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Sustaining Vision: Professor Alison Hilton on Landscapes and the Art of Soviet Russia

By Kara Burritt

A swath of blue sky, a mossy rock, a patch of grass. To Dr. Alison Hilton, these features of an artist’s landscape render not just a representation of nature, but also a reflection of society.

While landscape painting is a familiar genre of art, Hilton, the Wright Family Professor of Art History and chair of the Department of Art and Art History at Georgetown, particularly values the potential it has as an outlet for artist and audience to grasp something universal out of something particular. Rather than merely replicating scenery, each choice made in creating a landscape reflects artistic intent.

Hilton explains, “A landscape painting is always going to be a fragment of nature, and that involves choice.” Such choice may transform a specific and familiar subject into a catalyst for new reflections on a larger idea. She says, “Traditionally landscape was ancillary to what might be called the real subject, such as in a portrait or historical scene. The independent landscape may still stand for something more.”  

This is especially true, Hilton has found, in the context of Soviet Russia, a part of her current research. The core of Hilton’s career has been Russian art. Her first article, published when she was a college senior, discussed a visit the French artist Henri Matisse made to Russia. Since then she has researched, taught, and published on Russian realism and impressionism, myth in modern art, museum culture, art and social issues, women in art, and Russian folk art. Hilton’s great range of research interests grows out of her tendency to synthesize ideas.

“I didn’t aim to be an expert on one artist or another discrete topic,” she says. “I try to pull two things together rather than concentrating on just one.”

Making that leap between ideas often sparks inspiration. Besides yielding new research subjects for Hilton, it was also an important factor in the artistic reality of Soviet Russia, where artists had to seek a balance between working within the system and expressing themselves creatively. From the 1930s until the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian artists were state-mandated to work in a style termed “Soviet Socialist Realism.” Such art’s content was required to champion the government by celebrating Soviet agriculture and industry. And its form was to be purely representational, prohibiting any subversive symbolism.

“Much foreign art and anything formalist—anything that drew attention to form rather than content—was anathema,” Hilton explains. It was a challenge for artists who were interested in such techniques like those of impressionism, to develop their work creatively.  

Artists who rebelled against the conformity imposed by Soviet Socialist Realism actually put their professional reputations at risk. Even so, some artists subtly adapted prohibited styles in ways that proved to fill a genuine need for Soviet audiences of the time.

Thanks to the apparent neutrality of their subjects, landscape artists specifically were able to circumvent Soviet mandates while exploring their creativity. Hilton says, “A painter who doesn’t think that he or she would be able to maintain artistic integrity by obeying these strictures can still paint something that reflects choice and perspective, maybe even choice of the kind of color and composition that give rise to a mood. And it is subtle and can’t really be entirely faulted [by the authorities].”  

This idea is well illustrated in a current exhibit at Washington, DC’s Meridian International Center: Painting the Heart of Russia: Nikolai Timkov’s Sustaining Vision. The exhibit, which runs through March, features Russian painter Nikolai Timkov’s landscape art. As co-curator, Hilton wrote the text panels that accompany the paintings and became intimately familiar with Timkov’s work. She was struck by Timkov as an artist who worked creatively within the system without sacrificing his integrity by concentrating firmly on nature and the painting process. 

Timkov’s style ranges from colorful to monochromatic, with distinct delineation blurring into soft outlines. What is consistent throughout, however, is Timkov’s recognizing and drawing inspiration from the Russian people’s identification with their homeland. As an artist and citizen Timkov maintained good professional standing because his landscape paintings were not overt rebellion, yet they subtly express freedom. No matter the style or subject of a particular work, his landscapes connect viewers with their roots in the land and convey the autonomy inherent in this sense of identity. His post-World War II portrayals of German-occupied regions of Russia, for example, evoke enduring nature rather than war-torn land. Yet, his work can draw any audience, regardless of era or culture, to look closely at a scene for its universal relevance.

“Looking closely at an artist’s work or at a genre such as landscape can lead to understanding of a key element of all art: the artist’s continual process of decision, reflection, and adjustment. For the artist this is not necessarily a political or philosophical declaration,” says Hilton. “But it may be even more. It may be a way of going beyond representation to get us beyond the limitations of our horizon.”

As a researcher, Hilton thrives on the potential art has to let us step back and examine our world and ourselves with new perception. What Hilton calls the effect of temporary “estrangement”—a sense of distancing from the familiar—is consistently important in her research, no matter the type of art. “Art can be used to examine and question the familiar from a new perspective,” she explains.

Unknowns are inherent in Hilton’s research, whether focused on a single work, an artist’s creative voice, or art’s effect on society, and engaging in them demands some courage. Hilton says, “A scholar’s work can be like an artist’s--going out on a limb, sometimes hovering between discipline and passion.” But this is what drives Hilton’s continued involvement in her field: “Being immersed in something that doesn’t have a clear answer can be unsettling, but it is always positive and important.”  

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