Decorative art

Staging the Future. Meyerhold and Golovin’s lost production of “The Nightingale”

Brad Rosenstein, Kathryn Mederos Syssoyeva

Article: 
INVESTIGATIONS AND FINDS
Magazine issue: 
#4 2019 (65)

On the evening of May 30 1918, opera lovers in Petrograd gathered at the Mariinsky Theatre to attend the Russian premiere of Igor Stravinsky’s “The Nightingale” (Le Rossignol/Solovei').[1] The audience dodged gunfire in the streets to make their way into this jewel box of Russia’s former Imperial Theatres, and what they witnessed on its stage that night was a painful reminder of their own collapsing social world: a satiric fairytale about a dying emperor, surrounded by fawning, buffoonish courtiers and an agitated populace. That Stravinsky’s emperor is saved, at the eleventh hour, by the healing power of art - metaphorized as the song of a nightingale - must have served only to underscore the destabilizing dread of their own recently deposed emperor’s uncertain future: imprisoned at the time of the opera’s Russian premiere, the Imperial family would be executed just six weeks later. It wasn’t merely an unfortunate play of resemblances that jarred. The highly experimental production, directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold and designed by Alexander Golovin, featuring an enormous cast which included the 14-year-old dancer Georgi Balanchivadze (George Balanchine), seemed to play deliberately on tensions between a fading past and an uncertain future, and between fiction and reality.

Staging the Future. Meyerhold and Golovin’s lost production of “The Nightingale”

The Passionate Dance of the Avant-Garde

Tatiana Gubanova

Article: 
INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA
Magazine issue: 
#1 2006 (10)

Museum of Modern Art in Rovereto (Trento province, Italy) opened an exhibition titled ‘The Dance of the Avant-Garde" on December 16, displaying paintings, scenography and costumes from Degas to Picasso, from Matisse to Haring. Over 1,000 paintings, sculptures, graphic works and photographs created in the 20th century introduce the viewer to the magical union of dance and the visual arts, and to the wonderful century of real-life and fantastic images.

The Passionate Dance of the Avant-Garde

Museum of Modern Art in Rovereto (Trento province, Italy) opened an exhibition titled ‘The Dance of the Avant-Garde" on December 16, displaying paintings, scenography and costumes from Degas to Picasso, from Matisse to Haring. Over 1,000 paintings, sculptures, graphic works and photographs created in the 20th century introduce the viewer to the magical union of dance and the visual arts, and to the wonderful century of real-life and fantastic images.

The Gorki Estate and Its Collection

Tamara Shubina

Article: 
MUSEUMS OF RUSSIA
Magazine issue: 
#3 2006 (12)

One of the oldest estates in the environs of Moscow, Gorki is first mentioned in a 16th-century source. The estate’s history is long and varied, comprising periods of flourishing growth as well as decline and stagnation. Some years saw the erection of new and beautiful buildings and the appearance of leafy parks, whilst others witnessed the house falling into disrepair, weeds smothering the lawns and the grounds being sold off to holiday-makers. Originally the Spasitelev family estate, Gorki later boasted a whole string of wealthy owners from families such as the Naumovs, Beloselskys, Buturlins, Beketovs, Durasovs and Lopukhins.

The Gorki Estate and Its Collection

 

“The same familiar scene of peace and calm:
Tall trees with whispering boughs beside a dam,
A lake before a house, a garden in the grounds,
A stream and leafy grove with ancient burial mounds.”

Pyotr Vyazemski

Russia 1900: ART AND CULTURE IN THE EMPIRE OF THE LAST TSAR

Renate Ulmer

Article: 
INTERNATIONAL PANORAMA
Magazine issue: 
#3 2008 (20)

Designed as both cultural and historical, the exhibition has the objective of presenting Russian art of the end of the 19th-early 20th century which is little known in Germany, in parallel with the Western European decorative and literary movement “Stilkunst” (The Art of Style). Its focus is on the unique Russian integration of various forms of art of the period along with the ideas and thoughts that inspired and nurtured them. The dialogue between traditional, folk and romantic works and those which demonstrate international and Modernist influences increases the diversity of the exhibition.

Russia 1900: ART AND CULTURE IN THE EMPIRE OF THE LAST TSAR

Léon Bakst: “Dress up like a flower!”

Yelena Terkel

Article: 
EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS
Magazine issue: 
#4 2009 (25)

Léon Bakst hoped that his art would bring more harmony and joy into life. Wishing to make mankind happy and day-dreaming about antiquity and the Orient, what did he really have to offer? Something of a dandy and naive like a child, the artist often made his friends smile. Yet he would succeed in making life shinier and brighter, in bringing beauty closer to everyday life. Bakst was the first Russian artist to win worldwide recognition as a designer.

Leon Bakst: “Dress up like a flower!”

Léon Bakst hoped that his art would bring more harmony and joy into life. Wishing to make mankind happy and day-dreaming about antiquity and the Orient, what did he really have to offer? Something of a dandy and naive like a child, the artist often made his friends smile. Yet he would succeed in making life shinier and brighter, in bringing beauty closer to everyday life. Bakst was the first Russian artist to win worldwide recognition as a designer.

Science into Art, Art into Science

Marina Vaizey

Article: 
"GRANY" FOUNDATION PRESENTS
Magazine issue: 
#2 2016 (51)

THE GENIUS OF JOSIAH WEDGWOOD, THE 18TH-CENTURY BRITISH CERAMICIST WHOSE TASTES, AND TECHNICAL INNOVATIONS, CAME TO DEFINE THE ART OF HIS GENERATION, IS THE SUBJECT OF THE EXHIBITION "UNRIVALLED WEDGWOOD" AT MOSCOW'S MUSEUM OF THE APPLIED AND FOLK ARTS RUNNING THROUGH NOVEMBER AND DECEMBER 2014, PART OF THE ONGOING UK-RUSSIA YEAR OF CULTURE. IT BRINGS TOGETHER WORKS FROM THE LADY LEVER ART GALLERY IN LIVERPOOL WITH PIECES FROM THE HERMITAGE AND OTHER RUSSIAN COLLECTIONS - CATHERINE THE GREAT WAS AMONG WEDGWOOD'S FIRST INTERNATIONAL COLLECTORS.

Science into Art, Art into Science

Valery Maloletkov’s Cup of Destiny

Yelena Noskova

Article: 
PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST
Magazine issue: 
#1 2016 (50)

Valery Maloletkov, a famous master of contemporary applied arts, People’s Artist of Russia and member of the Russian Academy of Arts, recently celebrated his 70th birthday. Maloletkov’s work in ceramics, ranging from portraiture and genre scenes to works inspired by history and literature continues to expand the possibilities of the form. His artistic career started with a group of young ceramic artists at the Vorontsovo Experimental Design and Production Plant. Passionate about discovering new means of artistic expression, mastering different materials and techniques of decor, and widening the possible volume-spatial, plastic, constructive and colour possibilities of clay, he grew increasingly close to a number of talented Moscow artists, including Vadim Kosmachev, Vladimir Petrov, Lyudmila Soshinskaya, Tatyana Gan and Suren Malyan.

Valery Maloletkov’s Cup of Destiny

America in Léon Bakst’s Life and Art

Yelena Terkel

Article: 
EXCLUSIVE PUBLICATIONS
Magazine issue: 
Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

America in the eyes of the artists, actors and musicians of the Silver Age of Russian culture was an enigmatic and fabulously rich country - a country to go to on a tour or to earn money. Only a handful of such artists gradually came to view the New World as not just a source of income but also as a special cultural hub with distinct traditions and roots. One such was Léon Bakst, the Russian artist of international renown who spent the second half of his life in France.

America in Leon Bakst’s Life and Art

America in the eyes of the artists, actors and musicians of the Silver Age of Russian culture was an enigmatic and fabulously rich country - a country to go to on a tour or to earn money. Only a handful of such artists gradually came to view the New World as not just a source of income but also as a special cultural hub with distinct traditions and roots. One such was Léon Bakst, the Russian artist of international renown who spent the second half of his life in France.

ALEXANDER GOLOVIN AND SPAIN

Tom Birchenough

Magazine issue: 
#4 2015 (49)

"Golovin visited Spain only three or four times - less than France, Germany or Italy, to which he travelled in the years before World War I almost every year. But Spain became something of a poetic homeland for the artist, and a lasting source of inspiration for him. Golovin studied the Spanish language, knew the country's history, literature, music and art very well... [The works he painted on Spanish themes and his theatrical productions involving Spanish motifs] can only be termed 'genre' works in the loosest sense, rather they are painting-remembrances, painting-fantasies, in which Golovin expressed his painterly view of Spain, and his feeling for the Spanish national character."

ALEXANDER GOLOVIN AND SPAIN

"Golovin visited Spain only three or four times - less than France, Germany or Italy, to which he travelled in the years before World War I almost every year. But Spain became something of a poetic homeland for the artist, and a lasting source of inspiration for him. Golovin studied the Spanish language, knew the country's history, literature, music and art very well...

NATALIA GONCHAROVA'S SPANISH EXTRAVAGANZA

Yevgenia Ilyukhina

Magazine issue: 
#4 2015 (49)

Goncharova's discovery of Spain, through a journey undertaken with her husband Mikhail Larionov in 1916 on the invitation of Sergei Diaghilev, would profoundly influence the artist's work, marking both her painting and her frequent ballet and theatre design projects.

NATALIA GONCHAROVA'S SPANISH EXTRAVAGANZA

Goncharova's discovery of Spain, through a journey undertaken with her husband Mikhail Larionov in 1916 on the invitation of Sergei Diaghilev, would profoundly influence the artist's work, marking both her painting and her frequent ballet and theatre design projects.

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