|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
For Russia, the first decades of the century marked a crucial phase in
its troubled history. Torn since the early 19th century between a keen
interest in the West, and the deep suspicion with which Western
religion, scientific and political ideas were often viewed, the country
was plunged into an insoluble debate and an equally insoluble
institutional crisis.
The emancipation of the serfs in 1861 necessitated a fundamental
restructuring of rural society, which inevitably led to yet further
reforms. Land had to be distributed to the emancipated peasants. The
intelligentsia took an interest in the fate of the peasantry. Its first
naive impulse, in 1874, was a crusade to educate the popular classes and
prepare them for the coming revolution. The repression which ensued
favoured the development of terrorism, culminating in the assassination
of Czar Alexander II in March 1881. The timing was unfortunate: he was
on his way to the Duma to sign a liberalising law.
The development of the railway and the industrialisation of the country
led to the rise of a new class, coinciding with the decline of the
landed gentry. Anton Chekhov (1860-1904), himself the grandson of
emancipated serfs, paints a humane and moving portrait of "lives coming
undone" among the incomprehending gentry. (He also wrote an amusing
parody of Symbolist theatre in The Seagull.)
The arts, in this context, were
torn between the traditional, populist views of the Wanderers
(Peredwishniki), who favoured a realistic chronicle of Russian life, and
that of cosmopolitan artists and writers receptive to Western ideas.
Orthodox Russia was also attracted to the Symbolist spirit, precisely to
the extent that religious Symbolism remained a potent force in that
country. In 1899 a number of these "cosmopolitan" artists, founded the
magazine Mir Iskustva (The World of Art) in Moscow. They wished to keep
their readers informed of significant artistic events in Munich, Berlin,
Vienna and Paris. Notable among them was Sergei Diaghilev who was later
to found the Ballets Russes,
Leon Bakst, his stage and costume designer,
Constantin Somov and above all the painter
Mikhail Vrubel.
Despite his short and tragic life,
Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel
(1856-1910) was the most influential of the Russian painters working in
the Symbolist vein. The son of Danish and Polish parents, he studied law
in Saint Petersburg before enrolling in that city's School of Fine Arts
at the age of twenty-four. He devoted five years of his life to
restoring the frescoes of the Church of Saint Cyril in Kiev and finally
settled in Moscow where he was welcomed into the circle of Savva
Mamontov, a wealthy patron of the arts. At his request,
Vrubel created
opera sets and designed various objects manufactured at the artistic
colony which Mamontov had established on his country estate.
Vrubel depicted a variety of subjects, including ballet and
mythological (Pan, 1899) and allegorical themes. But his reputation is
based on a series of paintings illustrating Lermontov's poem "The Demon". It is the story of a quasi-supernatural being who is in
love with the beautiful Tamara. He arranges for her fiance to be
assassinated by bandits, then seduces her in the convent to which she
has retired. She dies and the Demon remains alone and in despair. The
figure of the Demon undergoes a slow transformation in
Vrubel's
paintings. First depicted as a "demon of superhuman beauty" he
eventually becomes, in the words of George Heard Hamilton, "a being
half-woman, fallen to earth, his body contorted and crushed, his wings
with their peacock feathers crushed beneath him, and on his face an
expression of unspeakable despair".
Vrubel himself went mad at
the age of thirty-six. He lost his sight at forty and died four years
later. Identifying
Vrubel with his theme, the painter Vassili
Denissov (1862-1920) commemorated Vrubel's death in his water-colour
The Fallen Demon, on the Death of Mikhail Vrubel (1910).
|
|
Mikhail Vrubel
(see collection)
|
|

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel
Seated Demon
1890
|
|
|
Leon Bakst (1866-1924)
made his reputation by designing sets and costumes for Diaghilev's
Ballets Russes, but his paintings are very much in the Symbolist vein.
Terror Antiquus (1908) shows the sinking of Atlantis, and with
it, a world and its values cataclysmically destroyed.
Konstantin
Somov
(1869-1939) was also active in the circle of Mir Iskustva. His manner is
more traditional than that of other Russian artists mentioned so far, at
times romantically atmospheric (as in his Fireworks of 1922), at others
bizarrely evocative (as in Sorcery of 1898).
|

Konstanin Somov
Sorcery
1898
|
|
|

Leon Bakst
Terror Antiquus
1908
|
|
|

Leon Bakst
Coppelius and Coppelia
1904
|
|
|
|
Mysticism and eroticism characterise the Symbolist works of
Kasimir
Malevich (1878-1935), whose marked tendency to polarisation between two
colours or even monochromaticism foreshadows Suprematism; thus the
yellow of The Flower Gathering (1908)
or the red of Oak and Dryads of the same period. But
Malevich's
Symbolism also partakes of the heady atmosphere of Russia with its
religious, theosophical anthroposophic, esoteric and occult activities.
The Flower Gathering has an esoteric philosophical import in direct line
of descent from the
Nabis
, and in particular from
Maurice
Denis, who had
visited Moscow and exhibited there. Yet in this mystical garden, the
feminine triad may well be regarded as a Far Eastern version of the
European "Three Graces". And in Oak and Dryads we may perhaps detect a
synthesis of Greek tradition, the Biblical tradition of the Tree of Life
and the Far Eastern "tree of illumination". The mystery of the Cosmos is
presented to our eyes in the meeting of the male (the phallic tree) and
female (the womb within the tree). Epitaphios (The Shroud of Christ) is orthodox in inspiration but draws on Buddhist models despite the icono-graphical debt it owes to
Vrubel's Kiev frescoes.
|

Kasimir Malevich
Epitaphios
1908
|
|
|
|

Kasimir Malevich
Oak and Driads
1908
|
|
|
|
|
|
The Lithuanian artist,
Mikolajus Ciurlionis
(1875-1911), lived in
poverty and solitude, taking a passionate interest in the writings of
Nietzsche and Rudolph Steiner and in the mythology of his own country.
He lived in Warsaw for six years and died at the age of 36. His work,
still relatively unknown in the West, combines the decorative and the
mystical. Tending toward abstraction, it draws much of its inspiration
from music, as in his Sonata series.
|
|
Mikolajus Ciurlionis
(see collection)
|
|
|
|

Mikolajus Ciurlionis
Star Sonata. Allegro
1908
|
|
|
|

Mikolajus Ciurlionis
Rex
1909
|
|
|
 |