A media person in the cultural space of Tomsk Province in the early 20th century: The artist G. I. Gurkin

The paper presents an experience of introduction of a character-related part into the media image of the real world of Tomsk Province of the beginning of the 20th century. The example of representation of G.I. Gurkin, an Altaian artist, the first professional artist among the Siberian non-Russians, the formation of the media personality in mass media is traced on the Siberian scale. The materials of the newspapers Sibirskaya Zhizn', Sibirskaya Gazeta, Tomskiye Gubernskiye Vedomosti and Tomskiye Yeparkhal 'nyye Vedomosti are chosen to study the methods of a purposeful development of the image of Gurkin as the most famous person among the Siberian non-Russians. The research notes that it was G.N. Potanin who first made Gurkin a part of the social life of Tomsk. The newspapers described the artist as Potanin's close friend and as an owner of a house in a small village of Anos that became a center of scientific life of the whole province every summer. Local farmers from Chemal and other neighboring villages could freely visit Gurkin's painting workshop, and this helped to realize the cultural and educational potential of the artist's house. In the paper, Gurkin's status of an iconic figure in the cultural space of the province is treated as a result of the purposeful work of mass media. Since the beginning of the 20th century, the newspapers carefully observed and covered the creative path of the artist: he was first introduced as an exotic talented person from a remote part of the province, an Altaian, a student of a missionary school, a painter of I.I. Shishkin's school. At the next stage, Gurkin was presented as an ideal of Siberian oblastniks: a talented Siberian man, who decided to come back to Siberia from the capital, who was willing to serve for his people with his art. Gradually, this image found its place in a number of cultural events of Tomsk, and when the newspapers wrote about Gurkin, the epithet famous always preceded the painter's name. Sibirskaya Zhizn' announced and reported about Gurkin's personal exhibitions, informed readers about his plans, about the details and the results of his trips across the Altai, published the artist's first literary works, described his house in Anos, mentioned the well-known Tomsk residents who came to visit him, who stopped in Anos during scientific expeditions. The name of the painter and the image of the Altai praised in his works soon appeared in the newspapers of Barnaul. The author of the paper concludes that by the middle of the second decade of the 20th century the image of Gurkin in the media space merged with the picturesque image of the high Altai mountains the artist created himself. Therefore, Gurkin became a genius of the Altai (the image "Gurkin is the bard of the Altai"), and thanks to him the Altai was understood as a place in Tomsk Province that possesses the most powerful aesthetic and mythogenic potential.

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