VERB Sergey see GOLOUSHEV Sergey Sergeevich

DIAGILEV Sergei Pavlovich 19 (31) 3/1872 - 19/8/1929 Theater and artistic figure, one of the founders and editors of the magazine "World of Art". Organizer of the "Russian Seasons" in Paris. "Elegant, not quite, but almost" master ", with an admixture of something else, with a

SERGEY GLAGOL, see GOLOUSHEV Sergey Sergeevich

SOLOVIEV Sergei Mikhailovich October 13 (25), 1885 - March 2, 1942 Poet, literary critic, translator, memoirist. Publications in the magazines "Scales", "Golden Fleece", "Questions of Life", in the collections "Free Conscience". Poetic books “Flowers and incense. The First Book of Poems (Moscow, 1907), Crurifragium. Poems and

When we hear about our Silver Age, everyone imagines it in their own way: some solid, bright, dynamic, relatively prosperous time with its own special face, or this time of unrest, decadence, "the end of the world", the time of "the coming boor" (D .Merezhkovsky), filled with tragic forebodings:
Twentieth century ... More homeless
Even worse than life is darkness
Even blacker and bigger
Shadow of Lucifer's wing.
unheard changes,
Unforeseen riots...
The twentieth century did not give a person, and even more so an artist, harmony with the century, on the contrary:
“Well, man? - Behind the roar of steel,
In fire, powder smoke,
What fiery distances
Have you opened your eyes?
Merciless end of Messina
Elemental forces cannot be overcome
And the relentless roar of the machine
Forging death day and night.
A. Tolstoy in 1921, in an article dedicated to S. Sudeikin, writes about this time as follows:
"I remember how in 1910 we were waiting for the end of the world: the tail of Halley's comet was supposed to touch the ground and instantly saturate the air with deadly cyanide gases. Thus, a decade before the World War, before the death of the Russian Empire, all Russian art, from top to bottom, in a vague premonition death, was one cry of mortal anguish. In painting there was sophistication, voluptuousness of form; in poetry - a white lady; in the novel - the sermon of suicides; in music, the most clairvoyant of the arts - flaming chaos. The Poem of Fire is a direct indication of the coming upheaval of the world "
In any case, this is a time that is very different from what was before and what came after. This era, a quarter of a century long, extends between the time of Alexander III and the seventeenth year of our century. During this period, new trends in art and personalities appear as if from a cornucopia: Z. Serebryakova, Mashkov, Kuprin, Goncharova, Golovin, Somov, Sapunov, B. Grigoriev, Larionova, Petrova-Vodkin, Kustodiev, M. Chagall and..... - 70 names in total... What artists! What names! And the poets... What poets! A. Blok, Mandelstam, M. Tsvetaeva, A. Akhmatova, I. Severyanin, S. Gorodetsky, M. Kuzmin ... and .. - no less than the number of artists. Not all of them were immediately called great or famous, but they were all creators of the image of the Silver Age. They suffered, loved, made friends, betrayed, created, joked, played, argued, opened exhibitions and clubs in which they tried to hide their the true "I", to escape from Time, but it overtook, overthrew the old, boring and created a new art, called symbolism in poetry, modernity in painting.
The art of the Silver Age can be likened to a colossal tragic-ironic epic with its heroes - geniuses, half-saints, victims, priests, warriors, seers, workers and demons.
Did the participants in this flourishing but ruined Russian renaissance themselves realize that they were living in a time of cultural and spiritual renaissance? Rather, no, but, of course, they felt the breath of the Epoch and their mission in it.

(1882-1946)
Sergei Sudeikin... one of 70, one of many... Yes, he did not become great, but how he dreamed, how he yearned for fame and partly tasted it during his lifetime, and then complete oblivion. There are no studies, monographs about him. Only a few articles, one of which is A. Tolstoy (1921), Kogan's pamphlet about the pre-Soviet period of S. Sudeikin's work and a lot of poems dedicated to him and his paintings by his contemporaries. Among them are A. Akhmatova, N. Gumilyov ("Journey to China"), S. Gorodetsky, Zenkevich, M. Kuzmin and many others.

A. Akhmatova drawing by S. Sudeikin
REFERENCE
This somewhat stylized drawing was written by S. Sudeikin in ink on the letterhead of the journal "Russian Icon" in the editorial office of the journal "Apollo". He himself did not attach any importance to it and threw it away, but his faithful friend A. Akhmatova Lozinsky (later a well-known translator) picked it up, made a frame and did not part with it all his life. There is also a pencil portrait of Akhmatova, made by Sudeikin in her album, which is kept in the RGALI. The appearance of Akhmatova is stylized in it under the Greek archaic.

Anna Akhmatova to Sergei Sudeikin

The course of simple harsh days is calm,
I humbly accept all transformations.
In my memory treasury
Your words, smiles and movements.

This is the one who gave me the zither
In the quiet hour of earthly miracles,
It's the one who's on his palette
Threw a rainbow of heaven

And, perhaps, his silhouette - the silhouette of S. Sudeikin - will open to us a new facet of this great world called the Silver Age. Perhaps we, like Anna Akhmatova, will be able to see the "rainbow of heaven" by S. Sudeikin.

E.S. Kruglikova Silhouette of S.Yu. Sudeikin.

Act 1: "Everything starts here..."

Get comfortable in your chair. Imagine that you are in a theater, perhaps absurd. But in the theatre. The curtain opens!
As a rule, the study of biography begins with the family, but there is practically no information about his upbringing. His father was a gendarmerie lieutenant colonel.

Contemporaries said (almost paraphrasing his own words): “If he had not been a gendarme, he would have been Edison. He has creative energy. He regrets that life pushed him into the detective field. But what to do, it's too late to go back. Father, Georgy Porfiryevich Sudeikin, was killed, killed harshly, cruelly, with two crowbars, but not every gendarmerie lieutenant colonel is killed. Sergei Porfiryevich - a somewhat legendary personality, a "genius of detective work", recruitment, hoaxes; it is he who owns the masterful (no other way to say) disclosure and destruction of the organization "Narodnaya Volya" (for more details, see here:). It was he who became the prototype of Ernst Fandorin at Akunin.
At that time, Sergei Sudeikin was only a year old. Therefore, he could not know his father. However, having barely matured, he immediately abandoned his patronymic, and we know him as Sergei Yuryevich, and not Sergei Georgievich. Why? Yes, the memory of this story was still very, very alive, and they spoke of Georgy Porfirievich only as a notorious swindler, an adventurer, albeit a very talented person. To disown the unsightly past, even from his father - this is how Sergei's youth began Sudeikin. But where are the genes going? And I think that talent, and a passion for hoaxes, outrageousness and an indestructible desire to become famous, to be higher, to become higher, better than everyone, the idea that he is underestimated - are they from there, from the roots of relatives ...

And about his mother - not a word, not a portrait. But there was still something from childhood, adolescence, which left a mark on the soul. Here is what A. Tolstoy writes in his article:
The old landowner's estate filled his soul with charm: undulating fields covered with bread and spots of peacefully grazing cattle; a country road along which, in the distance, in a cloud of dust, a retired staff captain gallops in a britzka, hurrying to visit somewhere; the green twilight of a grove, where barefoot beauties in colored sarafans dance, and the gentleman with a pipe under an oak tree looks at them, affectionate, strong, shy, and does not look enough ... "

S. Sudeikin In the orchard

Summer day in early autumn

yellow kite

Sergey Sudeikin studied a lot and hard: for more than 10 years at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, then with Serov and Korovin, then with the famous Kardovsky. Why so long? Not from mediocrity, but to some extent out of stupidity, youthful prowess or a desire to shock, show himself. Together with the future leader of the avant-garde movement Mikhail Larionov, he was expelled and deprived of the right to exhibit and participate in public events. His exile, which was explained by inattention to the educational process, was caused, in fact, by excessive frankness, obscenity and even eroticism, which filled the work of Sudeikin.

But he did not worry, did not yearn for the incomprehensibility of what creative personalities are prone to, but worked and worked, and by the time he finally received a diploma of a non-class artist, he was already known both in theatrical circles as a production designer and among literary and poetic bohemia. A. Tolstoy recalls: “Moscow revealed to him a cheerful, full-blooded, living reality. No effort could be made from this cheerful village into an industrial, dull city. places that could digest any kind of logic, any kind of despondency."

Toys

Tray
“Once Sudeikin,” A. Tolstoy continues, “told me about how he feasted across the Moskva River, somewhere in Devkin Lane, at a merchant’s wedding — Ostrovsky himself would grunt with pleasure, listening to this story.

And then he:
"Sudeikin is disgusted by modernity - an asphalt street with all its obvious logic, the dull faces of the crowd, dusty clothes. His eye pierces, like a mirage, the rancid vanity of modernity, forgotten by the Lord God, and by some elusive signs, indistinct outlines creates a bright and joyful life in clothes of the past.

Walking 1906

Here is the first combination of duality: Sudeikin is all in the past, but he is all alive, joyful, real. There is not a drop of the sweet poison of melancholy in him. Modernity slips him an asphalt, rancid from boredom, devil, and he writes from him a magnificent, cheerful girl in a kokoshnik and a sundress, and you feel: she is alive, she is among us - only creative will is needed to, having overcome the dusty veil of modernity, enter again into the dewy garden of the Lord God."

Night Feast 1905
Creative zeal, irrepressible desire to participate in everything at once, inexhaustible energy, as if in a hurry to catch up, overtake, do better, bigger, brighter, more original, made him participate in many, as they say now, projects. Let us dwell on those of them in which a lot of his soul, searches, impulses were invested, where his organizational and creative talent was manifested. On those that to a large extent can show us the era.

Act 2: "Blue Rose", "Golden Fleece"

On March 18, 1907, in Moscow on Myasnitskaya Street, in the house of the porcelain manufacturer M. Kuznetsov, an exhibition was opened, the ideological inspirer of which, S. Sudeikin was its motor. Strangeness and unusualness are already in the name - "Blue Rose".

Not cornflowers with forget-me-nots, not outlandish hydrangeas, but an unprecedented blue rose. Such a flower does not exist in nature. He can only dream or become a symbol of something beautiful and distant.

Firwaldstet Lake - Windrose,
Seven petals sway in the wind
This rose has formed between the royal mountains
In an emerald-azure pattern.
The mountains stood all around, flowers are happy in the snow,
One is called the Young Virgin there.
With this distant Virgin you are merged by fate,
Rose-moisture, blue flower.

Perhaps, thanks to this poem by Balmont, the phrase "blue rose" was heard. Or perhaps the name of the exhibition asserted the primacy of blue in the palette as a world of fantasy, magic, dreams of the unprecedented and non-existent. This name emphasized the proximity of the artists of this association (N. Sapunov, N. Krymov, Ivan Knabe, Pavel Kuznetsov, M. Saryan, Sergey Sudeikin, Petr Utkin, 16 artists in total) to Moscow symbolist poets and symbolist composers, such as Scriabin or Medtner.

Students of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture: Pyotr Utkin, Vladimir Polovinkin, Martiros Saryan, Mikhail Kuznetsov, Pavel Kuznetsov. Subsequently, they all began to participate in the Blue Rose exhibitions.
1904
All of them could be met in the "Society of Free Aesthetics", where the "Blue Bears" stood out for their extravagance of behavior and manners, which, in their opinion, befits the new reformers of life. Fyodor Sologub wrote about the artistic transformation of life in the spring of 1907: “I take a piece of life, rough and poor, and create a sweet legend out of it, for I am a poet.” Konstantin Balmont urged to change the world and life with a creative take-off of talent:

God created the world out of nothing.
And if your talent is a grain,
Do wonders for her
Grow endless forests
And himself, like a fabulous bird,
Fly high into the sky
Where free lightning shines,
Where is the eternal cloudy surf
Runs through the blue abyss.

Sea idyll

The backbone of the association was made up of participants in the exhibition "Scarlet Rose", held in 1904.

The halls, decorated with silver-gray and pale blue fabrics, housed paintings and graphic works, which were characterized by flatness and decorative stylization of forms.
The program of these artists was close to the symbolism of the poets of the Russian "Silver Age". It is no coincidence that A. Bely, V. Bryusov, K. Balmont read their poems there, the music of A. Scriabin sounded. S. Makovsky wrote about the Blue Rose exhibition: “Light. Quiet. And the pictures are like prayers... So far from the vain routine of European secessions and from the boudoir elegance of Diaghilev's exhibitions. The painters of the "Blue Rose" combined in their paintings the western decorative art of A. Matisse and M. Denis with elements of oriental art, an icon, a parsina, a Russian popular print. They created a peculiar type of panel painting, a tapestry painting, slightly stylized as classical art of the 18th century.

Marquise walk to the island of love

The exclusivity of the "Blue Rose" consisted in the fact that its artists were able to plastically express intangible categories - emotions, moods, emotional experiences. The works of young Muscovites amazed with delicate, smoky, as if melting colors and unsteady, elusive forms. Their favorite motifs are reflections in the water, fog, mirrors, clouds, the world of the theater with the magic lights of the footlights and the miraculous transformations taking place on the stage.

P. Kuznetsov "Blue Fountain"

S. Sudeikin Love

Blue color - the color of the sky, water, endless space - as if personified a poetic dream and reality, melancholy and hope.
Unlike most of the other "Blue Bearers", Sudeikin (not without the influence of his friend Somov) professed a certain "ironic symbolism", turning his paintings into picturesque popular prints on the themes of art, folklore, or "beautiful antiquity". These colorful, almost puppet mini-shows with emphatically “fake” figures and surroundings became the link between his painting and stage design.
Like Benois and Somov, Sudeikin turned to past eras in his work - but, perhaps, less clearly.

Mikhailovsky park

In the park 1907

The action of the artist's paintings, in particular the work "In the Park" (1907), usually takes place in English parks, with all the attributes of an old garden: an indispensable rotunda gazebo with a bright domed roof; enveloping the green hill are the steps of the stone stairs; trimmed clumps of trees; semi-cascade-semi-fountain, now overthrowing, then raising jets of water from the holes of huge decorative bowls standing on top of each other. There is also a pond here, reflecting the rotunda, there is also a boat, under the sail of which the lovers nestled ... And yet there is no garden, more precisely, there is no garden space. Flattened to a carpeted plane, this Sudeikin park is devoid of perspective: a green hill with trees “suspended” like a dark impenetrable wall. A visible small spot of light can turn out to be either a distant gap between the trees or a flash of fireworks. Diffused gloomy light gives these “scenes of the times of sentimentalism” a sense of dreaminess and an acute longing for the unrealizable.
The main paradox of Sudeikin's painting lies in the combination of the refinement of the old "park" plot with the deliberate popular spirit of the canvas, and he wins.

According to the definition of A. Efros, "the first group of Goluborozov, Kuznetsov" was decorative, the second, "Sapunov" - decorative, because "one introduced the techniques of the stage into painting, the other - the techniques of painting on the stage"
The style of S. Sudeikin, juicy, decorative, as already mentioned, using the techniques of Russian popular print, folk primitive - is typical of the “Blue Bears” and “Moscow World of Art”. But sometimes this style acquires a special, aesthetic refinement.

Russian Venus 1906

Pastoral 1906

New moon

The exhibition of young innovators caused a fierce controversy among the artistic intelligentsia. I. E. Grabar spoke with sharp criticism in the journal “Vesy”, urging the Blue Bears to leave the “realm of shadows” for the sunny world of reality. A harsh response to Grabar from V. Milioti was placed on the pages of the Golden Fleece magazine. By the way, many of the "Goluborozites" collaborated with the "Golden Fleece" magazine.

Landscape Lithograph 1907
In the "Golden Fleece" the individuality of creative manners was cultivated. One of his most beautiful publications is Balmont's cycle of poems "Dance of Times" (1907, Nos. 11-12), where 12 months and "father-year" are presented on separate pages filled with graphics. Among the artists of this cycle are Kuznetsov, Utkin, Drittenpreis, Arapov, N.P. Ulyanov, Bilibin, Yuon, Masyutin and S. Sudeikin.

April "Golden Fleece"

“April” is decorated with winding branches of curly trees performed by Sudeikin. Among them is a horsewoman. Pink garlands fall from her saddle, and the horse's mane curls into a transparent train, from which, like a cornucopia, flowers fall. And below, and in the branches of trees, the contours of children's figures, reminiscent of Kuznetsov's babies, appear. Sudeikin is trying to combine the ornamental style with the mysticism of generative space, which obviously goes back to Kuznetsov.
The artists of the Blue Rose were by nature theater-goers and decorators, mystics and hoaxers. It is no coincidence that Sapunov and Sudeikin became first-class theater artists.
The Blue Rose Association ceased to exist only in 1910. More than five thousand people visited the Exhibition.

Act 3: "He was all permeated with the theater"

In the same 1910, S. Sudeikin met A. Benois and soon became a permanent member of the "World of Arts" association. From that moment on, the artist consciously departs from the symbolism of the Blue Rose artists. In the 1910s, Sergei Yuryevich Sudeikin most clearly revealed himself as an easel and theater artist, he became a participant in the exhibitions of the World of Art association, whose leaders led the process of rapprochement between painting and theater.

Winter 1910

Dance of the Goats 1910

Lovers in the Moonlight 1910

Allegorical scene 1910

The Shepherd's Dream 1910

enchanted landscape
The theater attracted them as an opportunity to embody the idea of ​​"synthesis of the arts". This idea was attractive to many creative people of the "Silver Age" as a symbol of the dream of a harmonious beautiful space of art, where a new aestheticized world would be created. It was the theatrical action, when literature, music, choreography and painting came together on the stage, that most closely corresponded to the ideas of synthetic art. Such ideas were especially close to Sudeikin, he actively collaborated with various theaters, considering the artistic design of the performance an equal part of the stage performance. He emphasized all the time: "I am a painter in the theater - first of all a painter, and then, if necessary, a decorator."

On the stage

Spanish dancers

Passion for ballet, for dance was another aesthetic utopia that captured Sudeikin, like many contemporaries who saw in the emancipation of the body, in the harmony of its forms, in beauty and
the looseness of his movements is the condition of freedom.
In the foreground of S. Sudeikin's compositions, there is usually a duet or a group of dancers, which, gradually fading into the background, breaks up into separate figures.
In the pictures, there are formally no main characters, whose place is occupied by the group. However, the life of this group does not exhaust the content of the work. The allegorical figures of animals, cupids and angels are just as beautiful and significant for Sudeikin, they are organically woven into the character and melody of the dance, into the whole fabric of the pictorial narrative, because Sudeikin's ballet is a ballet-fairy tale, ballet-joke, ballet-irony.

ballet pastoral

In interaction with the images of the characters, the theme of the landscape also arises. Nature in works
Sudeikina is an essential part of the picture, helping the artist to reveal his own original method of understanding and interpreting the ballet plot.

Pavlova in ballet

Ballet 1910
In this regard, the painting "Ballet" is especially indicative. Nature and dance are perhaps the main themes of this work. And its meaning is the dissolution of the spiritual state of the hero in the environment of nature. The life of nature and the life of the soul, the mood of nature and the mood of the dance are equated to each other. The even cold color of the "Ballet", which makes one feel the very creed of the Symbolists - the aroma of the fabulous flower "Blue Rose", is not similar to the lively color stroke of the "Ballet Pastoral" or "Ballet Apotheosis". Sudeikin's ballet characters are in a mysterious and enigmatic mood, their existence is not momentary, but eternal, they live and dance in these glades created by the artist's imagination, like on a theater stage, among clear ponds that reflect their figures along with morning sunrises and evening sunsets.
This painting by S. Sudeikin was dedicated to the poem of the same name by his friend M. Kuzmin.

BALLET (Painting by S. Sudeikin)
S. Sudeikin.

O sweet kingdom of ballet,
Old Watteau loved you!
Hello ghostly summer
You captivate us like nothing.
Bologna doctor, harlequins
And powder sensual waste!
Mandolins murmur in the distance
And the rumble of guitars murmur.
He kisses his hand... "Ah... I feel bad!
I can't bear betrayal
Where is the urn pale under the willow,
Where should I put my light ashes?"
But the yellow curtain sways
Batman, sock and peruet.
Beauty is breathing again
After all, this world is ballet, ballet!
Cupid, whom you sting with an arrow,
You yourself will hardly notice
Here is Colombina, oh, only one,
And there are two harlequins.
Dance, darlings, play
Joking and loving dream
And don't drop the curtain
Until the lampion goes out

In publications about S. Sudeikin, the authors repeatedly emphasize: "Sudeikin thinks in theatrical images, the theater has completely mastered his artistic worldview."
The "fatal" meeting between the artist Sudeikin and director Meyerhold took place at the Studio Theater on Povarskaya. It was organized by Stanislavsky in order to enable the talented and young Meyerhold to create a new theater. The first joint production was Maeterlinck's play The Death of Tentagil. According to the director's idea, it was built against the backdrop of curtains, like a plastic pantomime. Sudeikin tried to simplify everything as much as possible, to make his scenery as flat as possible. However, they turned out to be too refined in color.

As soon as the actors entered the environment of Sudeikin's scenery, they dissolved into them. Painting suppressed the theater, and Meyerhold immediately understood this. “Sudeikin gave a bluish-green space, a beautiful world. Huge fantastic flowers bloomed here, red and pink. Colored wigs - green and purple, purple clothes, like on the figures of saints, reminiscent of tunics, were in harmony with the scenery, ”wrote actress Valentina Verigina in her memoirs of Sudeikin.

In 1913, Sudeikin participated in the "Russian Seasons" in Paris, completing the scenery and costumes for the ballets "The Red Mask" by N. N. Tcherepnin and "The Tragedy of Salome" by F. Schmidt.

Salome 1 sketch

Salome 2 sketch

Salome 3 sketch
Tatyana Karsavina as Salome. 1913

In a Parisian cafe 1912

The still life genre inevitably expresses the spirit of the times, social changes, changes in tastes, sometimes programmatically declares them - these are (still lifes by S.Yu. Sudeikin). Since the 1910s association (“World of Art”), to which the artist belonged, is overwhelmed by a wave of epigonism, which leads to a complete loss of integrity, to the reconciliation of completely different artistic worldviews. These trends are reflected in the work of Sudeikin. He consciously combined his predilection for the old noble way of life (and in this he was a typical World of Art) with the colorfulness of popular popular prints. All this is read in "Still Life with a Vase", in which Empire and genuine Rococo coexist with stylization, with philistine embroideries, in coloring exquisite mother-of-pearl tones coexist with rough, deliberately primitive strokes of open brown. Sudeikin seems to be ironic over the adherents of strict taste and purity of style, deliberately creating a “new reality” from heterogeneous things. In fact, this still life perfectly expresses the program of the second stage of the existence of the "World of Art".

Still life with a vase

Still life (by the way, the painting was found in the apartment of Evgenia Vasilyeva, like many, many others)

Saxon figurines
Sudeikin turns even a still life into a theatrical mise-en-scene, where porcelain figurines appear instead of live actors.
For example, in the still life "Saxon figurines" the use of a townsman's scarf as a background
creates a folklore, ditty mood. And even a sophisticated viewer will need time to correlate such intonation with the fact that in Saxony, in Meissen, a porcelain manufactory was located at the court of Elector Augustus the Strong. Accordingly, the unification of the folk and the court is nothing more than a joke of the artist, "the person playing."

Still life with porcelain figurines and roses

Still life Flowers and figurine

They are truly dead nature - motionless, hollow from the inside, devoid of soul and will, once and for all frozen in a certain pose. This is how the artist exposes the fake essence of the theatre. Surrounding objects add up to a small world. Pots of flowers appear as overgrown trees or backstage. The tapestry seen behind them is like a theatrical scenery. Resorting to the intricate polysemy of the image, to the reception of a picture in a picture, Sudeikin reveals the fragility of the world of artistic illusion. The spicy sophistication of color combinations, the combination of coarse figures with the solemn symmetry of the composition fill the artificial world of still life with an atmosphere of aesthetic admiration. Figurines suddenly come to life in it, similar to the heroes of Andersen's fairy tale "The Shepherdess and the Chimney Sweep", who started an escape from their toy world.

By this time, the images of S. Sudeikin from the Italian comedy del "Arte" belong.

Venetian dolls fragment 1910

However, unlike his senior associates A. Benois, K. Somov, Sudeikin shows more irony and play in relation to his own characters. His reading of the XVII-XVIII centuries is not a literal translation of the era, but a happy opportunity to feel through the images of that time all the fragility of the line between theater and life, fantasy and reality. At the same time, this is an attempt to mystify the ordinary - to "hide" it under the mask of Harlequin. Notice how much black... Why? No, his interpretation is only outwardly, superficially reminiscent of Watteau or a friend of Somov: they have a tribute to fashion, an era, artistry, a game: Sudeikin has a thought, a different feeling, a deeper penetration into the character, into the character of a contemporary who put on the Harlequin mask. Lustful, frivolous to disgust... Yes, and Columbine is not at all a simpleton and an ideal to follow... They are completely different Colombina of the 20th century, and there is neither purity nor immediacy of charm in them, but all the same slightly covered lust and stupidity.

Masquerade
Compare illustrations. Which one is closer to the original is hard to say.
And A. Tolstoy:
"Sudeikin is an emphatically Russian artist. In him, that special feature is very much revealed, which seems to the simple eye to be a mockery of himself: for example, a person will draw a picture from all his spiritual agitation and in the end, somewhere on the side, he will smile, deliberately show a fig, - everything, they say, is on purpose ... everything, they say, is nothing "

Masquerade

Carousel 1910

A famous poem by Anna Akhmatova, where the lyrical heroine is presented in the guise of a rope dancer
Let my path be terrible, let it be dangerous,
Even more terrible is the path of longing...
How red is my Chinese umbrella,
Chalked shoes!

The orchestra plays merrily
And the lips are smiling.
But the heart knows, the heart knows
That the fifth box is empty!

Written based on the painting "Carousel", which has no analogues in the depiction of the spirit of the times, when all life is built according to the laws of the theater, and people rather resemble the characters of the play dell'arte. Life resembles a merry-go-round with its ever-childish joy, but adults take part in it, hiding their faces under masks; there is no real life, no true feelings in this world of fantasy and play. And this joy is invented, sugary. And the author is also involved in this whirlwind: he stands aloof in a corner, observing and making an unpleasant diagnosis for himself and his contemporaries. He understands everything, but he can do nothing: he is both a product of this time and its creator.
Here is how the art critic S. Makovsky, at that time the editor-in-chief and owner of the Apollo magazine, characterizes the work of S. Sudeikin in the 10s: , pastorals, allegories, carousels, shepherdesses, lambs, openwork, porcelain freaks, toy arlestines and showcase trinkets, animated dolls of all kinds and colorings from the fairy kingdoms of Andersen and Hoffmann, from the enchanted world of childhood memories and the world adjacent to it, where everything impossible seems Not only a Russian poet, but also a typical Muscovite, with an admixture of motley Asianism, this tireless science fiction writer playing with dolls, is so far from modernity and at the same time so close to it, conceivable only in our era, contradictory and chaotic who does not believe in anything and believes in all the fairy tales of beauty.

This situation was largely due to a sharp sense of the illusory nature, fragility and illusory nature of life on the eve of large-scale social upheavals, therefore, a thirst for hasty, incessant entertainment was poured in society, which gave way to an all-encompassing theatricalization. In Moscow and St. Petersburg in the pre-war years, new theaters, studios or cabarets were opened almost every month, some of them, such as Crooked Mirror, Stray Dog, Comedians' Halt, were associated with the activities of S.Yu. Sudeikin.

Act 4: "Stray Dog"

And the Stray Dog was opened by entrepreneur Boris Pronin in the basement of the House of Jacob. The strange name for a cabaret, the memoirist recalled, was born quite by accident. On one of the last days of December, when the whole company of artists, artists and poets wandered in search of a cellar to celebrate the New Year, 1912, A. Tolstoy unexpectedly said:
- Do not we now resemble stray dogs who are looking for shelter?
- You found the name of our idea, - exclaimed N. Evreinov, - let this basement be called "Stray Dog".
A. Tolstoy also composed poetic impromptu for "The Stray Dog"
Don't reproach me.
I am a comic actor.
I have a purple nose
I am a stray old dog.
The dog will do without money,
The dog will walk along the Nevsky
Before a warm squash
Just stomping on his heels...

Italian street, 4 - Jacob's house, in the basement of which the Stray Dog is located.

In the first and main anthem of the Stray Dog, written by M. Kuzmin for the opening of the basement on New Year's Eve 1912, there are the following lines:

And the artists are not brutal
They write the walls and the fireplace,
Here are both Belkin and Meshchersky,
And cubic Kulbin,
Like a company of grenadiers
Leads the daring
Sudeikin himself (3 times) Mr.

Singing the anthem, at the words “not brutally”, the “dog brethren” had fun, probably especially violently: after all, in fact, both the walls and the fireplace were painted exactly that “brutally”. The surface of the walls in one of the rooms - and there were two of them - was broken by the cubist painting of N. Kulbin, the multi-colored metric forms that crushed its plane randomly overlapped each other.

cartoon on N. Kulbina
REFERENCE
Nikolai Ivanovich Kulbin (April 20, 1868, St. Petersburg - March 6, 1917, Petrograd) - Russian artist and musician, avant-garde theorist and philanthropist, theater theorist, philosopher; one of the organizers of the first art associations and exhibitions of new art in Russia, the initiator and active participant in disputes, large collective publications, almanacs. By profession - a military doctor, doctor of medicine (1895), assistant professor at the Military Medical Academy (since 1907), doctor of the General Staff (1903−1917), active state councilor. It would seem that such a serious person, but he is still an artist, a dreamer. He was Pronin's most active assistant in the creation of the Stray Dog. He is also included in those 70 artists of Russian modernity, although they recognize his unprofessionalism. A rare soul, a man who had no enemies. It is no coincidence that everyone loved him, ironically, teased and adored. Sudeikin devoted an article to his work.

Another room was painted by Sudeikin from the floor to the closing vaults with figures of women, children, blacks, bent in a strange break with unseen birds, whimsically intertwined with fantastic colors. Their painfully excessive luxury, pushing feverish red with poisonous green, evoked images of Baudelaire's "Flowers of Evil" in memory.

“The whole painting of the walls,” N. Evreinov explained its meaning, “perky, mysteriously humorous, so to speak, was, of course, not “decorations” in the narrow sense of the word, but, as it were, scenery that takes visitors to the basement far beyond their true places and times. Here the charms of the theatricalization of the given world, which Sudeikin owned like a real hypnotist, were fully affected. And under the influence of these charms, which confuse life with the theater and truth with fiction, prose with poetry with such an impressive inconsistency, visitors to the Stray Dog seemed to be transformed into some other creatures. The centuries-old vaults of the cabaret enclosed, as it were, a kind of playing space in which continuous aestheticized play shimmered and shone with different facets. Everyone entering this circle, both to himself and to everyone else, began to seem like a theatrical character. The so-called “unusual Wednesdays and Saturdays”, “evenings of cheerful obscurantism”, masquerades were arranged in the cabaret, the participants of which were ordered to appear only in carnival costumes.

1915

Joker 1915
One of the hymns for the Stray Dog "was written by S. Gorodetsky, in it there are such lines that have become famous:
““ Stray dog ​​”, and that you are good,
That every soul will meet here.
Here, artists from the World of Art - M. Dobuzhinsky, N. Arapov, L. Bakst coexisted peacefully and not peacefully, not only with the former "Blue Bearers", but also with Russian cubists, impressionists, simultanists, primitivists and many, many others ... up to a hundred people. “Various vagabonds from art flocked to The Dog on various paths of creative quest.”

Sometimes actors would come to the "Dog" without changing clothes and without making up, immediately after the performances, mingling with the night audience. But even in these cases, their appearance was not much different from cabaret regulars: the artists, musicians, poets who sat here, their “muses” themselves often looked like characters composed by someone, seemed to be aliens from some unknown countries and times.

Sudeikin Cabaret
The very atmosphere of the basement, with a painful vague sense of impending catastrophes; heated disputes that had no end, endless games of an inflamed mind, were capable of starting and starting - into dangerous limits, where the boundaries of what was allowed and what was not allowed became so unsteady. No one spoke about this with such calm frankness, having unmistakably accurately formulated the very essence of the atmosphere of the Dog, as one of its regulars and apologists M. Kuzmin in the famous quatrain, which was printed on her programs and was an epigraph to many of her evenings:

Here many chains are untied,
Everything will be preserved by the underground hall,
And those words that are spoken at night
Another would not say in the morning ...

Cover to the book of poems by M. Kuzmin "Autumn Lakes"
In the night fever of thoughts and feelings, “unchained chains”, uncontrolled verbiage (“But careless, spicy, shameless masquerade chatter”) intoxicated both the “krasnobaev and false prophets” themselves (Akhmatova’s words), and those who listened to them. Akhmatova's attitude to the "Dog", in which she was repeatedly, is clearly visible from her poem dated January 1, 1913:

We are all thugs here, harlots.
How sad we are together!
Flowers and birds on the walls
They languish on the clouds.

Oh, how my heart yearns.
Am I waiting for the hour of death?
And the one that's dancing now
It will definitely go to hell.

The stories of the "hawkers and harlots" of the "Stray Dog" that were swept away by the universal wind very soon realized that, victims of the era, they themselves called a tragic end on their heads, that sooner or later the masks would fall off, carnival clothes would slip off, and the frightening face of life would appear before them. .
In the meantime, they are still in the image, and the almighty Harlequin is instead of God.

Harlequin 1915

Koverny N. Evreinov 1915
"Harlequin! ... This word has a direct magical effect on me." The exclamation of the famous director, historian and theorist of the theater, the initiator and implementer of many interesting theatrical undertakings, the bearer of the idea of ​​“theatricalization of life” I.N. Evreinov is recalled with S.Yu.

Sudeikin Harlequin's Garden 1915

"Harlequin's Garden" is not painting in the theater, but theater in painting. On the tiny stage of the picture, the artist played out the mise-en-scène of a certain performance, which directly echoes the actual stage repertoire of that time. Like numerous productions created "for the greatest harlequin sparkle", Sudeikin's picture introduces the canonized heroes of Italian folk comedy. In his picture, Sudeikin resorts to a similar organization of the stage space, willingly using the symbolism of the theatrical setting, costumes, and lighting. And at the same time, he does not hide the complete unreality of this theatrical little world. Here is an imitation and at the same time glorification of the theater, a folded scenario of the game, requiring for its perception the sophistication of the audience and uninhibited imagination.
“Harlequin Garden” is one of those paintings by S.Yu. Sudeikin, which insistently affirms a return to the theater of improvisations, to such a theater that, according to Meyerhold, “rings the bells of pure theatricality”, freed from social, critical claims. This is what makes it one of the most characteristic works of its time.
But better than S. Gorodetsky said, perhaps, you can’t say either about his picture or about the author himself:

SUDEIKIN
Looking around with a half-contemptuous smile
Empty reality raging hell
You open the doors of the golden paradise
You introduce a garden into a garden that no mortal has ever seen.
There are virgins, tenderly burning from languor,
In stuffy bosquets they look for quivering delights.
There Schumann is attracted by his second mistress
To the fantasy of madness, to songs without barriers.
There are muses in the dawns of Apollo's funeral,
And Cupid gives the Persian a hookah.
There Shulamith opened Solomon's bosom,
A beauty in a shower jacket caresses the merchant,
And among the mysteriously captivating figures
Sudeikin, who has not yet been understood by anyone, stands.

This was said much later, in 1920, but even now his work has not been properly studied, it has not been understood, it has not been noticed behind the puppet, light plots, impudent scoffing, ironic, bitter smirk, depth of thought.
But let's go back to 1915.
In his memoirs, which he called "One and a half-eyed archer", B. Livshits tells how he returned home from the "Dogs" in the early morning by tram, with a face pale from insomnia, swollen eyes, smeared makeup.
“Two human streams met in a shuttle tram, embodying two opposite poles of city life.
In the mirror glass I saw my own reflection: a top hat slid down to the back of my head, a long face, heavy eyelids. The rest was not difficult for me to mentally complete: a double capule, white on the forehead and rouge on the cheeks - a nightly mask that is a frequenter of the basement, already destroyed by dawn<...>. In front of my eyes that were glued together, a piece of Sudeikin's painting, a brocaded, fur-trimmed Lilin shugay, a tangling couple, a stooped figure of Kulbin ... no, a medieval juggler Kulbinius, who was about to throw two prematurely bald heads into the air, alternated in succession, floating on each other. No, these are not bald heads, but hands lying on their knees, and it’s not the forehead-headed Nikolai Nikolayevich who is staring at me, but an elderly worker in a short fur coat. In the depths of sunken orbits - a dark flame of hatred.

Closed "Stray Dog" in 1915 for violating the prohibition law adopted during the First World War.

Act 5 "Halt of comedians"

The comedians' halt opened on April 18, 1916 in the basement of the Adamini House on the corner of the Field of Mars and the Moika embankment. This project by B. Pronin was a continuation of the most famous artistic cabaret of the Silver Age - "The Stray Dog" and is named like the picture painted by S. Sudeikin earlier, at his suggestion. If you imagine the atmosphere of military Petrograd, it becomes clear that only the brilliant organizational talent of B. Pronin, coupled with a passionate desire to revive the light, heady creative atmosphere of the club of artists, artists, poets, a real haven of bohemia, allowed this truly phantasmagoric undertaking to be carried out.

The halls of the "Comedian's Halt" were richly decorated - even more magnificent and refined than in the "Stray Dog". Entering the basement, guests from the hallway got into the pantry - a hall with a massive fireplace, made according to the sketch of the architect I. Fomin. The tables, instead of tablecloths, were covered with bright rustic shawls; the roles of the waiters were the black-haired people in colored harem pants. The walls of the pantry and adjacent room were painted by artists B. Grigoriev and A. Yakovlev, the main hall - S. Sudeikin. The visitors were greeted by the dwarf Vasily Ivanovich in the costume of a rooster, invented by Sudeikin, and Boris Pronin himself in a tailcoat and a snow-white shirt. An old poodle Mushka roamed the halls, reminiscent of the predecessor of "Halt", and symbolizing the continuity of the traditions of the "Stray Dog".

The painting by S. Sudeikin in the "Comedian's Halt" was made in the spirit of the new time: black walls, black ceilings with bright gold stucco, studded with broken glass. All this created a complete impression of a gloomy realm of shadows. “At the back of the hall shone with subdued gilding a stage with a purple curtain half-open in the middle. From the shutter of the closed window, a black-and-white tulle threatened with its mysterious appearance, stealing someone's reflection in the mirror. From the auditorium there was a passage to the next room, which the visitors of the "Halt of Comedians" later called the "devil's room." There, on the wall, everyone saw the image of Olechka Glebova (note - Sudeikin's first wife), it was undoubtedly her, but it seemed to me that she was in the power of some unknown spell. Perhaps the actor's imagination had an effect here, but this woman-doll, before my eyes, was changing strangely all the time, as if coming to life. To her shoulder, trying to catch her eye, leaned someone with a Mephistopheles profile and with horns. And isn’t the gloatingly impudent doctor Dapertutto (V. Meyerhold) himself depicted there in the form of a certain musician with a Mephistopheles profile?”, writes Valentina Verigina.
The painting, of course, did not survive the flood of 1926. An idea of ​​​​it can be given by a picture that in various sources bears the names: "Halt of comedians"; "Artistic cafe" and "My life".

1915

Three different names, and each carries its own semantic load, its own idea. "Artistic Cafe", the most neutral, presents us with the characters of the picture as artists. What artists? Why are they here? What prompted them to gather in such a strange way here in the cafe - we are free to speculate, fantasize as we please. "Halt of comedians" clarifies that before us are not just artists, but comedians, i.e. those who, by the nature of their profession, are called upon to amuse us, entertain, perhaps ridicule our shortcomings, make fun of their own. A halt is a resting place, their temporary shelter. From this point of view, nothing in the picture can particularly surprise us. Well, people have settled down as they like, their own among their own - some are still in costumes, make-up, masks - apparently, the performance has just ended, they did not have time to change clothes - so what? The first thought that arises is: "Somewhere I have already seen this (a) ..." And indeed, similar scenes abound from Watteau to Picasso.

But there is something crazy, magical in this picture that makes you peer into these masked faces. And gradually, tracing every gesture, posture, movement, you even subconsciously begin to guess that everything is not so simple among these people. As in a crooked mirror, when it is no longer funny, but wildly, frightening from its ugly appearance, appearance, distorted by a grimace, and this is “My life”. It was this impression of the picture that prompted me to immerse myself in Sudeikin, and very soon I discovered this, the third name - "My Life", the most accurate, suitable for this picture. It is important that the painting depicts very close, beloved by the artist people: in the foreground is the luxurious body of a naked young woman, peering into her reflection in the mirror. There is no doubt in her eyes, rather satisfaction with her appearance: "Good!" Poet-Pierrot and Artist-Harlequin look at her from opposite sides, she is their Muse, Madonna, they worship her and dedicate their creations: one writes poetry for her, the other paints her portrait. She is Love itself, Lady, Goddess, Venus, and arrows are useless. And Cupid, gently stroking her with his plump hand and smiling slyly, seems to confirm this. Another Poet sat down at her feet, thoughtfully languid, with a mournful fold at his mouth. With sadness in his huge eyes, he sadly reads his poems to her. The artist himself depicted himself twice: in the image of Harlequin and himself, as if from the side of observing the whole company and, first of all, not taking his eyes off HER - Venus (in the first illustration in the upper left corner, in the second - in the upper right). And only two characters are immersed in themselves: the central one - the actress, taking off her mask with a sharp gesture, turns out to be a doll, just a doll, in which the winding mechanism suddenly stopped. Her broken hands, a frozen face with motionless glazed eyes are full of tragedy: the one who admired her more than once writes poetry, not her - "Columbine of the 10s" - is served by Harlequin, who once idolized her ... Only the warm glow of her chest betrays in her a living woman, an abandoned living woman, as a broken doll is thrown as useless

What do you look so vaguely and vigilantly,
Petersburg doll, actor

Detail

The second character - Dr. Dapertutto - publishing some marvelous melodies is completely immersed in his work, in himself. He is near, close, but by himself. He has his own game. A little attention - and behind these masks of actor-images you will recognize their real names:

Artist, aka Harlequin - S. Sudeikin

Poet, aka Pierrot - poet M. Kuzmin

Actor, she is a doll, she is also "Colombina" - Olga Glebova-Sudeikina, the first wife of S. Sudeikin

Muse, she is Venus - Vera Sudeikina, the second wife of S. Sudeikin, she later Stravinskaya

Dr. Dapertutto - aka Vs. Meyerhold

This could be put an end to, and the viewer (reader) could sigh with relief and understanding: "So what's the matter!". Of course, triangles, "strange" relationships between men and between wives, husbands and mistresses and lovers were a sign not only of that time, they are now and not only in the creative environment. This picture, indeed, to some extent reflects the actual life of the artist S. Sudeikin. “All life is a theater, and the people in it are actors,” someone said. And this someone was right that in everyone’s life, at least once, once, unconsciously, perhaps (not in the literal sense - " triangle"), but there was an interweaving of the real and the fantastic, tragedy (or at least drama, almost like in the theater) and farce. S. Sudeikin's "My Life" is essentially the life of many, with its beautiful and ugly, tender, "My life" by S. Sudeikin is both a diagnosis and a sentence to the entire Silver Age, refined, refined, creatively brilliant in the highest degree, but also suffocating within the framework of the mise-en-scene that he himself designated; who, as if in agony, prophesied his near end.

You have seen or will see magnificent portraits of Serov, Somov, Grigoriev, amazing scenery by Golovin, Bakst, romantic paintings by Vrubel, Roerich, but only this picture turns inside out not only the life of one (several) person, but also a whole generation and direction called " Russian modern", the main idea of ​​which was: "the world is a theater, the world is a masquerade".

Sudeikin is one of .... but WHAT! There are no analogues of this picture, this thinking. "My Life" by S. Sudeikin is a hallmark of "Russian modern".

Announcements about premieres, as a rule, were placed in newspapers. January 23, 1917 "Birzhevye Vedomosti" reported the following:
Petrograd Art Society.
"Halt of comedians" on the Field of Mars, 7.

Premiere.
January 23, 1917
1. "Merry Death" by N. Evreinov, costumes by S. Sudeikin.
2. "Happy love" Taffy.
3. "Absolutely cheerful song", staged by N. Evreinov, scenery by Marc Chagall.
4. Ballet and so on.
Departure by 10 o'clock. evenings.
Admission by recommendation. Registration at 5 o'clock. days, tel. 274-58"17.

The brightest number of the new program, without a doubt, was Evreinov's drama with the sharp title "Merry Death". Its main characters were Harlequin, Columbine, Pierrot, Doctor and Death. Harlequin - this "Jester with a capital letter", a deeply tragic figure in world culture, in the interpretation of Evreinov, had to retain the paradoxical ability to laugh and remain himself even "in the face of death." The author himself wrote about the production: "After all, the Harlequin as a concept is a jester, a beautiful, impudent jester, forever living, idealized in the soul of every person, with a capital letter Jester, who does not change his position even in the face of death...

Poster for the play "The Most Important" 1916
Another memory of "Comedians' Halt"
Georgy Chulkov wrote in August 1917: “In Petrograd, on a huge square, in one of the old houses, there is a basement, and there, when the capital, tired of the violent wind of the revolution, endless political speeches and a feverish struggle for power, falls asleep at eleven o’clock, "there, in the basement, a peculiar nightlife begins, quite unlike the life of the soviets, parties, committees, unions, the street, and the Winter Palace. Very special people live and visit in this basement. True, there are also occasional guests, but they come out of curiosity and sit on the sidelines, perplexed and feeling superfluous. The point, of course, is not in these outside spectators, in that bunch of poets, actors, artists who are fleeing in the basement from the all-Russian flood, like Noah in the ark "

Everything ended after 1917, with the outbreak of the civil war. There was no Silver Age after that. In the twenties, inertia still continued, for

Painter, graphic artist, set designer.

Born in the family of a gendarmerie colonel. In 1897 he entered the MUZhViZ, studied with A. E. Arkhipov, N. A. Kasatkin, L. O. Pasternak, A. S. Stepanov, A. M. Vasnetsov. In 1902, together with M. F. Larionov and A. V. Fonvizin, he was expelled from the School for a year for showing works of intimate content at a student exhibition in a manner “not included in the curriculum.” In 1903 he continued his studies in the workshops of V. A. Serov and K. A. Korovin. He was awarded two silver medals for drawing and painting. In 1909 he graduated with the title of non-class artist. In the same year, he continued his studies at the Higher Art School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture at the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts - in the workshop of D. N. Kardovsky.

Work, and in a wide variety of areas, as well as participate in exhibition activities, Sudeikin began early. In 1904, together with fellow students at MUZhViZ, he organized the exhibition "Scarlet Rose" in Saratov. He was one of the organizers of the symbolist association "Blue Rose", the only exhibition of which took place in 1907 in Moscow. In 1904-1910 he participated in exhibitions of the Moscow Association of Artists and the Union of Russian Artists. In 1908 he exhibited his works at the avant-garde exhibition "Wreath - Stefanos", arranged by Larionov and D. D. Burliuk. In 1911 he became one of the founders of the revived "World of Art".

In 1902-1903 he participated in the design of performances in the opera company of S. I. Mamontov in the Hermitage Garden. From 1905 he collaborated with V. E. Meyerhold in the theater-judge on Povarskaya Street in Moscow, from 1906 he did work for the V. F. Komissarzhevskaya Theater in St. 1912-1917 - in the literary and artistic cabaret "Stray Dog" and "Comedian's Halt". He made paintings in the theater-studio on Povarskaya, the cabaret "Stray Dog" and "Halt of Comedians". He designed the performances of the Maly Opera Theater in St. Petersburg, the Moscow Chamber Theater, the New Drama Theater in Moscow. In 1912-1913 he was invited by S. P. Diaghilev to perform scenery based on sketches by L. S. Bakst and N. K. Roerich for the ballet performances of the Russian Seasons in Paris.

Many and fruitfully worked in book and magazine graphics. Sudeikin illustrated M. Maeterlinck's drama The Death of Tentagil (1903), M. A. Kuzmin's books Love Chimes (1912), Autumn Lakes (1912), Venetian Madmen (1915). Collaborated in the magazines "Balance" (1904-1909), "Apollo" (1910), "Satyricon" and "New Satyricon".

In 1917 he left for the Crimea, where he was engaged in accounting for the values ​​of the nationalized Vorontsov Palace, then he lived in Novorossiysk. In 1919 he moved to Tiflis. Together with L. Gudiashvili and D. Kakabadze, he designed the Chimerioni literary and artistic cafe, made a poster and twelve panel screens for the evening of the futurist poet V. V. Kamensky. He painted the Tumanovs' home theater.

In 1920 he emigrated to Paris. He worked for the theater "The Bat" N. F. Baliev, designed two performances for the troupe of Anna Pavlova. In 1922, together with Baliyev's troupe, he arrived on tour in the United States and settled in New York. Together with the composer S. Korona, he organized the cabaret "Basement of Fallen Angels". In 1924–1931 he worked extensively for the Metropolitan Opera, designing the performances Petrushka (1924), The Nightingale (1925), The Magic Flute (1926), The Wedding (1929), Sadko (1929), The Flying Dutchman "(1930), Sorochinskaya Fair" (1931) and others. In 1939–1940 he designed ballet performances at London's Covent Garden Theatre. Collaborated with choreographers D. Balanchine, V. F. Nizhinsky, M. M. Fokin.

In 1934-1935 in Hollywood he worked on the production of the film "Resurrection" based on the novel by Leo Tolstoy.

The last years of his life he was seriously ill; buried in Brooklyn Cemetery.

Solo exhibitions of Sudeikin were held at the Art Institute of Chicago (1927-1928), at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh (1929), the Public Library at the Brooklyn Museum in New York (1933). In the literature there are also references to the artist's exhibitions in 1934-1939 in private galleries in New York and Los Angeles. A memorial retrospective of the artist's work was held in 1964 in New York.

From the early symbolist works of the 1900s, Sudeikin in the 1910s moved towards a more primitivist, stylistic concept of painting and decoration, based on the traditions of Russian popular prints, signboards, and painted toys. His works of this time gained extraordinary popularity among the St. Petersburg and Moscow public and created Sudeikin's reputation as a "fashionable" artist. In exile, he was known primarily as a theater decorator, but continued to engage in easel painting. In the later works of Sudeikin, World of Art retrospectivism was combined with the techniques of cubism, futurism and expressionism.

The artist's works are in the collections of the largest domestic and foreign museums: the State Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum im. A. S. Pushkin in Moscow, the State Russian Museum, the Brooklyn Museum in New York and others.