ART AND CULTURE IN UKRAINE
Past and Present

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CULTURE

Ukrainian culture is a blend of the past and present. It honors it's folk heritage and traditions but also has a vibrant contemporary culture.

Ukraine possesses a wealth of cultural talent and a considerable cultural legacy. Numerous writers have contributed to the country’s rich literary history. Impressive monuments of architecture and museums displaying works by generations of Ukrainian artists can be found throughout the country, and art galleries featuring contemporary Ukrainian artists have become commonplace in larger urban centres. The country’s strong tradition of folk art also continues to this day.

The social changes brought about by Ukrainian independence are most evident in the cities, particularly Kyiv. The country’s capital now boasts high-end stores catering to a moneyed class, and a fashionable strip of contemporary art galleries and cafés winds its way down the historical street of Andriyivskyi Uzviz.

The cities, with their broad sidewalks and extensive greenery, are eminently suited for walking. Ukrainians generally do a considerable amount of walking, either to get around or simply for enjoyment. Parks are plentiful and popular for strolling or picnicking, a common pastime among city dwellers, most of whom live in apartments.

Cultural pursuits and entertainment are widespread. Most of Ukraine’s major cities have ornate theatres with their own opera or ballet companies. Song-and-dance ensembles, most notably the Verovka State Chorus and the Virsky Dance Ensemble, have made Ukrainian folk music and dance into an impressive stage art. Though classical music remains popular, contemporary Western-style music has expanded its audience considerably and now dominates the airwaves on numerous commercial radio stations. In addition, high-calibre performing artists and ensembles appear regularly in Ukraine’s numerous theatres and concert halls.

There are nearly 5,000 different museums in Ukraine, including National Art Museum of Ukraine, National Historical Museum of Ukraine, Museum of Western and Oriental Art, Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, Lviv National Art Gallery, Poltava Art Museum, Simferopol Art Museum, and many others of art, history, traditions or dedicated to different issues.

There are 14 libraries of state significance (Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, National Parliamentary Library of Ukraine, National historical library of Ukraine in Kyiv, Korolenko State Scientific Library in Kharkiv, and others), and 45,000 public libraries all over Ukraine. All these institutions own 700 million books.

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ART
Ukrainian art was practically banned during Soviet era by USSR-authorities who affraid of any kind of Ukrainian national self-actualization. As a result, many talented and even world famous artists are still not identified as Ukrainians. A part of modern Ukrainian population has never heard about huge number of artists – native Ukrainians – who lived and created their masterpieces during 20th century.

With the introduction of Christianity in the 10th century, the various forms of Byzantine art (e.g., architecture, mosaics, frescoes, manuscript illumination, and icon painting) spread rapidly and remained the dominant art forms through the 16th century. The mosaics and frescoes of the churches of Kyiv, notably the cathedral of St. Sophia (11th–12th century), and the icons of the more distinctively Ukrainian school in Galicia (15th–16th century) are particularly noteworthy. A number of outstanding churches of this period, notably the cathedral of St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery (early 12th century), were demolished by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s; only international protests saved the cathedral of St. Sophia from the same fate.

Baroque architecture had a pronounced impact in Ukraine, and a distinctive “Cossack Baroque” style developed there. Western European influences in the 17th and 18th centuries also affected iconography and stimulated portrait painting, engraving, and sculpture.

Western trends were carried to Russia by Ukrainian artists working there from the 18th century. During the late 18th and early 19th centuries the Ukrainian-born sculptor and rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, Ivan Martos, and the Ukrainian-born portraitists Dmytro Levytsky and Volodymyr Borovykovsky were among the leading figures of the St. Petersburg Classical school of painting.

The classicism and the emergent realism of the 19th century are best exemplified by the poet-painter Taras Shevchenko. New art movements are evident in the work of such 19th-century painters as the Impressionists Ivan Trush, Mykola Burachek, and Aleksander Murashko; the Post-Impressionist Mykola Hlushchenko; and the Expressionists Oleksander Novakivsky, Alexis Gritchenko (Ukrainian: Oleksa Hryshchenko), and Anatoly Petrytsky (see Impressionism; Post-Impressionism; Expressionism).

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LITERATURE

Written Ukrainian literature began with Christianization and the introduction of Old Church Slavonic as a liturgical and literary language. The literary heritage of the Ukrainian people in the early period, from the 11th to the 13th centuries, is that of Kyivan (Kievan) Rus; sermons, tales, and lives of the saints were the major genres.

Nineteenth-century Ukrainian writers greatly contributed to the reawakening of Ukrainian national consciousness under the Russian Empire. The classicist poet and playwright Ivan Kotlyarevsky may be considered the first modern Ukrainian author. In his work Eneyida (1798), he transformed the heroes of Virgil’s Aeneid into Ukrainian Cossacks. Classicist prose appeared only with Hryhorii Kvitka-Osnovianenko’s novel Marusya (1834).

In the 1830s Ukrainian Romanticism developed, and such authors as Izmail Sreznevsky, Levko Borovykovsky, Amvrosii Metlynsky, and Mykola Kostomarov published works that recognized a particular Ukrainian culture and history. In western Ukraine, Markiian Shashkevych, Yakiv Holovatsky, and Ivan Vahylevych constituted the so-called “Ruthenian Triad” of Ukrainian Romanticism. A markedly different approach was taken by Nikolay Gogol (Ukrainian: Mykola Hohol), who wrote Romantic works with Ukrainian themes in Russian and with a “pan-Russian” spirit.

The most important 19th-century Ukrainian poet, Taras Shevchenko, treated Ukrainian history and Russian oppression, as well as broader themes. Panteleymon Kulish was another significant poet of the period.

Marko Vovchok, who wrote Narodni opovidannia (1857; “Tales of the People”), ushered in Ukrainian Realism. Many Realist works depicted village life and contemporary society; some touched on populist themes. Panas Myrny, with his works on social injustice, became the major representative of Ukrainian Realism, but the novelists Ivan Nechuy-Levytsky and Ivan Franko were prominent as well.

A number of competing literary movements emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, though Realism, exemplified by the prose of Volodymyr Vynnychenko, remained important. Lesia Ukrainka was a leading modernist author. The poet Pavlo Tychyna followed the Symbolist movement; Mykola Bazhan, one of Ukraine’s greatest 20th-century poets, employed elements of Futurism; and Mykola Zerov, Maksym Rylsky, and Mykhaylo Dray-Khmara wrote Neoclassicist poetry (see Classicism and Neoclassicism).

During the early years of Bolshevik rule, talented Ukrainian writers proliferated. Mykola Khvylovy’s prose was imbued with revolutionary and national Romanticism, Hryhory Kosynka’s prose was impressionistic, Yury Yanovsky’s stories and novels were unabashedly romantic, and Valeriyan Pidmohylny’s work adhered to the principles of realism.

In 1932, however, the Communist Party began requiring writers to follow the theory of Socialist Realism. Many Ukrainian writers who did not adhere to the official style were imprisoned or executed, particularly during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s. A new generation of writers, known as the “Writers of the ’60s,” broke with Socialist Realism in the post-Stalinist period, but in the 1970s the Communist Party took new measures to repress literature that deviated from the approved style.

With Ukraine’s independence in 1991 came a rebirth of free literary expression. Many of the established literary journals continued to publish, although with far-more-open editorial policies, and a plethora of new journals appeared as well. Literary journals have provided a valuable outlet for the work of writers in Ukraine, particularly younger ones, as the postindependence economic difficulties substantially limited the publication of books, especially in the realm of belles lettres. Among the literary talents of independent Ukraine, novelist Valerii Shevchuk and poet Yury Andrukhovych stand out.

Additional Poetry by Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenkoalso