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The significance of the literary critic Vissarion Belinskii for Russian art criticism of the nineteenth century was crucial. His passionate essays published in the journal Notes of the Fatherland, such as 'An Overview of Russian Literature of 1847' and 'A Speech on Criticism', radically altered Russian intellectual life of the 1840s. These essays paved the way to the emergence of the controversial and ideologically charged art criticism of the 1860s and particularly that of Vladimir Stasov, who took upon himself the application of Belinskii's ideas to the visual arts. Belinskii insisted on the rational re-examination of all spheres of life, which in art criticism meant a vivisection of a given work of art. His scientific method of art criticism demanded that art reflect 'the spirit of the age' and express a progressive ideology; beauty was understood as a means to express rational content. Belinskii's criticism was particularly scathing of the notion of 'art for art's sake', which in his view, was useless for society, even if a work possessed mastery of execution and beauty of form. Belinskii's own contribution to the criticism of the visual arts, however, was limited and represented the extension of his literary criticism: his notes on book illustrations advocate the dissemination of art among the masses, accuracy in the depiction of reality, representation of typical images of Russian life and, above all, the creation of a national Russian art. It was not until the end of the nineteenth century that Belinskii's legacy of looking at art as a means to promote social progress was finally discarded by the art critics associated with the World of Art group. whose views on art were reflected in the manifesto entitled 'Complicated Questions' published in the first issues of the World of Art journal in 1898-1899.
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acknowledgements