Saint-Petersburg and Tallinn in the Work of Alexander Vladovsky: Metamorphosis of Identity

Abstract

There are architects who are destined to play the role of a cultural bridge between countries, Alexander Ignatievich Vladovsky (1876-1950) was one of the kind. The architect made his mark both in pre-revolutionary Russia (in St. Petersburg and Narva) and in the Republic of Estonia, to where he emigrated in the early 1920s and left a significant legacy. Such a fate of an artist was not common among immigrant architects who were forced to adapt to a different culture being fully formed people already. Estonian art historian L. Gens considered A. I. Vladovsky to be the largest figure among Russian architects who ever worked in Estonia. In Russia circa the 1900s he was, to a certain extent, a representative of the new style — Art-Nouveau (Baltic ArtNouveau or Baltic Romantic style), in Estonia of the classic tradition considered in the Estonian professional milieu akin to conservatism. However, the works of Vladovsky in his Tallinn period had the peculiar Baltic “accent”, the fact that remained unnoticed both by his contemporaries and historians of today. Careful study of the Vladovsky's heritage from the standpoint of cultural identity illustrates the metamorphoses of the creative approach of the artist who organically fit into the architectural and artistic context of the Baltic countries in the first half of the 20th century. This phenomenon can be viewed as an example of the creative work of talented Russian architects who ended up abroad as a result of the early twentieth century turmoil. Keywords—Alexander Vladovsky; Saint-Petersburg; the Baltics; Estonia; Art-Nouveau style; academic style; identity; regionalism; adaptation