These pictures have, too, an
oriental flavour: there are brown Madonnas in the Russian churches,
and such an one illustrates the statistics of infant mortality in
India, while the Russian mother, broad-footed, in gay petticoat and
kerchief, sits in a starry meadow suckling her baby from a very ample
white breast. I think that this movement towards the Church tradition
may be unconscious and instinctive, and would perhaps be deplored by
many Communists, for whom grandiose bad Rodin statuary and the crudity
of cubism better express what they mean by revolution. But this
revolution is Russian and not French, and its art, if all goes well,
should inevitably bear the popular Russian stamp. It is would-be
primitive and popular art that is vulgar. Such at least is the
reflection engendered by an inspection of Russian peasant work as
compared with the spirit of _Children's Tales_.
The Russian peasant's artistic impulse is no legend. Besides the
carving and embroidery which speak eloquently to peasant skill, one
observes many instances in daily life. He will climb down, when his
slowly-moving train stops by the wayside, to gather branches and
flowers with which he will decorate the railway carriage both inside
and out, he will work willingly at any task which has beauty for its
object, and was all too prone under the old regime to waste his time
and his employer's material in fashioning small metal or wooden
objects with his hands.
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