Astra Salvensis (Jul 2019)
Life as a Literary Text: Narrative in the Autobiographical Paintings of D. Galanin and Memoirs of the People's Artist M. Budkeev
Abstract
The context of historical and cultural heritage as a personal history is currently one of the largest natural projects of the last decade: there are thematic projects, photo albums about the history of the family, generation, etc. in the virtual space. The article deals with autobiographical works of representatives of one generation of hereditary Siberian peasants, witnesses and participants of key events of the Russian history in the 20th century – the self-taught artist Dmitry Galanin and the People's artist of Russia Mikhail Budkeev. Both authors are nonprofessionals in the chosen artistic narrative form of their ways of life. Dmitry Galanin turned to painting in the decline of years without artistic education, and Mikhail Budkeev, being a recognized master-painter, but without literary experience in the genre of memoirs, in short novels consistently recreated his life. In the course of the research, an attempt has been made to correlate the facts from the authors' biographies with their artistic interpretation. Simultaneously with the semantic analysis of the works, the article examines their historical and cultural context, explores the peculiarities of the artistic language and reveals the commonality of the world perception. Based on the sources, general characteristics have been given and the formation of special worldview attitudes of the Siberian peasant population has been substantiated. The examples of the Siberian territorial and social dialectic words and phrases "kerzhak", "chaldon", etc. have been provided. In quotations from Mikhail Budkeev's memoirs, the spelling and punctuation of the author have been preserved. The significance of autobiographical authentic works (in a pictorial and literary form) as an important component of the source base for the study of historical and cultural heritage and socio-cultural aspects in humanitarian research has been determined.
