I guess their stories probably rarely include this rather forgotten Russian painter, who worked through the Tsarist regime, the 1917 Revolution, and into Stalin’s era. Amid political upheaval, standing at the threshold is a 1916 work, In Rus: The Soul of the People, a nearly five-meter-long oil painting on canvas that portrays the Volga River as a spiritual unifier of all walks of Russian life, as envisioned by the painter. Created in the lead-up to the 1917 Revolution, it became the last of its kind in the painter’s oeuvre. It was soon suppressed and removed from public display until the 1980s.

The crowd in this painting, rendered as symbols to be read, seems summoned by a tragic, divine force. They gather along the riverbank, where the landscape appears to be purified, standing pensively still or marching in a unified direction. Their uncoordinated steps are meticulously orchestrated— an organized mess. A diverse range of characters appear uneasy in their own ways, yet all seem to find a shared sense of peace, tinged with sorrow, in submission. The composition hints at a faint sense of three-dimensional depth while emphasizing flatness, like a sculptural relief. With each deliberate brushstroke, Nesterov painted as though a humble bricklayer would construct. Every element, from the foliage in the foreground to the distant mountains and the chiseled, cloudy sky at the back, is carefully crafted, building this painterly hall brick by brick, blending humility with his distinct poetic touch.

What role does oil painting play in building a new nation? Oil and some colorful mud, oxidizing into a solid, tangible layer of film, can serve the purpose of figurative representation. Yet, this very transformation—from chaos to order, fluidity to permanence, formlessness to concreteness—almost mirrors the process of nation-building itself. It is no surprise, then, that many artists, as revolutionaries striving for a modern, national home—whether they themselves are wanted in this new home is a different matter—placed high hopes on the medium. In their hands, extracted through fieldwork, individuals become “the people,” customs transform into “folk traditions,” and daily activities are elevated to “symbols and signs.” In contrast, the actual people and the things they do, much like wet, muddy paint yet to be fully organized and solidified, often appear trivial, too lazy, and too rusty compared to their idealized potentiality. For the revolutionary artists, the normalcy of the rust must be rigorously studied for it to be transformed.

Yet in this grand, somewhat awkwardly transformative five-meter canvas, I also sense the artist’s hesitation and discomfort. In between the trembling, twisting strokes, he has left behind private moments—playful gestures or small self-indulgences the artist may have secretly taken pride in. Or perhaps, with the weird glance of a character or an out-of-place arrangement, he inserted some involuntary distrust into the orderly hall this work was meant to build. From the many small cracks of intimacy, I hear a flurry of whispers deemed too trivial and too out-of-place, too individualistic. It is as if a heroic orator, in full public display, is caught in a moment of embarrassing hesitation. Their tongue rusty, their shoes full of mud.

Today, Nesterov’s paintings also serve as conduits for Russian religious conservatism and ultra-nationalist ideology. What was once a complex body of work produced in a turbulent time has been fully detached by many from its author, its medium, and its history. Ironically, what I see as a conflicted sensibility of rust—a shadowy vacillation behind a frontal, performative will, a kind of closet, perhaps—has become a stable “common sense,” a fabricated patina for a supposedly more natural, yet undeniably modern, past. And, of course, regarding this kind of tragedy, there is nothing a not-quite- revolutionary, dead painter can do.

Nesterov was deeply influenced by European fin-de-siècle art (think Klimt, Bilibin, Hodler), favoring line, graphic clarity, and romantic ornamentation. Like many of his contemporaries, his work was also indebted to a distant, modern European gaze upon the “exotic Orient,” perceiving their art as petrified in the past. Borrowed inspirations allowed them to discard the old, and the idea of the old becomes a cage for the alterity. The modern observer often steps out, coolly gazing from afar, while those observed—at home or elsewhere—remain trapped in their rust, unaware.

Without any firsthand examination, like what I did with Nesterov’s monastery piece, I tried to maintain the position of an outsider, performing the role of a mirrored European fin-de-siècle gazer. I’ve only studied In Rus through low-quality online images and indulged myself in a destined yet deliberate fog about its rich symbolic nitty-gritty. Perhaps it was precisely this distance that allowed me to project a tenderness and, therefore, naively search for small betrayals behind the artist’s apparent conviction. Driven by a desire to follow the rust, unknowingly, I found myself in Rus, immersed in someone else’s grand hall—a place I usually disdain. However, I cannot quite step away, nor can I offer a coolly detached, more ideologically correct hindsight from afar.

As one often cast as a distant, rusty other, does it also secretly lure one to long for the rust that is professedly the domain of the other?

Li Yong Xiang

March 2025

Translated and edited by Zian Chen