-Inspired Books of the "Today" Collective: Baby Mice
The lubok also served as inspiration for the innovative series of handmade Futurist books created in the early 1910s by Aleksei Kruchenykh, Mikhail Larionov, Vladimir Tatlin, Natalya Goncharova, and others, who used rubber-stamped or stenciled lettering that "resembled the quaint woodcut letters of eighteenth-century lubki" (Parton 1993, 84; Gourianova 1999, 97–120; Compton 1978, 67–86). Gourianova notes that Kruchenykh's handmade books merge the "ornamental style of medieval manuscripts and the richly visual lubok tradition," while also uniting Neo-Primitivism "with the early abstractions of Rayism invented by Larionov." In Worldbackwards (Mirskontsa, 1912), Larionov used a coloring technique that was "common in the lubok, in which colored spaces do not coincide with the contours of the drawing but go beyond the boundaries of the lines" and creates "a Cubo-Futurist dislocation of forms, time, and rhythm" (Gourianova 1999, 98, 104–5).
Following in the footsteps of the avant-garde Futurist books, with their emphasis on Cubist dislocation, Neo-Primitivism, and a handcrafted quality, the "Today" Collective (Segodnia), led by Vera Yermolaeva, emerged immediately after the Russian Revolution as the first significant group of Soviet artists to focus on children's book design. Yermolaeva (1893–1937) was a significant figure in avant-garde artistic circles, and she associated with both Suprematist and Futurist groups: she later worked as director of the Institute of Practical Arts in Vitebsk alongside Marc Chagall and Kazimir Malevich, and she was also a founding member of the innovative artistic group UNOVIS.
Lasting only briefly, from 1918–19, the "Today" Collective was strongly influenced by folk art and the traditions of the Russian lubok. In addition to creating their own lubki, such as Yermolaeva's Rooster (Petukh), they published a series of limited-edition eight-page books, "hand printed from linoleum blocks," and "hand-colored, in the manner of lubok pictures" (Steiner 1999, 13; Kovtun 1971, 34). Their efforts embodied a revival of traditions associated with peasant handicrafts, as noted by a journalist in 1919, who wrote: "The destruction of the printing industry has given birth to a new form of artistic, hand-crafted (kustarnoe) publishing, embodied by a new Petersburg collective of writers and artists, who carve and print their own engravings. One can find comfort in the fact that the current crisis has thus engendered a return to a beautiful, archaic form of handworked craftsmanship" (quoted in Fomin 2009a, 161).
Steiner and Fomin both emphasize the innovative and lasting significance of this group, whose work evokes "Cubist principles of organizing space," and foreshadows Constructivism in its "dominance of unstable diagonal lines over the usual spatial coordinate axes." Their connection with the lubok is particularly strong; as Fomin points out, they "recreate the compositional structure characteristic of the lubki" by "depicting their topics dynamically" and "grotesquely accentuating the features of their heroes" (Fomin 2009a, 161; Steiner 1999, 14).
The Harer Collection includes a particularly charming and distinctive example of the "Today" Collective's works: Baby Mice (Myshata, 1918), which contains engraved illustrations by Yermolaeva, along with a short text in rhymed stanzas written by Natan Vengrov (1894–1962). This thin book, with only three illustrations and three pages of text, printed on rough brown paper, evokes the primitive, handcrafted style of an old chapbook. It tells the story of a group of baby mice who play at night when everyone else in the house is sleeping. The mice are thrilled to discover hard crusts of sukhari (approximate translation: dried, hardened toast), and celebrate with a feast and dancing. In Yermolaeva's illustrations, the link to the lubok comes to fore. On page 2, the image of the dancing, rowdy mice evokes the folk celebrations found in lubki. The mice festivities take on a transgressive, carnivalesque quality: the underdogs (in this case, mice) have temporarily reversed the hierarchy of power. Povelikhina and Kovtun argue that the images in this book and Yermolaeva's other works were also influenced by the advertising shop signs (vyveski) of early twentieth-century Russian establishments, which they describe as "modern urban pictorial folklore" and were an object of particular fascination for the avant-garde of that era (1991, 153, 158–59).
The Bolshevik Poster Meets the Lubok: Red-Army Alphabet
In the early Soviet era, a rich tradition of propaganda posters developed, and some scholars view these posters as one of the clearest continuations of the Russian lubok, invoking both its "boldness, energy, humor, and popular appeal" and its propagandistic function (White 1988, 1–3; Norris 2006, 4). Indeed, artists such as Dmitry Moor and Vladimir Mayakovsky, who recreated contemporary versions of the lubok for the Moscow Publishing House called "The Modern-Day Lubok," later channeled their experience with the lubok into the creation of the early Bolshevik propaganda poster. Dmitry Moor (1883–1946; pseudonym of Dmitry Stakhievich Orlov) was a particularly prominent Soviet poster artist, and he created one of the most famous Soviet posters of the era, the world-renowned Did You Volunteer? (Ty zapisalsia dobrovol'tsem?, 1920), which depicts a Red–Army soldier pointing his finger at the viewer. He was interested in lubki early on; he created "patriotic lubki" during World War I, and some of his Soviet-era posters seem like modern renditions of lubki. He also had a particular fascination with Russian icons, especially their composition, narrative techniques, and use of color, and later said that icons "lay at the foundations of my own work" (White 1988, 6–7, 43–44).
When Moor created his first children's book, Red-Army Alphabet (Azbuka krasnoarmeitsa, 1921), these diverse influences (posters, icons, and lubki) all came to the fore. In this book, as in many of his posters, he used a "before and after" motif to indicate the contrast between pre-revolutionary corruption and the idealized new Soviet world (see White 1988, 43–51, for examples of Moor's posters with the "before and after" motif). For instance, just as in his poster of 1920, The Priests Help Capital and Hinder the Worker (White 1988, 51), in this alphabet book Moor repeatedly juxtaposes corrupt priests and bourgeois capitalists with the hardworking proletariat.
On page 9 of Red-Army Alphabet, the unusually broadened foreground image of Lenin, his size amplified to reflect his political importance, is juxtaposed to the symbolically and literally diminished capitalists and royalists whom he is sweeping away with his broom. This recalls the non-mimetic, symbolic usage of size and placement in both medieval art and the Russian lubok. On page 8, the snake of imperialism is symbolically destroyed by heroic, proletarian factory workers pounding sledgehammers, while the sinister smokestacks of the factory simmer in the background. Here, and throughout the entire book, the exaggerated features of the figures, accentuating their negative or positive value, evoke the rough, cartoonish quality of lubok satire. In contrast to Bilibin and other members of the Mir Iskusstva movement, who sought to "ennoble" the lubok tradition, as seen above, "Moor was drawn to its crudeness and vivid intensity," and in Red-Army Alphabet he reproduced the "extremely simplified language" and "grotesquely-satirical and naïvely-heroic figures" found in lubok pictures (Fomin 2009c, 228).