Pictures-travelers: Jakov Meksin’s exhibitions of German and Japanese children’s books in the USSR

Abstract

The fact that the early-Soviet children’s book illustration aroused interest
abroad has been already broadly acknowledged. The article considers the possibility of a reverse influence: could Moscow artists get acquainted with foreign children’s books? Two exhibitions of a foreign children’s literature took place in Moscow in 1928: one exposing the books from Germany and another from Japan. The article is dedicated to the history of these exhibitions, reconstructs their contents and restores main ideas of the organizers by analyzing the brochures issued for the exhibitions and reviews in Soviet press. The theoretical framework for the article is the concept of Michel Espagne’s cultural transfer. One of the most active and passionate transfer agents of children’s culture in the Soviet Union was without a doubt children’s writer, devoted collector of children’s books and curator Yakov Petrovich Meksin. It was thanks to him and his collaboration with VOKS (All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries) that the exhibitions of German and Japanese books could take place in Moscow. As we can see from Meksin’s comments on exhibitions, for him they were not only the way to demonstrate contemporary foreign books for children in USSR, but also a possibility to discuss the tradition of children’s illustration — in Germany and in Japan, as well as in pre-revolutionary Russia.

Keywords: Yakov Meksin, VOKS, Children’s Book Museum, cultural transfer, Soviet children’s books, children’s book exhibitions, history of children’s book illustration, German art in Soviet Union, Japaneese
children’s books, Kodomo-no-Kuni, manga.