Still Life with Beets

among the great artists of the Russian avant-garde, David Shterenberg is often overlooked. Unlike Vladimir Tatlin, the founder of Constructivism, or Kazimir Malevich, king of Suprematism, Shterenberg was not given to radical experimentation. In the many still lifes he painted, Shterenberg focused not on cosmic visions but on domestic details, endowing them nonetheless with meaning beyond their simple representation.

Born in the Ukrainian town of Zhitomir in 1881, Shterenberg studied art in Odessa. From 1906 to 1912 he lived in Paris, where he encountered Cubism and other modernist movements. But the bold promise of the Revolution lured him back to Russia, as it did his fellow artists Marc Chagall and Vasily Kandinsky (although, unlike them, Shterenberg remained in the Soviet Union until his death). Shterenberg was soon named head of the Fine Arts Department of NARKOMPROS, the People’s Commissariat of Enlightenment, and later taught at Moscow’s influential Vkhutemas school, with which some of the most important artists of the day were associated, including Tatlin, Malevich, Rodchenko, and Lissitzky.

Shterenberg’s greatest legacy is found in the dozens of tabletop still lifes he composed, such as Aunt Sasha from 1922/23, reproduced here. Although the influence of Cubism is evident in his analysis of planes, the painting also evinces a debt to Suprematism’s exploration of geometric forms and Constructivism’s close study of textures. Shterenberg conveys equally beautifully the airiness of the curtains and the solid weight of the wood. The painting is remarkably earthy in its use of so many rich brown tones, and in its gravitational pull away from the window’s rectangular light down to the grounded tables. Aunt Sasha’s long brown skirt carries the eye even further, beyond the frame of the picture. Most notable, however, is the fact that all of the elements on the table actually come from the earth — root vegetables and tubers. Even though somewhat abstracted and flattened, these vegetables clearly represent the makings of beet soup, borshch (борщ). Most prominent, and most crucial for borshch, is the beet, here depicted as a deep red cylinder standing upright against the white plate. Just next to it lies a red cabbage in a cutaway view that reveals its beautiful veins. To the left are an onion, a carrot, and a parsnip. A second table holds a wooden basket of potatoes. Shterenberg has shifted the angle of the tables so that even though we are looking Aunt Sasha right in the face, the tilt of the tabletops displays surface rather than edge.

Something beyond the minimalism of this painting lends it an air of dejection. If we compare Shterenberg’s Aunt Sasha to another table — that in Zinaida Serebriakova’s Lunch, for example (Russian Life, April 2010), with its profusion of plates and cheerful blue-and-yellow palette, we find that the dark umber of the background, the dense wood, and Aunt Sasha’s substantial skirt create a sense of heaviness, despite the vegetables that seem to float across the surface of the table. Aunt Sasha appears work-worn, her face lined. Given the years in which this painting was made, such starkness is understandable. The ravages of the Civil War and the terrible 1921 Volga famine meant that foodstuffs were still scarce. The very spareness of the food depicted here — a single beet, one onion, one carrot, one parsnip — represents the opposite of abundance. And the artist’s intense focus on these individual vegetables makes them more than just props for a successful still life. They have become essential objects in their own right: sustenance, not just food.

Shterenberg’s conceptual still lifes did not find favor in 1930s Russia, when the official rhetoric was all about abundance and record harvests. He abandoned his earlier style for more realistic modes of representation and died in Moscow in 1948, largely forgotten.

Unlike the lean borshch implied in Shterenberg’s painting, this one is enriched with meat. But you could always substitute a vegetable broth, and feel free to add a parsnip along with the carrot for a touch of sweetness.

9 cups water

2 pounds beef shin or chuck with bone

3 medium beets, peeled and cut in half

1 to 1½ tablespoons salt

2 medium potatoes, peeled and cubed

1 small carrot, peeled and grated

½ medium heat white cabbage (3/4 pound), shredded

1 ripe tomato, coarsely chopped

6 tablespoons tomato paste

4 black peppercorns

Freshly ground black pepper

2 tablespoons red wine vinegar

1 teaspoon sugar

1 bay leaf

Sour cream

Simmer the meat in the water for 30 minutes, then add the beets and salt. Cook for 10 minutes more.

Remove the beets from the broth and grate them coarsely. Then return to the pot along with the remaining ingredients, except for the bay leaf and sour cream.

Simmer the soup until done, about 1½ hours. Remove from the heat and add the bay leaf. Let the soup cool to room temperature, then chill overnight. Next day, skim off the fat and reheat. Put a slice of meat and a dollop of sour cream in each bowl.

Makes 3 quarts

Adapted from A Taste of Russia