Wooden Church Architecture of the Russian North in the Russian Art History of the Early 21st Century

Abstract

The article represents a historiographical review of publications on the wooden architecture of the Russian North, published in 2000–2010s. In these years the main perspectives of the research of the wooden church architecture of the Russian North can be distinguished as follows: the regional studies in the framework of large-scale scientific projects; studying the construction history and analysing the architectural features of specific objects, including in connection with their restoration; “rehabilitation” of the late period (19th–20th centuries) in the history of church wooden church building, which is a fundamentally new approach to this segment of the architectural heritage of the North; attracting a wide range of archival sources and gradually moving away from the speculative nature of unsubstantiated theoretical conclusions. An analytical review of publications on wooden church architecture published over the past twenty years is important not only for summing up intermediate results, but also for indicating further prospects for creating a complete panorama of wooden church building in the Russian North, which still remains unconnected and fragmentary, that is, forming from the history of individual monuments in different regions. The interaction of researchers of Russian wooden architecture with each other in the framework of long-term scientific projects is the key to successful joint work on the identification and introduction into scientific circulation of archival documents of the early period (16th–18th centuries) and conducting field surveys of preserved objects. The subsequent integration of the obtained data on chronological, quantitative and typological indicators will allow us to obtain a new objective picture of the historical development and artistic diversity of the monuments of wooden architecture of the Russian North.