Exhibition of Bakst in the Pushkin Museum. Art & More: Anniversary Exhibition of Lev Bakst at the Pushkin Museum

An exhibition has opened at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, which, no doubt, will attract the attention of connoisseurs of different styles and trends of painting.

The exposition includes 250 works by Lev Bakst - a portrait painter, master of landscape and book illustrations, theater artist. They were provided by the largest museums in the world and private collectors. And some - the Russian public will see for the first time.

"Dinner", after which a scandal erupted. Contemporaries called this picture of Leo Bakst too frank and frightening. In the smile of the lady, many recognized the Mona Lisa, and in the oranges they saw the forbidden fruit. The stranger with the serpentine curves of the body was clearly tempting.

Each picture Bakst intrigued. He depicted the poetess Zinaida Gippius as a rebel in a man's costume, deliberately did not finish many portraits, while conveying facial features with photographic accuracy. And the critics immediately recognized the image of Sergei Diaghilev as the most accurate.

“Bakst somehow sums up all the elements of Diaghilev's character. On the one hand, we see a very theatrical person, and on the other hand, one might even say an old-fashioned, nostalgic person. That is, it is not at all accidental that his nanny is in the background, ”said John Boult, curator of the exhibition.

He never chased fame - she came to him herself. And already even the Rothschilds order the finishing of their estate precisely to Bakst. As models for the panel based on the fairy tale "Sleeping Beauty", family members themselves, their friends, servants and even a dog deducted from the Rothschilds' favorite pet posed for him.

But the main model for the artist was his wife - Lyubov Gritsenko, the daughter of the gallery owner Tretyakov. And even when they quarreled, Bakst dedicated the most romantic stories to his wife. Like in this picture. And if you mistook it for a still life, then take a closer look.

“We see Bakst himself and his wife. In general, the whole mood of this work, you see, is somewhat of such a sad character. And characteristic of Bakst's mood of this moment. He is on the eve of a divorce from his wife, ”says the director of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin Marina Loshak.

Bakst's works are hunted by gallerists and collectors all over the world, and he himself often took his works lightly. Threw them away and burned them. He painted rapidly and quickly, and in search of inspiration he traveled all over the world, remaining in love with Ancient Greece until the end of his life.

Aphrodite smiles as the world collapses behind her. Many critics believed that with the painting "Ancient Horror" Bakst predicted the fall of the Russian Empire and the victory of the revolution of the 17th year. And this is heaven on earth - the mythical Elysium. One of the variants of this plot was chosen by the artist for the curtain of the theater of Vera Komissarzhevskaya. Moscow audience will see it for the first time.

The main artist of "Russian Seasons" Diaghilev, he made a revolution in the theater. Having tried on costumes sewn according to Bakst's sketches, the artists were shocked: where are the starched tutus, where are the tight corsets in which the whole world danced then? Instead, there were almost weightless trousers and chiffon dresses that barely covered the body. In a silk jersey suit, Vaslav Nijinsky captivated the audience with his part of the Phantom of the Rose. Bakst then personally followed the work of milliners.

“According to the memoirs of contemporaries, these petals, which we see on the costume, were cut out according to its specific pattern. And he himself commanded how to sew them on - whether all the petals or some part of the petal, so that they were in such a vibration, ”says Natalia Avtonomova, curator of the exhibition.

But fabrics alone were not enough for him, and he painted directly on bare legs, arms and shoulders. His sketches for the ballet "Scheherazade" and "Cleopatra" became alive, the dancing figures became iconic. He created them especially for Ida Rubinstein.

Then for the first time they began to come to the theater specifically for the sake of scenery and costumes. Paris was drunk with Bakst. And French women of fashion asked their tailors to sew them dresses a la Bakst - Arabic or pseudo-Egyptian style. Now many of these outfits are in the collection of Alexander Vasiliev.

“A turban, the absence of a corset, harem pants, a lampshade skirt are the details that take the Parisian into the atmosphere of a harem. Bakst is the creator of orange in fashion. And many non-trivial fashion combinations of 1910-1920 came from Leon Bakst. It's purple and green. A combination, for example, crimson and extreme bronze or gold,” says fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev.

He has become a trendsetter. All the leading fashion houses begged Bakst to draw at least a few sketches for them. And at a time when ladies did not even think about wearing trousers, he already said that women's fashion tends to men's. He was not ahead of time, but only created an era.

Photo: DR

MOSCOW, 8 June. /Corr. TASS Svetlana Yankina/. The exhibition "Lev Bakst. Leon Bakst", which tells about one of the most famous Russian artists of the 20th century, a member of the "World of Art" association and the star of Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons", opened at the State Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkin to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the master.

The exhibition is striking in scale: it is difficult to remember any other project that would occupy two buildings of the Pushkin Museum at once - the main building and the Museum of Private Collections. In the first one, you can see sketches for productions of St. Petersburg theaters and "Russian Seasons" in Paris, as well as costumes made from them and products of Bakst's fashion houses. The second shows Bakst's early work and archival materials - from personal correspondence and bills for the purchase of glasses to the diploma of an officer of the Order of the Legion of Honor.

Immersion in context

Earlier, the Pushkin Museum opened an exhibition of works from the collection of Ilya Zilberstein, which became the basis of the Museum of Private Collections. Two halls with an exhibition of Bakst turned out to be, as it were, built into this exposition, which presents works by contemporaries and friends of the artist - the founder of the "World of Art" Alexander Benois, Valentin Serov, Boris Anisfeld, which makes immersion in the artistic context of the turn of XIX-XX more complete .

In the part devoted to the early work of Bakst, a large-scale canvas "Meeting of Admiral F.K. Avelan in Paris on October 5, 1893" and a small painting "Bathers on the Lido. Venice" stand out. The artist went to Venice after the triumph of the "Russian Seasons" in Paris and wrote from there: "I bathe on the Lido in the company of Isadora Duncan, Nijinsky, Diaghilev. I bathe up to my throat in aesthetic impressions."

The section with graphic portraits of the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, presented here, depicting the artists Philip Malyavin, Isaac Levitan, Konstantin Somov and Anna Benois, seems to connect the display of Bakst's works in the Museum of Private Collections and the main building.

If I were a sultan

There, in a separate room, later brilliant portraits of the artist are collected - "Portrait of S. P. Diaghilev with a nanny", "Portrait of Zinaida Gippius" and "Dinner", which depicts the wife of Alexander Benois Anna Kid. She was met one evening in a Parisian cafe by Bakst and Valentin Serov, who worked together on the design of the ballet "Scheherazade" to the music of N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov.

A curtain based on Serov's sketches for Scheherazade was shown recently at his retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery. Now in the Pushkin Museum you can see Bakst's drawings for this performance, as well as a reconstruction of the dances of the star of the production, Tamara Karsavina, who performs the part of Zobeida - a black-and-white film is being shown in the White Hall.

In the center of the exhibition composition is a podium with historical theatrical costumes from museum collections and private collections, including from the collection of fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev. The curtain for the "Elysium" of 1906 serves as a background for them, and on the walls the works are grouped according to themes: ancient visions, romantic dreams, oriental fantasies. Here you can see the bright colors and incredible plasticity of the artist's key works in sketches for "Orpheus", "Firebird", "Narcissus", "Afternoon of a Faun".

Many of them are well-known, they were exhibited and published, but at least on the example of a selection of sketches for the ballet "Sleeping Beauty" to the music of P. I. Tchaikovsky, you can see how many resources had to be used to put together this large-scale exhibition.

Thus, the sketch of the Good Fairy costume came from the private collection of Nina Lobanova-Rostovskaya, and the Rowan Fairy came from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. How these costumes looked on the dancers for whom they were created can be seen here in black and white archival photographs.

Undoubtedly, the attention of the audience will be attracted by the costume of Vaslav Nijinsky from the ballet "Vision of the Rose" by the thoroughness of the study and the preservation of the petals, as well as the fabulous panel "Awakening" based on the "Sleeping Beauty". It depicts the happy newlyweds James and Dorothy de Rothschild, who in 1913 ordered Bakst to decorate his London mansion with a series of panels depicting family members, friends, servants and even pets. Until recently, these works, which are now in the Rothschild estate of Waddesdon Manor, now a museum, were inaccessible even to specialists and are still considered little studied.

The exhibition "Lev Bakst. Leon Bakst" will last until September 4, 2016. You can learn more about the artist's work at the educational program specially organized at the Pushkin Museum with lectures and excursions, including for children.

Auditor/Irina Remneva

About 250 works of painting and graphics, photographs, archival documents, rare books, as well as theatrical costumes and sketches for fabrics. In the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin opened a large-scale exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of one of the brightest and most original artists of the early XX century - Lev Bakst.

Connoisseurs of Russian fine art this year celebrate the anniversaries of two of the largest Russian masters of the late 19th and early 20th centuries: the world-famous theater artist Lev Bakst was born 150 years ago.

One of the large retrospective exhibitions dedicated to the creative legacy of the latter has already successfully completed within the walls. Bakst's works were viewed by more than 150,000 residents and guests of St. Petersburg. And now Moscow is joining the festive celebrations.

Exposition in the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin is not just a collection of artifacts, one part of which is directly the work of Leo Bakst, and the other - things related to his work. The purpose of the exhibition is not to show objects, but to try to recreate the world of the artist with their help, in which all facets of art are subtly and gracefully intertwined, said the director of the museum, Marina Loshak.

Lev Bakst is primarily known as a theater artist. From 1909 to 1914, he designed fourteen ballets for Sergei Diaghilev's Russian Seasons in Paris, among which Cleopatra and Scheherazade were the most iconic. Masterfully working with colors and textures, Bakst embodied in the scenery and costumes for them all the luxury, all the intoxicating beauty of the East. “His Scheherazade drove Paris crazy,” recalled the composer Igor Stravinsky. “And this was the beginning of the European and then the world fame of Bakst.”

Dozens of sketches for costumes and scenery became the basis of the Moscow exposition. Within the walls of the Pushkin Museum, one can see in great detail how Bakst worked on the images of characters in such ballets as Cleopatra, Scheherazade, The Firebird, The Blue God, Tamara, The Afternoon of a Faun, and once again enjoy the inimitable manner of the artist.

"The Times font is unmistakable," says Sherlock Holmes in one of Arthur Conan Doyle's famous stories. The same can be said about Bakst's sketches. They cannot be confused with the work of other theatrical artists. If in the drawings of Alexander Golovin or Ivan Bilibin we see, strictly speaking, just a suit, then Bakst has a solid plastic image. Here on one of the walls hangs a sketch of a Bacchante costume for the ballet "Narcissus", made in gouache and silver paint. It seems that the Bacchante froze only for a second and in a moment she will jump off the canvas, spinning in a sensual dance.

Alas, such revived sketches are only fantasies. However, at the exhibition you can also see real costumes created according to the drawings of Lev Bakst. So, the Museum of the Academy of Russian Ballet named after A.Ya. Vaganova provided the famous costume of Vaslav Nijinsky from Mikhail Fokine's one-act ballet "The Phantom of the Rose", and the famous Russian fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev - costumes for the ballets "Tamara" and "Scheherazade". In addition, the Elysium curtain, shining with emerald and pistachio hues, created by the artist for the theater of Vera Komissarzhevskaya, was brought to Moscow from the Russian Museum. One of the actresses of the theater recalled how the actors said: "Bakst went," meaning that the curtain was rising and it was time to go on stage.

However, Bakst became famous not only as a theater artist, but also as a painter. On display at the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin included his famous painting "Ancient Horror" from the Russian Museum, written under the impression of a trip to the island of Crete and Asia Minor. There are also a number of brilliant portrait works. In particular, the legendary portrait of Sergei Diaghilev with his nanny arrived in Moscow, from which the founder of the art association "World of Arts" and the organizer of the Russian Seasons in Paris looks resolutely at the viewer. The "Lady with Oranges" ("Dinner") also became a decoration of the exhibition. The canvas depicts the wife of the ideologist of the "World of Arts" Alexander Benois - Anna Kind in a closed black dress and a black hat resembling a flower. At one time, the picture presented at the exhibition caused a storm of indignation. The Russian music and art critic Vladimir Stasov was especially angry: "A cat in a lady's dress is sitting at the table ...". However, there were those who appreciated the canvas. Literary critic and publicist Vasily Rozanov admired the "stylish decadent" with a mysterious smile a la Mona Lisa. An elegant portrait of Countess Maria Keller from the Zaraisk Kremlin Museum deserves special attention. The maid of honor of Empress Alexandra Feodorovna is depicted in full growth, in a dress with airy folds made of the finest fabric, decorated with a pattern of powdery pink and pale lilac flowers.

The work of Lev Bakst had a huge impact on fashion at the beginning of the 20th century. Impressed by the costumes from Russian ballets, high-society beauties began to order dresses according to the sketches of the artist. In June 1910, soon after the stunning success of the ballet "Scheherazade", the oriental style comes into fashion: wide shalwars, colored turbans, richly decorated fabrics.

Bakst enters into a cooperation agreement with the Parisian fashion designer Paul Poiret. Works with fashion houses of Jeanne Paquin and Charles Worth. Designs bags, hats, shoes and jewelry. It is known that the artist was friends with the jeweler Louis Cartier. Fashion historians believe that his famous "panther style" arose precisely under the influence of the ballets designed by Bakst.

The exhibition presents samples of fabrics with patterns based on the artist's sketches, as well as luxurious evening dresses of famous fashion houses of the early 20th century in the Renaissance and Art Nouveau styles, oriental and pseudo-Egyptian style. For more than a hundred years, these strikingly beautiful outfits embroidered with beads, glass beads, gold and silver threads have inspired such great couturiers as Yves Saint Laurent, Christian Lacroix, John Galliano and Alexander McQueen.

The exposition is complemented by a series of photographs depicting fragments from the legendary ballets designed by Bakst. On them, in particular, you can see in the images of the ballerina Tamara Karsavina and the dancer Vaslav Nijinsky.

It is important to note that all the exhibits of the exhibition, provided by more than thirty museum and private collections from around the world, could not fit in the main building of the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin. Nearby in the "Department of Private Collections", in the second part of the exhibition, there are rare items related to the early creative work of Bakst, as well as a large amount of archival and handwritten material. Many of these artifacts are presented in Russia for the first time.

Exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of Lev Bakst in the Pushkin Museum im. Pushkin, will become a bright event for the audience and leave a long aftertaste of a joyful impression. The exhibition does not just provide information, it creates an atmosphere. Once among the sketches and costumes, the viewer will be able to feel what irresistible creative energy filled the world of Bakst, and, perhaps, for the first time, truly discover this outstanding artist.

What: Exhibition "Lev Bakst / Léon Bakst. To the 150th anniversary of his birth"
Where: State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin (Main Building and Department of Private Collections)

When art is not only beautiful, but also fashionable. A large-scale exhibition of works by Lev Bakst has opened at the Pushkin Museum. It is dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of the famous artist. Art connoisseurs first of all remember his works for Sergei Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons", and fashion designers - sketches for fabrics and accessories. How a native of Belarusian Grodno could turn into a trendsetter in European fashion, learned the correspondent of the MIR 24 TV channel Ekaterina Rogalskaya.

"French Revolution" is a stable concept. But if coups in the streets were organized by local residents, then only Russians could arrange a revolution in the French theater. The bright and provocative costumes of Leon Bakst for Diaghilev's Russian Seasons turned the head of the European public. Having visited the performances, the fans wanted to get the costumes invented by the artist, and were ready for anything for this.

“Bakst was the sexiest artist of all, he allowed women not to stand, but to lie on pillows, wear bloomers, translucent tunics, take off their corsets. The erotic element that is present in his sketches could not fail to please the women of the Edwardian era, brought up in Victorian puritanism,” says fashion historian Alexander Vasiliev.

Lyovushka Bakst, a native of the Belarusian Grodno, started with portraits and landscapes. Then his name was still Leib-Chaim Rosenberg. The pseudonym Bakst is a shortened surname of Baxter's grandmother - he took it later, for his first exhibition. Many years will pass before the boy from a poor Jewish family will feel at home in both St. Petersburg and Paris.

“In the West, he was at the height of his fame, which is rare in such an artistic field. Bakst is also well-known in our country, also due to the fact that he was a member of the "World of Arts" galaxy. It is no coincidence that at our exhibition we see portraits of Bakst's friends and associates: Alexander Benois, Sergei Diaghilev, Victor Nouvel, Zinaida Gippius. All of them are representatives of our "Silver Age", - says the curator of the Exhibition Natalia Avtonomova.

Bright colors, rich fabrics. It seems that you are not in the center of Moscow, but somewhere in the East. Just like Bakst, who collected motifs for his works from all over the world, the organizers of the exhibition collected his works. For example, "Portrait of Countess Keller" was brought from Zaraysk. It turned out that in a small town where the only attraction is the Kremlin, there is a work of a famous artist. A sketch of Cleopatra's costume, which Bakst made especially for the dancer Ida Rubinstein, was delivered from London.

“Not every exhibition requires such a detailed approach. It was necessary to collect a lot of different things, and then make sure that they began to live with each other, ”says the director of the Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkin Marina Loshak.

Works for this exhibition were shared by 30 museum and private collections. But it is in the Pushkin Museum, which combines the East and Ancient Greece, the past and the present, that each of the paintings seemed to be in its place.