Who entered the world of art an association of artists. School encyclopedia

The artistic association and the magazine "World of Art" are significant phenomena in Russian culture of the Silver Age, clearly expressing one of the essential aesthetic trends of their time. The Commonwealth of the World of Art began to take shape in St. Petersburg in the 90s. XIX century. around a group of young artists, writers, and art workers striving to renew the cultural and artistic life of Russia. The main initiators were A. N. Benois, S. P. Diaghilev, D. V. Filosofov, K. A. Somov, L. S. Bakst, later M. V. Dobuzhinsky and others. friends with the same culture and common taste. " In 1898, the first issue of the magazine "World of Art" was published, which was mainly prepared by Filosofov, in 1899 the first of five exhibitions of the magazine was held, the association itself was formalized in 1900. The magazine existed until the end of 1904, and after the revolution of 1905 the official activity of the association ceased. In addition to the members of the association, outstanding artists of the turn of the century were involved in the exhibitions, who shared the spiritual and aesthetic line of the "World of Art". Among them are the names of K. Korovin, M. Vrubel, V. Serov, N. Roerich, M. Nesterov, I. Grabar, F. Malyavin. Foreign masters were also invited. Many Russian religious thinkers and writers who stood up for the "revival" of spirituality in Russia were also published on the pages of the magazine. These are V. Rozanov, D. Merezhkovsky, L. Shestov, N. Minsky and others. The journal and the association in their original form did not last long, but the spirit of the World of Art, its publishing, organizational, exhibition and educational activities left a mark on Russian culture and aesthetics, and the members of the association have preserved this spirit and aesthetic preferences almost throughout their lives. In 1910-1924. The "World of Art" resumed its activity, but already in a very expanded composition and without a sufficiently clearly oriented first aesthetic (essentially aesthetic) line. Many of the representatives of the association in the 1920s. moved to Paris, but there, too, they remained adherents of the artistic tastes of their youth.

Two main ideas united the participants of the World of Art into an integral community: 1. The desire to return to Russian art the main quality of art artistry, to free art from any tendentiousness (social, religious, political, etc.) and direct it into a purely aesthetic channel. Hence, the slogan l'art pour l'art, popular among them, although old in culture, rejection of the ideology and artistic practice of academism and itinerant movement, a special interest in romantic and symbolist tendencies in art, in the English Pre-Raphaelites, French Nabids, in Puvi's painting de Chavannes, Böcklin's mythology, Jugendstil's aestheticism, Art Nouveau, but also to the fairy-tale fiction of E.T.A. Hoffmann, to the music of R. Wagner, to ballet as a form of pure artistry, etc .; a tendency to include Russian culture and art in a wide European artistic context. 2. On this basis - romanticization, poeticization, aestheticization of the Russian national heritage, especially of the late, 18th - early 19th centuries, oriented towards Western culture, in general, interest in post-Petrine culture and late folk art, for which the main members of the association received the nickname in artistic circles "Retrospective dreamers".

The main trend of the "World of Art" was the principle of innovation in art based on a highly developed aesthetic taste. Hence the artistic and aesthetic predilections, and the creative attitudes of the world of art. In fact, they created a solid Russian version of that aesthetically sharpened movement at the turn of the century, which gravitated towards the poetics of neo-romanticism or symbolism, towards the decorative and aesthetic melodiousness of the line and in different countries had different names (Art Nouveau, Secession, Jugendstil), and in Russia it was called the style " modern ".

The participants in the movement themselves (Benoit, Somov, Dobuzhinsky, Bakst, Lanceray, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Bilibin) were not great artists, did not create artistic masterpieces or outstanding works, but wrote several very beautiful, almost aesthetic pages in the history of Russian art, actually showing the world that Russian art is no stranger to the spirit of nationally oriented aestheticism in the best sense of this unfairly belittled term. Typical for the style of most of the world of art were exquisite linearity (graphic quality - they brought Russian graphics to the level of an independent art form), subtle decorativeness, nostalgia for the beauty and luxury of past eras, sometimes neoclassical tendencies and intimacy in easel works. At the same time, many of them gravitated towards the theatrical synthesis of arts - hence their active participation in theatrical performances, Diaghilev projects and "Russian seasons", an increased interest in music, dance, modern theater in general. It is clear that most of the world of art were wary, and as a rule, sharply negatively related to the avant-garde movements of their time. The "World of Art" sought to find its own innovative path in art, an alternative path of the avant-garde artists, firmly connected with the best traditions of art of the past. Today we see that in the twentieth century. the efforts of the World of Artists practically did not receive any development, but in the first third of the century they contributed to the maintenance of a high aesthetic level in domestic and European cultures and left a good memory in the history of art and spiritual culture.

Art Association "World of Art"

The World of Art (1898-1924) is an artistic association formed in Russia at the end of the 1890s. A magazine was published under the same name, published since 1898 by members of the group. The founders of the "World of Art" were the St. Petersburg artist A. N. Benois and theatrical figure S. P. Diaghilev. It loudly announced itself by organizing the "Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists" in 1898 at the Museum of the Central School of Technical Drawing of Baron A. L. Stieglitz. The classic period in the life of the association fell on 1900-1904. - at this time, the group was characterized by a special unity of aesthetic and ideological principles. The artists organized exhibitions under the auspices of the World of Art magazine. After 1904, the association expanded and lost its ideological unity. In 1904-1910. most of the members of the "World of Art" were members of the Union of Russian Artists. After the revolution, many of its leaders were forced to emigrate. The association actually ceased to exist in 1924. Artists of the World of Art considered the aesthetic principle in art a priority and strove for modernity and symbolism, opposing the ideas of the Wanderers. Art, in their opinion, should express the personality of the artist.

The association included artists:

Bakst, Lev Samoilovich

Roerich, Nicholas Konstantinovich

Dobuzhinsky, Mstislav Valerianovich

Lanceray, Evgeny Evgenievich

Mitrokhin, Dmitry Isidorovich

Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Anna Petrovna

Chambers, Vladimir Yakovlevich

Yakovlev, Alexander Evgenievich

Somov, Konstantin Andreevich

Zionglinsky, Yan Frantsevich

Purvit, Wilhelm

Sunnerberg, Konstantin Alexandrovich, critic

"Group portrait of members of the World of Art" association. 1916-1920 B. M. Kustodiev.

portrait - Diaghilev Sergei Petrovich (1872 - 1925)

Sergei Diaghilev was born on March 19 (31), 1872 in Selishchi, Novgorod province, in the family of a military, hereditary nobleman Pavel Pavlovich Diaghilev. His mother died a few months after the birth of Sergei, and he was raised by his stepmother Elena, daughter of V.A.Panaev. As a child, Sergei lived in St. Petersburg, then in Perm, where his father served. Father's brother, Ivan Pavlovich Diaghilev, was a philanthropist and founder of a musical circle. In Perm, at the corner of Sibirskaya and Pushkin streets (formerly Bolshaya Yamskaya), the ancestral house of Sergei Diaghilev is preserved, where the gymnasium named after him is now located. The mansion in the style of late Russian classicism was built in the 50s of the 19th century by the project of the architect R.O. Karvovsky. For three decades, the house belonged to the large and friendly Diaghilev family. In the house called by contemporaries "Perm Athens", the city intelligentsia gathered on Thursdays. Here they played music, sang, played home performances. After graduating from the Perm gymnasium in 1890, he returned to St. Petersburg and entered the law faculty of the university, while studying music under N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov at the St. Petersburg Conservatory. In 1896 Diaghilev graduated from the university, but instead of studying law, he began his career as an art worker. A few years after receiving his diploma, he founded, together with A. Benois, the World of Art association, edited the magazine of the same name (from 1898 to 1904) and wrote articles on art history himself. He organized exhibitions that caused a wide resonance: in 1897 - an Exhibition of English and German watercolors, introducing the Russian public to a number of major masters of these countries and modern trends in the visual arts, then an Exhibition of Scandinavian artists in the halls of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, an Exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists in the Stieglitz Museum (1898) the World of Artists themselves considered their first performance (Diaghilev managed to attract other major representatives of young art - Vrubel, Serov, Levitan, etc.) Historical and art exhibition of Russian portraits in St. Petersburg (1905); Exhibition of Russian art at the Autumn Salon in Paris with the participation of works by Benoit, Grabar, Kuznetsov, Malyavin, Repin, Serov, Yavlensky (1906) and others.

Benois Alexander Nikolaevich (1870 - 1960)

Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (April 21 (May 3) 1870 - February 9, 1960) - Russian artist, art historian, art critic, founder and chief ideologist of the World of Art association. Born April 21 (May 3) 1870 in St. Petersburg, in the family of the Russian architect Nikolai Leontievich Benois and Camilla Albertovna Benois (daughter of the architect A.K. Kavos). Graduated from the prestigious 2nd St. Petersburg Gymnasium. For some time he studied at the Academy of Arts, also studied the visual arts independently and under the guidance of his older brother Albert. In 1894, he began his career as a theoretician and art historian, writing a chapter on Russian artists for the German collection History of 19th Century Painting. In 1896-1898 and 1905-1907 he worked in France. He became one of the organizers and ideologists of the art association "World of Art", founded the magazine of the same name. In 1916-1918, the artist created illustrations for Alexander Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman". In 1918 Benoit became the head of the Hermitage Picture Gallery and published its new catalog. He continued to work as a book and theater artist, in particular, he worked on the design of BDT performances. In 1925 he took part in the International Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative and Industrial Arts in Paris. In 1926, Benoit left the USSR without returning from a business trip abroad. Lived in Paris, worked mainly on sketches of theatrical scenery and costumes. Alexander Benois played a significant role in the productions of S. Diaghilev's ballet enterprise "Ballets Russes", as an artist and author - stage director. Benoit died on February 9, 1960 in Paris.

Portrait of Benoit

Self-portrait, 1896

- Second Versailles Series (1906), including:

The earliest of Benoit's retrospective works are related to his work at Versailles. A series of small paintings made in watercolors and gouache and united by a common theme - "The last walks of Louis XIV", belongs to the years 1897-1898. Benois's second Versailles series, created in 1905-1906, is much more extensive than The Last Walks of Louis XIV and is more varied in content and technique. It includes sketches from nature, painted in the Versailles park, retrospective historical and genre paintings, original "fantasies" on architectural and landscape themes, images of court theater performances in Versailles. The series includes works with oil paints, tempera, gouache and watercolors, sanguine and sepia drawings. These works can only be conditionally called a "series", since they are connected with each other only by a certain unity of mood that developed at the time when Benoit, in his words, was "intoxicated by Versailles" and "completely moved into the past", trying to forget about tragic Russian reality in 1905. The artist seeks here to inform the viewer as much factual information about the era, about the forms of architecture, about costumes, somewhat neglecting the task of figuratively-poetic recreation of the past. However, the same series includes works that are among the most successful works of Benoit, deservedly widely known: "Parade under Paul I" (1907, State Russian Museum;), "Exit of Empress Catherine II in the Tsarskoye Selo Palace" (1909, State Art Gallery of Armenia, Yerevan), "Petersburg Street under Peter I" (1910, private collection in Moscow) and "Peter I on a walk in the Summer Garden" (1910, State Russian Museum). In these works, one can notice some change in the very principle of the artist's historical thinking. Finally, it is not the monuments of ancient art, not things and costumes, but people that fall into the center of his interests. The multi-figured historical and everyday scenes painted by Benoit recreate the appearance of a past life, seen as if through the eyes of a contemporary.

- "The King's Walk" (Tretyakov Gallery)

48x62

Paper on canvas, watercolor, gouache, bronze paint, silver paint, lead pencil, pen, brush.

State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow.

In The Walk of the King, Alexandre Benois transports the viewer to the magnificent Versailles park of the time of Louis XIV. Describing the king's walks, the author did not ignore anything: neither park views with garden architecture (they are written from nature), nor theatrical performances, which were very fashionable in ancient times, nor everyday scenes drawn after a careful study of historical material. The King's Walk is a very effective piece. The viewer meets with Louis XIV, strolling through his brainchild. It's autumn at Versailles: trees and shrubs have dropped their foliage, their bare branches gaze lonely into the gray sky. The water is calm. It seems that nothing can disturb the quiet pond, in the mirror of which the sculptural group of the fountain and the ceremonial procession of the monarch and his entourage are reflected. Against the background of an autumn landscape, the artist depicts the solemn procession of the monarch with his courtiers. Plane modeling of the walking figures as if turns them into ghosts of a bygone era. Among the court retinue, it is difficult to find Louis XIV himself. The Sun King is not important to the artist. Benoit is much more concerned with the atmosphere of the era, the breath of the Versailles park of the times of its crowned owner. This work is included in the second cycle of paintings, resurrecting scenes of the Versailles life of the era of the "sun king". Benois's Versailles is a kind of landscape elegy, a beautiful world presented to the eyes of a modern person in the form of a desolate scene with dilapidated scenery of a long-run performance. Formerly magnificent, full of sounds and colors, this world now seems a little ghostly, shaded by cemetery silence. It is no coincidence that Benois depicts a Versailles park in the "Walk of the King" in autumn and at the hour of bright evening twilight, when the leafless "architecture" of a regular French garden against the background of a bright sky turns into a see-through, ephemeral building. The old king, talking with the lady-in-waiting, accompanied by the courtiers walking at precisely specified intervals behind and in front of them, like the figures of an old winding clock, to the light chime of a forgotten minuet, glide along the edge of the reservoir. The theatrical character of this retrospective fantasy is subtly revealed by the artist himself: he animates the figures of the frisky cupids inhabiting the fountain, they comically depict a noisy audience freely sitting at the foot of the stage and gazing at the puppet show played by people.

- "Bath of the Marquise"

1906 g.

Russian picturesque historical landscape

51x47.5

cardboard, gouache

The painting "Bath of the Marquise" depicts a secluded corner of Versailles Park hidden among dense greenery. The sun's rays penetrate into this shaded refuge, illuminating the surface of the water and the bathing awning. Almost symmetrical in composition, built in accordance with the frontal perspective, the picture gives the impression of the impeccable beauty of the pattern and color. The volumes of clear geometric shapes have been carefully worked out (light horizontals - the ground, descents to the water, and verticals - the illuminated walls of the bosquets, the columns of the gazebo). An elegant white marble pavilion illuminated by the sun, which we see in the gap of trees, is depicted in the upper part of the picture, directly above the head of the awning. Decorative masks, from which light streams of water pour into the bath, break the horizontal line of the white wall of the pool. And even the light clothing of the awning thrown on the bench (almost coinciding with the vanishing point of the lines extending into the depths) is a necessary compositional element in this carefully thought-out drawing. The compositional center is, of course, not a bench with clothes, even though it is located in the geometric center, but the whole complex "quadrangle" complex with a central vertical axis, where a sun-lit gazebo over the awning's head looks like a precious piece of jewelry, like a crown. The awning head organically complements this complex symmetrical pattern of horizontals, verticals and diagonals. In a strictly thought out and planned park, even its inhabitants only complete its perfection with their presence. They are just an element of the composition, emphasizing its beauty and splendor.

Miriskussians are often reproached for the lack of "painting" in their paintings. In response, we can say that the "Bath of the Marquise" is a triumph of green with a variety of its shades. The artist simply admires the beauty and riot of fresh greenery. The foreground of the picture is written in a generalized manner. Soft light shining through the foliage illuminates the slopes to the bathing water, dark water painted through blue-gray and deep blue-green colors. The long-range plan has been worked out in more detail: the foliage of the trees is painted carefully and masterly, leaf to leaf, the moire of foliage on the bosquets consists of the smallest dots, colorful strokes. In the shade, we see both muted and bright cold greens of different shades. Luxurious, sunlit foliage in the center is painted with small, cold bluish and warm green strokes. It is as if the artist bathes greenery in the rays of light, exploring the nature of green. Deep blue shadows, gray-purple earth, a purple dress with a blue pattern, a yellow scarf, a hat with blue flowers around the ribbon, white dots of flowers on a green slope and drops of red on the marquise's hairstyle, on the black woman's head prevent the work from becoming monochrome green. " Bath of the Marquis "- a historical landscape.

- Illustrations to the poem by A.S. Pushkin's "The Bronze Horseman" (1904-22.), including:

In the first decades of the twentieth century, drawings by Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870 - 1960) for "The Bronze Horseman" were made - the best that has been created in the entire history of Pushkin's illustration. Benoit began working on The Bronze Horseman in 1903. Over the next 20 years, he created a cycle of drawings, headpieces and endings, as well as a huge number of options and sketches. The first edition of these illustrations, which were being prepared for a pocket edition, was created in 1903 in Rome and St. Petersburg. Diaghilev published them in a different format in the first issue of the magazine "World of Art" in 1904. The first cycle of illustrations consisted of 32 drawings, made in ink and watercolors. In 1905, A.N. Benois, while in Versailles, reworked six of his previous illustrations and completed the frontispiece for The Bronze Horseman. In the new drawings for The Bronze Horseman, the theme of the Horseman's pursuit of a little man becomes the main one: the black horseman over the fugitive is not so much Falcone's masterpiece as the personification of cruel force and power. And St. Petersburg is not the one that conquers with its artistic perfection and the scope of construction ideas, but a gloomy city - a cluster of gloomy houses, trading rows, fences. The anxiety and anxiety that gripped the artist during this period turns here into a real cry about the fate of man in Russia. In 1916, 1921–1922, the cycle was revised for the third time and supplemented with new drawings.

- "Chase Scene" (frontispiece)

Sketch of the frontispiece to the poem by Alexander Pushkin "The Bronze Horseman", 1905

Book graphics

23.7 x 17.6

watercolor on paper

All-Russian Museum of A.S. Pushkin, St. Petersburg

In 1905, A.N. Benois, while in Versailles, reworked six of his previous illustrations and completed the frontispiece (frontispiece is a page with an image that forms a spread with the front page of the title sheet, and this image itself.) For "The Bronze Horseman" ... In the new drawings for The Bronze Horseman, the theme of the Horseman's pursuit of a little man becomes the main one: the black horseman over the fugitive is not so much Falcone's masterpiece as the personification of cruel force and power. And St. Petersburg is not the one that conquers with its artistic perfection and the scope of construction ideas, but a gloomy city - a cluster of gloomy houses, trading rows, fences. The anxiety and anxiety that gripped the artist during this period turns here into a real cry about the fate of man in Russia. On the left in the foreground is the figure of the running Yevgeny, on the right - the rider on horseback overtaking him. In the background is the city landscape. The moon is visible from behind the clouds on the right. A huge shadow from the figure of the rider falls on the pavement. While working on "The Bronze Horseman", she defined the highest rise of Benoit's work of these years.

Somov Konstantin Andreevich (1869 - 1939)

Konstantin Andreevich Somov (November 30, 1869, St. Petersburg - May 6, 1939, Paris) - Russian painter and graphic artist, master of portrait and landscape, illustrator, one of the founders of the "World of Art" society and the magazine of the same name. Konstantin Somov was born into the family of Andrei Ivanovich Somov, a famous museum figure, curator of the Hermitage. While still in the gymnasium, Somov met A. Benois, V. Nouvel, D. Filosofov, with whom he later participated in the creation of the World of Art society. Somov took an active part in the design of the magazine "World of Art", as well as the periodical "Art Treasures of Russia" (1901-1907), edited by A. Benois, created illustrations for "Count Nulin" by A. Pushkin (1899), stories N. Gogol's "The Nose" and "Nevsky Prospect" (1901), painted the covers of K. Balmont's poetry collections "The Firebird. Svirel of the Slav ", V. Ivanov" Cor Ardens ", the title page of the book by A. Blok" Theater "and others. The first personal exhibition of paintings, sketches and drawings (162 works) was held in St. Petersburg in 1903; 95 works were shown in Hamburg and Berlin in the same year. Along with landscape and portrait painting and graphics, Somov worked in the field of small plastic, creating exquisite porcelain compositions "Count Nulin" (1899), "Lovers" (1905), etc. In January 1914 he received the status of a full member of the Academy of Arts. In 1918, the publishing house of Golike and Vilborg (St. Petersburg) published the most famous and complete edition with erotic illustrations by Somov: The Book of the Marquise, where the artist created not only all the design elements of the book, but also selected texts in French. In 1918 he became a professor at the Petrograd state free art educational workshops; worked at the school of E. N. Zvantseva. In 1919, his jubilee personal exhibition took place in the Tretyakov Gallery. In 1923, Somov left Russia for America as an authorized representative of the Russian Exhibition; in January 1924, at an exhibition in New York, Somov was presented with 38 works. He did not return to Russia. From 1925 he lived in France; He died suddenly on May 6, 1939 in Paris.

Portrait of Somov

Self-portrait, 1895

Self-portrait, 1898

46 x 32.6

Watercolor, pencil, pastel, paper on cardboard

Self-portrait, 1909

45.5 x 31

Watercolor, gouache, paper

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

- “Lady in blue. Portrait of the Artist Elizaveta Martynova "(1897-1900, State Tretyakov Gallery)

The artist had long been friends with Elizaveta Mikhailovna Martynova, he studied with her at the Academy of Arts. In 1897 K. Somov began work on the portrait of E.M. Martynova, with a detailed plan. The artist had a very interesting model in front of him, and he was worried about the idea of ​​a portrait-painting in which he could capture a deeply poetic image. A young woman in a lush, strongly low-cut dress, with a volume of poetry in her lowered hand, is depicted standing against a green wall of an overgrown bush. EAT. The artist takes Martynova into the world of the past, clothe her in an old dress, and places the model against the background of a conventional decorative park. The evening sky with light pink clouds, the trees of an old park, the dark surface of the reservoir - all this is exquisite in color, but, like a true "world of art", K. Somov stylizes the landscape. Looking at this lonely, yearning woman, the viewer does not perceive her as a person from another world, past and distant. This is a woman of the late 19th century. Everything about her is characteristic: both painful fragility, and a feeling of aching melancholy, sadness in her large eyes and a dense line of mournfully compressed lips. Against the background of the sky breathing with excitement, the fragile figure of E.M. Martynova is full of special grace and femininity, despite her thin neck, thin sloping shoulders, hidden sadness and pain. Meanwhile, in the life of E.M. Everyone knew Martynova as a cheerful, cheerful young woman. EAT. Martynova dreamed of a great future, wanted to realize herself in real art and despised the bustle of everyday life. And it so happened that at the age of 30, she died of pulmonary tuberculosis, not having time to fulfill anything from her plan. Despite the splendor of the portrait, there is a hidden soulful note in it. And she makes the viewer experience the mood of the heroine, to be imbued with the sympathy for her, which the artist himself was full of. "Lady in Blue" appeared at the exhibition "World of Arts" in 1900 (due to the artist's departure to Paris and the model's illness, this painting was painted for three years) under the title "Portrait", and three years later it was acquired by the Tretyakov Gallery.

- "Evening" (1902, State Tretyakov Gallery)

142.3 x 205.3

Canvas, oil

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

The poet Valery Bryusov called Somov “the author of exquisite short stories.” After all, the Somov novels are theatrical through and through. Som's "reality" appears stylistically completed in the painting "Evening" (1902). Everything here corresponds to a single harmonious and ceremonial rhythm: repetitions of arcades, alternation of planes of bosquets receding into the distance, slow, as if ritualistic, movements of the ladies. Even nature here is a work art, bearing the features of the style, inspired by the 18th century. But above all it is the "Somov" world, enchanted, strangely static world of the golden sky and gilded sculptures, where man, nature and art are in harmonious unity. Grapes twinkle, sunlight, making its way through leaves, casts reflexes on people's clothes and faces, softening the sonorous emerald and scarlet colors of clothes etc. It is a pleasure to look at the finely made details of toilets, rings, ribbons, shoes with a red heel. There is no genuine monumentality in the painting "Evening". The Somovsky world carries with it the ephemerality of the scenery, so the large size of the canvas seems to be accidental. This is an enlarged thumbnail. Somov's chamber, intimate talent always gravitates towards miniaturism. Contemporaries perceived "Evening" as a contrast to reality: "The era that seems to us naive, with weak muscles, without steam locomotives - slow-moving, creeping (in comparison with ours) - and how she can take possession of nature, seduce nature, almost making it an extension of her costume" ... Somov's retrospectives often have a fantastically fictional tinge, fantasies almost always have a retrospective tinge.

- "The Harlequin and the Lady" (1912, Tretyakov Gallery)

1912 1921

62.2 x 47.5

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Somov's artistic concept acquires a special completeness here. The whole construction of the picture is frankly likened to the theatrical stage. The two main characters are located in the foreground, in the center of the picture, facing the viewer, like the actors of the comedy Marivaux, conducting a dialogue. The figures at the back are like minor characters. The trees, illuminated by the false light of the fireworks, like theatrical spotlights, the pool, part of which is visible in the foreground, make one think of the orchestra pit. Even the point of view of the characters from the bottom up seems to be the view of the spectator from the theater hall. The artist admires this colorful masquerade, where a curving Harlequin in his attire of red, yellow and blue patches coyly embraces a lady in robron, who has taken off her mask, where red roses are burning brightly, and festive fireworks are scattered in the sky. For Somov, this deceptive world of phantoms with their fleeting existence is more alive than reality itself.

A series of graphic portraits, incl. -

- "Portrait of A. Blok" (1907, Tretyakov Gallery)

"Portrait of Alexander Alexandrovich Blok", 1907

38 x 30

Lead and colored pencils, gouache on paper

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

In 1907 Somov created images of L. A. Blok. In them one can see traces of the closest study of the French pencil portrait (with the use of sanguine) of the late 16th and especially the 17th century, although the portraits of Somov are in no way a direct imitation. The traditions of the French pencil portrait were transformed by Somov beyond recognition. The character of the image is completely different. In the portraits of Blok and Lancer (both in the State Tretyakov Gallery) Somov strives for the utmost brevity. Now in the portrait of Blok there is a shoulder image. All irrelevant details are discarded. Somov sparingly outlines the outline of only the silhouette of the shoulders and those details of the costume that are integral to the image of the depicted one - the turn-down collars that Blok always wore. In contrast to the laconic depiction of the figure and costume, the face of the portrait is carefully worked out, and the artist introduces a few color accents into their rendering, which sound especially expressive in Blok's portrait. The artist renders with colored pencils the cold, "winter" look of Blok's gray-blue eyes, the pinkness of his half-open lips, with whitewash - a vertical fold cutting through a smooth forehead. Blok's face, framed by a cap of thick curly hair, resembles a frozen mask. The portrait struck contemporaries by its similarity. Many of them also noted the "wax immobility of features" inherent in Blok. Somov, in his portrait, elevated this deadness of features to the absolute and thereby deprived the image of Blok of that versatility, spiritual wealth, which constituted the essence of his personality. Blok himself admitted that, although he liked the portrait, it was "burdensome" for him.

Bakst Lev Samoilovich (Leib-Chaim Izrailevich Rosenberg, 1866 - 1924)

To enter the Academy of Arts as a volunteer, L. S. Bakst had to overcome the resistance of his father, a small businessman. He studied for four years (1883-87), but became disillusioned with academic training and left the educational institution. He began painting on his own, studied the technique of watercolors, earning a living by illustrating children's books and magazines. In 1889, the artist first exhibited his works, adopting a pseudonym - the abbreviated surname of his maternal grandmother (Baxter). 1893-99 he spent in Paris, often visiting Petersburg, and worked hard in search of his own style. Having become close with A. N. Benois, K. A. Somov and S. P. Diaghilev, Bakst became one of the initiators of the creation of the association "World of Art" (1898). Bakst became famous for his graphic works for the magazine "World of Art". He continued to study easel art - he performed excellent graphic portraits of I.I. Levitan, F.A.Malyavin (1899), A. Bely (1905) and 3. N. Gippius (1906) and painted portraits of V.V. Rozanov ( 1901), S.P.Dyagilev with a nanny (1906). His painting "Dinner" (1902), which became a kind of manifesto of the Art Nouveau style in Russian art, aroused fierce controversy among critics. Later, a strong impression on the audience was made by his painting "Ancient Horror" (1906-08), which embodies the symbolist idea of ​​the inevitability of fate. By the end of the 1900s. limited himself to work in the theater, occasionally making exceptions for graphic portraits of people close to him, and went down in history precisely as an outstanding theater artist of the Art Nouveau era. He made his theater debut back in 1902, having designed the pantomime "The Heart of the Marquise". Then the ballet "The Fairy of the Dolls" (1903) was staged, which was a success mainly due to its scenery. He designed several more performances, made separate costumes for artists, in particular for A. Pavlova in the famous "Swan" by M. M. Fokin (1907). But the real talent of Bakst unfolded in the ballet performances of "Russian Seasons", and then "The Russian Ballet of S. P. Diaghilev." Cleopatra (1909), Scheherazade and Carnival (1910), Vision of the Rose and Narcissus (1911), The Blue God, Daphnis and Chloe and Faun's Afternoon Rest (1912), The Games (1913) amazed the jaded Western audience with decorative imagination, richness and power of color, and the design techniques developed by Bakst marked the beginning of a new era in ballet scenography. The name of Bakst, the leading artist of Russian Seasons, resounded along with the names of the best performers and famous choreographers. He received interesting orders from other theaters as well. All these years Bakst lived in Europe, only occasionally returning to his homeland. He continued to collaborate with the Diaghilev troupe, but contradictions gradually grew between him and S.P.Dyaghilev, and in 1918 Bakst left the troupe. He worked tirelessly, but he was no longer able to create anything fundamentally new. Death from pulmonary edema overtook Bakst at the time of his fame, though beginning to fade, but still brilliant.

Portrait of the artist

Self-portrait, 1893

34 x 21

Oil on cardboard

State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

- "Elysium" (1906, State Tretyakov Gallery)

Decorative panel, 1906.

158 x 40

Watercolor, gouache, paper on cardboard

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

- "Ancient (Antique) Horror" (1908, RM)

250 x 270 oil on canvas

State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

“Ancient Horror” is a painting by Leon Bakst depicting the death of an ancient civilization (possibly Atlantis) in a natural cataclysm. In the pagan worldview, "ancient horror" is the horror of life in the world under the rule of a dark and inhuman Fate, the horror of the impotence of a person enslaved by it and hopelessly submissive (Fatum); and also the horror of chaos as an abyss of nothingness, immersion into which is disastrous. Under the ancient horror he understood the horror of fate. He wanted to show that not only everything human, but also everything worshiped by the divine was perceived by the ancients as relative and transitory. A large canvas of almost square format is occupied by a panorama of a landscape painted from a high point of view. The landscape is lit by a flash of lightning. The main space of the canvas is occupied by the raging sea, which destroys ships and beats against the walls of fortresses. In the foreground is the figure of an archaic statue in a generational trim. The contrast of the calm smiling face of the statue is especially striking in comparison with the riot of the elements behind her. The artist transports the viewer to some kind of invisible height, from which this panoramic perspective is the only possible, unfolding somewhere in the depths under our feet. Closest to the viewer is the hill bearing the colossal statue of the archaic Cypriot Aphrodite; but the hill, and the foot, and the very legs of the idol are outside the canvas: as if free from the fate of the earth, the goddess arises, close to us, right in the darkness of the deeply lying sea. The female statue depicted is a type of archaic crust that smiles with an enigmatic archaic smile and holds a blue bird (or a dove - the symbol of Aphrodite) in her hands. Traditionally, it is customary to call the statue depicted by Bakst - Aphrodite, although it has not yet been established which goddesses the barks depicted. The prototype of the statue was a statue found during excavations on the Acropolis. Bakst's wife posed for the missing hand. The island landscape unfolding behind the back of the goddess is a view from the Athenian Acropolis. At the foot of the mountains in the right part of the picture in the foreground are the buildings, according to Pruzhan - the Mycenaean Lion Gate and the remains of the palace in Tiryns. These are buildings dating back to the early, Cretan-Mycenaean period of Greek history. On the left is a group of people running in horror among buildings typical of classical Greece - most likely, this is the Acropolis with its propylaea and huge statues. Beyond the Acropolis is a lightning-lit valley overgrown with silvery olives.

Ballet decoration, incl. -

"Sketch of a Cleopatra costume for Ida Rubinstein for the ballet" Cleopatra "to the music of A.S. Arensky"

1909

28 x 21

Pencil, watercolor

"Scheherazade" (1910, music by Rimsky-Korsakov)

"Sketch of the scenery for the ballet" Scheherazade "to the music of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov", 1910

110 x 130

Canvas, oil

Collection of Nikita and Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky, London

"Costume design for the Blue Sultana for the ballet" Scheherazade "

1910

29.5 x 23

Watercolor, pencil

Collection of Nikita and Nina Lobanov-Rostovsky, London

Dobuzhinsky Mstislav Valerianovich (1875 - 1957)

MV Dobuzhinsky was the son of an artillery officer. After the first year of the law faculty of St. Petersburg University, Dobuzhinsky tried to enter the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, but was not accepted and studied in private studios until 1899. Returning to St. Petersburg in 1901, he became close to the World of Art association and became one of the most notable its representatives. Dobuzhinsky made his debut in graphics - drawings in magazines and books, city landscapes, in which he was able to impressively convey his perception of St. Petersburg as a city. The theme of the city immediately became one of the main in his work. Dobuzhinsky was engaged in easel graphics and painting, he taught successfully - in various educational institutions. Soon the Moscow Art Theater invited him to stage the play by Ivan Turgenev "A Month in the Country" (1909). The great success of the scenery he performed laid the foundation for close cooperation between the artist and the renowned theater. The pinnacle of this collaboration was the scenery for the play "Nikolai Stavrogin" (1913) based on the novel "Demons" by FM Dostoevsky. Sharp expressiveness and rare laconicism made this innovative work a phenomenon that anticipated the future discoveries of Russian scenography. A sound perception of the events unfolding in post-revolutionary Russia forced Dobuzhinsky in 1925 to accept Lithuanian citizenship and move to Kaunas. In 1939, Dobuzhinsky left for the United States to work with the actor and director Mikhail Chekhov on the play "The Demons", but because of the outbreak of World War II he never returned to Lithuania. The last years of his life turned out to be the most difficult for him - he could not and did not want to adapt to the American way of life that was alien to him and to the mores of the American art market. He often experienced financial difficulties, lived alone, communicating only with a narrow circle of Russian emigrants, and tried to use every opportunity to get out to Europe at least for a while.

Portrait of the artist

Self-portrait. 1901

55x42

Canvas, oil

State Russian Museum

The work, executed in the Munich school of Sandor Holloshi, according to the pictorial task is close to the symbolist compositions of Eugene Career, who loved to immerse his characters in a dense, emotionally active environment. The mysterious haze surrounding the model, the vibrating “colored” light on the face and figure, seems to enhance the keenly energetic and mysterious expression of the shaded eyes. This gives the image of an internally independent and coldish young man the features of a kind of demonism.

- "Province of the 1830s" (1907-1909, State Russian Museum)

60 x 83.5

Cardboard, pencil, watercolor, whitewash

State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg

"The Province of the 1830s" captures the gaze of an artist who is touched by the flow of everyday life in a Russian town more than half a century ago. The "snatch" of the image with the deliberate placement of the pillar almost in the center of the composition contributes to the perception of what is happening as an accidentally seen frame of a film. The absence of the main character and the plotlessness of the picture is a kind of game of the artist with the vain expectations of the viewer. Leaning houses, domes of ancient churches and a policeman sleeping at his post - this is the view of the main square of the city. The bustle of ladies, apparently hurrying to the milliner for new outfits, is almost caricatured by Dobuzhinsky. The work is imbued with the mood of the artist's harmless kindness. The bright color of the work makes it look like a postcard so popular at the turn of the century. The painting "Russian province of the 1830s" (watercolor, graph pencil, State Russian Museum) dates back to 1907. It depicts the sleepy square of a provincial town with shopping malls dozing, leaning on his poleaxe, a watchman, a brown pig rubbing against a lamppost, a few passers-by and an inevitable puddle in the middle. Gogol's reminiscences are unquestionable. But Dobuzhinsky's painting is devoid of any sarcasm. The artist's elegant graphics ennoble everything that he touches. Under Dobuzhinsky's pencil and brush, the beauty of the proportions of the Empire style Gostiny Dvor, the stylish suit of the 1930s with a “basket” hat on a shopping lady crossing the square, the slender silhouette of the bell tower come to the fore. Dobuzhinsky's subtle stylism triumphs over his next victory.

- "House in St. Petersburg" (1905, State Tretyakov Gallery)

37 x 49

Pastel, gouache, paper on cardboard

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

- "Man with glasses" (Portrait of the writer Konstantin Sunnerberg, 1905-1906, State Tretyakov Gallery)

Portrait of art critic and poet Konstantin Sunnerberg

1905

63.3 x 99.6

Charcoal, watercolor, paper on cardboard

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Not being a portrait painter, Dobuzhinsky created one of the most capacious images-symbols, embodying a whole generation of intellectuals-townspeople. The painting "The Man with Glasses" (1905-1906) depicts the poet and art critic KA Sunnerberg, acting under the pseudonym Konst. Erberg. The man is tightly closed in the hard shell of a respectable dress, his eyes, screened from the world by glasses of glasses, are almost invisible. The whole figure, as if deprived of the third dimension, is sprawled, squeezed in an incredibly tight space. A man is, as it were, exposed, placed between two panes - a specimen of the bizarre fauna of a fantastic city - St. Petersburg, seen outside the window, revealing another face to the viewer - a mixture of multi-storey, multi-pipe urbanism and provincial backyards.

Lanceray Evgeny Evgenievich (1875 - 1946)

Russian and Soviet artist. Graduated from the First St. Petersburg Gymnasium. From 1892 he studied at the Drawing School of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, St. Petersburg, where he attended the classes of Ya. F. Tsionglinsky, NS Samokish, EK Lipgart. From 1895 to 1898, Lanceray traveled extensively throughout Europe and improved his skills in the French academies of F. Calarosi and R. Julien. Since 1899 - a member of the World of Art association. In 1905 he left for the Far East. In 1907-1908 he became one of the founders of the "Ancient Theater" - a short-term, but interesting and noticeable phenomenon in the cultural life of Russia at the beginning of the century. Lanceray continued to work with the theater in 1913-1914. 1912-1915 - artistic director of a porcelain factory and glass engraving workshops in St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. 1914-1915 - war artist-correspondent on the Caucasian front during the First World War. He spent 1917-1919 in Dagestan. In 1919, he collaborated as an artist at the Information and Agitation Bureau of A. I. Denikin's Volunteer Army (OSVAG). In 1920 he moved to Rostov-on-Don, then to Nakhichevan-on-Don and Tiflis. Since 1920 - a draftsman at the Museum of Ethnography, went on ethnographic expeditions with the Caucasian Archaeological Institute. Since 1922 - Professor of the Academy of Arts of Georgia, Moscow Architectural Institute. In 1927 he was sent to Paris for six months from the Academy of Arts of Georgia. In 1934 he moved permanently from Tiflis to Moscow. From 1934 to 1938 he taught at the All-Russian Academy of Arts in Leningrad. HER. Lanceray died on September 13, 1946.

Portrait of the artist

- "Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in Tsarskoe Selo" (1905, State Tretyakov Gallery)

43.5 x 62

Gouache, paper on cardboard

State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Evgeny Evgenievich Lansere is a versatile artist. The author of monumental murals and panels that adorn the stations of the Moscow metro, the Kazansky railway station, the hotel "Moscow", landscapes, paintings on a theme from Russian history of the 18th century, he was at the same time a wonderful illustrator of classic works of Russian literature ("Dubrovsky" and "Shot" A S. Pushkin, "Hadji Murad" by L. N. Tolstoy), the creator of sharp political cartoons in satirical magazines in 1905, theatrical decoration artist. The painting reproduced here is one of the artist's most interesting and significant easel works and testifies to the very understanding of historical painting in the art of the early 20th century. So, the atmosphere of the era is revealed here through the images of art embodied in architecture and park ensembles, costumes and hairstyles of people, through the landscape, showing the court life, rituals. The theme of royal processions became especially favorite. Lanceray depicts the solemn exit of the courtyard of Elizabeth Petrovna in her country residence. As if on the stage of the theater, a procession takes place in front of the audience. A corpulent empress, dressed in woven clothes of amazing beauty, swims with a regal majesty. This is followed by ladies and gentlemen in puffy outfits and powdered wigs. In their faces, poses and gestures, the artist reveals different characters and types. We see now humiliatingly timid, now arrogant and prim courtiers. In the show of Elizabeth and her court, one cannot fail to notice the artist's irony and even some grotesque. Lanceray contrasts the people he depicted with the noble austerity of the white marble statue and the genuine grandeur embodied in the magnificent architecture of the Rastrelli Palace and the beauty of the regular park.

Ostroumova-Lebedeva Anna Petrovna (1871 - 1955)

A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva was the daughter of a prominent official P.I.Ostroumov. While still a high school student, she began attending the elementary school at the CUTR. Then she studied at the school itself, where she was carried away by the technique of engraving, and at the Academy of Arts, where she studied painting in the studio of I.E.Repin. In 1898-99. worked in Paris, improving in painting (with J. Whistler) and engraving. 1900 turned out to be a turning point in her life, the artist made her debut with her engravings at the exhibition "The World of Art" (with which she later firmly connected her work), then received the second prize for engravings at the OPKh competition and graduated from the Academy of Arts with the title of artist, presenting 14 engravings ... Ostroumova-Lebedeva played the main role in the revival in Russia of easel wood engraving as an independent type of art - after a long existence as a reproduction technique; especially great is the artist's contribution to the revival of color engraving. The original techniques of generalizing form and color, worked out by her, were mastered and used by many other artists. The main theme of her engravings was Petersburg, the image of which she devoted several decades of tireless labor. Her color and black-and-white engravings - both easel, combined in cycles ("Petersburg", 1908-10; "Pavlovsk", 1922-23, etc.), and executed for V. Ya. Kurbatov's books "Petersburg" ( 1912) and NP Antsiferov's "The Soul of Petersburg" (1920) - are still unsurpassed in the accuracy of the sensation and transmission of the majestic beauty of the city and in the rare laconicism of expressive means. Reproduced many times and but for different reasons, they have long become textbooks and are extremely popular. In their own way, the works created by the artist based on the impressions of frequent trips - both abroad (Italy, France, Spain, Holland) and across the country (Baku, Crimea) were interesting and outstanding. Some of them were performed in engraving, and some in watercolors. A gifted and well-trained painter, Ostroumova-Lebedeva could not work with oil paints, because their smell caused her asthma attacks. But she perfectly mastered the difficult and capricious technique of watercolor painting and was engaged in it all her life, creating excellent landscapes and portraits ("Portrait of the artist I. V. Ershov", 1923; "Portrait of Andrei Bely", 1924; "Portrait of the artist E. S. Kruglikova ", 1925, etc.). She spent the Ostroumova-Lebedeva war in besieged Leningrad, not abandoning her beloved work and completing work on the third volume of Autobiographical Notes. The last years of the artist's life were darkened by the impending blindness, but as long as possible, she continued to work.

A series of prints and drawings "Views of St. Petersburg and its suburbs", incl. -

Throughout her mature creative life, the graphics of A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva were undividedly dominated by the theme of St. to the fortress at night. " In total, according to her own calculations, she created 85 works dedicated to the great city. The image of Petersburg for Ostroumova-Lebedeva has been forming for almost half a century. However, its main features were found by the artist in the most joyful and calm years - during the first decade of the twentieth century. It was then that a combination of sharp, refined, even harsh lyricism with powerful stability and monumentality, geometric, verified perspective and tartness of emotional freedom, arose in her works,

- "Neva through the columns of the Exchange" (1908)

Like the feet of giants, the corner columns of the Stock Exchange stand on the Spit of Vasilyevsky Island, and the perspective of the other bank of the Neva, the wing of the Admiralty and the magnificent parabola of the General Staff building on Palace Square go into the distant distance. No less striking is the perspective of the dark and powerful, becoming the edge of the architectural space of the greenery of the park, converging in the distance to the barely discernible Elagin Palace. A fragment of the grate of the Summer Garden, which descends to the granite garment of the Moika River, entering the Neva, turns out to be inconceivably exquisite. Here, each line is not accidental, both chamber and monumental at the same time, here the genius of the architect was combined with the refined vision of the artist attentive to the beauty. Above the dark Kryukov Canal, the sunset sky burns out, and the silhouette of the famous for its magnificent slenderness of the bell tower of the St. Nicholas Naval Cathedral rises from the water.

The World of Art is an organization that emerged in 1898 and brought together masters of the highest artistic culture, the artistic elite of Russia in those years. The "World of Art" began with the evenings in the house of A. Benois, dedicated to art, literature and music. The people who gathered there were united by love for the beautiful and the confidence that it can only be found in art, since reality is ugly. Having arisen, as well as a reaction to the petty themes of the "late" Wanderers, "The World of Art" soon turned into one of the major phenomena of Russian artistic culture. Almost all famous artists participated in this association - Benoit, Somov, Bakst, Lancere, Golovin, Dobuzhinsky, Vrubel, Serov, Korovin, Levitan, Nesterov, Ryabushkin, Roerich, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Malyavin, even Larionov and Goncharova. The personality of Diaghilev, a philanthropist and organizer of exhibitions, and later impresario of Russian ballet and opera tours abroad (Russian Seasons, which introduced Europe to the works of Chaliapin, Pavlova, Fokin, Nizhinsky, etc.), was of great importance for the formation of this association. ). At the initial stage of the existence of the "World of Art" Diaghilev arranged an exhibition of English and German watercolors in St. Petersburg in 1897 and an exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists in 1898. From 1899 to 1904 he edited a magazine under the same name, consisting of two departments: artistic and literary (the latter is of a religious and philosophical plan, D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius collaborated in it before the opening of their magazine Novy Put in 1902. the place of the theory of aesthetics, and the journal in this part of it became the tribune of the Symbolists headed by A. Bely and V. Bryusov). The magazine had the profile of a literary and artistic almanac. Abundantly supplied with illustrations, he at the same time was one of the first examples of the art of book design - a field of artistic activity in which the "world of art" were genuine innovators. The drawing of the font, the composition of the page, the splash screen, the endings in the form of vignettes - everything was carefully thought out.

The editorial articles of the first issues of the magazine clearly formulated the main provisions of the "world of art" about the autonomy of art, that the problems of modern culture are exclusively problems of the artistic form and that the main task of art is to educate the aesthetic tastes of Russian society, primarily through acquaintance with the works world art. We must pay tribute to them: thanks to the "world of art", English and German art was really appreciated in a new way, and most importantly, the painting of the Russian 18th century and the architecture of St. Petersburg classicism became a discovery for many. "Miriskusniki" fought for "criticism as art", proclaiming the ideal not of a scientist-art critic, but of a critic-artist with a high professional culture and erudition. The type of such a critic was embodied by one of the founders of the "World of Art" A.N. Benoit.

One of the main places in the journal's activities was occupied by the propaganda of the achievements of the latest Russian and especially Western European art. Parallel to this, "World of Art" introduces the practice of joint exhibitions of Russian and Western European artists. The first exhibition of the "world of art" united, in addition to Russians, artists from France, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway, Finland, etc. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow painters and graphic artists took part in it. But the crack between these two schools - St. Petersburg and Moscow - has been outlined almost from the first day. In March 1903, the last, fifth exhibition of the "World of Art" was closed, in December 1904 the last issue of the magazine "World of Art" was published. Most of the artists moved to the Union of Russian Artists, organized by the Union of Russian Artists, writers - and the Novy Put magazine opened by Merezhkovsky's group, the Moscow Symbolists united around the Vesy magazine, the musicians organized Evenings of Contemporary Music, Diaghilev went entirely to ballet and theater. His last significant work in the visual arts was a grandiose historical exhibition of Russian painting from icon painting to modern times in the Paris Autumn Salon of 1906, then exhibited in Berlin and Venice (1906 - 1907). In the section of contemporary painting, the main place was occupied by the "world of art". This was the first act of all-European recognition of the "World of Art", as well as the discovery of Russian painting of the 18th - early 20th centuries. in general for Western criticism and a real triumph of Russian art.

In 1910, an attempt was made to breathe life into the "World of Art" again. At this time, a demarcation took place among painters. Benoit and his supporters break with the "Union of Russian Artists", with Muscovites, and leave this organization, but they understand that the secondary association called "World of Art" has nothing to do with the first. Benoit notes with sadness that "not reconciliation under the banner of beauty has now become a slogan in all spheres of life, but a fierce struggle." Glory came to the "world of art", but the "World of Arts", in fact, no longer existed, although formally the association existed until the early 20s - with a complete lack of integrity, on boundless tolerance and flexibility of positions, reconciling artists from Rylov to Tatlin, from Grabar to Chagall. How not to remember the Impressionists here? The Commonwealth, which was once born in the workshop of Gleyre, in the Salon of the Outcast, at the tables of the Herbois cafe and which was to have a huge impact on all European painting, also disintegrated on the threshold of its recognition. The second generation of the "world of art" is less occupied with the problems of easel painting, their interests lie in graphics, mainly books, and theatrical and decorative arts, in both areas they have made a real artistic reform. In the second generation of "World of Art" there were also large individuals (Kustodiev, Sudeikin, Serebryakova, Chekhonin, Grigoriev, etc.), but there were no innovators at all, for since the 10s the "World of Art" has been overwhelmed by a wave of epigonism. Therefore, when characterizing the "World of Art", we will mainly talk about the first stage of the existence of this association and its core - Benoit, Somov, Bakst.

Polemising with academic salon art, on the one hand, and with late itinerant movement, on the other, World of Art proclaims the rejection of direct social tendentiousness as something that allegedly fetters the freedom of individual creative self-expression in art and infringes upon the rights of the artistic form. Subsequently, in 1906, the leading artist and ideologist of the group A. Benois announced the slogan of individualism, with which the "World of Art" came out at the beginning, "artistic heresy." The individualism that was proclaimed by the "World of Art" at the beginning of its performances was nothing more than a defense of the rights of freedom of creative play. "Miriskusnikov" were not satisfied with the one-sided specialization inherent in the fine arts of the second half of the 19th century, in only one area of ​​easel painting, and within it - in certain genres and on certain (topical) subjects "with a tendency." Everything that the artist loves and worships in the past and present has the right to be embodied in art regardless of the spite of the day - this was the creative program of the World of Art. But this seemingly broad program had a significant limitation. Since, as the “world of art” believed, only admiration for beauty generates genuine creative enthusiasm, and immediate reality, they believed, is alien to beauty, the only pure source of beauty, and, therefore, inspiration is art itself, as a sphere of beauty par excellence. Thus, art becomes a kind of prism through which the "world of art" view the past, present and future. Life interests them only insofar as it has already expressed itself in art. Therefore, in their work, they act as interpreters of already perfect, ready-made beauty. Hence the primary interest of the World of Art artists to the past, especially to the epochs of the dominance of a single style, which makes it possible to single out the main, dominant and expressing the spirit of the era, the “line of beauty” - the geometric schematics of classicism, the whimsical curl of Rococo, the rich forms and chiaroscuro of the Baroque, etc.

The leading master and aesthetic legislator of the "World of Art" was Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870-1960). The talent of this artist was remarkable for its extraordinary versatility, and the volume of professional knowledge and the level of general culture were unmatched in the highly educated circle of the World of Art figures. Painter and graphic easel painter, illustrator and book designer, master of theatrical scenery, director, author of ballet librettos, Benoit was at the same time an outstanding historian of Russian and Western European art, theorist and keen publicist, an astute critic, a major museum figure, an incomparable connoisseur of theater, music and choreography ... However, just listing the spheres of culture, deeply studied by Alexander Benois, still does not give a correct idea of ​​the spiritual image of the artist. Significantly, there was nothing pedantic about his astonishing erudition. The main feature of his character should be called an all-consuming love of art; versatility of knowledge served only as an expression of this love. In all his activities, in science, art criticism, in every movement of his thought, Benoit always remained an artist. Contemporaries saw in him a living embodiment of the spirit of artistry.

But there was one more peculiarity in Benois's appearance, sharply noted in the memoirs of Andrei Bely, who sensed in the artist, first of all, a “diplomat of the responsible party of the World of Art, conducting a great cultural cause and sacrificing many for the sake of the whole; A.N. Benoit was the main politician in it; Diaghilev was an impresario, entrepreneur, director; Benoit gave, so to speak, the staged text ... ". Benois's artistic policy united around him all the figures of the "World of Art". He was not only a theorist, but also the inspirer of the tactics of the World of Art, the creator of its changing aesthetic programs. The inconsistency and inconsistency of the journal's ideological positions is largely due to the inconsistency and inconsistency of Benoit's aesthetic views at that stage. However, this very inconsistency, reflecting the contradictions of the era, gives the artist a special historical interest.

In addition, Benoit possessed a remarkable pedagogical talent and generously shared his spiritual wealth not only with friends, but also with “everyone who wanted to listen to him. It is precisely this circumstance that determines the strength of Benois's influence on the entire circle of artists of the World of Art, who, according to the correct remark of A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva, passed "with him, imperceptibly for themselves, a school of artistic taste, culture and knowledge."

By birth and upbringing, Benoit belonged to the Petersburg artistic intelligentsia. For generations, art has been a hereditary profession in his family. Benois maternal great-grandfather K.A. Kavos was a composer and conductor, his grandfather was an architect who built a lot in St. Petersburg and Moscow; the artist's father was also a major architect, his older brother was famous as a watercolor painter. The consciousness of young Benoit developed in an atmosphere of art and artistic interests.

Subsequently, recalling his childhood, the artist especially persistently emphasized two spiritual streams, two categories of experiences that powerfully influenced the formation of his views and, in a sense, determined the direction of all his future activities. The first and most powerful of these is associated with theatrical experience. From his earliest years and throughout his life, Benoit experienced a feeling that can hardly be called anything other than the cult of the theater. Benois always associated the concept of "artistry" with the concept of "theatricality"; it was in the art of theater that he saw the only opportunity to create in modern conditions a creative synthesis of painting, architecture, music, plastics and poetry, to realize that organic fusion of arts, which seemed to him the highest goal of artistic culture.

The second category of adolescent experiences, which left an indelible imprint on Benois's aesthetic views, arose from the impressions of country residences and St. Petersburg suburbs - Pavlovsk, the old Kushelev-Bezborodko dacha on the right bank of the Neva and, above all, from Peterhof, and its many art monuments. “These ... Peterhof impressions ... probably gave rise to my entire further cult of Peterhof, Tsarskoe Selo, Versailles,” the artist later recalled. The early impressions and experiences of Alexander Benois go back to the origins of that bold reappraisal of the art of the 18th century, which, as already mentioned above, is one of the greatest achievements of the "World of Art".

Young Benoit's artistic tastes and views were formed in opposition to his family, which adhered to conservative "academic" views. The decision to become an artist was ripe for him very early; but after a short stay at the Academy of Arts, which brought only disappointment, Benoit chose to receive a law degree at St. Petersburg University, and undergo professional artistic training on his own, according to his own program.

Subsequently, hostile criticism has repeatedly called Benoit an amateur. This was hardly fair: the daily stubborn study, constant training in drawing from life, the exercise of imagination in working on compositions, combined with an in-depth study of art history, gave the artist a confident skill, not inferior to the skill of his peers who studied at the Academy. With the same persistence Benoit prepared for the activities of an art historian, studying the Hermitage, studying special literature, traveling to historical cities and museums in Germany, Italy and France.

Alexander Benois's painting "The King's Walk" (1906, State Tretyakov Gallery) is one of the brightest and most typical examples of painting in the "World of Art". This work is part of a cycle of paintings that revive scenes of the Versailles life of the era of the "Sun King". The cycle of 1905-1906, in turn, is a continuation of an earlier Versailles suite of 1897-1898, entitled "The Last Walks of Louis XIV", begun in Paris under the impression of the memoirs of the Duke de Saint-Simon. Benois's Versailles landscapes merged the historical reconstruction of the 17th century, the artist's modern impressions, his perception of French classicism, French engraving. Hence the clear composition, clear spatiality, grandeur and cold severity of rhythms, contrasting the grandeur of the monuments of art and the smallness of human figures, which are only staffage among them - the first series entitled "The Last Walks of Louis XIV."

Versailles at Benois is a kind of landscape elegy, a beautiful world that appears to the eyes of a modern person in the form of a desolate scene with dilapidated scenery of a long-performed performance. Formerly magnificent, full of sounds and colors, this world now seems a little ghostly, shaded by cemetery silence. It is no coincidence that Benois depicts a Versailles park in The King's Walk in autumn and at the hour of light evening twilight, when the leafless “architecture” of a regular French garden against the background of a light sky turns into a see-through, ephemeral pos-three. The effect of this picture is similar to that if we saw a real big scene at a sharp distance from the balcony of the last tier, and then, having examined this reduced to doll-size world through binoculars, we would combine these two impressions into a single spectacle. The distant, thus, approaches and comes to life, remaining distant, the size of a toy theater. As in romantic fairy tales, at the appointed hour, a certain action is played out on this stage: the king in the center talks with the maid of honor, accompanied by the courtiers marching at precisely specified intervals behind them and in front of them. All of them, like figurines of an old winding clock, glide along the edge of the reservoir to the light sounds of a forgotten minuet. The theatrical nature of this retrospective fantasy is subtly revealed by the artist himself: he revives the figures of the frisky cupids inhabiting the fountain - they comically portray themselves as a noisy audience, freely sitting at the foot of the stage and gazing at the puppet show played by people.

The motive of solemn exits, trips, walks, as a characteristic feature of the everyday ritual of bygone times, was one of the beloved "people of the world". We also meet with a peculiar variation of this motive in "Peter I" by V.A. Serov, and in the painting by G.E. Lanceray "Empress Elizabeth Petrovna in Tsarskoe Selo" (1905, GGT). Unlike Benois with his aestheticization of the rationalist geometry of classicism, Lanceray is more attracted by the sensual pathos of the Russian Baroque, the sculptural materiality of forms. The portrayal of portly Elizabeth and her rosy-cheeked courtiers, dressed with rude pomp, is devoid of that tinge of theatrical mystification that is characteristic of Benois's Walk of the King.

Benoit turned into a semi-fabulous, toy king none other than Louis XIV, whose reign was distinguished by incredible splendor and splendor, and was the era of the heyday of French statehood. This deliberate reduction of the past greatness contains a kind of philosophical program - everything serious and great in its turn is destined to become a comedy and farce. But the irony of the "World of Artists" does not mean only nihilistic skepticism. The purpose of this irony is not at all to discredit the past, but just the opposite - to rehabilitate the past in the face of the possibility of a nihilistic attitude towards it through an artistic demonstration that the autumn of bygone cultures is beautiful in its own way, like their spring and summer. But, thus, the special melancholic charm, which marked the phenomenon of beauty among the "artisans", was purchased at the price of depriving this beauty of its connection with those periods when it appeared in the fullness of vital power and greatness. The categories of the great, the sublime, the beautiful are alien to the aesthetics of the "World of Art"; beautiful, graceful, graceful are more akin to her. In their ultimate expression, both of these moments - sober irony, bordering on naked skepticism, and aestheticism, bordering on sensitive exaltation - are combined in the work of the most complex of the group's masters - K.A. Somova.

The activity of Benois, an art critic and art historian, who, together with Grabar, updated the methods, techniques and themes of Russian art history, is a whole stage in the history of art history science (see "History of 19th century painting" by R. Muter - volume "Russian painting", 1901-1902; "Russian School of Painting", published in 1904; "Tsarskoe Selo during the reign of Empress Elizabeth Petrovna", 1910; articles in the magazines "World of Art" and "Old Years", "Artistic Treasures of Russia" and etc.).

According to the unanimous recognition of his closest associates, as well as the evidence of later criticism, Somov was a central figure among the artists of the "World of Art" in the first period of the history of this association. Representatives of the World of Art circle saw him as a great master. “The name of Somov is known to every educated person not only in Russia, but all over the world. This is a world value ... It has long since gone beyond the boundaries of schools, eras, and even Russia, and entered the world arena of genius, ”wrote the poet M. Kuzmin about him. And this is far from an isolated and not even the most enthusiastic review. If Diaghilev should be called the organizer and leader, and Benois should be called the ideological leader and the main theoretician of the new artistic movement, then Somov at first belonged to the role of the leading artist. The admiration of his contemporaries is explained by the fact that it was in the work of Somov that the basic pictorial principles were born and formed, which later became guiding for the entire group of the World of Art.

The biography of this master is very typical for the World of Art circle. Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939) was the son of the curator of the Hermitage, a famous art figure and collector. The atmosphere of art has surrounded him since childhood. Somov's interest in painting, theater, literature and music arose very early and passed through his entire life. After leaving the gymnasium (1888), where his friendship with Alexander Benois and Filosofov began, young Somov entered the Academy of Arts and, in contrast to all the other founders of the World of Art, spent almost eight years there (1889-1897). He undertook a number of trips abroad - to Italy, France and Germany (1890, 1894, 1897-1898, 1899, 1905).

Unlike most of his companions in The World of Art, Somov never taught, never wrote articles, never tried to play any role in public circles. The artist's life was closed and secluded, among a few friends - artists, devoted only to work, reading, music and collecting antiques.

Two characteristic features distinguish Somov's artistic personality. One of them is determined by his relatively early creative maturity. Somov was a skilled craftsman and a completely original artist when his peers Bakst and Benoit were just beginning to look for an independent path in art. But this advantage soon turned into a disadvantage. Even the most sensitive contemporaries felt something painful in Somov's premature maturity. The second feature of Somov was vigilantly noticed by his friend and admirer S. Yaremich: “... Somov is by nature a powerful realist, akin to Vermeer van Delft or Pieter de Russian painter. On the one hand, he is attracted and attracted by life ..., on the other hand, the discrepancy between the general life and the artist's life distracts him from the present ... There is hardly another artist so gifted with the ability of the most acute and penetrating observation, as our Somov, who would devote there is so much space in my work for purely decorative tasks and the past. " One could assume that Somov's works are the more significant, the closer they remain to the living, concretely seen nature and the less the split and isolation from real life, which the critic speaks of, is felt in them. However, it is not. The very duality of the artist's consciousness, so typical of his era, becomes a source of sharp and original creative ideas.

One of the most famous portraits of Somov is “Lady in Blue. Portrait of Elizaveta Mikhailovna Martynova "(1897-1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), is a program work of the artist. Dressed in an old dress, evoking the memory of Pushkin's Tatiana "with a sad thought in her eyes, with a French book in her hands," the heroine of the Somov portrait, with an expression of fatigue, longing, inability to fight in life, all the more betrays her dissimilarity with her poetic prototype, forcing mentally feel the depth of the abyss separating the past from the present. It is in this work of Somov, where the artificial bizarrely intertwined with the genuine, the game - with seriousness, where a living person looks bewildered, inquiring, helpless and abandoned among the fake gardens, with emphasized frankness expressed the pessimistic background of the worldly "abandonment of the past" and impossibility for modern man to find there salvation from oneself, from one's real, not ghostly sorrows.

Close to "The Lady in Blue" is the portrait-painting "Echo of the Past Tense" (1903, paper on cardboard, watercolor, gouache, State Tretyakov Gallery), where Somov creates a poetic description of the fragile, anemic female beauty of the decadent model, refusing to convey real everyday signs of our time. He dresses the models in old costumes, gives their appearance the features of secret suffering, sadness and dreaminess, painful brokenness.

A brilliant portrait painter, Somov in the second half of the 1900s creates a suite of pencil and watercolor portraits, which present us an artistic and artistic environment, well known to the artist and deeply studied by him, the intellectual elite of his time - V. Ivanov, Blok, Kuzmin, Sollogub, Lancere , Dobuzhinsky, etc. In his portraits, he uses one general technique: against a white background - in a certain timeless sphere - he draws a face, the resemblance in which is achieved not through naturalization, but by bold generalizations and accurate selection of characteristic details. This absence of signs of time creates the impression of static, stiffness, coldness, almost tragic loneliness.

Somov's later works are pastoral and gallant festivities ("Laughed Kiss", 1908, State Russian Museum; "Walk of the Marquise", 1909, State Russian Museum), "Columbine's Tongue" (1913-1915), full of caustic irony, spiritual emptiness, even hopelessness. Love scenes from the 18th - early 19th centuries. are always given with a touch of eroticism. The latter was especially evident in his porcelain figurines dedicated to the ghostly pursuit of pleasure.

A game of love - dating, notes, kissing in alleys, gazebos, trellises of regular gardens or in lavishly tiled boudoirs - is a common pastime of Somov heroes, who appear in powdered wigs, high hairstyles, embroidered camisoles and dresses with crinolines. But there is no genuine cheerfulness in the merriment of the Somov paintings; people rejoice not because of the fullness of life, but because they do not know anything else, sublime, serious and strict. This is not a merry world, but a world doomed to fun, to an exhausting eternal holiday that turns people into puppets, a ghostly pursuit of the pleasures of life.

Earlier than anyone else in The World of Art, Somov turned to the themes of the past, to the interpretation of the 18th century. ("Letter", 1896; "Confidentiality", 1897), being the predecessor of Benoit's Versailles landscapes. He was the first to create an unreal world, woven from the motives of the noble-manor and court culture and his own purely subjective artistic sensations, permeated with irony. The historicism of the "World of Artists" was an escape from reality. Not the past, but its dramatization, longing for its irreversibility - that is their main motive. Not true fun, but playing fun with kisses in the alleys - this is Somov.

The theme of the artificial world, a false life, in which there is nothing significant and important, is the leading one in Somov's work. It has as its prerequisite the artist's deeply pessimistic assessment of the morals of modern bourgeois-aristocratic society, although it was Somov who was the most vivid exponent of the hedonistic tastes of this circle. The Somov farce is the wrong side of the tragic outlook, which, however, rarely manifests itself in the choice of specially tragic subjects.

The techniques of Somov painting ensure the consistent isolation of the world he depicts from the simple, artless. Somov's man is fenced off from natural nature by the props of artificial gardens, walls upholstered with damask, silk screens, and soft sofas. It is no coincidence that Somov is also especially willing to use motives of artificial lighting (a series of "Fireworks" of the early 1910s). An unexpected flash of fireworks lights finds people in risky, randomly absurd, angular poses, plotting the symbolic assimilation of life to a puppet theater.

Somov worked a lot as a graphic artist, he designed a monograph by S. Diaghilev about Levitsky, a work by A. Benois about Tsarskoe Selo. The book as a single organism with its rhythmic and stylistic unity was raised by him to an extraordinary height. Somov is not an illustrator, he “illustrates not a text, but an era, using a literary device as a springboard,” wrote the art critic A.A. Sidorov.

The role of M.V. Dobuzhinsky in the history of the World of Art is not inferior in importance to the role of senior masters of this group, although he did not belong to the number of its founders and was not a member of the youth circle of A.I. Benoit. Only in 1902, Dobuzhinsky's graphics appeared on the pages of the magazine "World of Art", and only in 1903 he began to take part in exhibitions under the same name. But, perhaps, none of the artists who joined the named group in the first period of its activity came as close as Dobuzhinsky to understanding the ideas and principles of the new creative movement, and none of them contributed such a significant and original contribution to the development of the artistic method of the "World of Art".

Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957) was a man with a university education and broad cultural interests. He became addicted to drawing as a child and early began to prepare for the work of an artist. Along with the visual arts, he was attracted by literature and history; he read a lot and used to illustrate what he read. The earliest artistic impressions that have forever stuck in his memory were gleaned from children's books with illustrations by Bertal, G. Dore and W. Bush.

Graphics have always been easier for Dobuzhinsky than painting. In his student years, he studied under the guidance of the itinerant G. Dmitriev-Kavkazsky, who, however, did not have any influence on him. “Fortunately,” as the artist said, he did not get into the Academy of Arts and did not experience its impact at all. After graduating from the university, he went to study art in Munich and for three years (1899-1901) studied in the workshops of A. Ashbe and S. Holloshi, where I. Grabar, D. Kardovsky and some other Russian artists also worked. Here Dobuzhinsky's artistic education was completed and his aesthetic tastes were formed: he highly valued Manet and Degas, fell in love with the Pre-Raphaelites forever, but the German landscape painters of the late 19th century and the Simplicissimus artists had the strongest influence on him. The preparation and creative formation of the young Dobuzhinsky quite organically led him to contact with the "World of Art". Upon his return to St. Petersburg, Dobuzhinsky met with active support from Grabar and Benois, who highly appreciated his talent. In the early drawings of Dobuzhinsky (1902-1905), the reminiscences of the Munich school are intertwined with the quite obvious influence of the senior masters of the World of Art, primarily Somov and Benois.

Dobuzhinsky stands out among the artists of the "World of Art" with a thematic repertoire of works dedicated to the modern city. But just as in Somov and Benois the “spirit of the past” is expressed through the artistic style of the era, embodied in architecture, furniture, costumes, ornamentation, so in Dobuzhinsky, modern urban civilization expresses itself not in the actions and actions of people, but through the appearance of modern urban buildings , in dense rows closing the horizon, blocking the sky, crossed out by factory chimneys, stunning with countless rows of windows. Dobuzhinsky sees the modern city as a kingdom of monotony and standard that erases and absorbs human individuality.

Just as programmatic as for Somov "The Lady in Blue" is for Dobuzhinsky's picture "The Man with Glasses. Portrait of Konstantin Alexandrovich Sunnerberg "(1905-1906, State Tretyakov Gallery). Against the background of a window, behind which, at some distance in front of an abandoned wasteland, the city block is piled up, depicted from the back, unpresentable side, where factory chimneys and the bare firewalls of large apartment buildings rise above the old houses, the figure of a thin man in a jacket sagging on his hunched shoulders looms. The shimmering lenses of his glasses, matching the outlines of the eye sockets, give the impression of empty eye sockets. In the black and white modeling of the head, the construction of a naked skull is exposed - a frightening ghost of death appears in the outlines of a human face. In the affected frontality, the accentuated verticalism of the figure, the immobility of the posture, a person is likened to a mannequin, a lifeless automaton - so, in relation to the modern era, Dobuzhinsky transformed the theme of the “puppet show” played in retrospect by Somov and Benoit on the stage of the past. There is something "demonic" and pitiful at the same time in the ghostly man of Dobuzhinsky. He is a terrible creature and at the same time a victim of the modern city.

Dobuzhinsky also worked extensively in illustration, where the most remarkable can be considered his cycle of ink drawings for Dostoevsky's White Nights (1922). Dobuzhinsky also worked in the theater, designed for Nemirovich-Danchenko's Nikolai Stavrogin (staging of Dostoevsky's Demons), Turgenev's plays A Month in the Country and Freeloader.

The sophistication of fantasy aimed at reuniting and interpreting the language, stylistic handwriting of foreign cultures, in general “foreign language” in a broad sense, has found its most natural organic application in the area where this quality is not only desirable, but necessary - in the field of book illustration. Almost all of the World of Art artists were excellent illustrators. The largest and most outstanding artistically illustrative cycles of the era, when the "Miriskusnicheskoe" direction in this area was dominant, are the illustrations by A. Benois to The Bronze Horseman (1903-1905) and E. Lancer to Hadji Murad (1912- 1915).

Evgeny Evgenievich Lanceray (1875-1946) in his work touched upon all the main problems of book graphics at the beginning of the 20th century. (see his illustrations for the book "Legends of the Ancient Castles of Brittany", for Lermontov, the cover for "Nevsky Prospect" by Bozheryanov, etc.), Lanceray created a number of watercolors and lithographs of St. Petersburg ("Kalinkin Bridge", "Nikolsky Market", etc. ). Architecture occupies a huge place in his historical compositions ("Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in Tsarskoe Selo", 1905, State Tretyakov Gallery). We can say that a new type of historical picture was created in the works of Serov, Benois, Lanceray - it is devoid of a plot, but at the same time it perfectly recreates the appearance of the era, evokes many historical, literary and aesthetic associations. One of the best creations of Lanceray - 70 drawings and watercolors for the story by L.N. Tolstoy's "Hadji Murad" (1912-1915), which Benoit considered "an independent song, perfectly engaging in the mighty music of Tolstoy."

Benois the illustrator is a whole page in the history of the book. Unlike Somov, Benoit creates a narrative illustration. The plane of the page is not an end in itself for him. The illustrations for "The Queen of Spades" were more likely complete independent works, not so much "book art", according to A.A. Sidorov, how much "art in the book." A masterpiece of book illustration was the graphic design of The Bronze Horseman (1903, 1905, 1916, 1921-1922, ink and watercolor imitating color woodcut).

Petersburg - the city "beautiful and terrible" - the protagonist of Benois's illustrations. In the style of these illustrations, a typical for "world of art" in general, but in this case a rather complex "system of prisms", in which images and pictures of Pushkin's St. Petersburg story were refracted many times, makes itself felt - here is a reminder of the landscapes of the first singer of "Northern Venice "In painting - F. Alekseev (in the illustrations accompanying the odic introduction of the story), and the poetic charm of the interiors of the Venetian school in interior scenes, and the graphics of the first third of the 19th century, and not only Pushkin's Petersburg, but also Dostoevsky's Petersburg, for example, in famous scene of the night chase. The central theme of Pushkin's St. Petersburg story - the conflict between a private person and the state power personified in the image of the Bronze Horseman, acting for the individual in the form of ominous fate - found its lofty artistic expression in the frontispiece, made in 1905. In this watercolor drawing, Benoit managed to achieve amazing simplicity and clarity in expressing a complex idea, that is, the quality that is akin to Pushkin's great simplicity. But the shade of gloomy "demonism" in the image of the Bronze Horseman, as well as assimilation of the persecuted Eugene to the image of an "insignificant worm" ready to mingle with dust, not only indicates the presence of one more "prism" that is quite typical for the "World of Artists" - Hoffmann's fantasy, but also means a shift from Pushkin's objectivity towards a purely individualistic in nature feeling of horror at the dispassionateness of historical necessity - a feeling that Pushkin did not have.

Theatrical decoration, akin to the art of book illustration, since it is also associated with the interpretation of someone else's design, was another area where the "World of Art" was destined to make a major artistic reform. It consisted of rethinking the old role of theatrical artist. Now he is no longer an artist-designer of an action and an inventor of comfortable stage enclosures, but an interpreter of music and drama, a creator of a performance just as equal as a director and actors. Thus, in the process of composing music for the ballet "Petrushka" by I. Stravinsky, A. Benois unfolded before him visual images of the future performance.

The scenery of "Petrushka", this, in the words of the artist, "ballet of the street", revived the spirit of the fairground festivity.

The flourishing of the activities of the "world of art" in the field of theatrical and decorative art dates back to the 1910s and is associated with the organized by S.P. Diaghilev (the idea belonged to A. Benois) "Russian Seasons" in Paris, which included a whole series of symphony concerts, opera and ballet performances. It was in the performances of "Russian Seasons" that the European audience first heard F. Chaliapin, saw A. Pavlova, got acquainted with M. Fokine's choreography. It was here that the talent of L.S. Bakst, an artist who belonged to the main core of the "World of Art".

Together with Benoit and Somov, Lev Samoilovich Bakst (1866-1924) is one of the central figures in the history of the World of Art. He was a member of the youth circle, in which the ideological and creative tendencies of this direction were born; he was among the founders and most active employees of the magazine, which was carrying out a new aesthetic program; he, together with Diaghilev, "exported" Russian art to Western Europe and achieved its recognition; The world fame of the Russian theatrical and decorative painting "The World of Art" fell primarily to Bakst.

Meanwhile, in the system of development of ideas and principles of the "World of Art" Bakst has a completely separate and independent place. While actively supporting the tactics of unification and sharing, in general, his basic aesthetic positions, Bakst, at the same time, followed a completely independent path. His painting is not like the painting of Somov and Benoit, Lanceray and Dobuzhinsky; it comes from other traditions, relies on a different mental and life experience, turns to other themes and images.

The path of the artist was more complex and winding than the smooth and consistent evolution, characteristic of the work of many of his friends and associates. There is a shade of paradox in Bakst's quests and throwings; the line of its development is drawn with steep zigzags. Bakst came to the "World of Art" as if "from the right"; he brought with him the skills of the old academic school and reverence for the traditions of the nineteenth century. But very little time passed, and Bakst became the most "leftist" among the participants in the "World of Art"; he more actively than others approached the Western European art nouveau painting and organically assimilated its techniques. Western viewers found it easier to recognize Bakst as "theirs" than any other artist of the "World of Art".

Bakst was three years older than Somov, Benoit four years older, and Diaghilev six years older. The age difference, in itself insignificant, had a certain significance at the time when the figures of the "World of Art" were young men. Among the young amateurs who grouped around Benoit and formed his circle. Bakst was the only artist with some professional experience. For four years (1883-1887) he studied at the Academy of Arts, sometimes made portraits to order and acted as an illustrator in the so-called "thin magazines". The Russian Museum contains several landscape and portrait sketches by Bakst, painted in the first half of the 1890s. They are not of high artistic quality, but they are quite professional. They already show the decorative flair characteristic of Bakst; but according to their principles, they do not go beyond the limits of late academic painting.

Soon, however, Bakst's work took on a different character. At the first exhibitions of the World of Art, Bakst acted primarily as a portrait painter. It is enough to take a closer look at the series of portraits he created at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries to understand from which concepts Bakst's painting originated at the beginning of his career and in what direction it developed in the future.

One of the artist's most famous works is the portrait of Alexander Benois (1898, State Russian Museum). In this early, pastel-filled work, still imperfect and unfamiliar with illusionistic tendencies, one can discern a whole complex of creative ideas that then determined the task and meaning of portrait painting for Bakst. Nature is taken here in the stream of its living states, in all the variability of its concrete, precisely noted qualities. The main role is played by the desire to reveal the character, to reveal the individual psychological characteristics of the person being portrayed. This tendency directly goes back to the creative principles of Russian realistic painting. As with the portrait painters of the second half of the 19th century, the artist's task is here to fix some moment of flowing reality, some fragment of real life. From here comes the plot idea - to portray Benoit as if taken by surprise, without any thought of posing; hence the compositional structure of the portrait, emphasizing the ease, as it were, the randomness of the pose and expression of the model; from here, finally, comes the interest in everyday characteristics, in the introduction of interior elements and still life into the portrait.

Another, somewhat later work of the artist is based on similar principles - a portrait of the writer V.V. Rozanov (pastel, 1901, State Tretyakov Gallery). However, here one can already see the guiding tendency in the development of Bakst's portrait painting, an attempt to free himself from the traditions of psychological realism of the 19th century.

In the portrait of Rozanov, a striving for psychological and everyday characteristics is also manifested, and in the interpretation of the form it is easy to notice the features of illusionism. And yet, in comparison with the portrait of Benoit, different, new qualities are immediately evident here. The format of the picture, narrow and elongated, is deliberately emphasized by the vertical lines of the door and bookshelves. Against a white background, which occupies almost the entire plane of the canvas, a dark silhouette of the portrait is outlined, encircled by a rigid outline. The figure is shifted from the central axis of the picture and no longer merges with the interior, but is sharply opposed to it. The shade of intimacy characteristic of Benoit's portrait disappears.

Refusing to understand the portrait as a moment of flowing reality fixed on the canvas, Bakst - almost simultaneously with Somov - now begins to build his work on different foundations. Reflection prevails in Bakst over direct observation, generalization prevails over elements of analysis.

The content of the portrait characteristic is no longer nature in the stream of its living states, but a certain, peculiarly idealized idea of ​​the person being portrayed. Bakst does not abandon the task of revealing the inner world of this particular person in his individual uniqueness, but at the same time he seeks to sharpen in the appearance of the portrayed typical features characteristic of people of the cool World of Art, realizes the image of a “positive hero” of his era and his close ideological environment. These features have acquired a quite distinct and complete form in the portrait of S.P. Diaghilev with a nanny (1906, State Russian Museum). Varying the same theme of the human figure in the interior, the artist, as it were, rearranges the accents, reinterprets the previous methods in a new way, brings them into a coherent, consistent system and subordinates them to the intended image. There are no more traces of illusionism and naturalistic thoroughness, as noted earlier portraits. Compositional rhythms are based on sharp asymmetry. The masses of painting do not balance each other: the right half of the picture seems overloaded, the left almost empty. With this technique, the artist creates an atmosphere of special tension in the portrait, which is necessary to characterize the image. Diaghilev's pose is given a ceremonial imposingness. The interior, together with the image of a seated old woman, a nanny, becomes, as it were, a commentary that complements the portrait characterization.

It would be a mistake to assert that the image of Diaghilev in this portrait is outside the psychological. On the contrary, Bakst puts into the image a whole set of sharp and apt psychological definitions, but there he deliberately limits them: we have a portrait of a posing person. The moment of posing is the most important part of the concept, in which there is not even a hint of everyday intimacy; posing is emphasized by the whole structure of the picture: the outlines of Diaghilev's silhouette, and his expression, and the spatial construction of the composition, and all the details of the situation.

There are no motives of the 18th century in Bakst's graphics. and manor themes. He gravitates towards antiquity, and towards the Greek archaic, interpreted symbolically. His painting "Terroantiquus" (tempera, 1908, State Russian Museum) enjoyed particular success among the Symbolists. A terrible stormy sky, lightning that illuminates the abyss of the sea and the ancient city - and over this entire universal catastrophe, an archaic statue of a goddess dominates with a mysterious frozen smile.

Later Bakst completely went into theatrical and decorative work, and his scenery and costumes for the ballets of Diaghilev's entreprise, performed with extraordinary brilliance, masterly, artistically, brought him world fame. It was designed for performances with Anna Pavlova, Fokine's ballets.

The exotic, spicy East, on the one hand, the Aegean art and the Greek archaic, on the other, are two themes and two stylistic layers that were the subject of Bakst's artistic hobbies and formed his individual style.

He designs mainly ballet performances, among which his masterpieces are the sets and costumes for "Scheherazade" to the music of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov (1910), "The Firebird" by I.F. Stravinsky (1910), "Daphnis and Chloe" by M. Ravel (1912) and directed by V.F. Nijinsky to music by K. Debussy to the ballet "Afternoon of a Faun" (1912). In a paradoxical combination of opposing principles: bacchanalistic brilliance, sensual astringency of color and lazy grace of a weak-willed flowing line of drawing, which retains a connection with the ornamentation of early modernism, is the originality of Bakst's individual style. Performing sketches of costumes, the artist conveys character, color image-mood, plastic drawing of the role, combining the generality of the contour and color spot with jewelry-careful finishing of details - jewelry, patterns on fabrics, etc. That is why his sketches can least of all be called drafts, but are complete works of art in themselves.

A.Ya. Golovin - one of the largest theater artists of the first quarter of the XX century, I. Ya. Bilibin, A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedev and others.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) occupies a special place in the "World of Art". An expert in the philosophy and ethnography of the East, an archaeologist and scientist, Roerich received an excellent education, first at home, then at the Faculty of Law and History and Philology, then at the Academy of Arts, in Kuindzhi's workshop, and in Paris at F. Cormon's studio. He early acquired the authority of a scientist. He was related to the "world of art" by the same love of retrospection, only not the 17th-18th centuries, but pagan Slavic and Scandinavian antiquity and Ancient Russia, stylistic tendencies, theatrical decorativeness ("The Messenger", 1897, State Tretyakov Gallery; "The Elders Are Converging" , 1898, State Russian Museum; "Sinister", 1901, State Russian Museum). Roerich was most closely associated with the philosophy and aesthetics of Russian symbolism, but his art did not fit into the framework of the existing trends, because in accordance with the artist's worldview and worldview, it addressed, as it were, all of humanity with the appeal of a friendly union of all peoples. Hence the special monumentalism and epic character of his canvases. After 1905, the mood of pantheistic mysticism grew in Roerich's work. Historical themes give way to religious legends ("Heavenly Battle", 1912, State Russian Museum). The Russian icon had a tremendous influence on Roerich: his decorative panel Cutting at Kerzhenets (1911) was exhibited while performing a fragment of the same title from Rimsky-Korsakov's opera The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia in the Parisian Russian Seasons.

Due to the evolution of the initial aesthetic attitudes, the split within the editorial office of the magazine, the branch of the Moscow group of artists "World of Art" by 1905 ceased its exhibition and publishing activities. In 1910, the "World of Art" was renewed, but it functions exclusively as an exhibition organization, not fastened, as before, by the unity of creative tasks and stylistic orientation, uniting artists of various directions.

However, there was a number of artists of the world of art of the "second wave", in whose work the artistic principles of the senior masters of the "World of Art" are further developed. Among them was B.M. Kustodiev.

Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev (1878-1927) was born in Astrakhan, in the family of a teacher. He studied drawing and painting from the artist P.A. Vlasov in Astrakhan (1893-1896) and at the Higher Art School at the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg (1896-1503), since 1898 - in the workshop of Professor I.E. Repin. In 1902-1903 he was involved by Repin in joint work on the painting “Solemn meeting of the State Council. As a student of the Academy of Arts, on vacation he traveled across the Caucasus and the Crimea, and then annually (since 1900) spent the summer in the Kostroma province; in 1903 he made a trip along the Volga and with D.S. Stellets-kim to Novgorod.

In 1903, Kustodiev received the title of artist and the right to travel abroad for the painting "Bazaar in the Village" (which was in the Novgorod Historical and Art Museum until 1941). At the end of the same year, as a pensioner of the Academy, he left for Paris, where he worked for a short time in the workshop of R. Menard and at the same time got acquainted with contemporary art, visited museums and exhibitions. In April 1904 he left Paris for Spain to study the old masters; at the beginning of summer he returned to Russia. In 1909 he was awarded the title of academician.

Kustodiev subsequently made several trips abroad: in 1907, together with D.S. Stelletsky, - to Italy; in 1909 - to Austria, Italy, France and Germany; in 1911 and 1912 - to Switzerland; in 1913 - to the south of France and to Italy. He spent the summer of 1917 in Finland.

Genre painter and portrait painter in painting, easel painter and illustrator in graphics, theater decorator, Kustodiev also worked as a sculptor. He made a number of portrait busts and compositions. In 1904, Kustodiev became a member of the New Society of Artists; he has been a member of the World of Art since 1911.

The object of Kustodiev's refined stylizations in the spirit of painted toys and popular prints is patriarchal Russia, the customs of the posad and merchants, from which the artist borrows a special aesthetic code - a taste for everything colorful, overly colorful, intricate ornamental. Hence the bright festive "Fairs", "Maslenitsa", "Balagany", hence his paintings from the bourgeois and merchant life, conveyed with caustic irony, but not without admiring these red-cheeked half-asleep beauties at the samovar and with saucers in plump fingers ("Merchant", 1915, State Russian Museum; "Merchant's wife at tea", 1918, State Russian Museum).

"Beauty" (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery) is a perfect example of Kustodiev's stylization in the spirit of merchant "aesthetics of quantity", expressed by hyperbolic forcing of this quantity - body, fluff, satin, ornaments. A pearl pink beauty in the kingdom of duvets, pillows, featherbeds and mahogany is a goddess, an idol of merchant life. The artist makes one feel the typically “worldly” ironic distance in relation to the values ​​of this life, cleverly intertwining delight with a gentle grin.

The World of Art was a major aesthetic movement at the turn of the century that overestimated the entire modern artistic culture, approved new tastes and problems, returned to art - at the highest professional level - the lost forms of book graphics and theatrical and decorative painting, which, through their efforts, received all European recognition. -nie, who created a new art criticism, promoted Russian art abroad, in fact, even opened some of its stages, like the Russian XVIII century. "Miriskusniki" created a new type of historical painting, portrait, landscape with their own stylistic features (distinct stylistic tendencies, the predominance of graphic techniques over painting, purely decorative understanding of color, etc.). This determines their importance for Russian art.

The weaknesses of the "World of Art" are reflected primarily in the variegation and inconsistency of the program, proclaiming an example of "now Böcklin, now Manet"; in idealistic views on art, affected by indifference to the civic tasks of art, in programmatic apoliticality, in the loss of the social significance of the picture. The intimacy of the World of Art and the features of its original limitations determined the short historical period of its life in the era of formidable foreshadowings of the impending proletarian revolution. These were only the first steps on the path of creative pursuits, and very soon the "World of Art" were overtaken by the young.

The World of Art is a creative association of artists that has existed since the late 1890s. until 1924 (intermittently). The main core of the association included A. N. Benois, L. S. Bakst, K. A. Somov, M. V. Dobuzhinsky, E. E. Lansere, I. Ya. Bilibin. K. A. Korovin, A. Ya. Golovin, B. M. Kustodiev, N. K. Roerich, S. Yu. Sudeikin, B. I. Anisfeld and others joined the World of Art.

The World of Art program was controversial. Opposing its activities to the Itinerants and the Academy of Arts, "World of Art" was a supporter of "pure art". At the same time, the artists of the association did not break with realism, many of them responded to the Revolution of 1905, and in the 1910s. The "World of Art" opposed decadence and formalism. In the works of the artists of the World of Art, there was a strong retrospective tendency, a fascination with the culture of the 17th and 18th centuries.

The greatest strengths of the World of Art are book graphics and theatrical scenery. Defending the content and integrity of the performance's solution, the artist's active role in it, "World of Art" continued the reform of theatrical and decorative art, begun by the decorators of the opera S. I. Mamontov.

The decoration works of the World of Art artists are characterized by high culture, enrichment of the theater with the achievements of modern painting, artistic integrity of solutions, delicate taste and depth of interpretation of stage works, including ballet ones.

A large role was played by the artists of the "World of Art" in the design of the performances

The art association "World of Art" announced itself with the release of the magazine of the same name at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. The publication of the first issue of the magazine "World of Art" in St. Petersburg at the end of 1898 was the result of ten years of communication between a group of painters and graphic artists headed by Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870-1960).

The main idea of ​​the unification was expressed in the article “Difficult Questions. Our imaginary decline. " The main goal of artistic creation was declared to be beauty, and beauty in the subjective understanding of each master. This attitude to the tasks of art gave the artist absolute freedom in choosing themes, images and means of expression, which was quite new and unusual for Russia.

The World of Art opened for the Russian public many interesting and previously unknown phenomena of Western culture, in particular Finnish and Scandinavian painting, English Pre-Raphaelite artists and graphic artist Aubrey Beardsley. Collaboration with the Symbolist writers was of great importance for the masters united around Benoit and Diaghilev. In the twelfth issue of the magazine in 1902, the poet Andrei Bely published an article "Forms of Art", and since then the largest Symbolist poets have been regularly published on its pages. However, the artists of the World of Art did not confine themselves to symbolism. They strove not only for stylistic unity, but also for the formation of a unique, free creative personality.

As an integral literary and artistic association, the "World of Art" did not last long. Disagreements between artists and writers led in 1904 to the fact that the magazine was closed. The resumption of the group's activities in 1910 could no longer restore its former role. But in the history of Russian culture, this association has left a deep mark. It was it that switched the attention of the masters from questions of content to problems of form and pictorial language.

A distinctive feature of the World of Art artists was their versatility. They were engaged in painting, and the design of theatrical performances, and arts and crafts. However, graphics play an important role in their legacy.

The best works of Benoit graphic; especially interesting among them are illustrations to the poem by Alexander Pushkin "The Bronze Horseman" (1903-1922). Petersburg became the main "hero" of the entire cycle: its streets, canals, architectural masterpieces appear now in the cold severity of thin lines, now in the dramatic contrast of bright and dark spots. At the climax of the tragedy, when Eugene runs away from the formidable giant, the monument to Peter, galloping behind him, the master paints the city with dark, gloomy colors.

Benoit's work is close to the romantic idea of ​​opposing a lonely suffering hero and the world, indifferent to him and thus killing him.

The design of theatrical performances is the brightest page in the work of Lev Samuilovich Bakst (real name Rosenberg; 1866-1924). His most interesting works are associated with opera and ballet productions of Russian Seasons in Paris 1907-1914. - a kind of festival of Russian art, organized by Diaghilev. Bakst made sketches of scenery and costumes for the opera "Salome" by R. Strauss, the suite "Scheherazade" by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, the ballet "Afternoon of a Faun" to music by C. Debussy and other performances. Especially remarkable are the sketches of costumes, which have become independent graphic works. The artist modeled the costume, focusing on the dancer's system of movements, through lines and color, he tried to reveal the pattern of the dance and the nature of the music. In his sketches, the sharpness of the vision of the image, a deep understanding of the nature of ballet movements and amazing grace are striking.

One of the main themes for many of the World of Art masters was the appeal to the past, the longing for the lost ideal world. Favorite era was the 18th century, and above all the Rococo period. The artists not only tried to revive this time in their work - they drew the public's attention to the genuine art of the 18th century, in fact, rediscovering the work of French painters Antoine Watteau and Honore Fragonard and their compatriots - Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky.

Benois's works are associated with the images of the "gallant age", in which Versailles palaces and parks are presented as a beautiful and harmonious world, but abandoned by people. Evgeny Evgenievich Lanceray (1875-1946) preferred to depict pictures of Russian life in the 18th century.

Rococo motifs manifested themselves with particular expressiveness in the works of Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939). He early joined the history of art (father

artist was the curator of the Hermitage collections). After graduating from the Academy of Arts, the young master became an excellent connoisseur of old painting. Somov brilliantly imitated her technique in his paintings. The main genre of his work could be called variations on the theme of the "gallant scene". Indeed, on the artist's canvases, Watteau's characters seem to come to life again - ladies in lush dresses and wigs, actors of comedy masks. They flirt, flirt, and sing serenades in the park alleys, surrounded by the caressing glow of the sunset light.

However, all means of Somov's painting are aimed at showing the "gallant scene" as a fantastic vision that flashed for a moment and immediately disappeared. After him, only a painful memory remains. It is no accident that in the midst of light gallant play, the image of death appears, as in the watercolor "Harlequin and Death" (1907). The composition is clearly divided into two planes. In the distance the traditional “set of stamps” of Rococo: the starry sky, couples in love, etc. And in the foreground there are also traditional mask characters: Harlequin in a colorful suit and Death - a skeleton in a black cloak. The silhouettes of both figures are outlined with sharp, broken lines. In a bright palette, in a certain deliberate striving for a template, one feels a gloomy grotesque. Refined grace and horror of death turn out to be two sides of the same coin, and the painter seems to be trying to treat both of them with equal ease.

Somov managed to express his nostalgic admiration for the past in a particularly subtle way through female images. The famous work "The Lady in Blue" (1897-1900) is a portrait of a contemporary of the master artist E. Martynova. She is dressed in old fashion and is depicted against the backdrop of a poetic landscape park. The manner of painting brilliantly imitates the Biedermeier style. But the obvious morbidity of the heroine's appearance (Martynova soon died of tuberculosis) evokes a feeling of acute melancholy, and the idyllic softness of the landscape seems unreal, existing only in the artist's imagination.

Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957) focused his attention mainly on the urban landscape. His Petersburg, unlike Benois's Petersburg, is devoid of a romantic aura. The artist chooses the most unattractive, "gray" views, showing the city as a huge mechanism that kills the human soul.

The composition of the painting "Man with Spectacles" ("Portrait of K. A. Sunnerberg", 1905-1906) is based on the opposition of the hero and the city, which is visible through a wide window. At first glance, a motley row of houses and the figure of a man with a face immersed in the shadows seem to be isolated from each other. But there is a deep inner connection between these two planes. The "mechanical" dullness of city houses stands behind the brightness of the colors. The hero is detached, immersed in himself, in his face there is nothing but fatigue and emptiness.