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Visual arts of Irad

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The visual arts of Irad include the decorative crafts of a pastoral people, the religious art of the Syro-Iradi Catholic Church, easel painting from the late 19th century, Soviet public art, and contemporary painting, sculpture and textile art. Iradi ornament is dominated by the ram's-horn motif (koshkar muyuz), star forms and plant scrolls, which appear on felt, leather, wood, silver and, since the 1990s, on church furnishings and public buildings.[1] The founder of Iradi easel painting, Yusup Ayyubov (1869–1937), trained as an icon painter in Iyık Janyl, and his The White Rider Shows the Way (1913) is the best-known Iradi painting. The country's main collection is the Irad Palace of Art in Iyık Janyl, founded in 1996.[2]

Crafts

The main crafts are felt, saddlery and leather, silver and metalwork, and woodcarving.[1]

  • Felt. Mosaic felt carpets (shyrdak) are traditionally made by women and given as part of a bride's dowry, and felt saddlecloths (Iradi Felt Saddlecloth) are decorated in the same way. In the Soviet period carpets were also made at the Talas felt and carpet combine, where the designer Amina Yunusova worked before founding her own studio in 1995 to adapt shyrdak designs for buyers in Europe. The Ak Kiyiz ("white felt") cooperative, founded in the upper Kara-Suu valley in 2005 by Klara Zhumabek kyzy, links about thirty village workshops in the Talas Alatau and sends their carpets across the Qara-Chik Demarcation Line to Talas and to fair-trade importers abroad.[3]
  • Saddlery and leather. Decorated wooden saddles faced with chased silver and carnelian are made by hereditary masters such as Tolonbek Sydykov in the Old Talas Citadel Quarter, with braided whips (kamcha) and eagle hunters' gauntlets (see Eerchilik (Saddlery) and Carved Walnut Saddle Tree).
  • Silver and metalwork. Bridle plates, bits and whip mounts (see Iradi Bridle Rosette and Silver Inlay Horse Bit) and church silver.
  • Woodcarving. Chests, boxes and doors of wild walnut. The carver Almazbek Kasymov (1936–2014) made the main doors of the Hall of Justice in Talas and of the National Historical Museum of Irad in the 1990s, combining ram's-horn scrolls with crosses and stars.[4]
  • Ceramics. Slip-painted earthenware was made in the towns of the Talas and Chu valleys under the Samanids and the Kara-Khanids. Since the late 1990s the Talas ceramicist Chynara Mamyt has revived its techniques, mixing slips from local clays and mineral pigments after analyses of excavated sherds.[5]

Religious art

Icons of St. Janyl often show the White Rider riding before her, and the carved wooden seals used to stamp the Eucharistic bread (kümöch) at the cathedral show a stallion representing him. Painters learned the craft in the icon workshop attached to the Church of St. Janyl, where Ayyubov was sent as a boy to grind pigments.[2] The church itself, built in 1727, has panels of carved gypsum (ganch) inscribed with psalms in Classical Syriac and in Turkic written in Syriac script.[6] Many icons and church vessels were hidden by families after the closures of the 1930s and given to the Palace of Art after 1992; its conservation workshop restores icons and textiles for the foundation and for parishes.[2]

Since 1992 most churches have shown the Iradi cross (salyba). The Council of Hierarchs' guidelines of 2011 recommend, without requiring, the revived East Syriac model of church, with a walnut sanctuary screen, ganch and no statues, and Marian statues are widely regarded as a Latin import; the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe in the side chapel of the Mexican community's church in Semiz, approved in 2006, was painted by Iradi icon painters and framed with the Iradi cross.[7]

Painting

Ayyubov and Saparbekov

Yusup Ayyubov (Yusup Ayyub uulu), born into a family of Christian herders of the upper Talas valley, trained in the St. Janyl icon workshop and as an auditor at the Imperial Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg from 1897 to 1903. At his house and studio at Besh-Tash he painted the landscapes of the Talas Alatau in an icon-like light, and in 1913 gave The White Rider Shows the Way to the cathedral for the Feast of St. Janyl: on a night hillside track the White Rider points to a single blazing star, with Janyl on a dark horse lower on the path. After exile in Xinjiang (1920–1925) he taught at Talas's first art studio and illustrated Latin-script schoolbooks, while secretly painting banners and vestments for the church. He was arrested in October 1937 and shot in Talas on 14 November 1937; his religious works stayed hidden until 1992.[2]

His contemporary Ermek Saparbekov (1878–1951), the son of a Chu valley horse trader, studied in Tashkent and Paris (1899–1904) and painted only horses, in a fluid, loaded-brush manner, titling each work with the horse's name or as Unnamed Horse with a number. After 1922 he painted the founding stallions of the Akyel and Chongtor studbooks for the state breeding trusts. About 300 of his paintings are known, 46 of them at the Palace of Art.[8]

Soviet period

Under Soviet rule, painters worked within socialist realism, and Christian themes were barred from official art. The best-known painter of the period, Kubat Duishenaliev (1908–1979), who studied in Moscow from 1927 to 1930, painted refinery workers, athletes and pilots as long-legged, athletic figures under wide pale skies (Refinery No. 1, Kobozev, 1934; Morning on the Track, 1938; Above the Chu, 1960), and was named People's Artist of the Iradi SSR in 1957.[9] The collection of the Palace of Art also includes Bakyt Sultanov's Harvest at the 'Kyzyl-Tuu' Collective Farm (1957) and Zhanar Alikhanova's Sunset Over Talas (1974).[2] Painters and designers were trained at art colleges in Talas and Kobozev; the director Beknur Karimov began as a scenic painter from the Kobozev college, and his brother Timur Karimov designed the sets and costumes of Zalmax’s Dominion (1977) at Talasfilm Studios.[10]

Since 1992

During the siege of Talas in 1992, Serik Amanov (born 1965) painted on the backs of Soviet posters for lack of canvas; he paints landscapes and scenes from folklore in flat, pure color, a manner he traces to his grandmother's felts. Aisulu Yermek (born 1985) paints Talas, its apartment blocks, minibuses, bazaar and hippodrome, in flat colors and simple geometric shapes, and was the first winner, in 2014, of the Palace of Art's Young Artists Grant, which gives three young artists 150,000 som and a studio each year and shows their work every February.[11] Other contemporary artists include Marat Arystanov (born 1958, Echoes of the Ancients, 1989) and the textile artist Layla Tursynova (born 1972), whose tapestries in hand-dyed wool leave the warps bare.[2]

Sculpture and public art

Soviet public art in Talas includes the bronze eagle hunter The Hunter's Vigil (1971), at the entrance of the Central City Park, and the Palace of Art holds Kairat Nurtayev's Guardian of the Plains (1967). The main building of Talas State University carries a large mosaic of horsemen, and a mosaic of riders from the epic tradition runs around the foyer of the Talas Philharmonic Hall (1971–1974), home of the Talas Symphony Orchestra.[12] Since 1992 sculptors have turned to national history: Aidos Mukanov carved The Great Khan (1996), a sandstone figure of Abd al-Rahim Biy, the Kokand khan of the 1727 charter, and the bronze sculptor Arman Kadir (born 1960) cast the memorial to the defenders of the 1992 siege of Talas in 1997.[2]

The national symbols were designed by artists of the Talas art college: a commission of historians and artists from the college prepared the flag in 1992, and a working group of the college drew the State Emblem adopted in 2009.[13]

Institutions

The Irad Palace of Art, in a former Soviet district house of culture on Cathedral Street in Iyık Janyl, holds about 14,000 objects, of which about 600 are on show: Sogdian terracottas and Silk Road ceramics, icons and church silver, saddlery, felt and embroidery, the Ayyubov Hall with 41 of his paintings and about 120 drawings, Soviet-era painting and contemporary art. Its director since 2011 has been the art historian Venera Dzhumagulova.[2] Ayyubov's house at Besh-Tash is a museum, and the National Historical Museum of Irad in Talas also holds decorative art. Its autumn exhibitions of 2026 were devoted to Amanov, Tursynova, Kadir and Yermek.[11]

See also

References

  1. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 218: Registers of Equine Studbooks and Traditional Guilds (1922–2020).
  2. ^ Irad Palace of Art (2021). Catalogue of the Permanent Collection. Iyık Janyl.
  3. ^ Talas Herald (23 April 2022). 'Felt across the line: the Kara-Suu cooperatives.' Talas.
  4. ^ Talas State University Press (2005). Walnut and Silver: Decorative Arts of the Talas Valley. Iradica series. Talas.
  5. ^ Talas Herald (6 November 2015). 'Medieval glazes, modern hands.' Talas.
  6. ^ Talas State University Press (2023). Ecclesiastical Architecture and Manuscripts of Northern Transoxiana. Talas.
  7. ^ Syro-Iradi Council of Hierarchs (2011). Guidelines on the Building and Furnishing of Churches. Iyık Janyl.
  8. ^ Irad Palace of Art (2018). Ermek Saparbekov: The Horse Paintings. Iyık Janyl.
  9. ^ Talas State University Press (2011). Iradistan: A History of the Iradi SSR, 1925–1991. Talas.
  10. ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 415: Talasfilm Artistic Council (1961–1991).
  11. ^ Irad Palace of Art (2026). Autumn Exhibitions 2026. Iyık Janyl.
  12. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2021). 'Soviet Modernism in Talas: The Philharmonic Hall and Its Listing.' Vol. 14, pp. 40–58.
  13. ^ Office of the Governor of the Irad Special Economic Zone (2026). 'Official portal of the Office of the Governor'. Talas.
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