Representing Russia in The City of Angels

The church of Holy Virgin Mary

Abstract

The unprecedented history of the church of Holy Virgin Mary, in Silver Lake, is simultaneously a scathing story of the Angelenos. It could also be a perfect illustration of Jean Baudrillard's famous critique of representation. The church was originally designed as the setting for a free adaptation of Leon Tolstoy's novel 'The Cossacks', in the first Hollywood, a dubious choice to represent the culture and architectural context of the Terek Cossacks, where the action was developed of the homonymous novel. Once reconstructed as a permanent structure, it became a simulation without original: the simulation of a previous simulation. However, immediately after its construction in 1928, the church became a place of worship much loved by Russian emigrants in Hollywood, and in one of the favorite shrines of the Russian Orthodox Church abroad in general. This fact raises a series of difficult questions to resolve, such as the comparison between authenticity and simulation, permanence vs. temporality, or structural honesty versus pastiche. This article argues that the representative aspects of architecture are especially valued by its users in moments of great social cataclysms that threaten the very foundations of their identity.