House of Cards (Serebryakova's picture)

By October 1917, Zinaida Serebryakova with children lived in her estate Neskuchnoye in the Kharkov province . With increasing political tensions in Ukraine, the family was forced to move first to the town of Zmiyev , and then to Kharkov ^[2] . In 1918, the artist's husband, who worked in Moscow , was arrested during the “Red Terror” , almost half a year nothing was known about him. In 1919, he died of typhus in the hands of his wife and children. By November 1919, the estate in Neskuchny was looted and burned, all the property of the artist perished. She was left with four children and a sick mother without a livelihood ^[3] . All art critics agree that the picture shows Serebryakova's Kharkov apartment, in which she lived after the death of her husband ^[4] . Daughter Tatiana describes her as three rooms with a glazed terrace ^[5] .

Technique of painting - oil painting on canvas . Size - 65 x 75 centimeters . The picture is currently in the collection of the Russian Museum (inventory number - Zh-6634), where it entered in 1957 from Evgeny Serebryakov, the artist's son, in whose family she was in Leningrad after the artist left the country abroad. The picture is dated by different researchers of the artist's work in different ways: 1918, ^[1] , 1919, ^[6] or 1920, ^[4] .

The painting depicts four children of the artist:

• Yevgeny Serebryakov (1906, Neskuchnoye - 1990, Leningrad). After leaving his mother abroad, he remained in the USSR . Architect, restorer, watercolor painter . After 1945, he participated in the restoration of architectural monuments of Peterhof ^[7] .
• Alexander Serebryakov (1907, Neskuchnoye - 1995, Paris ). In 1925 he moved to Paris, where his mother already lived. He worked on the interior design of museums, shops, mansions, park pavilions, worked for a while in the cinema; executed decorative panels , monumental paintings ^[8] .
• Tatiana Serebryakova (1912–1989, Moscow). She graduated from the ballet school in Leningrad, theater artist, the wife of the artist Valentina Nikolaev. Honored Artist of the RSFSR ^[8] .
• Catherine Serebryakova (1913–2014, Paris). In 1928 ^[9] moved to Paris to her mother. The artist ^[10] .

A house of cards is a construction erected from playing cards by placing them in rows on top of each other, the goal is to create as high a structure as possible of cards, which should not collapse (glue should not be used in the construction of card houses) ^[11] . The house of cards, which gave the name of the picture, also is a phraseological turn in the Russian language, its two basic meanings: 1. Light fragile construction (in this sense, it usually has a dismissive meaning); 2. Assumptions, calculations that do not have a solid foundation and therefore doomed to failure (in this sense, most often has an ironic tinge) ^[12] . The house of cards has repeatedly become the object of the image by major artists, a narrow spectrum of the indicated symbolic meanings entrenched in iconography behind it ^[11] .

According to art critic A. A. Rusakova, “The House of Cards” is the best work of the artist of 1920 (this year she dated the canvas ^[4] ), in her the document and everyday life are combined with psychological authenticity. Rusakova contrasts two group portraits of the artist's children. In the portrait of children " At dinner " in 1914, calm and happiness reign. In the “House of Cards,” children in blue clothes (of different shades) sit huddled together at the table covered with a dark tablecloth and build a fragile house out of playing cards. They are focused, simultaneously awaiting and afraid of the collapse of the building. Rusakova denies the original and conscious symbolism and allegory of the picture, considers it purely realistic, but believes that the situation itself depicted in the picture becomes a symbol in the everyday sense (fragility of the artist’s family at this time): in this case the painter’s inspiration was reinforced by the mother love and anxiety about the future of the family leaving into the unknown, now resembling a fragile structure of cards ” ^[4] . Some critics consider this picture the most gloomy in the work of the artist. From the beginning of 1920, the artist painted tables of historical finds, sketched themselves artifacts found during the excavations for the Archaeological Museum at Kharkiv National University , where she hardly managed to get a permanent job. Such work was extremely boring, but it allowed the artist to contain children and an elderly mother ^[13] .

E. V. Efremova notes the sharp light-shade and color contrasts, the restless rhythms of the lines characteristic of the canvas, all this, in her opinion, together creates an atmosphere of anxious expectation of misfortune. The faces of the children are confused, quiet and sad concentration. The picture itself, from the point of view of the art historian, expresses the instability of family happiness ^[11] .

N. I. Tregub in his Ph.D. thesis establishes the sequence of development of the artist's world-view on the basis of her most important works: “Self-portrait“ Behind the toilet ”is decided as“ I am a woman ”, children's portrait“ For dinner ”-“ my family is waiting for events ”, " Diana and Acteon " - the despair of everything that happens, "House of Cards" - a tragic outcome. " Tregub believes that in Serebryakova's early works, symbolism is expressed as the subtext of the image, and in this work it is a manifesto, the card game depicts the fragility of human life, it ciphers not only the death of her husband, but also the loss of the Neskuchnoye estate, the collapse of all the foundations of the state and society ^{[ 14]} .

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  Jean-Baptiste Chardin . House of Cards, 1730s

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  Harry Brooker. House of Cards, 1889

• Yefremova E.V. Card House // Zinaida Serebryakova. - M .: Art Spring, 2012. - 96 p. - 3000 copies - ISBN 5-9561-0176-8 .
• Rusakova A. A. The house of cards // Zinaida Serebryakova. - M .: Young Guard, 2008. - 226 p. - (Life of great people). - 3000 copies - ISBN 978-5-235-03436-5 .
• Rusakova A. A. Appendix: T. B. Serebryakova. Creativity belonging to the Motherland // Zinaida Serebryakova. - M .: Young Guard, 2008. - 226 p. - (Life of great people). - 3000 copies - ISBN 978-5-235-03436-5 .
• Rusakova A. A. Appendix: M. B. Meylakh. Children of Serebryakova (conversation with Ekaterina Serebryakova) // Zinaida Serebryakova. - M .: Young Guard, 2008. - 226 p. - (Life of great people). - 3000 copies - ISBN 978-5-235-03436-5 .
• Fedorov A. I. The house of cards // Phraseological dictionary of the Russian literary language .. - M .: Astrel, AST., 2008. - 828 p. - ISBN 978-0-7524-5166-4 .