Mir Iskusstva Research Articles

Мирискусники и генезис акмеистических исканий (по поводу обзора одной выставки)

The article presents the experience of comprehension V. Narbut’s publication “Mir Iskusstva” (“The World of Art”) in the St. Petersburg newspaper “Theater and Sport”. The article, dedicated to the exhibition of the same name, is written in the genre of art criticism, unique for the poet’s creative biography, and is perceived as a capacious manifestation of the author’s artistic preferences. The significance of comprehension this publication is due to its chronological correlation not only with the beginning of the poet’s creative path, but also with key events in the history of Russian literature at the beginning of the 20th century.

К вопросу о пространственной композиции пейзажа эпохи символизма и модерна (на примере работ 1890‑х гг. М.В. Якунчиковой-Вебер, К.А. Сомова, А.Н. Бенуа)

The paper presents an attempt to analyse and classify the spatial composition of landscape paintings created in the 1890s by painters who actively collaborated with the World of Art (Mir iskusstva) association and were close to Art Nouveau and Symbolism. Their novelty partially results from impressionist innovations, with the latter revised in terms of both plastic effect and meaning. One of such revised formulae is vividly embodied in the works by М.V. Yakunchikova-Weber, as well as Е.D. Polenov and V.D. Polenov: fragment of a landscape depicting (almost) no ground or sky, tending towards a carpet-like surface and filled with vegetation forms of varying degrees of conventionality. Landscapes focusing on the lower layer of vegetation, flowers, and grass growing from the ground, or in combination with a smooth lake surface motif (the sky as if overturned into water) become a special variant of composition. This comes in tune with the Art Nouveau’s interest in vegetation and water, and Symbolism’s fascination with the motif of reflections. The latter may also be implemented in landscape in a window compositions: combination of reflection (microcosm of the painter’s inner world) and landscape (nature’s macrocosm) on the illusively two-layer surface. М.V. Yakunchikova-Weber and К.А. Somov transform the Landscape without sky, view from a balcony perspectives anticipated by C. Monet’s experiments into a special type of chamber park landscape: a beautiful shelter isolated from the world and the sky endlessness disturbing the soul. At the same time, panoramic landscapes (by K.А. Somov and А.N. Benois) tend towards an extremely high or low horizon line that is far from the everyday perception, oftentimes being presented from behind the back of a park statue and as if seen by its eyes.

The Journal “Mir Iskusstva” (1899–1904) as a Source on the History of Russian Art at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries

The Journal “Mir Iskusstva” (1899–1904) as a Source on the History of Russian Art at the end of the 19th – beginning of the 20th centuries

Ferdynand Ruszczyc: A Polish Painter at the Crossroads of Cultures

The oeuvre of beloved Polish painter Ferdynand Ruszczyc (1870–1936) reflected the patriotic Neo-Romantic landscape trend of the fin-de-siècle prevalent in Germany and the Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Norway, Sweden). It should be considered in the context of Nordic visual culture for two reasons: (1) until the affiliation of Central and Eastern European nations with the Soviet Union in the wake of World War Two, nations bordering the Baltic formed a single, fluid territory of cultural exchange, and (2) Ruszczyc’s oeuvre displays significant commonalities with dominant patriotic and Neo-Romantic trends of progressive artists around the Baltic Sea, where landscape became a vehicle for expressing dreams and emotions, as well as love of homeland. This article situates Ruszczyc’s national and artistic identity at the crossroads of cultures and artistic impulses, regional as well as international. Ruszczyc was born in Bohdanów near Vilnius (now Belarus) to a Polish father and a Danish mother. Like many Polish artists from the Russian partition, he was educated at the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg, where he studied with Ivan Shishkin (1832–1898) and Arkhip Kuindzhi (1878–1910). He also travelled to Sweden. Ruszczyc was influenced by the Russian art circle Mir Iskusstva (World of Art, est. 1898) and is often compared with Nordic (e.g., Akseli Gallen-Kallela; Finnish, 1865–1931) and German (e.g., Otto Modersohn; 1865–1943) artists. His visions of nature are sometimes raw monumental images of the northern landscape or fairy-tale fantasies containing symbolic allusiveness and a mythical, poetic element that evoke intimate memories of the land of his childhood. In his paintings, Ruszczyc presented the changeability of seasons, orchards, soil and streams, clouds formations, and tree trunks with palpable emotion. By exposing the material substance of nature, his paintings also reveal its mystical aspect, its ability to transform in accordance with the cyclical, cosmic rhythm of growth, maturation, death, and rebirth.

Участие художников-мирискусников в книжных проектах издателя З. Гржебина (1917-1922)

The paper is devoted to the study of the printed heritage of famous artists belonging to the “Mir iskusstva” (World of Art) society. The research aims to shed light on the history of participation of Miriskusnik artists (members of the “Mir iskusstva” society) in the book projects of the publisher Z. Grzhebin (1917-1922). A new chapter is opened, i.e. the printed works of Miriskusniks in children’s books, a completely new side of activities for graphic artists of the late XIX – early XX century. The paper presents the search in the design and creation of children’s books – richly illustrated books, providing insight into the dramatic plot through drawings, having an educational impact. The research is novel in that it determines various creative search options chosen by Miriskusnik artists when working on illustrations: the predominance of the drawing over the text, change of capital letters and inscriptions, introduction of a jobbing font set, which promoted a new interpretation of book images. As a result, it has been substantiated that the publishing house of Zinovii Isaevich Grzhebin remained a stronghold of high aesthetic taste, compliance with the demands of an intelligent public and a laboratory of creativity for artists and the publisher.

Japonisme in Russian Printed Graphics at the End Of the 19th – the Beginning of the 20th Century

Japonisme is a complex phenomenon, based on the pervasion of Japanese culture into Western culture. Russian artists comprehended it mainly in Europe at the same time as the latest trends in Western art. In their memoirs, the names of Hokusai, Hiroshige and Utamaro are often found: The acquaintance with the engravings of these masters had a great influence on the visual language of a generation of artists in Europe and Russia. Immersion in the technique of Japanese ukiyo-e woodcuts led to experiments, the result of which was the reception by Russian artists of several principles of graphic interpretation of depicted objects, spatial structure, and composition. One of the first Russian artists, who began to work in color engraving was M. V. Yakunchikova. In her works a fusion of various trends is noticeable, among which are the innovative ideas of European artists, and the influence of Japanese woodcuts, and the aestheticism of the “Mir Iskusstva”. The main features of Yakunchikova’s etchings are the conciseness and restraint of the compositions, the absence of excessive detail, the smoothness of the lines and the silhouette of the construction. A. P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva enriched Russian woodcut with color and abandoned the stroke, putting the silhouette and the generalized line in the first place. Her works are characterized by subtle lyricism at the same time as a strictly built composition. V. D. Falileev also worked in the technique of linocut. He created several talented works that demonstrated her wide visual capabilities. Along with recognized masters such as Yakunchikova, Ostroumova-Lebedeva and Falileev, lesser-known masters such as N. N. Zeddeler and A. P. Somova-Zeddeler. Until recently their works did not attract the attention of researchers, but at the beginning of the twentieth century their work was an integral part of artistic life. Despite the presence of a fairly large number of publications devoted to Japonisme and its influence on European art, this topic remains insufficiently studied in Russian art. Japonisme has become one of the important features of the Art Nouveau style, which is characterized by spatial convention, silhouette construction, the rhythm of color spots and other techniques aimed at creating laconic and decorative artistic images.

On Ideological and Aesthetic Program of “Herald of Literature and Art” of Nikolay Adonts

Among the first literary-and-art magazines of the late XIX – early XX centuries, which had played a noticeable role in nurturing aesthetic tastes of educated Armenians, one should name “Բանբեր գրականության և արվեստի [Herald of Literature and Art]” (Saint-Petersburg, 1903-1904) under the editorship of the outstanding Armenian historian and philologist Nikolay Adonts (Nikoghayos Ter-Avetikyan, 1871-1942). The ideological and aesthetic program of “Herald” was of a pronounced decadent nature, and this was declared both in the editor’s introductory note, signed by Nikolay Adonts, and in his article “Literary Essays: Decadence and Symbolism”. The same position was also held by the anonymous commentator of the art album, concluding the magazine, where, along with the works of such masters of Western European and Russian visual art as Dante-Gabriel Rossetti, Eugene Carriere, Arnold Böklin, Franz Stuck, Hans Thoma, Friedrich Kaulbach, Leon Bakst and others, paintings by Armenian artists were reproduced as well. However, only the works of E. Carriere’s pupil Arminia Babayan and F. Kaulbach’s pupil Vardges Surenyants could stand the proximity to the Europeans. Vardges Surenyants participated in selecting illustrations for “Herald”, too, giving preference to the Munich school of Jugendstil, with the early examples of which he had become acquainted in his student years in the Bavarian capital. The same spirit of Munich Jugendstil marked the graphic design of the magazine. The ideological and aesthetic program of Nikolay Adonts’s “Herald” was close to a number of foreign and Russian art editions, such as “La Revue blanche” and ”Art et décoration” in France, ”Pan”, ”Jugend”, ”Ver Sacrum”, ”Insel” in Germany and Austria, ”The Yellow Book” in England and particularly – “Mir iskusstva [World of Art]”, coming out in Saint-Petersburg from 1898. It ceased to exist in 1904, the same year as Nikolay Adonts’s magazine.

“Construction and Decorative Art” Magazine: A Forgotten Word in the Russian Artistic Criticism of the Early 20th Century

The article is devoted to the history of the Moscow magazine “Construction and Decorative Art”, which played a significant role in Russian art criticism in 1903, despite its short (within six months) existence. This topic needs to be addressed due to the small number of comprehensive studies in the field of Russian art criticism of the early 20th century. On the basis of archival materials of censorship, the article reconstructs the creation circumstances of two homogeneous magazines (“Architecture and Decorative Art”, renamed “Free Art”, and “Construction and Decorative Art”) and their actual transformation into one press organ. There is examined the rapprochement of the architects Vasily Borin and Leonid Betelev with the scandalous journalist Alexey Filippov, their struggle for the permission to publish a new Moscow magazine about art in 1900—1902, the patronizing attitude of the Main Directorate for Press Affairs and the Moscow Governor-General to the new initiative of Filippov. The author introduces into scientific circulation important recorded sources related to the transfer of the rights to publish the magazine to Vasily Borin, and his attempt to pass off the former magazine of Filippov and Betelev as his own (hitherto non-existent) magazine “Free Art”. The article analyzes three issues of the illustrated magazine “Construction and Decorative Art” published in 1903. Basing on the data on the magazine’s format and prices, the author concludes that the publication turned out to be expensive and, therefore, unprofitable. The article pays particular attention to the views of Borin and Filippov on the development of contemporary art, Art Nouveau, and the activities of the artists of the group “Mir Iskusstva” (“World of Art”). In the context of a meaningful analysis of the magazine’s articles, there is discussed the honoring of the architect Nikolai Nikitin in connection with his anniversary. The author poses the question of how the issues of “Free Art” at the end of 1903 should be assessed. There are analyzed the causes for the mysterious closure of both the magazines in 1904—1905, which was not formalized in accordance with the law.

The image of Finland at the exhibitions of artists association “Mir Iskusstva” (World of Art)

The complex and ambiguous relations between Russia and Finland at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were reflected in the cultural sphere, in particular, at the exhibitions of the most “pro-Western” art association of Russia “Mir Iskusstva” (World of Art). The image of Finnish nature, created at the “Mir Iskusstva” (World of Art) exhibitions, revealed the poetic charm of the natural, dim beauty of the northern landscape, which has common features with the Central Russian landscape. He contributed to the formation of a common cultural integrity, allowing researchers to talk about the uniform features of the northern version of the Art Nouveau style, common to both Russian and Finnish art.

Петербургский текст в «Воспоминаниях» М.В. Добужинского

Mstislav Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957) was one of the members of the artistic movement Mir Iskusstva, a cityscape painter, book illustrator, scene designer, and also wrote memoirs. He had been writing his Vospominaniya [Recollections] for over 30 years, from the mid-1920s to his death in 1957. Emigration, home-sickness, author’s intention to relive the foretime stipulate the specificity of the text’s chronotope, which is mainly related to Petersburg. Dobuzhinsky idealized the image of Petersburg in Vospominaniya. I determine the specificity of Petersburg’s chronotope and describe the interconnections between the delineation of Petersburg and its verbal image in the text. The theme of depicting Petersburg highlights Dobuzhinsky’s artworks. Dobuzhinsky perceived Petersburg as a piece of art and focused on his own visual interpretation of the city. His attitude to Petersburg metamorphosed with the autobiographic main character’s acquisition of new art techniques and artistic devices from works of Alexandre Benois and E. T. A. Hoffmann. Petersburg’s chronotope is multifaceted in the text: it is a real historical cityscape, a happy childhood time, an object of visual art of the autobiographic main character, and also a space of author mystification. The main character perceives Petersburg and the Petersburg text through the prism of works of Alexander Pushkin and Fyodor Dostoevsky. The city becomes the author’s ideal. It is the space that combines the features of the beautiful and the ugly, which determined the antinomy of the Petersburg text. Petersburg is fantastic, it has an infernal theme, an evil principle inherent in the city: in inclement weather, the main character had nightmares in the streets and petty demons coming out of the cracks. The narrator recognizes the city as an inspired creature hostile to man, the main character himself is confronted with a peculiar manifestation of Petersburg’s metaphysical fear. In the narration, Petersburg reflected the various features inherent in the image of the city in Dobuzhinsky’s artworks with their aestheticism, tragedy, lyricism, irony, philosophy, and sentimentality. Petersburg in Vospominaniya concentrates different real and unreal meanings. The autobiographic main character teeters on the brink of his historical real-life time and space and unreal time and space created by literature texts and pieces of visual art that compensate the need for comprehending the city’s soul. Petersburg in the text is a complex ambivalent space, saturated with cultural codes, reflected by the cognizing consciousness that acts systematically and transforms the main character’s inner world. The theme of depicting Petersburg allows the author-narrator to reveal the general approach to his pictorial art, rethink some aspects of artistic activity, and verbalize the visual representation of the city. The author declares no conflicts of interests.

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

Guest Editor's Introduction: The Ballets Russes in North America

Причины и особенности обращения к художественной традиции мирискусников в последней трети XX - начале XXI века

The research objectives are as follows: to identify the causes of Miriskusniks’ (members of the artistic movement “Mir Iskusstva” (1898-1927)) artistic tradition revival among domestic painters, to reveal the specificity of this process. By the example of A. A. Mylnikov’s and A. V. Khvastunova’s creative works the researcher analyzes the existing approaches to using figurative language associated with Art Nouveau style. Scientific originality of the study lies in the fact that the author identifies the specificity of pre-revolutionary artistic tradition representation in visual art of the end of the XX - the beginning of the XXI century. As a result, it is shown that Miriskusniks’ artistic tradition revival can be explained by the existence of collective memories about Russian Silver Age and Art Nouveau style.

Взаимосвязь стилистики модерна и эмоциональной реакции зрителя на художественные образы в графике А. В. Хвастуновой

The paper aims to identify specificity of a spectator’s emotional response to Art Nouveau images created by the talented modern painter A. V. Khvastunova. The article reveals the potential of the figurative language introduced by the Miriskusniks (members of the artistic movement “Mir Iskusstva (World of Art)” (1898-1927)). The author shows how the Art Nouveau style influences a spectator’s emotional response, and herein lies scientific originality of the study. The conducted analysis allows concluding that at the beginning of the XXI century, A. V. Khvastunova successfully uses such elements of the Art Nouveau style as line, stain and stroke, which not only decorate a picture but express the author’s emotions, thus participating in an image formation.

Графика А. В. Хвастуновой: использование стиля модерн для эстетизации повседневной действительности в XXI веке

The paper examines the modern painter A. V. Khvastunova’s creative activity whose works are based on everyday reality aesthetization. The article clarifies ways to solve the problem that proved to be a sticking point for the Miriskusniks (members of the artistic movement “Mir Iskusstva (World of Art)”). Scientific originality of the study lies in a description of the artistic method which involves positive perception of the aesthetized reality represented by the Art Nouveau artistic means. As a result, it is shown that rich figurativeness of A. V. Khvastunova’s works allows describing everyday reality by means of a refined artistic language.

Beardsley Men in Early Twentieth-Century Russia: Modernising Decadent Masculinity

This article explores the reception of the Decadent artist Aubrey Beardsley (1872–1898) in Russia concentrating on new gendered meanings acquired by ‘Beardsleyism’ in modernist Russian culture. While the so-called ‘Beardsley Woman’ became a widely discussed literary construct and journalistic trope in Britain, the imagination of Russian artists and literati was captured by a ‘Beardsley Man’. Due to the circulation of the artist's portraits and descriptions by modernist periodicals such as Sergei Diaghilev's Mir iskusstva (1899–1904), a specific form of male (self-)representation emerged in the homophile art circles of St Petersburg and Moscow. Exploring this new urban Russian masculinity, I use the case studies of four men who were compared to Beardsley or used Beardsley as a model in their work and self-fashioning: artist Nikolai Feofilaktov, poet Georgii Ivanov, writers Mikhail Kuzmin and Iurii Iurkun.

«...Этот план задуман мною...»: к истории забытого письма Д. Мережковского в редакцию «Мира искусства»

The paper clarifies the circumstances of the publication of a little-known letter by D. Merezhkovskiy in the “Mir Iskusstva” (“World of Art”) journal. The letter was published under the same rubric as a letter by Yu. Ozarovskiy, director of the Alexandrinsky Theatre, a person far from the journal’s editorial board, giving the impression of a public debate between like-minded people. Recreating the details of the struggle for setting ancient Greek tragedies in D. Merezhkovskiy’s translations on the stages of Russian theatres, based on forgotten publications of those years, indicates that the staging of “Hippolytus”, a tragedy by Euripides, was regarded by the “Mir Iskusstva” association as evidence of the effectiveness of their program in the struggle for new theatrical art. It was not D. Merezhkovskiy who played the leading role in this process, as he wrote in his letter, but D. Filosofov, who sought to stage the tragedy as a mystery play. Disagreements between D. Merezhkovskiy and the creative association of the “Mir Iskusstva” appeared later, when their aesthetic, religious, and philosophical views began to differ. However, during the production of “Hippolytus”, these differences did not prevent them from participating in joint projects as a new artistic force. It should be recognized that ancient Greek tragedies in D. Merezhkovskiy’s translations played a part in the history of the Russian theatre: the debate about the concept of performances, the specifics of L. Bakst’s sets, and musical accompaniments was an important step in the development of the theatre in expanding its expressive capabilities.

Dialogue on the turns. Vasily Surikov and “modernism”: relationship сonflict

The article deals with the peculiarities of the dialogue which occurred at the turn of the 19th century between the creative searches of Surikov and the newest modernist trends in Russia: from Symbolism of the artists of the World of Art (known in Russian as Mir Iskusstva) group and the Blue Rose (Golubaya Roza) circle to the different stages of the Russian avant-garde – from the Jack of Diamonds (Bubnovy Valet) to Suprematism. The composition of the study is based on the counterpoint of two questions – how Surikov perceived “modernism” and how “modernism” perceived Surikov. The concept of “modernism” in this case is interpreted in the extended sense of the creative search to the early 20th century for unconventional art of magical and plastic means of expression that went beyond the limits of the Itinerant (Рeredvizhniki) Movement’s realism. The collision of relationships is viewed through the prism of the stable plastic and emotional features of the artistic poetics of Surikov himself. That is why the author touches the issues of the artists’s personal understanding of the nature of art and the problems of innovation, which worried him until the end of his life and found expression in the decorative, lyrical and expressive features of the late creative period.

The Past as “self-citations”: The 18th century and its creative reflection in the works of the members of the World of Art Movement

The article gives an analytical review of the visual poetics of the works of Mir iskusstva (World of Art) artistic group in the context of the relationship of the innovative features of the Art Nouveau with the Past. The perception of Time through the images of Art, inherent in the symbolist worldview, is considered as one of the main sources that gives the retrospective dreams of the leading World of Art masters the character of a subjectively significant poetic longing for an ideal. Nostalgia for the imaginary past, the appropriation of its artistic reality to its own inner world, led the artists of the group to the path of turning a “quote” into a “self-citation”, a “sample” into an “image”, a “copy” into a “likeness”. This process expanded the semantic component of the artistic language, opening up new possibilities for the synthesis of the past and the presentin the creative practice of the first third of the 20th century.

К истории текста предисловия ко второму тому книги Д.С. Мережковского «Л. Толстой и Достоевский»

The article analyzes the origins of the Preface to the second volume, Religion, of Dmitry Merezhkovsky’s book L. Tolstoy and Dostoevsky (1900–1902). The first publication of the book in Mir iskusstva ended with a Conclusion. When preparing a separate publication of his work (1902), Merezhkovsky published the Conclusion of Religion as a Preface without changing the original text. He used the revised text of the Conclusion for a paper entitled “Leo Tolstoy and the Russian Church” (1903). The paper includes the key points of the talk; it is an almost exact copy of the Preface to the second and third editions of the book (1903, 1909), as well as to both editions of the author’s complete works (Vol. VIII, 1912; Vol. XI, 1914). The article attempts to show the evolution of the author’s original design, explain the motives that encouraged Merezhkovsky to publish the text, reconstruct the context of the heated arguments about his book as well as his reasons to give a talk “Fathers and children of Russian liberalism” (1901).

Венецианская сюита А. В. Хвастуновой в контексте теории художественного совершенства И. А. Ильина

The paper aims to identify examples of ideal pictorial works from the talented modern painter A. V. Khvastunova’s cycle “Venice, XVIII Century” and to establish a place of these works in domestic art history. The article reveals a technique to achieve perfection of graphical works on the basis of the figurative language associated with Art Nouveau aesthetics. Scientific originality of the study involves identifying influence of “Mir Iskusstva” (1898-1927) and “Blue Rose” (1907-1910) artistic traditions on modern domestic art. The research findings are as follows: the author shows that the XXI-century painter A. V. Khvastunova, following artistic principles of “Blue Rose” representatives, continued the work to renovate Miriskusniks’ artistic tradition and managed to expand the spectrum of emotions imparted in an artwork.