Images of space

the long version

The highly original work is about the spatial imagination as it has manifested itself in one of the most beautiful and historically important cities in the world. The subject is not the buildings, trees, and rivers of St. Petersburg, but the spaces between them: space as a conceptual interval, not as emptiness. Emptiness and space are not synonyms, the author argues. One way or another, space is formed and shaped into a structure that can be perceived, but emptiness has no distinct articulation or content. Interpreting the unique space of Petersburg since its founding in Russian and Soviet art, this richly illustrated book analyzes the changes of "spatial conception" that were inwardly linked with the development of Russian culture and that manifested themselves in poetry and prose, in architecture and fashion, in interior design and painting.