Shawl "ON THE SEA" wool 135х135 on a blue background

On this headscarf, one can see a picture imitating Russian lubok style. It is an illustration for a traditional song for singing and dancing in a ring called “On the Sea”. The song was recorded by Mily Balakirev in Nizhny Novgorod governorate. Folk and fantastic themes are combined in a single whimsical composition. The feathers of a dead bird blown with the wind symbolize the link between real and mythological worlds.

Lubok is a type of graphics. The prints were cheap pictures with narratives for mass distribution. Lubok is characterized by daring techniques including grotesque and deliberate deformation of the subject. Originally, the main genre of lubok was only a religious one. Only later did artists start to make lubok images to illustrate Russian fairy tales, heroic poems, legends and songs. Many directions of modern mass culture originate from lubok prints that served – for ordinary citizens and rural people – as a newspaper, an icon and a letter book.