Feodosia as a city and a visual text (Aivazovsky Project)

Abstract

The article describes the personality of Ivan K. Aivazovsky, a man of 'frontiers' who lived in a polyphonic city where Russian, Armenian and Turkic were spoken. The message of the article is the following: Aivazovsky was not only a gifted artist but also a diplomat, a responsible and upstanding citizen who appreciated the values of the city and was concerned about its problems, Armenian community and people. Aivazovsky changed the social space of the city, the (infra)structure and the image of Feodosia. The marinist was a man of culture, for whom money was important only as a form of donation and charity, ennobling the city and generating a new urban text and urban syntagmas. His works were a product of Feodosia, but at the same time, the painter’s personality was shaped by the city/sea. It was this combination of talent and the spirit of the place that synergised transnational culture: the periphery of tsarist Russia produced the central texts of the imperial policy of cultural memory.