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Shaman image. 1992-1993. Oil painting. 118 x 93.
Alexander Khodulov was a Yakutian artist, who lived from 1962 till 2003. His preferred genres were portrait, landscape scenery, still life, etc.
He was born in Yakutsk. In the family of the outstanding USSR national artist Dmitry F. Khodulov. Graduated Children Art School, Yakutsk Art College (1981), the Surikov Art Institute in Moscow (1987). A member of the Sakha Republic Artist Union since 1993.
In June, Ilya Kovyakin, a friend of mine from Magadan, asked me to help him with fishing on the Lena River and travelling to Lena Pillars. He said, he would wish to do that in the course of 3 days. I was like, «My god, I am not a fisherman, I don’t have a boat, and I’ve heard that great fishing might happen in far away places… So…»
Eventually, the idea arrived… Everything might be done on the way from Yakutsk to Lena Pillars with visiting three places and for three days. The route is Elanka — the camp at the Buotama River (the Lena River tributary) — Lena Pillars.
The miracle happened. On the first day, Ilya with his family and Ajar Varlamov drove on his 4wd from Yakutsk to Elanka. The drive took 4.5 hrs. At that place, they rented rooms in Arinosov’s house (800 rubles per person) and did what they wanted. Ilya fished, his family members enjoyed nature, and Ajar took as many photographs as possible.
Below, please, see Ajar’s photographs. Beautiful, aren’t they?
Here in historical videos, you can see how Yhyakh (Ысыах in Russian), the Yakut national holiday, was celebrated in the 1960s. For the long period, the Soviets prohibited the Yakuts to hold its traditional summer event, but eventually, since 1941, allowed.
Yhyakh is the celebration of the summer solstice. Dedicated to the spirits of Ajyy and nature revival. Followed with the rising sun worship ceremonies, abundant food, kumis (also spelled kumiss, koumiss or kumys; it’s the horse milk) drinking, national sports games, horse races.
Further, please, find the second historical video. Read the rest of this entry…
This is a print of a Jakut woman. It is one of 72 prints from the book: Costume of the Russian Empire, ... dedicated, by permission, to her Royal Highness the Princess Elisabeth, London 1803. PS. Click the image to enlarge.
Saying a lot of thanks to my Finish friend of mine, Fredrik Forsberg, who provided a book print scan copy and the A FEMALE YAKOUTI chapter text from the book «Costume of the Russian Empire.» And it was him, who colored his black-and-white print copy.
Further, please, read the chapter with information on the illustrated Yakut woman in a national costume.
Platon Oyunsky statue on Orzhanikidze Square in Yakutsk. *To enlarge the image, click on it.
A book image of Platon Oyunsky
Always wanted to write about Platon Oyunsky, a Soviet Yakut statesman, writer and translator, a co-founder of modern Yakut literature, but I didn’t know how to do that. He is really a big man of history of the Republic of Sakha. Many Yakutian scientists wrote many serious works about this personage… and unconsciously I considered the task of writing about him to be impossible.
And you know what happened? One morning I was heading to my work place. It was in the early winter. I was passing Ordzhanikidze Square, when I saw a man cleaning the stature of Platon Oyunsky from snow.
It was so fascinating to see how the man was doing his job that I took a picture of his brushing work, uploaded the photo to my TwitPic account and soon got series of replies from a Yakutsk-based guy in the form of short information of who Mr. Oyunsky was.
I said, «Wow!» That guy, named Petr Petrov, was pretty serious and tried to overflow my stream stressing the importance of the historic hero. I wrote to him, «Do you have more text in English?» He, «Yes, I’ve just finished one.»
Below, please, find Petr’s text. It appeared to be pretty short, however, he wrote it very sincerely.
Roman Sofronov is a Yakutsk-based fellow, who has his own YouTube channel with great videos displaying the life in Yakutia, the biggest Siberian|Russian region.
He’s got great black-and-white 8mm home videos of children made in an ordinary Yakutian|Siberian village called Ytyk-Kyuel’ in the Soviet time. Fascinating flashbacks! Enjoy the history of Yakutia.
Pictures of Yakutsk taken in 1980. That’s how the Siberian city looked like in the Soviet time. See more old photographs.
Photos were digged by the local website Joker on the Foto Soyuz website.
I am really, really a big fan of Sakha Theater. I love everything they did, do and will do. Recently I got a fantastic CD solely dedicated to the Sakha Theater set design. That’s a presentation disc, that gives profound information about the theater, its decor history, artists and their works. Saying a big thank to ST for providing me with the disc.
In this post I am presenting Vladimir D. Ivanov, an art director of the Sakha Theater, who worked almost thirty years ago. Further, please, find his profile and images of his works. Read the rest of this entry…
Our Yakutia photo exhibit in Brooklyn, New York City. Photo by Gale Krylova.
Thomas Ross Miller, the curator of our joint «On the Road of Bones» photo exhibit in Brooklyn, NYC, informs that a couple of major New York newspapers have listed this Friday night’s open house reception at the Kris Waldherr Art and Words Studio Gallery in their events pages. Woo hoo! Many visitors and reporters are expected to come to that event on October 15th, 2010.
More NY exhibit details are available in the previous post. You might also wish to check out the exhibition schedule at http://ontheroadofbones.com/.
Meanwhile, hereby I present our curator Thomas Ross Miller’s statement in regards to the exhibition. What you are going to read further, convinced NYC-based culture editors to do what they did. Read the rest of this entry…
A cool Hollywood movie with Colin Farrell is coming on wide screens soon. Yakutia, actually, a bloody part of its history, is depicted. Here is what Richard Laweson wrote in Defamer:
«Here’s a trailer for The Way Back, Peter Weir’s upcoming film about a ragtag band of men (and a girl) escaping the gulag in Siberia [read Yakutia's Kolyma]. It looks a fun, throwbacky adventure yarn, complete with soaring vistas and handsome, grizzled men.»
«Specifically Colin Farrell, who’s having an interesting, quieter second leg of his career. Gone are the cheesy star-maker thrillers, replaced by nimble performances in well-chosen indies. (He was terrific in, and a deserving Golden Globe winner for, In Bruges, and had a nice, unshowy supporting bit in Crazy Heart.) Ed Harris looks typically half-bearded and flint-eyed, and that cute little Saoirse Ronin shows up as eerily adult as ever as a lost babe in the woods.»
We blog about the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), the biggest & coldest region in Russia's Siberia. Also known as Yakutia. My honor to have been born and live in such a beautiful land! ~ Bolot.
