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Russian art late XIX-beginning of XX century

Introduction

Painting

Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin

Valentin Alexandrovich Serov

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel

"World of Art"

"Union of Russian Artists"

"Jack of Diamonds"

"Youth Union"

Architecture

Sculpture

Bibliography

Introduction

Russian culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries is a complex and controversial period in the development of Russian society. The culture of the turn of the century always contains elements of a transitional era, which includes the traditions of the culture of the past and the innovative tendencies of a new emerging culture. There is a transfer of traditions and not just a transfer, but the emergence of new ones, all this is connected with the turbulent process of searching for new ways of developing culture, corrected by the social development of this time. The turn of the century in Russia is a period of major changes brewing political system, the change of the classical culture of the 19th century to the new culture of the 20th century. The search for new ways of developing Russian culture is associated with the assimilation of progressive trends in Western culture. The diversity of directions and schools is a feature of Russian culture at the turn of the century. Western trends are intertwined and complemented by modern ones, filled with specifically Russian content. A feature of the culture of this period is its orientation towards the philosophical understanding of life, the need to build a holistic picture of the world, where art, along with science, plays a huge role. The focus of Russian culture of the late 19th - early 20th centuries was a person who becomes a kind of connecting link in the motley variety of schools and areas of science and art, on the one hand, and a kind of starting point for analyzing all the most diverse cultural artifacts, on the other. Hence the powerful philosophical foundation that underlies Russian culture at the turn of the century.

Highlighting the most important priorities in the development of Russian culture of the late XIX - early XX centuries, one cannot ignore its most important characteristics. The end of the 19th - the beginning of the 20th century in the history of Russian culture is usually called the Russian Renaissance or, in comparison with the golden age of Pushkin, the silver age of Russian culture.

At the turn of the century, a style developed that affected all plastic arts, starting primarily with architecture (in which eclecticism dominated for a long time) and ending with graphics, which was called the Art Nouveau style. This phenomenon is not unambiguous, in modernity there is also decadent pretentiousness, pretentiousness, designed mainly for bourgeois tastes, but there is also a desire for unity of style that is significant in itself. The Art Nouveau style is a new stage in the synthesis of architecture, painting, and decorative arts.

In the visual arts, Art Nouveau showed itself: in sculpture - by the fluidity of forms, the special expressiveness of the silhouette, the dynamism of the compositions; in painting - the symbolism of images, addiction to allegory. symbolism modern avant-garde silver

The Russian symbolists played an important role in the development of the aesthetics of the Silver Age. Symbolism as a phenomenon in literature and art first appeared in France in the last quarter of the 19th century and by the end of the century had spread to most of Europe. But after France, it is in Russia that symbolism is realized as the most large-scale, significant and original phenomenon in culture. Russian symbolism at first had basically the same prerequisites as Western symbolism: "a crisis of a positive worldview and morality." The main principle of the Russian symbolists is the aestheticization of life and the desire for various forms of substitution of aesthetics for logic and morality. First of all, Russian symbolism is characterized by the demarcation with the traditions of the revolutionary-democratic "sixties" and populism, with atheism ideologization, utilitarianism. according to the Russian symbolists, they correspond to the principles of "pure", free art.

Another bright, acquired global importance the phenomenon of the Silver Age - the art and aesthetics of the avant-garde. In the space of the already listed areas of aesthetic consciousness, the avant-garde artists were distinguished by an emphatically rebellious character. They perceived the crisis of classical culture, art, religion, sociality, statehood with delight as a natural dying, the destruction of the old, obsolete, irrelevant, and they realized themselves as revolutionaries, destroyers and gravediggers of "all junk" and creators of everything new, in general, a new emerging race. Nietzsche's ideas about the superman, developed by P. Uspensky, were taken literally by many avant-garde artists and tried on, especially by the futurists, for themselves.

Hence the rebellion and outrageousness, the desire for everything fundamentally new in the means of artistic expression, in the principles of approach to art, the tendency to expand the boundaries of art until it comes to life, but on completely different principles than those of representatives of theurgical aesthetics. Life for the avant-gardists of the 10s. 20th century - this is, above all, a revolutionary revolt, an anarchist revolt. Absurdity, chaos, anarchy are for the first time comprehended as synonyms of modernity and precisely as creatively positive principles based on the complete denial of the rational principle in art and the cult of the irrational, intuitive, unconscious, meaningless, abstruse, formless, etc. The main directions of the Russian avant-garde were: abstractionism (Vasily Kandinsky), Suprematism (Kazimir Malevich), constructivism (Vladimir Tatlin), Cubofuturism (Cubism, Futurism) (Vladimir Mayakovsky).

Painting

For painters of the turn of the century, other ways of expression are characteristic than those of the Wanderers, other forms of artistic creativity - in images that are contradictory, complicated and reflect modernity without illustrativeness and narrative. Artists painfully seek harmony and beauty in a world that is fundamentally alien to both harmony and beauty. That is why many saw their mission in cultivating a sense of beauty. This time of "eves", the expectation of changes in public life, gave rise to many trends, associations, groupings, a clash of different worldviews and tastes. But it also gave rise to the universalism of a whole generation of artists who came forward after the "classical" Wanderers.

Impressionistic lessons in plein air painting, the composition of "random framing", a wide free pictorial manner - all this is the result of evolution in the development of pictorial means in all genres of the turn of the century. In search of "beauty and harmony" artists try themselves in a variety of techniques and art forms - from monumental painting and theatrical scenery to book design and arts and crafts.

Genre painting developed in the 1990s, but it developed somewhat differently than in the "classical" Wandering movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, the peasant theme is revealed in a new way. S. A. Korovin (1858-1908) depicts the split in the rural community in the painting “On the World” (1893).

At the turn of the century, a somewhat peculiar path is outlined in the historical theme. So, for example, A.P. Ryabushkin (1861-1904) works more in the historical genre than in the purely historical genre. “Russian women of the 17th century in the church” (1899), “Wedding train in Moscow. XVII century ”(1901) - these are everyday scenes from the life of Moscow in the XVII century. Ryabushkin's stylization is reflected in the flatness of the image, in a special system of plastic and linear rhythm, in the color scheme built on bright major colors, in the general decorative solution. Ryabushkin boldly introduces local colors into the plein-air landscape, for example, in “The Wedding Train ...” - the red color of the wagon, large spots of festive clothes against the background of dark buildings and snow, given, however, in the finest color nuances. The landscape always poetically conveys the beauty of Russian nature.

A new type of painting, in which the contemporary art folklore artistic traditions were created by F. A. Malyavin (1869-1940. His images of “women” and “girls” have a certain symbolic meaning - healthy soil Russia. His paintings are always expressive, and although these are, as a rule, easel works, they receive a monumental and decorative interpretation under the artist's brush.Laughter (1899, Museum of Modern Art, Venice), Whirlwind (1906) is a realistic depiction of peasant girls laughing contagiously loudly or rushing uncontrollably in a round dance, but this is a different realism, than in the second half of the century.The painting is sweeping, sketchy, with a textured stroke, the forms are generalized, there is no spatial depth, the figures, as a rule, are located in the foreground and fill the entire canvas.

M. V. Nesterov (1862-1942) addresses the theme of Ancient Russia, but the image of Russia appears in the artist’s paintings as a kind of ideal, almost enchanted world, in harmony with nature, but disappeared forever like the legendary city of Kitezh. This keen sense of nature, delight in the world, in front of every tree and blade of grass is especially pronounced in one of Nesterov's most famous works. pre-revolutionary period- "Vision to the youth Bartholomew" (1889-1890,). In the disclosure of the plot of the picture, there are the same stylistic features as those of Ryabushkin, but a deeply lyrical sense of the beauty of nature is invariably expressed, through which the high spirituality of the characters, their enlightenment, their alienation from worldly fuss is conveyed.

M.V. Nesterov did a lot of religious monumental painting. The murals are always dedicated to the ancient Russian theme (for example, in Georgia - to Alexander Nevsky). In the wall paintings of Nesterov, there are many observed real signs, especially in the landscape, portrait features - in the image of saints. In the artist's striving for a flat interpretation of the composition of elegance, ornamentality, refined sophistication of plastic rhythms, an undoubted influence of Art Nouveau manifested itself.

The landscape genre itself develops at the end of the 19th century also in a new way. Levitan, in fact, completed the search for the Wanderers in the landscape. A new word at the turn of the century was to be said by K.A. Korovin, V.A. Serov and M.A. Vrubel.

Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin

For the brilliant colorist Korovin, the world appears as a "riot of colors." Generously gifted by nature, Korovin was engaged in both portraiture and still life, but it would not be a mistake to say that landscape remained his favorite genre. He brought into art the strong realistic traditions of his teachers from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture - Savrasov and Polenov, but he has a different view of the world, he sets other tasks. He began to paint en plein air early, already in the portrait of a chorus girl in 1883, one can see his independent development of the principles of plein airism, embodied then in a number of portraits made in the estate of S. Mamontov in Abramtsevo (“In the Boat”, portrait of T.S. Lyubatovich, and etc.), in the northern landscapes, executed during the expedition of S. Mamontov to the north (“Winter in Lapland”,). His French landscapes, united by the name "Parisian Lights", are already a completely impressionistic painting, with its highest culture of etude. Sharp, instant impressions of big city life: quiet streets in different time days, objects dissolved in a light-air environment, molded by a dynamic, “trembling”, vibrating stroke, a stream of such strokes that create the illusion of a veil of rain or urban air saturated with thousands of different vapors - features reminiscent of the landscapes of Manet, Pissarro, Monet. Korovin is temperamental, emotional, impulsive, theatrical, hence the bright brilliance and romantic elation of his landscapes (“Paris. Capuchin Boulevard”, 1906, State Tretyakov Gallery; “Paris at night. Italian Boulevard”, 1908,). Korovin retains the same features of impressionist etude, painterly maestro, striking artistry in all other genres, primarily in portraiture and still life, but also in decorative panels, in applied art, in theatrical scenery, which he was engaged in all his life (Portrait of Chaliapin, 1911, Russian Museum; "Fish, wine and fruits" 1916, State Tretyakov Gallery).

Korovin's generous gift for painting brilliantly manifested itself in theatrical and decorative painting. As a theater painter, he worked for the Abramtsevo Theater (and Mamontov was perhaps the first to appreciate him as a theater artist), for the Moscow Art Theater, for the Moscow Private Russian Opera, where he began his lifelong friendship with Chaliapin, for the Diaghilev entreprise. Korovin raised the theatrical scenery and the significance of the artist in the theater to a new level, he made a whole revolution in understanding the role of the artist in the theater and had a great influence on his contemporaries with his colorful, "spectacular" scenery, revealing the very essence of the musical performance.

Valentin Alexandrovich Serov

One of the largest artists, an innovator of Russian painting at the turn of the century, was Valentin Alexandrovich Serov (1865-1911). Serov was brought up among outstanding figures of Russian musical culture (his father is a famous composer, his mother is a pianist), he studied with Repin and Chistyakov.

Serov often paints representatives of the artistic intelligentsia: writers, artists, artists (portraits of K. Korovin, 1891, State Tretyakov Gallery; Levitan, 1893, State Tretyakov Gallery; Yermolova, 1905, State Tretyakov Gallery). All of them are different, he interprets all of them deeply individually, but the light of intellectual exclusivity and inspired creative life shines on all of them.

Portrait, landscape, still life, domestic, historical painting; oil, gouache, tempera, charcoal - it is difficult to find both pictorial and graphic genres in which Serov would not work, and materials that he would not use.

A special theme in the work of Serov is the peasant. In his peasant genre there is no itinerant social sharpness, but there is a sense of the beauty and harmony of peasant life, admiration for the healthy beauty of the Russian people (“In the village. A woman with a horse”, on the map, pastel, 1898, State Tretyakov Gallery). Winter landscapes are especially exquisite with their silver-pearl range of colors.

Serov interpreted the historical theme in his own way: the “royal hunts” with pleasure walks of Elizabeth and Catherine II were conveyed by the artist of the new time, ironic, but also invariably admiring the beauty of life in the 18th century. Interest in XVIII century arose from Serov under the influence of the "World of Art" and in connection with the work on the publication of the "History of the Grand Duke, Royal and Imperial Hunting in Russia."

Serov was a deeply thinking artist, constantly looking for new forms of artistic realization of reality. Inspired by Art Nouveau ideas about flatness and increased decorativeness were reflected not only in historical compositions, but also in his portrait of the dancer Ida Rubinstein, in his sketches for The Abduction of Europa and The Odyssey and Navzikai (both 1910, State Tretyakov Gallery, cardboard, tempera). It is significant that Serov at the end of his life turns to the ancient world. In the poetic legend, interpreted by him freely, outside the classical canons, he wants to find harmony, the search for which the artist devoted all his work.

Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel

The creative path of Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) was more direct, although at the same time unusually complex. Before the Academy of Arts (1880), Vrubel graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. In 1884, he went to Kyiv to supervise the restoration of frescoes in St. Cyril's Church and created several monumental compositions himself. He makes watercolor sketches of the murals of the Vladimir Cathedral. The sketches were not transferred to the walls, as the customer was frightened by their non-canonical and expressiveness.

In the 90s, when the artist settled in Moscow, Vrubel's style of writing, full of mystery and almost demonic power, was formed, which cannot be confused with any other. He sculpts the shape like a mosaic, from sharp "faceted" pieces of different colors, as if glowing from the inside ("Girl against the backdrop of a Persian carpet", 1886, KMRI; "Fortuneteller", 1895, State Tretyakov Gallery). Color combinations do not reflect the reality of the color relationship, but have a symbolic meaning. Nature has no power over Vrubel. He knows her, owns her perfectly, but creates his own fantasy world, little like reality. He gravitates toward literary subjects, which he interprets abstractly, trying to create eternal images of great spiritual power. So, having taken up illustrations for "The Demon", he soon departs from the principle of direct illustration ("Tamara's Dance", "Do not cry, child, do not cry in vain", "Tamara in the coffin", etc.). The image of the Demon is the central image of Vrubel's entire work, his main theme. In 1899, he wrote "The Flying Demon", in 1902 - "The Downcast Demon". Vrubel's demon is, first of all, a suffering creature. Suffering prevails over evil in it, and this is the peculiarity of the national Russian interpretation of the image. Contemporaries, as rightly noted, saw in his "Demons" a symbol of the fate of an intellectual - a romantic, trying to rebelliously escape from a reality devoid of harmony into an unreal world of dreams, but plunged into the rough reality of the earthly

Vrubel created his most mature paintings and graphic works at the turn of the century - in the genre of landscape, portrait, book illustration. In the organization and decorative-planar interpretation of the canvas or sheet, in the combination of the real and the fantastic, in the commitment to ornamental, rhythmically complex solutions in his works of this period, the features of modernity are increasingly asserting themselves.

Like K. Korovin, Vrubel worked a lot in the theater. His best scenery was performed for Rimsky-Korsakov's operas The Snow Maiden, Sadko, The Tale of Tsar Saltan and others on the stage of the Moscow Private Opera, that is, for those works that gave him the opportunity to "communicate" with Russian folklore, fairy tale, legend.

The universalism of talent, boundless imagination, extraordinary passion in the affirmation of noble ideals distinguish Vrubel from many of his contemporaries.

Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov

Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov (1870-1905) is a direct exponent of pictorial symbolism. His works are an elegiac sadness for the old empty "noble nests" and dying "cherry orchards", for beautiful women, spiritualized, almost unearthly, dressed in some kind of timeless costumes that do not carry external signs of place and time.

His easel works most of all resemble not even decorative panels, but tapestries. The space is solved in an extremely conditional, planar way, the figures are almost ethereal, like, for example, the girls by the pond in the painting "Pond" (1902, tempera, State Tretyakov Gallery), immersed in dreamy meditation, in deep contemplation. Faded, pale gray shades of color enhance the overall impression of fragile, unearthly beauty and anemic, ghostly, which extends not only to human images, but also to the nature depicted by him. It is no coincidence that Borisov-Musatov called one of his works "Ghosts" (1903, tempera, State Tretyakov Gallery): silent and inactive female figures, marble statues by the stairs, a half-naked tree - a faded range of blue, gray, purple tones enhances the ghostliness of the depicted.

"World of Art"

"World of Art" - an organization that arose in St. Petersburg in 1898 and united the masters of the highest artistic culture, the artistic elite of Russia of those years. "World of Art" has become one of the largest phenomena of Russian artistic culture. Almost all of them participated in this association. famous artists.

The editorial articles of the first issues of the journal clearly articulated the main provisions of the "World of Art" about the autonomy of art, that the problems of modern culture are exclusively problems art form and that the main task of art is to educate the aesthetic tastes of Russian society, primarily through acquaintance with works of world art. We must give them their due: thanks to the World of Art, English and German art was really appreciated in a new way, and most importantly, Russian painting of the 18th century and the architecture of St. Petersburg classicism became a discovery for many. "World of Art" fought for "criticism as an art", proclaiming the ideal of a critic-artist with a high professional culture and erudition. The type of such a critic was embodied by one of the creators of The World of Art, A.N. Benoit.

"Miriskusniki" organized exhibitions. The first was also the only international one that brought together, in addition to Russians, artists from France, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway, Finland, etc. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow painters and graphic artists took part in it. But the crack between these two schools - St. Petersburg and Moscow - was already evident almost from the first day. In March 1903, the last, fifth exhibition of the World of Art closed, in December 1904 the last issue of the magazine World of Art was published. Most of the artists moved to the “Union of Russian Artists” organized on the basis of the Moscow exhibition “36”, writers - to the magazine “New Way” opened by the Merezhkovsky group, Moscow symbolists united around the magazine “Scales”, musicians organized “Evenings contemporary music”, Diaghilev completely went into ballet and theater.

In 1910, an attempt was made to breathe life back into the "World of Art" (led by Roerich). Fame came to the “World of Art” but the “World of Arts” essentially no longer existed, although formally the association existed until the early 1920s (1924) - with a complete lack of integrity, on boundless tolerance and flexibility of positions. The second generation of "World of Art" was less busy with the problems of easel painting, their interests lie in graphics, mainly book, and theatrical and decorative arts, in both areas they made a real artistic reform. In the second generation of "World of Art" there were also major individuals (Kustodiev, Sudeikin, Serebryakova, Chekhonin, Grigoriev, Yakovlev, Shukhaev, Mitrokhin, etc.), but there were no innovative artists at all.

The leading artist of the "World of Art" was K. A. Somov (1869-1939). The son of the chief curator of the Hermitage, who graduated from the Academy of Arts and traveled around Europe, Somov received an excellent education. Creative maturity came to him early, but, as the researcher (V.N. Petrov) rightly noted, he always had some duality - the struggle between a powerful realistic instinct and a painfully emotional worldview.

Somov, as we know him, appeared in the portrait of the artist Martynova (“Lady in Blue”, 1897-1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), in the portrait painting “Echo of the Past Time” (1903, on map, aqua., gouache, State Tretyakov Gallery ), where he creates a poetic characterization of the fragile, anemic female beauty of the decadent model, refusing to convey the real everyday signs of modernity. He dresses the models in ancient costumes, gives their appearance the features of secret suffering, sadness and dreaminess, painful brokenness.

Somov owns a series of graphic portraits of his contemporaries - the intellectual elite (V. Ivanov, Blok, Kuzmin, Sollogub, Lansere, Dobuzhinsky, etc.), in which he uses one general technique: on a white background - in a certain timeless sphere - he draws a face, a resemblance in which it is achieved not through naturalization, but by bold generalizations and apt selection of characteristic details. This lack of signs of time creates the impression of static, stiffness, coldness, almost tragic loneliness.

Before anyone else in The World of Art, Somov turned to the themes of the past, to the interpretation of the 18th century. ("Letter", 1896; "Confidentialities", 1897), being the forerunner of Benois' Versailles landscapes. He is the first to create an surreal world, woven from the motifs of the nobility, estate and court culture and his own purely subjective artistic sensations, permeated with irony. The historicism of the "World of Art" was an escape from reality. Not the past, but its staging, longing for its irretrievability - this is their main motive. Not true fun, but a game of fun with kisses in the alleys - such is Somov.

The ideological leader of the "World of Art" was A. N. Benois (1870-1960) - an unusually versatile talent. Painter, graphic artist and illustrator, theater artist, director, author of ballet librettos, art theorist and historian, musical figure, he was, in the words of A. Bely, the main politician and diplomat of the "World of Art". As an artist, he is related to Somov by stylistic tendencies and addiction to the past (“I am intoxicated with Versailles, this is some kind of illness, love, criminal passion ... I completely moved into the past ...”). In the landscapes of Versailles, Benois merged the historical reconstruction of the 17th century. and contemporary impressions of the artist, his perception of French classicism, French engraving. Hence the clear composition, clear spatiality, the grandeur and cold severity of rhythms, the opposition between the grandiosity of monuments of art and the smallness of human figures, which are only staffage among them (the 1st Versailles series of 1896-1898 under the title "The Last Walks of Louis XIV"). In the second Versailles series (1905-1906), the irony, which is also characteristic of the first sheets, is colored with almost tragic notes (“The King’s Walk”, c., gouache, aqua, gold, silver, pen, 1906, State Tretyakov Gallery). The thinking of Benois is the thinking of a theatrical artist par excellence, who knew and felt the theater very well.

Nature is perceived by Benois in an associative connection with history (views of Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, executed by him in watercolor technique).

Benois the illustrator (Pushkin, Hoffman) is a whole page in the history of the book. Unlike Somov, Benois creates a narrative illustration. The plane of the page is not an end in itself for him. A masterpiece of book illustration was the graphic design of The Bronze Horseman (1903,1905,1916,1921-1922, ink and watercolor imitating color woodcut). In a series of illustrations for the great poem, the main character is the architectural landscape of St. Petersburg, now solemnly pathetic, now peaceful, now sinister, against which the figure of Eugene seems even more insignificant. This is how Benois expresses the tragic conflict between destinies Russian statehood and the personal fate of the little man (“And all night long the poor madman, / Wherever he turned his feet, / The Bronze Horseman was everywhere with him / With a heavy stomp galloped”).

As a theater artist, Benois designed the performances of the "Russian Seasons", of which the most famous was the ballet "Petrushka" to the music of Stravinsky, he worked a lot at the Moscow Art Theater, and later - on almost all major European stages.

A special place in the "World of Art" is occupied by N. K. Roerich (1874-1947). A connoisseur of philosophy and ethnography of the East, an archaeologist-scientist, Roerich received an excellent education, first at home, then at the law and historical-philological faculties of St. Petersburg University, then at the Academy of Arts, in the workshop of Kuindzhi, and in Paris in the studio of F. Cormon. Early he gained the authority of a scientist. He was related to the "World of Art" by the same love for retrospection, only not in the 17th-18th centuries, but in pagan Slavic and Scandinavian antiquity, in Ancient Russia; stylistic tendencies, theatrical decorativeness (“Messenger”, 1897, State Tretyakov Gallery; “The Elders Converge”, 1898, Russian Museum; “Sinister”, 1901, Russian Museum). Roerich was most closely associated with the philosophy and aesthetics of Russian symbolism, but his art did not fit into the framework of the existing trends, because, in accordance with the artist’s worldview, it turned, as it were, to all of humanity with an appeal for a friendly union of all peoples. Hence the special epic nature of his paintings.

After 1905, the mood of pantheistic mysticism grew in Roerich's work. Historical themes give way to religious legends (The Heavenly Battle, 1912, Russian Museum). The Russian icon had a huge influence on Roerich: his decorative panel The Battle of Kerzhents (1911) was exhibited during the performance of a fragment of the same title from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia in the Paris Russian Seasons.

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

The weaknesses of the "World of Art" were primarily reflected in the variegation and inconsistency of the program, proclaiming the model "either Böcklin, then Manet"; in idealistic views on art, in an affected indifference to the civic tasks of art, in programmatic apathy, in the loss of the social significance of the picture. The intimacy of the "World of Art", its pure aestheticism determined the short historical period of his life in the era of formidable tragic portents of the impending revolution. These were only the first steps on the path of creative searches, and very soon the young ones overtook the World of Art students.

"Union of Russian Artists"

In 1903, one of the largest exhibition associations of the beginning of the century, the Union of Russian Artists, was founded. At first, almost all the prominent figures of the "World of Art" - Benois, Bakst, Somov, entered it, Vrubel, Borisov-Musatov were participants in the first exhibitions. The initiators of the creation of the association were Moscow artists associated with the "World of Art", but weighed down by the programmatic aesthetics of Petersburgers.

National landscape, lovingly painted pictures of peasant Russia - one of the main genres of the artists of the "Union", in which "Russian impressionism" expressed itself in a peculiar way with its predominantly rural rather than urban motifs. So the landscapes of I.E. Grabar (1871-1960), with their lyrical mood, with the finest pictorial nuances reflecting instantaneous changes in true nature, is a kind of parallel on Russian soil to the French impressionistic landscape (“September Snow”, 1903, State Tretyakov Gallery). Grabar's interest in the decomposition of visible color into spectral, pure colors of the palette also makes him related to neo-impressionism, to J. Seurat and P. Signac ("March Snow", 1904, State Tretyakov Gallery). The play of colors in nature, complex coloristic effects become the subject of close study of the "Allies", who create on the canvas a pictorial and plastic figurative world, devoid of narrative and illustrativeness.

With all the interest in the transmission of light and air in the painting of the masters of the "Union", the dissolution of the object in the light-air medium is never observed. The color becomes decorative.

"Allies", in contrast to the Petersburgers - the graphic artists of the "World of Art" - are mostly painters with a heightened decorative sense of color. An excellent example of this is the paintings of F.A. Malyavin.

On the whole, The Allies gravitated not only towards plein-air studies, but also towards monumental pictorial forms. By 1910, the time of the split and the secondary formation of the "World of Art", at the exhibitions of the "Union" one could see an intimate landscape (Vinogradov, Yuon, etc.), painting close to French divisionism (Grabar, early Larionov) or close to symbolism ( P. Kuznetsov, Sudeikin); they were also attended by the artists of Diaghilev's "World of Art" - Benois, Somov, Bakst.

"Union of Russian Artists", with its solid realistic foundations, which played a significant role in the national fine arts, had a certain impact on the formation of the Soviet school of painting, having existed until 1923.

In 1907, in Moscow, the Golden Fleece magazine organized the only exhibition of artists following Borisov-Musatov, called the Blue Rose. P. Kuznetsov became the leading artist of the Blue Rose. The “Blue Bears” are closest to symbolism, which was expressed primarily in their “language”: unsteadiness of mood, vague, untranslatable musicality of associations, refinement of color relationships. The aesthetic platform of the participants of the exhibition also had an effect in subsequent years, and the name of this exhibition became a household name for a whole trend in art in the second half of the 900s. The entire activity of the "Blue Rose" also bears the strongest imprint of the influence of the Art Nouveau style (plane-decorative stylization of forms, whimsical linear rhythms).

The works of P. V. Kuznetsov (1878-1968) reflect the basic principles of the Blue Bears. Kuznetsov created a decorative panel-picture in which he sought to abstract from everyday concreteness, to show the unity of man and nature, the stability of the eternal cycle of life and nature, the birth of the human soul in this harmony. Hence the desire for monumental forms of painting, dreamy-contemplative, purified from everything instantaneous, universal, timeless notes, a constant desire to convey the spirituality of matter. A figure is only a sign expressing a concept; color serves to convey feelings; rhythm - in order to introduce into a certain world of sensations (as in icon painting - a symbol of love, tenderness, sorrow, etc.). Hence the reception of a uniform distribution of light over the entire surface of the canvas as one of the foundations of Kuznetsov's decorative effect. Serov said that P. Kuznetsov's nature "breathes". This is perfectly expressed in his Kyrgyz (Steppe) and Bukhara suites, in Central Asian landscapes. Kuznetsov studied the techniques of ancient Russian icon painting, the early Italian Renaissance. This appeal to the classical traditions of world art in search of its own great style, as correctly noted by researchers, was of fundamental importance in a period when any traditions were often denied altogether.

The exoticism of the East - Iran, Egypt, Turkey - is realized in the landscapes of M. S. Saryan (1880-1972). The East was a natural theme for the Armenian artist. Saryan creates in his painting a world full of bright decorativeness, more passionate, more earthly than that of Kuznetsov, and the pictorial solution is always built on contrasting color relationships, without nuances, in sharp shadow comparison (“Date Palm, Egypt”, 1911, maps. , tempera, GTG).

The images of Saryan are monumental due to the generalization of forms, large colorful planes, the general lapidarity of the language - this is, as a rule, a generalized image of Egypt, whether, Persia, native Armenia, while maintaining vital naturalness, as if written from nature. Saryan's decorative canvases are always cheerful, they correspond to his idea of ​​creativity: “... a work of art is the very result of happiness, that is, creative work. Consequently, it should ignite the flame of creative burning in the viewer, contribute to the identification of his natural desire for happiness and freedom.

"Jack of Diamonds"

In 1910, a number of young artists - P. Konchalovsky, I. Mashkov, A. Lentulov, R. Falk, A. Kuprin, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova and others - united in the Jack of Diamonds organization, which had its own charter, arranged exhibitions and published its own collections of articles. The “Jack of Diamonds” actually existed until 1917. As post-impressionism, primarily Cezanne, was a “reaction to impressionism”, so “Jack of Diamonds” opposed the vagueness, untranslatability, the subtlest nuances of the symbolic language of the “Blue Rose” and the aesthetic stylism of the “World of Art” . The "Knave of Diamonds", carried away by the materiality, "materiality" of the world, professed a clear construction of the picture, emphasized objectivity of the form, intensity, fullness of color. It is no coincidence that the still life becomes a favorite genre of the “Valetovites”, just as the landscape becomes a favorite genre of the members of the Union of Russian Artists. The subtlety in conveying the change of moods, the psychologism of the characteristics, the understatement of the states, the dematerialization of the painting of the "Blue Bearers", their romantic poetry are rejected by the "Valetovites". They are opposed by the almost spontaneous festivity of colors, the expression of the contour drawing, the juicy pasty broad manner of writing, which convey an optimistic vision of the world, creating an almost farcical, square mood. The "Knave of Diamonds" allow such simplifications in the interpretation of the form, which are akin to a popular popular print, a folk toy, painting tiles, a signboard. The craving for primitivism (from the Latin primitivus - primitive, initial) manifested itself in various artists who imitated the simplified forms of art of the so-called primitive eras - primitive tribes and nationalities - in search of gaining immediacy and integrity of artistic perception. The “Jack of Diamonds” drew its perceptions from Cezanne (hence sometimes the name “Russian Cezanneism”), even more from cubism (“shift” of forms) and even from futurism (dynamics, various modifications of form.

The extreme simplification of the form, the direct connection with the art of signage is especially noticeable in M.F. Larionov (1881-1964), one of the founders of the "Jack of Diamonds", but already in 1911 broke with him. Larionov paints landscapes, portraits, still lifes, works as a theater artist of the Diaghilev entreprise, then turns to genre painting, his theme is the life of a provincial street, soldiers' barracks. The forms are flat, grotesque, as if deliberately stylized as a child's drawing, popular print or signboard. In 1913, Larionov published his book "Luchism" - in fact, the first of the manifestos of abstract art, the true creators of which in Russia were V. Kandinsky and K. Malevich.

Artist N.S. Goncharova (1881-1962), Larionov's wife, developed the same tendencies in her genre paintings, mostly on a peasant theme. In the years under review, in her work, more decorative and colorful than the art of Larionov, monumental inner strength and conciseness, keenly felt passion for primitivism. Describing the work of Goncharova and Larionov, the term "neo-primitivism" is often used.

M.Z. Chagall (1887-1985) created fantasies transformed from the boring impressions of small-town Vitebsk life and interpreted in a naive-poetic and grotesque-symbolic spirit. With surreal space, bright colors, deliberate primitivization of form, Chagall turns out to be close to both Western expressionism and primitive folk art (“I and the Village”, 1911, Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; “Over Vitebsk”, 1914, coll. Zak. Toronto; "Wedding", 1918, State Tretyakov Gallery).

"Youth Union"

The Union of Youth is a St. Petersburg organization formed almost simultaneously with the Jack of Diamonds (1909). The leading role in it was played by L. Zheverzheev. Just like the "valetovtsy", members of the "Union of Youth" published theoretical collections. Until the collapse of the association in 1917. The "Union of Youth" did not have a specific program, professing symbolism, and cubism, and futurism, and "non-objectivity", but each of the artists had his own creative face.

The art of the pre-revolutionary years in Russia is marked by the unusual complexity and inconsistency of artistic searches, hence the successive groupings with their own program settings and stylistic sympathies. But along with the experimenters in the field of abstract forms in the Russian art of that time, the "World of Art" and "Goluborozites", "allies", "knaves of diamonds" continued to work at the same time, there was also a powerful stream of neoclassical currents, an example of which can be the work of an active member of the "Mir art" in his "second generation" Z. E. Serebryakova (1884-1967). In her poetic genre canvases with their laconic drawing, palpably sensual plastic molding, and balance of composition, Serebryakova comes from the high national traditions of Russian art, primarily Venetsianov and even further - ancient Russian art (“Peasants”, 1914, Russian Museum; “Harvest”, 1915 , Odessa Art Museum; "Whitening of the canvas", 1917, State Tretyakov Gallery).

Finally, a brilliant evidence of the vitality of national traditions, the great ancient Russian painting is the work of K. S. Petrov-Vodkin (1878-1939), an artist-thinker, who later became the most prominent master of art of the Soviet period. In the famous painting Bathing the Red Horse (1912, Fri), the artist resorted to a figurative metaphor. As it was correctly noted, the young man on a bright red horse evokes associations with the popular image of St. George the Victorious (“Saint Egor”), and the generalized silhouette, rhythmic, compact composition, full force contrasting color spots, flatness in the interpretation of forms bring to mind the old Russian icon. A harmoniously enlightened image is created by Petrov-Vodkin in the monumental painting “Girls on the Volga” (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery), in which he also feels his orientation towards the traditions of Russian art, leading the master to a true nationality.

Architecture

The era of highly developed industrial capitalism caused significant changes in architecture, primarily in the architecture of the city. There are new types of architectural structures: factories, stations, shops, banks, with the advent of cinema - cinemas. The revolution was made by new Construction Materials: reinforced concrete and metal structures, which made it possible to block gigantic spaces, make huge showcases, and create a bizarre pattern of bindings.

In the last decade of the 19th century, it became clear to architects that in using the historical styles of the past, architecture reached a dead end; according to the researchers, it was necessary, according to the researchers, not to “rearrange” historical styles, but to creatively comprehend the new that was accumulating in the environment of a rapidly growing capitalist city. . The last years of the 19th - early 20th centuries are the time of the dominance of modernity in Russia, which was formed in the West primarily in Belgian, South German and Austrian architecture, a phenomenon in general cosmopolitan (although here Russian modernity differs from Western European, because it is a mixture with historical neo-renaissance, neo-baroque, neo-rococo, etc.).

A striking example of Art Nouveau in Russia was the work of F.O. Shekhtel (1859--1926). Profitable houses, mansions, buildings of trading companies and stations - in all genres Shekhtel left his handwriting. The asymmetry of the building is effective for him, the organic increase in volumes, the different nature of the facades, the use of balconies, porches, bay windows, sandriks above the windows, the introduction of a stylized image of lilies or irises into the architectural decor, the use of stained-glass windows with the same ornament motif, different textures of materials in interior design. A bizarre pattern, built on the twists of lines, extends to all parts of the building: the mosaic frieze, beloved by Art Nouveau, or a belt of glazed ceramic tiles in faded decadent colors, stained-glass window bindings, a fence pattern, balcony lattices; on the composition of the stairs, even on the furniture, etc. Capricious curvilinear outlines dominate everything. In Art Nouveau, one can trace a certain evolution, two stages of development: the first is decorative, with a special passion for ornament, decorative sculpture and painting (ceramics, mosaics, stained glass), the second is more constructive, rationalistic.

Art Nouveau is well represented in Moscow. During this period, railway stations, hotels, banks, mansions of the wealthy bourgeoisie, tenement houses were built here. The Ryabushinsky mansion at the Nikitsky Gates in Moscow (1900-1902, architect F.O. Shekhtel) is a typical example of Russian Art Nouveau.

Appeal to the traditions of ancient Russian architecture, but through the techniques of modernity, not copying the naturalistic details of medieval Russian architecture, which was characteristic of the "Russian style" of the middle of the 19th century, but freely varying it, trying to convey the very spirit of Ancient Russia, gave rise to the so-called neo-Russian style of the beginning 20th century (sometimes called neo-romanticism). Its difference from Art Nouveau itself is primarily in disguise, and not in revealing, which is typical for Art Nouveau, the internal structure of the building and utilitarian purpose behind intricately complex ornamentation (Shekhtel - Yaroslavsky Station in Moscow, 1903-1904; A.V. Shchusev - Kazansky station in Moscow, 1913-1926; V. M. Vasnetsov - the old building of the Tretyakov Gallery, 1900-1905). Both Vasnetsov and Shchusev, each in their own way (and the second under the very great influence of the first), were imbued with the beauty of ancient Russian architecture, especially Novgorod, Pskov and early Moscow, appreciated its national identity and creatively interpreted its forms.

Art Nouveau was developed not only in Moscow, but also in St. Petersburg, where it developed under the undoubted influence of the Scandinavian, so-called "northern modern": P.Yu. Suzor in 1902-1904 builds the building of the Singer company on Nevsky Prospekt (now the Book House). The terrestrial sphere on the roof of the building was supposed to symbolize the international nature of the company's activities. The façade was clad with precious stones (granite, labradorite), bronze, and mosaics. But the traditions of monumental St. Petersburg classicism influenced St. Petersburg modernism. This served as an impetus for the emergence of another branch of modernity - neoclassicism of the 20th century. In the mansion of A.A. Polovtsov on Kamenny Island in St. Petersburg (1911-1913) architect I.A. Fomin (1872-1936) fully affected the features of this style: the façade (central volume and side wings) was resolved in the Ionic order, and the interiors of the mansion in a reduced and more modest form, as it were, repeat the enfilade of the hall of the Tauride Palace, but the huge windows of the semi-rotunda of the winter garden , stylized drawing of architectural details clearly define the time of the beginning of the century. The works of a purely St. Petersburg architectural school of the beginning of the century - tenement houses - at the beginning of Kamennoostrovsky (No. 1-3) Avenue, Count M.P. Tolstoy on the Fontanka (No. 10-12), buildings b. The Azov-Don Bank on Bolshaya Morskaya and the Astoria Hotel belong to the architect F.I. Lidval (1870-1945), one of the most prominent masters of St. Petersburg Art Nouveau.

Art Nouveau was one of the most significant styles that ended the 19th century and opened the next. All modern achievements of architecture were used in it. Modern is not only a certain constructive system. Since the reign of classicism, modern is perhaps the most consistent style in terms of its holistic approach, the ensemble solution of the interior. Art Nouveau as a style captured the art of furniture, utensils, fabrics, carpets, stained-glass windows, ceramics, glass, mosaics, it is recognizable everywhere for its drawn contours and lines, its special color palette of faded, pastel colors, and its favorite pattern of lilies and irises.

Sculpture

Russian sculpture at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. and the first pre-revolutionary years is represented by several major names. First of all, this is P.P. Trubetskoy (1866-1938). His early Russian works (portrait of Levitan, image of Tolstoy on horseback, both - 1899, bronze) give a complete picture of Trubetskoy's impressionist method: the form, as it were, is all permeated with light and air, dynamic, designed for viewing from all points of view and from different angles creates a multifaceted characterization of the image. The most remarkable work of P. Trubetskoy in Russia was a bronze monument Alexander III, installed in 1909 in St. Petersburg, on Znamenskaya Square. Here Trubetskoy leaves his impressionistic style. Researchers have repeatedly noted that Trubetskoy's image of the emperor is resolved, as it were, in contrast to Falconet's, and next to The Bronze Horseman, this is an almost satirical image of autocracy. It seems to us that this contrast has a different meaning; not Russia, “raised on its hind legs”, like a ship launched into European waters, but Russia of peace, stability and strength is symbolized by this rider sitting heavily on a heavy horse.

Impressionism in a peculiar, very individual creative refraction found expression in the works of A. S. Golubkina (1864-1927). In the images of Golubkina, especially women's, there is a lot of high moral purity, deep democracy. These are most often images of ordinary poor people: exhausted women or sickly "children of the dungeon".

The most interesting thing in Golubkina's work is her portraits, always dramatically intense, which is generally characteristic of the work of this master, and unusually diverse (portrait of V.F. Ern (wood, 1913, State Tretyakov Gallery) or a bust of Andrei Bely (gypsum, 1907, State Tretyakov Gallery)) .

In the work of Trubetskoy and Golubkina, for all their differences, there is something in common: features that make them related not only to impressionism, but also to the rhythm of fluid lines and forms of modernity.

Impressionism, which captured the sculpture of the beginning of the century, little affected the work of S. T. Konenkov (1874-1971). The marble “Nike” (1906, State Tretyakov Gallery) with clearly portrait (moreover, Slavic) features of a round face with dimples on the cheeks portends the works that Konenkov performed after a trip to Greece in 1912. Images of Greek pagan mythology are intertwined with Slavic mythology. Konenkov begins to work in wood, draws a lot from Russian folklore, Russian fairy tales. Hence his "Stribog" (tree, 1910, State Tretyakov Gallery), "Velikosil" (tree, private, coll.), images of beggars and old people ("Old Man-Polyevichok", 1910).

In the revival of wooden sculpture, Konenkov's great merit. Love for the Russian epic, for the Russian fairy tale coincided in time with the "discovery" of ancient Russian icon painting, ancient Russian wooden sculpture, with an interest in ancient Russian architecture. Unlike Golubkina, Konenkov lacks drama, mental breakdown. His images are full of popular optimism.

In the portrait, Konenkov was one of the first to pose the problem of color at the beginning of the century. His coloring of stone or wood is always very delicate, taking into account the characteristics of the material and the characteristics of the plastic solution.

Of the monumental works of the beginning of the century, it is necessary to note the monument to N.V. Gogol N.A. Andreev (1873-1932), opened in Moscow in 1909. This is Gogol of the last years of his life, terminally ill. Unusually expressive are his sad profile with a sharp ("Gogol") nose, a thin figure wrapped in an overcoat; In the lapidary language of sculpture, Andreev conveyed the tragedy of a great creative personality. In a bas-relief frieze on a pedestal in multi-figured compositions, Gogol's immortal heroes are depicted in a completely different way, with humor or even satirically.

A. T. Matveev (1878-1960). He overcame the impressionistic influence of his teacher in his early works - in the nude (the main theme of those years. Strict architectonics, laconism of stable generalized forms, a state of enlightenment, peace, harmony distinguish Matveev, directly contrasting his work with sculptural impressionism.

As rightly noted by the researchers, the master's works are designed for a long, thoughtful perception, they require an inner mood, "silence" and then they open up most fully and deeply. They have the musicality of plastic forms, great artistic taste and poetry. All these qualities are inherent in the gravestone of V.E. Borisov-Musatov in Tarusa (1910, granite). In the figure of a sleeping boy, it is difficult to see the line between sleep and non-existence, and this is done in the best traditions of memorial sculpture of the 18th century. Kozlovsky and Martos, with her wise calm acceptance of death, which in turn leads us even further, to archaic antique steles with scenes of "funeral treats". This tombstone is the pinnacle in the work of Matveev of the pre-revolutionary period, who still had to work fruitfully and become one of the famous Soviet sculptors. In the pre-October period, a number of talented young masters appeared in Russian sculpture (S.D. Merkurov, V.I. Mukhina, I.D. Shadr, etc.), who in the 1910s were just starting their creative activity. They worked in different directions, but retained the realistic traditions that they brought to the new art, playing an important role in its formation and development.

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With the crisis of the populist movement in the 1990s, the "analytical method of nineteenth-century realism," as it is called in Russian science, is becoming obsolete. Many of the Wanderers experienced a creative decline, went into the “small-scale” of an entertaining genre picture. Perov's traditions were preserved most of all in the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture thanks to the teaching activities of such artists as S.V. Ivanov, K.A. Korovin, V.A. Serov and others.

Complex life processes determined the variety of forms of artistic life of these years. All kinds of art - painting, theater, music, architecture - came out for renewal artistic language for high professionalism.

For painters of the turn of the century, other ways of expression are characteristic than those of the Wanderers, other forms of artistic creativity - in images that are contradictory, complicated and reflect modernity without illustrativeness and narrative. Artists painfully seek harmony and beauty in a world that is fundamentally alien to both harmony and beauty. That is why many saw their mission in cultivating a sense of beauty. This time of "eves", the expectation of changes in public life, gave rise to many trends, associations, groupings, a clash of different worldviews and tastes. But it also gave rise to the universalism of a whole generation of artists who came forward after the "classical" Wanderers. It is enough to name only the names of V.A. Serov and M.A. Vrubel.

An important role in the popularization of Russian art, especially of the 18th century, as well as Western European art, in attracting Western European masters to exhibitions, was played by the artists of the World of Art association. "Miriskusniki", who gathered the best artistic forces in St. Petersburg, published their own magazine, by their very existence contributed to the consolidation of artistic forces in Moscow, the creation of the "Union of Russian Artists".

The impressionistic lessons of plein air painting, the composition of "random framing", the wide free pictorial manner - all this is the result of the evolution in the development of pictorial means in all genres of the turn of the century. In search of "beauty and harmony", the artists try themselves in a variety of techniques and art forms - from monumental painting and theatrical scenery to book design and arts and crafts.

At the turn of the century, a style developed that affected all the plastic arts, starting primarily with architecture (in which eclecticism dominated for a long time) and ending with graphics, which was called the Art Nouveau style. This phenomenon is not unambiguous, in modernity there is also decadent pretentiousness, pretentiousness, designed mainly for bourgeois tastes, but there is also a desire for unity of style that is significant in itself. Art Nouveau is a new stage in the synthesis of architecture, painting, and decorative arts.

In the visual arts, Art Nouveau has manifested itself: in sculpture - by the fluidity of forms, the special expressiveness of the silhouette, the dynamism of the compositions; in painting - the symbolism of images, addiction to allegories.

The emergence of Art Nouveau did not mean that the ideas of wandering died by the end of the century. Genre painting developed in the 1990s, but it developed somewhat differently than in the “classical” Wandering movement of the 1970s and 1980s. Thus, the peasant theme is revealed in a new way. The split in the rural community is emphasized accusatoryly portrayed by Sergei Alekseevich Korovin (1858–1908) in the painting “On the World” (1893, State Tretyakov Gallery). Abram Efimovich Arkhipov (1862–1930) was able to show the vitality of existence in hard, exhausting work in the painting “Washerwomen” (1901, State Tretyakov Gallery). He achieved this in to a large extent thanks to new pictorial discoveries, to a new understanding of the possibilities of color and light.

Reticence, “subtext”, a well-found expressive detail make even more tragic the painting by Sergei Vasilyevich Ivanov (1864-1910) “On the road. Death of a Settler" (1889, State Tretyakov Gallery). Shafts sticking out, as if raised in a cry, dramatize the action much more than the dead man depicted in the foreground or the woman howling over him. Ivanov owns one of the works dedicated to the revolution of 1905 - "Execution". The impressionistic technique of “partial composition”, as if accidentally snatched from the frame, is preserved here too: only a line of houses, a line of soldiers, a group of demonstrators are outlined, and in the foreground, in a square illuminated by the sun, the figure of a dog killed and running from shots. Ivanov is characterized by sharp light and shade contrasts, an expressive contour of objects, and a well-known flatness of the image. His tongue is lapidary.

In the 90s of the XIX century. an artist enters art, who makes the worker the protagonist of his works. In 1894, a painting by N.A. Kasatkina (1859-1930) "Miner" (TG), in 1895 - "Coal miners. Change".

At the turn of the century, a slightly different path of development than that of Surikov is outlined in the historical theme. So, for example, Andrei Petrovich Ryabushkin (1861–1904) works more in the historical genre than in the purely historical genre. “Russian Women of the 17th Century in the Church” (1899, State Tretyakov Gallery), “Wedding Train in Moscow. XVII century” (1901, State Tretyakov Gallery), “They are coming. (The people of Moscow during the entry of a foreign embassy into Moscow at the end of the 17th century)" (1901, Russian Museum), "Moskovskaya Street of the 17th century on a holiday" (1895, Russian Museum), etc. - these are everyday scenes from the life of Moscow in the 17th century. Ryabushkin was especially attracted to this century, with its gingerbread elegance, polychrome, patterned. The artist aesthetically admires the bygone world of the 17th century, which leads to a subtle stylization, far from the monumentalism of Surikov and his assessments of historical events. Ryabushkin's stylization is reflected in the flatness of the image, in a special system of plastic and linear rhythm, in the color scheme built on bright major colors, in the general decorative solution. Ryabushkin boldly introduces local colors into the plein-air landscape, for example, in The Wedding Train... - the red color of the wagon, large spots of festive clothes against the background of dark buildings and snow, given, however, in the finest color nuances. The landscape always poetically conveys the beauty of Russian nature. True, sometimes Ryabushkin is also characterized by an ironic attitude in the depiction of certain aspects of everyday life, as, for example, in the painting “Tea Drinking” (cardboard, gouache, tempera, 1903, Russian Museum). In the frontally seated static figures with saucers in their hands, measuredness, boredom, drowsiness are read, we also feel the oppressive power of petty-bourgeois life, the limitations of these people.

Apollinary Mikhailovich Vasnetsov (1856–1933) pays even more attention to the landscape in his historical compositions. His favorite subject is also the 17th century, but not everyday scenes, but the architecture of Moscow. (“Street in Kitay-gorod. Beginning of the 17th century”, 1900, Russian Museum). Painting “Moscow at the end of the 17th century. At Dawn at the Resurrection Gates (1900, State Tretyakov Gallery) may have been inspired by the introduction to Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina, for which Vasnetsov had sketched the scenery shortly before.

A.M. Vasnetsov taught in the landscape class of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (1901–1918). As a theoretician, he outlined his views in the book Art. The experience of analyzing the concepts that define the art of painting ”(Moscow, 1908), in which he advocated realistic traditions in art. Vasnetsov was also the founder of the Union of Russian Artists.

A new type of painting, in which folklore artistic traditions were mastered in a completely special way and translated into the language of modern art, was created by Philip Andreevich Malyavin (1869–1940), who in his youth was engaged in icon painting in the Athos Monastery, and then studied at the Academy of Arts under Repin. His images of "women" and "girls" have a certain symbolic meaning - healthy soil Russia. His paintings are always expressive, and although these are, as a rule, easel works, they receive a monumental and decorative interpretation under the artist's brush. “Laughter” (1899, Museum of Modern Art, Venice), “Whirlwind” (1906, State Tretyakov Gallery) is a realistic depiction of peasant girls laughing contagiously loudly or rushing uncontrollably in a round dance, but this realism is different than in the second half of the century. The painting is sweeping, sketchy, with a textured stroke, the forms are generalized, there is no spatial depth, the figures, as a rule, are located in the foreground and fill the entire canvas.

Malyavin combined in his painting expressive decorativeism with realistic fidelity to nature.

Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov (1862–1942) addresses the theme of Ancient Russia, like a number of masters before him, but the image of Russia appears in the artist’s paintings as a kind of ideal, almost enchanted world, in harmony with nature, but disappeared forever like the legendary city of Kitezh . This keen sense of nature, delight in the world, in front of every tree and blade of grass is especially pronounced in one of Nesterov's most famous works of the pre-revolutionary period - "The Vision of the Young Bartholomew" (1889-1890, State Tretyakov Gallery). In the disclosure of the plot of the picture, there are the same stylistic features as those of Ryabushkin, but a deeply lyrical sense of the beauty of nature is invariably expressed, through which the high spirituality of the characters, their enlightenment, their alienation from worldly fuss is conveyed.

Before turning to the image of Sergius of Radonezh, Nesterov had already expressed interest in the theme of Ancient Russia with such works as “The Bride of Christ” (1887, location unknown), “The Hermit” (1888, Russian Museum; 1888–1889, State Tretyakov Gallery), creating images of high spirituality and quiet contemplation. He dedicated several more works to Sergius of Radonezh himself (Youth of St. Sergius, 1892-1897, State Tretyakov Gallery; triptych "Works of St. Sergius", 1896-1897, State Tretyakov Gallery; "Sergius of Radonezh", 1891-1899, State Russian Museum).

M.V. Nesterov did a lot of religious monumental painting: together with V.M. Vasnetsov painted the Kyiv Vladimir Cathedral, independently - the monastery in Abastuman (Georgia) and the Marfo-Mariinsky monastery in Moscow. The murals are always dedicated to the ancient Russian theme (for example, in Georgia - to Alexander Nevsky). In the wall paintings of Nesterov, there are many observed real signs, especially in the landscape, portrait features - in the image of saints. In the artist's striving for a flat interpretation of the composition of elegance, ornamentality, refined sophistication of plastic rhythms, an undoubted influence of Art Nouveau manifested itself.

Stylization, in general, so characteristic of this time, to a large extent touched Nesterov's easel works. This can be seen in one of the best paintings dedicated to women's fate - "The Great Tongue" (1898, Russian Museum): the deliberately flat figures of nuns, "chernitsa" and "belitsa", generalized silhouettes, as if a slow ritual rhythm of light and dark spots - figures and landscape with its light birches and almost black firs. And as always with Nesterov, the landscape plays one of the main roles. “I love the Russian landscape,” the artist wrote, “against its background, somehow it’s better, you feel more clearly both the meaning of Russian life and the Russian soul.”

The landscape genre itself develops at the end of the 19th century also in a new way. Levitan, in fact, completed the search for the Wanderers in the landscape. A new word at the turn of the century was to be said by K.A. Korovin, V.A. Serov and M.A. Vrubel.

Already in the early landscapes of Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin (1861-1939) purely pictorial problems are solved - to write gray on white, black on white, gray on gray. A "conceptual" landscape (the term of M.M. Allenov), such as Savrasovsky or Levitanovsky, does not interest him.

For the brilliant colorist Korovin, the world appears as a "riot of colors." Generously gifted by nature, Korovin was engaged in both portraiture and still life, but it would not be a mistake to say that landscape remained his favorite genre. He brought into art the strong realistic traditions of his teachers from the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture - Savrasov and Polenov, but he has a different view of the world, he sets other tasks. He began to paint en plein air early, already in the portrait of a chorus girl in 1883, one can see his independent development of the principles of plein airism, embodied then in a number of portraits made in the estate of S. Mamontov in Abramtsevo (“In the Boat”, State Tretyakov Gallery; portrait of T. S. Lyubatovich, State Russian Museum, etc.), in the northern landscapes, executed during the expedition of S. Mamontov to the north (“Winter in Lapland”, State Tretyakov Gallery). His French landscapes, united by the title "Parisian Lights", is already a completely impressionistic painting, with its highest culture of etude. Sharp, instant impressions of the life of a big city: quiet streets at different times of the day, objects dissolved in a light-air environment, molded by a dynamic, “trembling”, vibrating stroke, a stream of such strokes that create the illusion of a veil of rain or city air saturated with thousands of different vapors, - features reminiscent of the landscapes of Manet, Pissarro, Monet. Korovin is temperamental, emotional, impulsive, theatrical, hence the bright colors and romantic elation of his landscapes (“Paris. Capuchin Boulevard”, 1906, State Tretyakov Gallery; “Paris at Night. Italian Boulevard.” 1908, State Tretyakov Gallery). Korovin retains the same features of impressionist etude, painterly maestro, striking artistry in all other genres, primarily in portraiture and still life, but also in decorative panels, in applied art, in theatrical scenery, which he was engaged in all his life (Portrait of Chaliapin, 1911, Russian Museum; "Fish, wine and fruits" 1916, State Tretyakov Gallery).

Korovin's generous gift for painting brilliantly manifested itself in theatrical and decorative painting. As a theater painter, he worked for the Abramtsevo Theater (and Mamontov was perhaps the first to appreciate him as a theater artist), for the Moscow Art Theater, for the Moscow Private Russian Opera, where he began his lifelong friendship with Chaliapin, for the Diaghilev entreprise. Korovin raised the theatrical scenery and the significance of the artist in the theater to a new level, he made a whole revolution in understanding the role of the artist in the theater and had a great influence on his contemporaries with his colorful, "spectacular" scenery, revealing the very essence of the musical performance.

One of the greatest artists, an innovator of Russian painting at the turn of the century, was Valentin Aleksandrovich Serov (1865–1911). His “Girl with Peaches” (portrait of Verusha Mamontova, 1887, State Tretyakov Gallery) and “Girl Illuminated by the Sun” (portrait of Masha Simanovich, 1888, State Tretyakov Gallery) represent a whole stage in Russian painting. Serov was brought up among prominent figures of Russian musical culture (his father is a famous composer, his mother is a pianist), studied with Repin and Chistyakov, studied the best museum collections in Europe and, upon returning from abroad, entered the Abramtsevo circle. In Abramtsevo, the two portraits mentioned above were painted, from which the glory of Serov, who entered art with his own, bright and poetic view of the world, began. Vera Mamontova sits in a calm pose at the table, peaches are scattered on a white tablecloth in front of her. She herself and all the objects are presented in the most complex light and air environment. Sun glare falls on the tablecloth, on clothes, a wall plate, a knife. The depicted girl sitting at the table is in organic unity with all this material world, in harmony with it, full of vital trembling, inner movement. To an even greater extent, the principles of plein air painting were reflected in the portrait of the artist's cousin Masha Simanovich, painted right in the open air. The colors here are given in complex interaction with each other, they perfectly convey the atmosphere of a summer day, color reflections that create the illusion of sun rays sliding through the foliage. Serov departs from the critical realism of his teacher Repin to "poetic realism" (D.V. Sarabyanov's term). The images of Vera Mamontova and Masha Simanovich are imbued with a sense of the joy of life, a bright feeling of being, a bright victorious youth. This was achieved by “light” impressionistic painting, for which the “principle of chance” is so characteristic, a sculpted form with a dynamic, free brushstroke that creates the impression of a complex light-air environment. But unlike the Impressionists, Serov never dissolves an object in this environment so that it dematerializes, his composition never loses stability, the masses are always in balance. And most importantly, it does not lose the integral generalized characteristics of the model.

Serov often paints representatives of the artistic intelligentsia: writers, artists, artists (portraits of K. Korovin, 1891, State Tretyakov Gallery; Levitan, 1893, State Tretyakov Gallery; Yermolova, 1905, State Tretyakov Gallery). All of them are different, he interprets all of them deeply individually, but the light of intellectual exclusivity and inspired creative life shines on all of them. The figure of Yermolova resembles an ancient column, or rather, a classical statue, which is further enhanced by the vertical format of the canvas. But the main thing remains the face - beautiful, proud, detached from everything petty and vain. The coloring is decided only on a combination of two colors: black and gray, but in a variety of shades. This truth of the image, created not by narrative, but by purely pictorial means, corresponded to the very personality of Yermolova, who, with her restrained, but deeply penetrating play, shook the youth in the turbulent years of the early 20th century.

Yermolova front door portrait. But Serov is such a great master that, choosing a different model, in the same genre of a formal portrait, in fact, with the same expressive means able to create an image of a completely different character. Thus, in the portrait of Princess Orlova (1910–1911, Russian Museum), some details are exaggerated (a huge hat, a too long back, sharp corner knee), emphasized attention to the luxury of the interior, transmitted only fragmentarily, like a snatched frame (part of a chair, paintings, table corner), allow the master to create an almost grotesque image of an arrogant aristocrat. But the same grotesqueness in his famous “Peter I” (1907, Tretyakov Gallery) (Peter in the picture is simply gigantic), which allows Serov to depict the impetuous movement of the tsar and the courtiers absurdly rushing after him, leads to an image that is not ironic, as in the portrait of Orlova, but symbolic, conveying the meaning of an entire era. The artist admires the originality of his hero.

Portrait, landscape, still life, domestic, historical painting; oil, gouache, tempera, charcoal - it is difficult to find both pictorial and graphic genres in which Serov would not work, and materials that he would not use.

A special theme in the work of Serov is the peasant. In his peasant genre there is no itinerant social sharpness, but there is a sense of the beauty and harmony of peasant life, admiration for the healthy beauty of the Russian people (“In the village. A woman with a horse”, on the map, pastel, 1898, State Tretyakov Gallery). Winter landscapes are especially exquisite with their silver-pearl range of colors.

Serov interpreted the historical theme in his own way: the “royal hunts” with pleasure walks of Elizabeth and Catherine II were conveyed by the artist of the new time, ironic, but also invariably admiring the beauty of life in the 18th century. Serov's interest in the 18th century arose under the influence of The World of Art and in connection with the work on the publication of The History of the Grand Duke, Tsar and Imperial Hunting in Russia.

Serov was a deeply thinking artist, constantly looking for new forms of artistic realization of reality. Inspired by Art Nouveau ideas about flatness and increased decorativeness were reflected not only in historical compositions, but also in his portrait of the dancer Ida Rubinstein, in his sketches for The Abduction of Europa and The Odyssey and Navzikai (both 1910, State Tretyakov Gallery, cardboard, tempera). It is significant that Serov at the end of his life turns to the ancient world. In the poetic legend, interpreted by him freely, outside the classical canons, he wants to find harmony, the search for which the artist devoted all his work.

It is hard to immediately believe that the portrait of Verusha Mamontova and The Abduction of Europe were painted by the same master, Serov is so versatile in his evolution from the impressionistic authenticity of portraits and landscapes of the 80s and 90s to Art Nouveau in historical motifs and compositions from ancient mythology.

The creative path of Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856–1910) was more direct, although at the same time unusually complex. Before the Academy of Arts (1880), Vrubel graduated from the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. In 1884, he went to Kyiv to supervise the restoration of frescoes in St. Cyril's Church and created several monumental compositions himself. He makes watercolor sketches of the murals of the Vladimir Cathedral. The sketches were not transferred to the walls, as the customer was frightened by their non-canonical and expressiveness.

In the 90s, when the artist settled in Moscow, Vrubel's style of writing, full of mystery and almost demonic power, was formed, which cannot be confused with any other. He sculpts the shape like a mosaic, from sharp "faceted" pieces of different colors, as if glowing from the inside ("Girl against the backdrop of a Persian carpet", 1886, KMRI; "Fortuneteller", 1895, State Tretyakov Gallery). Color combinations do not reflect the reality of the color relationship, but have a symbolic meaning. Nature has no power over Vrubel. He knows her, owns her perfectly, but creates his own fantasy world, little like reality. In this sense, Vrubel is antithetical to the Impressionists (about whom it is not accidentally said that they are the same as naturalists in literature), because he does not in any way strive to fix a direct impression of reality. He gravitates toward literary subjects, which he interprets abstractly, trying to create eternal images of great spiritual power. So, having taken up illustrations for The Demon, he soon departs from the principle of direct illustration (“Dance of Tamara”, “Do not cry, child, do not cry in vain”, “Tamara in the coffin”, etc.) and already in the same 1890 creates his "Seated Demon" - a work, in fact, plotless, but the image is eternal, like the images of Mephistopheles, Faust, Don Juan. The image of the Demon is the central image of Vrubel's entire work, its main theme. In 1899 he wrote "The Flying Demon", in 1902 - "The Downtrodden Demon". Vrubel's demon is, first of all, a suffering creature. Suffering prevails over evil in it, and this is the peculiarity of the national Russian interpretation of the image. Contemporaries, as rightly noted, saw in his "Demons" a symbol of the fate of an intellectual - a romantic, trying to rebelliously escape from a reality devoid of harmony into an unreal world of dreams, but plunged into the rough reality of the earth. This tragedy of the artistic worldview also determines the portrait characteristics of Vrubel: spiritual discord, a breakdown in his self-portraits, alertness, almost fright, but also majestic strength, monumentality - in the portrait of S. Mamontov (1897, State Tretyakov Gallery), confusion, anxiety - in the fabulous image of "Princess -Swan" (1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), even in his decorative panels "Spain" (1894, State Tretyakov Gallery) and "Venice" (1893, Russian Museum) executed for the mansion of E.D. Dunker, there is no peace and serenity. Vrubel himself formulated his task - "to awaken the soul with majestic images from the little things of everyday life."

The already mentioned industrialist and philanthropist Savva Mamontov played a very important role in Vrubel's life. Abramtsevo connected Vrubel with Rimsky-Korsakov, under the influence of whose work the artist writes his Swan Princess, performs the sculptures Volkhova, Mizgir, etc. In Abramtsevo, he did a lot of monumental and easel painting, he turns to folklore: to a fairy tale, to an epic, which resulted in the panels “Mikula Selyaninovich”, “Heroes”. Vrubel tries his hand at ceramics, making sculptures in majolica. He is interested in pagan Russia and Greece, the Middle East and India - all the cultures of mankind, artistic techniques which he seeks to attain. And each time the impressions he gleaned, he turned into deeply symbolic images, reflecting all the originality of his worldview.

Vrubel created his most mature paintings and graphic works at the turn of the century - in the genre of landscape, portrait, book illustration. In the organization and decorative-planar interpretation of the canvas or sheet, in the combination of the real and the fantastic, in the commitment to ornamental, rhythmically complex solutions in his works of this period, the features of modernity are increasingly asserting themselves.

Like K. Korovin, Vrubel worked a lot in the theater. His best scenery was performed for Rimsky-Korsakov's operas The Snow Maiden, Sadko, The Tale of Tsar Saltan and others on the stage of the Moscow Private Opera, that is, for those works that gave him the opportunity to "communicate" with Russian folklore, fairy tale, legend.

The universalism of talent, boundless imagination, extraordinary passion in the affirmation of noble ideals distinguish Vrubel from many of his contemporaries.

Vrubel's work brighter than others reflected the contradictions and painful throwings of the milestone era. On the day of Vrubel's funeral, Benois said: “Vrubel's life, as it will now go down in history, is a wondrous pathetic symphony, that is, the fullest form of artistic existence. Future generations ... will look back on the last decades of the 19th century as on the "Vrubel era" ... It was in it that our time was expressed in the most beautiful and saddest thing that it was capable of.

With Vrubel, we are entering a new century, the era of the "Silver Age", the last period of the culture of St. Petersburg Russia, which is out of touch both with the "ideology of revolutionism" (P. Sapronov) and "with cultural power autocracy and the state. The rise of Russian philosophical and religious thought, the highest level of poetry is associated with the beginning of the century (suffice it to name Blok, Bely, Annensky, Gumilyov, Georgy Ivanov, Mandelstam, Akhmatova, Tsvetaeva, Sologub); drama and musical theater, ballet; the “discovery” of Russian art of the 18th century (Rokotov, Levitsky, Borovikovsky), Old Russian icon painting; the finest professionalism of painting and graphics from the very beginning of the century. But the "silver age" was powerless in the face of the impending tragic events in Russia, which was heading towards a revolutionary catastrophe, continuing to stay in the "ivory tower" and in the poetics of symbolism.

If Vrubel's work can be correlated with the general direction of symbolism in art and literature, although, like any great artist, he destroyed the boundaries of the direction, then Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov (1870–1905) is a direct exponent of pictorial symbolism and one of the first retrospectivists in fine art. art of frontier Russia. Critics of the time even called him "the dreamer of retrospectivism." Having died on the eve of the first Russian revolution, Borisov-Musatov turned out to be completely deaf to the new moods that were rapidly breaking into life. His works are an elegiac sadness for the old empty “noble nests” and dying “cherry orchards”, for beautiful women, spiritualized, almost unearthly, dressed in some kind of timeless costumes that do not carry external signs of place and time.

His easel works most of all resemble not even decorative panels, but tapestries. The space is solved in an extremely conditional, planar way, the figures are almost ethereal, like, for example, the girls by the pond in the painting "Pond" (1902, tempera, State Tretyakov Gallery), immersed in dreamy meditation, in deep contemplation. Faded, pale gray shades of color enhance the overall impression of fragile, unearthly beauty and anemic, ghostly, which extends not only to human images, but also to the nature depicted by him. It is no coincidence that Borisov-Musatov called one of his works "Ghosts" (1903, tempera, Tretyakov Gallery): silent and inactive female figures, marble statues by the stairs, a half-naked tree - a faded range of blue, gray, purple tones enhances the ghostliness of the depicted.

This longing for bygone times made Borisov-Musatov related to the artists of the World of Art, an organization that arose in St. Petersburg in 1898 and united the masters of the highest artistic culture, the artistic elite of Russia of those years. (“The World of Arts”, by the way, did not understand the art of Borisov-Musatov and recognized it only at the end of the artist’s life.) The World of Art was started by evenings in the house of A. Benois devoted to art, literature and music. The people who gathered there were united by their love for beauty and the belief that it can only be found in art, since reality is ugly. Having also arisen as a reaction to the pettiness of the late Wanderers, its edifying and illustrative nature, the World of Art soon turned into one of the major phenomena of Russian artistic culture. Almost all famous artists participated in this association - Benois, Somov, Bakst, E.E. Lansere, Golovin, Dobuzhinsky, Vrubel, Serov, K. Korovin, Levitan, Nesterov, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Bilibin, Sapunov, Sudeikin, Ryabushkin, Roerich, Kustodiev, Petrov-Vodkin, Malyavin, even Larionov and Goncharova. Of great importance for the formation of this association was the personality of Diaghilev, a patron and organizer of exhibitions, and later - the impresario of Russian ballet and opera tours abroad (Russian Seasons, which introduced Europe to the work of Chaliapin, Pavlova, Karsavina, Fokine, Nijinsky and others and revealed the world an example of the highest culture of form various arts: music, dance, painting, scenography). At the initial stage of the formation of the "World of Art", Diaghilev arranged an exhibition of English and German watercolors in St. Petersburg in 1897, then an exhibition of Russian and Finnish artists in 1898. Under his editorship from 1899 to 1904, a magazine was published under the same name, consisting of two departments: artistic and literary (the latter is of a religious and philosophical plan, D. Filosofov, D. Merezhkovsky and Z. Gippius collaborated in it until the opening of his journal New Way in 1902. Then the religious and philosophical direction in the journal Mir Art" gave way to the theory of aesthetics, and the magazine in this part became a platform for other symbolists, headed by A. Bely and V. Bryusov).

In the editorial articles of the first issues of the journal, the main provisions of the "World of Art" about the autonomy of art, that the problems of modern culture are exclusively problems of artistic form, and that the main task of art is to educate the aesthetic tastes of Russian society, primarily through acquaintance with the works world art. We must give them their due: thanks to the World of Art, English and German art was really appreciated in a new way, and most importantly, Russian painting of the 18th century and the architecture of St. Petersburg classicism became a discovery for many. "World of Art" fought for "criticism as an art", proclaiming the ideal of a critic-artist with a high professional culture and erudition. The type of such a critic was embodied by one of the creators of The World of Art, A.N. Benoit. "Miriskusniki" organized exhibitions. The first was also the only international one that brought together, in addition to Russians, artists from France, England, Germany, Italy, Belgium, Norway, Finland, etc. Both St. Petersburg and Moscow painters and graphic artists took part in it. But the crack between these two schools - St. Petersburg and Moscow - was outlined almost from the first day. In March 1903, the last, fifth exhibition of the World of Art closed, in December 1904 the last issue of the magazine World of Art was published. Most of the artists moved to the Union of Russian Artists organized on the basis of the Moscow exhibition "36", writers - to the New Way magazine opened by Merezhkovsky's group, Moscow symbolists united around the magazine "Vesy", musicians organized "Evenings of Contemporary Music", Diaghilev went entirely into ballet and theater. His last significant work in the visual arts was a grandiose historical exhibition of Russian painting from iconography to the present in the Paris Autumn Salon of 1906, then exhibited in Berlin and Venice (1906-1907). In the section of modern painting, the main place was occupied by "World of Art". This was the first act of pan-European recognition of the "World of Art", as well as the discovery of Russian painting of the 18th - early 20th centuries. in general for Western criticism and a real triumph of Russian art.

In 1910, an attempt was made to breathe life back into the "World of Art" (led by Roerich). In the environment of painters at this time there is a demarcation. Benois and his supporters break with the Union of Russian Artists, Muscovites, and leave this organization, but they understand that the secondary association called the World of Art has nothing to do with the first. Benois sadly states that "not reconciliation under the banner of beauty has now become a slogan in all spheres of life, but a fierce struggle." Glory came to the "World of Art" artists, but the "World of Arts", in fact, no longer existed, although formally the association existed until the beginning of the 1920s (1924) - with a complete lack of integrity, on unlimited tolerance and flexibility of positions, reconciling artists from Rylov to Tatlin, from Grabar to Chagall. How can one not remember the Impressionists here? The community that was once born in Gleyre's workshop, in the "Salon of the Rejected", at the tables of the Guerbois cafe and which was to have a huge impact on all European painting, also fell apart on the threshold of its recognition. The second generation of "World of Art" is less busy with the problems of easel painting, their interests lie in graphics, mainly books, and theatrical and decorative arts, in both areas they made a real artistic reform. In the second generation of "World of Art" there were also major individuals (Kustodiev, Sudeikin, Serebryakova, Chekhonin, Grigoriev, Yakovlev, Shukhaev, Mitrokhin, etc.), but there were no innovative artists at all, because since the 1910s, the "World of Art" has overwhelmed epigonism wave. Therefore, when characterizing the World of Art, we will mainly talk about the first stage of the existence of this association and its core - Benois, Somov, Bakst.

The leading artist of the "World of Art" was Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869-1939). The son of the chief curator of the Hermitage, who graduated from the Academy of Arts and traveled around Europe, Somov received an excellent education. Creative maturity came to him early, but, as the researcher (V.N. Petrov) rightly noted, he always had some duality - the struggle between a powerful realistic instinct and a painfully emotional worldview.

Somov, as we know him, appeared in the portrait of the artist Martynova (“Lady in Blue”, 1897–1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), in the portrait painting “Echoes of the Past Time” (1903, b. on the map, aqua., gouache, State Tretyakov Gallery ), where he creates a poetic characterization of the fragile, anemic female beauty of the decadent model, refusing to convey the real everyday signs of modernity. He dresses the models in ancient costumes, gives their appearance the features of secret suffering, sadness and dreaminess, painful brokenness.

Somov owns a series of graphic portraits of his contemporaries - the intellectual elite (V. Ivanov, Blok, Kuzmin, Sollogub, Lansere, Dobuzhinsky, etc.), in which he uses one general technique: on a white background - in a certain timeless sphere - he draws a face, a resemblance in which it is achieved not through naturalization, but by bold generalizations and apt selection of characteristic details. This lack of signs of time creates the impression of static, stiffness, coldness, almost tragic loneliness.

Before anyone else in The World of Art, Somov turned to the themes of the past, to the interpretation of the 18th century. ("Letter", 1896; "Confidentialities", 1897), being the forerunner of Benois' Versailles landscapes. He is the first to create an surreal world, woven from the motifs of the nobility, estate and court culture and his own purely subjective artistic sensations, permeated with irony. The historicism of the "World of Art" was an escape from reality. Not the past, but its staging, longing for its irretrievability - this is their main motive. Not true fun, but a game of fun with kisses in the alleys - such is Somov.

Other works by Somov are pastoral and gallant festivities (“The Ridiculous Kiss”, 1908, Russian Museum; “Marquise's Walk”, 1909, Russian Museum), full of caustic irony, spiritual emptiness, even hopelessness. Love scenes from the 18th – early 19th centuries. are always given with a touch of erotica. The latter was especially manifested in his porcelain figurines, dedicated to one theme - the illusory pursuit of pleasure.

Somov worked a lot as a graphic artist, he designed S. Diaghilev's monograph on D. Levitsky, A. Benois's essay on Tsarskoye Selo. The book, as a single organism with its rhythmic and stylistic unity, was raised by him to an extraordinary height. Somov is not an illustrator, he “illustrates not a text, but an era, using a literary device as a springboard,” wrote A.A. Sidorov, and this is very true.

The ideological leader of the "World of Art" was Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870-1960) - an unusually versatile talent. Painter, easel graphic artist and illustrator, theater artist, director, author of ballet librettos, art theorist and historian, musical figure, he was, in the words of A. Bely, the main politician and diplomat of the "World of Art". Coming from the highest stratum of the St. Petersburg artistic intelligentsia (composers and conductors, architects and painters), he first studied at the law faculty of St. Petersburg University. As an artist, he is related to Somov by stylistic tendencies and addiction to the past (“I am intoxicated with Versailles, this is some kind of illness, love, criminal passion ... I completely moved into the past ...”). In the landscapes of Versailles, Benois merged the historical reconstruction of the 17th century. and contemporary impressions of the artist, his perception of French classicism, French engraving. Hence the clear composition, clear spatiality, the grandeur and cold severity of rhythms, the opposition between the grandiosity of monuments of art and the smallness of human figures, which are only staffage among them (the 1st Versailles series of 1896-1898 under the title "The Last Walks of Louis XIV"). In the second Versailles series (1905–1906), the irony, which is also characteristic of the first sheets, is colored with almost tragic notes (“The King’s Walk”, c., gouache, aqua, gold, silver, pen, 1906, State Tretyakov Gallery). The thinking of Benois is the thinking of a theatrical artist par excellence, who knew and felt the theater very well.

Nature is perceived by Benois in an associative connection with history (views of Pavlovsk, Peterhof, Tsarskoye Selo, executed by him in watercolor technique).

In a series of paintings from the Russian past, commissioned by the Moscow publishing house Knebel (illustrations for the "Royal Hunts"), in scenes of the noble, landowner life of the 18th century. Benois created an intimate image of this era, although somewhat theatrical (Parade under Paul I, 1907, State Russian Museum).

Benois the illustrator (Pushkin, Hoffman) is a whole page in the history of the book. Unlike Somov, Benois creates a narrative illustration. The plane of the page is not an end in itself for him. The illustrations for The Queen of Spades were rather complete independent works, not so much the “art of the book”, as A.A. Sidorov, how much "art is in the book." A masterpiece of book illustration was the graphic design of The Bronze Horseman (1903,1905,1916,1921–1922, ink and watercolor imitating colored woodcuts). In a series of illustrations for the great poem, the main character is the architectural landscape of St. Petersburg, now solemnly pathetic, now peaceful, now sinister, against which the figure of Eugene seems even more insignificant. This is how Benois expresses the tragic conflict between the fate of Russian statehood and the personal fate of a little man (“And all night long the poor madman, / Wherever he turned his feet, / The Bronze Horseman was everywhere with him / With a heavy stomp galloped”).

As a theater artist, Benois designed the performances of the Russian Seasons, of which the most famous was the ballet Petrushka to music by Stravinsky, he worked a lot at the Moscow Art Theater, and later on almost all major European stages.

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

The third in the core of the "World of Art" was Lev Samuilovich Bakst (1866-1924), who became famous as a theater artist and was the first among the "World of Art" to gain fame in Europe. He came to the "World of Art" from the Academy of Arts, then professed the Art Nouveau style, joined the leftist trends in European painting. At the first exhibitions of the "World of Art" he exhibited a number of pictorial and graphic portraits (Benoit, Bely, Somov, Rozanov, Gippius, Diaghilev), where nature, coming in a stream of living states, was transformed into a kind of ideal representation of a contemporary person. Bakst created the brand of the magazine "World of Art", which became the emblem of Diaghilev's "Russian Seasons" in Paris. Bakst's graphics lack 18th-century motifs. and estate themes. He gravitates towards antiquity, moreover, to the Greek archaic, interpreted symbolically. Particularly successful with the Symbolists was his painting "Ancient Horror" - "Terror antiquus" (tempera, 1908, Russian Museum). Terrible stormy sky, lightning illuminating the depths of the sea and ancient city, - and over all this universal catastrophe dominates the archaic bark with a mysterious frozen smile. Soon Bakst completely devoted himself to theatrical and scenery work, and his scenery and costumes for the ballets of the Diaghilev entreprise, performed with extraordinary brilliance, masterfully, artistically, brought him world fame. In its design there were performances with Anna Pavlova, ballets by Fokine. The artist made sets and costumes for Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade, Stravinsky's The Firebird (both 1910), Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe, and The Afternoon of a Faun to Debussy's music (both 1912).

From the first generation of “World of Art” the youngest was Evgeniy Evgenievich Lansere (1875–1946), who in his work touched upon all the main problems of book graphics of the early 20th century. (See his illustrations for the book "Legends of the ancient castles of Brittany", for Lermontov, the cover for "Nevsky Prospekt" by Bozheryanov, etc.). Lansere created a number of watercolors and lithographs of St. Petersburg (Kalinkin Bridge, Nikolsky Market, etc.). Architecture occupies a huge place in his historical compositions (“Empress Elizaveta Petrovna in Tsarskoye Selo”, 1905, State Tretyakov Gallery). We can say that in the work of Serov, Benois, Lansere a new type of historical painting was created - it is devoid of a plot, but at the same time perfectly recreates the appearance of the era, evoking many historical, literary and aesthetic associations. One of Lansere's best creations - 70 drawings and watercolors for L.N. Tolstoy's "Hadji Murad" (1912-1915), which Benois considered "an independent song that fits perfectly into Tolstoy's powerful music." During the Soviet era, Lansere became a prominent muralist.

The graphics of Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875–1957) represent not so much Petersburg of the Pushkin era or the 18th century, but a modern city, which he was able to convey with almost tragic expressiveness (“The Old House”, 1905, watercolor, State Tretyakov Gallery), as well as a person - inhabitant of such cities (“The Man with Glasses”, 1905–1906, pastel, State Tretyakov Gallery: a lonely, against the backdrop of dull houses, a sad man, whose head resembles a skull). The urbanism of the future inspired Dobuzhinsky with panic fear. He also worked extensively in illustration, where his series of ink drawings for Dostoevsky's White Nights (1922) can be considered the most remarkable. Dobuzhinsky also worked in the theater, designed for Nemirovich-Danchenko "Nikolai Stavrogin" (staged "Demons" by Dostoevsky), Turgenev's plays "A Month in the Country" and "The Freeloader".

Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947) occupies a special place in the World of Art. A connoisseur of philosophy and ethnography of the East, an archaeologist-scientist, Roerich received an excellent education, first at home, then at the law and historical-philological faculties of St. Petersburg University, then at the Academy of Arts, in the workshop of Kuindzhi, and in Paris in the studio of F. Cormon. Early he gained the authority of a scientist. He was related to the "World of Art" by the same love for retrospection, only not of the 17th-18th centuries, but of pagan Slavic and Scandinavian antiquity, to Ancient Russia; stylistic tendencies, theatrical decorativeness (“Messenger”, 1897, State Tretyakov Gallery; “The Elders Converge”, 1898, Russian Museum; “Sinister”, 1901, Russian Museum). Roerich was most closely associated with the philosophy and aesthetics of Russian symbolism, but his art did not fit into the framework of the existing trends, because, in accordance with the artist’s worldview, it turned, as it were, to all of humanity with an appeal for a friendly union of all peoples. Hence the special epic nature of his paintings.

After 1905, the mood of pantheistic mysticism grew in Roerich's work. Historical themes give way to religious legends (The Heavenly Battle, 1912, Russian Museum). The Russian icon had a huge influence on Roerich: his decorative panel The Battle of Kerzhents (1911) was exhibited during the performance of a fragment of the same title from Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Tale of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia in the Paris Russian Seasons.

In the second generation of the "World of Art" one of the most gifted artists was Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev (1878-1927), a student of Repin, who helped him in his work on the "State Council". Kustodiev is also characterized by stylization, but this is a stylization of popular popular print. Hence the bright festive “Fairs”, “Shrovetide”, “Balagany”, hence his paintings from the petty-bourgeois and merchant life, conveyed with slight irony, but not without admiring these red-cheeked, half-asleep beauties behind a samovar and with saucers in plump fingers (“Merchant”, 1915, Russian Museum; "The Merchant for Tea", 1918, Russian Museum).

A.Ya. Golovin is one of the greatest theater artists of the first quarter of the 20th century; I. Ya. Bilibin, A.P. Ostroumova-Lebedeva and others.

The "World of Art" was a major aesthetic movement at the turn of the century, which overestimated the entire modern artistic culture, approved new tastes and problems, returned to art - at the highest professional level - the lost forms of book graphics and theatrical and decorative painting, which gained all-European recognition through their efforts, created new art criticism, which promoted Russian art abroad, in fact, even opened some of its stages, like the Russian 18th century. The "World of Art" created a new type of historical painting, portrait, landscape with its own stylistic features (distinct stylistic tendencies, the predominance of graphic techniques over pictorial ones, a purely decorative understanding of color, etc.). This determines their significance for Russian art.

The weaknesses of the "World of Art" were primarily reflected in the variegation and inconsistency of the program, proclaiming the model "either Böcklin, then Manet"; in idealistic views on art, in an affected indifference to the civic tasks of art, in programmatic apathy, in the loss of the social significance of the picture. The intimacy of the "World of Art", its pure aestheticism determined the short historical period of his life in the era of formidable tragic portents of the impending revolution. These were only the first steps on the path of creative searches, and very soon the young ones overtook the World of Art students.

For some "World of Art", however, the first Russian revolution was a real revolution in their worldview. The mobility and accessibility of graphics caused her special activity in these years of revolutionary turmoil. A huge number of satirical magazines arose (380 titles were counted from 1905 to 1917). The Sting magazine stood out for its revolutionary-democratic orientation, but the largest artistic forces were grouped around the Bogey and its Infernal Mail supplement. The rejection of autocracy united liberal-minded artists of various trends. In one of the issues of the "Bogey" Bilibin places a caricature "Donkey in 1 / 20 natural size": in a frame with attributes of power and glory, where the image of the king was usually placed, a donkey is drawn. Lansere in 1906 prints the cartoon "Feast": the tsarist generals in a gloomy feast listen not to singing, but to screaming soldiers standing at attention. Dobuzhinsky in the picture "October Idyll" remains true to the theme modern city, only ominous signs of events burst into this city: a window broken by a bullet, a lying doll, glasses and a blood stain on the wall and on the pavement. Kustodiev made a number of caricatures of the tsar and his generals and portraits of the tsarist ministers, Witte, Ignatiev, Dubasov, and others, exceptional in their sharpness and malicious irony, whom he studied so well while helping Repin in his work on the State Council. Suffice it to say that Witte under his hand appears as a staggering clown with a red banner in one hand and the royal flag in the other.

But the most expressive in the revolutionary graphics of those years should be recognized as the drawings of V.A. Serov. His position was quite definite during the revolution of 1905. The revolution brought to life a whole series of Serov's caricatures: “1905. After the Pacification” (Nicholas II, with a racket under his arm, distributes St. George's crosses to the suppressors); "Harvest" (rifles are laid in sheaves on the field). The most famous composition in this series is “Soldiers, brave kids! Where is your glory? (1905, Russian Museum). Serov's civic position, his skill, observation and wise laconism as a draftsman were fully manifested here. Serov depicts the beginning of the Cossacks' attack on the demonstrators on January 9, 1905. In the background, the demonstrators are given in a general mass; in front, at the very edge of the sheet, there are large individual figures of Cossacks, and between the first and the background, in the center, an officer calling them to attack on horseback, with a saber drawn. The name, as it were, contains all the bitter irony of the situation: the Russian soldiers took up arms against their people. So it was, and so this tragic event was seen not only by Serov from the window of his workshop, but also (let us say figuratively) from the depths of the liberal consciousness of the Russian intelligentsia as a whole. Russian artists who sympathized with the revolution of 1905 did not know what cataclysms of national history they were on the verge of. Taking the side of the revolution, they preferred, relatively speaking, a terrorist bomber (from the heirs of nihilists-raznochintsy, "with their skills in political struggle and ideological indoctrination of broad sections of society, ”according to the correct definition of one historian) policeman, standing in the protection of order. They did not know that the "red wheel" of the revolution would sweep away not only the autocracy they hated, but the whole way of Russian life, the whole Russian culture, which they served and which was dear to them.

In 1903, as already mentioned, one of the largest exhibition associations of the beginning of the century, the Union of Russian Artists, arose. At first, almost all the prominent figures of the "World of Art" entered it - Benois, Bakst, Somov, Dobuzhinsky, Serov, Vrubel, Borisov-Musatov were participants in the first exhibitions. The initiators of the creation of the association were Moscow artists associated with the "World of Art", but weighed down by the programmatic aesthetics of Petersburgers. The face of the "Union" was determined mainly by Moscow painters of the Itinerant direction, students of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, the heirs of Savrasov, students of Serov and K. Korovin. Many exhibited at the same time in traveling exhibitions. The exhibitors of the "Union" were artists of different worldviews: S. Ivanov, M. Nesterov, A. Arkhipov, the Korovin brothers, L. Pasternak. Organizational affairs were in charge of A.M. Vasnetsov, S.A. Vinogradov, V.V. Binders. Pillars of wandering V.M. Vasnetsov, Surikov, Polenov were its members. K. Korovin was considered the leader of the "Union".

The national landscape, lovingly painted pictures of peasant Russia, is one of the main genres of the artists of the "Union", in which "Russian impressionism" expressed itself in a peculiar way, with its predominantly rural rather than urban motifs. So the landscapes of I.E. Grabar (1871–1960), with their lyrical mood, with the finest pictorial nuances reflecting instantaneous changes in true nature, is a kind of parallel on Russian soil to the French impressionistic landscape (“September Snow”, 1903, State Tretyakov Gallery). In his automonography, Grabar recalls this plein-air landscape: “The spectacle of snow with bright yellow foliage was so unexpected and at the same time so beautiful that I immediately settled down on the terrace and painted ... a picture in three days.” Grabar's interest in the decomposition of visible color into spectral, pure colors of the palette also makes him related to neo-impressionism, to J. Seurat and P. Signac ("March Snow", 1904, State Tretyakov Gallery). The play of colors in nature, complex coloristic effects become the subject of close study of the "Allies", who create on the canvas a pictorial and plastic figurative world, devoid of narrative and illustrativeness.

With all the interest in the transmission of light and air in the painting of the masters of the "Union", the dissolution of the object in the light-air medium is never observed. The color becomes decorative.

The "Allies", unlike the Petersburgers - the graphic artists of the "World of Art" - are mostly painters with a heightened decorative sense of color. An excellent example of this is the paintings of F.A. Malyavin.

Among the participants of the "Union" there were artists who were close to the "World of Art" by the very theme of creativity. So, K.F. Yuon (1875-1958) was attracted by the appearance of ancient Russian cities, the panorama of old Moscow. But Yuon is far from aesthetically admiring the motives of the past, the ghostly architectural landscape. These are not Versailles parks and Tsarskoye Selo baroque, but the architecture of old Moscow in its spring or winter guise. Pictures of nature are full of life, they feel a natural impression, from which the artist was primarily repelled (March Sun, 1915, State Tretyakov Gallery; Trinity Lavra in Winter, 1910, Russian Museum). Subtle changeable states of nature are depicted in the landscapes of another member of the "Union" and at the same time a member of the Association of Traveling Exhibitions - S.Yu. Zhukovsky (1873-1944): the bottomlessness of the sky, changing its color, the slow movement of water, the sparkling of snow under the moon ("Moonlight Night", 1899, State Tretyakov Gallery; "Dam", 1909, State Russian Museum). Often he also has the motif of an abandoned estate.

In the painting by the painter of the St. Petersburg school, a loyal member of the "Union of Russian Artists" A.A. Rylov (1870-1939), "Green Noise" (1904), the master managed to convey, as it were, the very breath of a fresh wind, under which trees sway and sails swell. There are some joyful and disturbing forebodings in it. The romantic traditions of his teacher Kuindzhi also affected here.

On the whole, The Allies gravitated not only towards plein-air studies, but also towards monumental pictorial forms. By 1910, the time of the split and the secondary formation of the "World of Art", at the exhibitions of the "Union" one could see an intimate landscape (Vinogradov, Petrovichev, Yuon, etc.), painting close to French divisionism (Grabar, early Larionov) or close symbolism (P. Kuznetsov, Sapunov, Sudeikin); they were also attended by the artists of Diaghilev's "World of Art" - Benois, Somov, Bakst, Lansere, Dobuzhinsky.

The "Union of Russian Artists", with its solid realistic foundations, which played a significant role in the domestic fine arts, had a certain impact on the formation of the Soviet school of painting, having existed until 1923.

The years between the two revolutions are characterized by the intensity of creative searches, sometimes directly excluding each other. In 1907, in Moscow, the Golden Fleece magazine organized the only exhibition of artists following Borisov-Musatov, called the Blue Rose. P. Kuznetsov became the leading artist of the Blue Rose. M. Saryan, N. Sapunov, S. Sudeikin, K. Petrov-Vodkin, A. Fonvizin, sculptor A. Matveev grouped around him during the years of study. The “Blue Bears” are closest to symbolism, which was expressed primarily in their “language”: unsteadiness of mood, vague, untranslatable musicality of associations, refinement of color relationships. In Russian art, symbolism was most likely formed in literature; in the very first years of the new century, such names as A. Blok, A. Bely, V. Ivanov, S. Solovyov already sounded. Separate elements of "pictorial symbolism" also appeared in the work of Vrubel, as already mentioned, Borisov-Musatov, Roerich, Chiurlionis. In the painting of Kuznetsov and his associates, there were many points of contact with the poetics of Balmont, Bryusov, Bely, only they were attached to symbolism through the operas of Wagner, the dramas of Ibsen, Hauptmann and Maeterlinck. The exhibition "Blue Rose" was a kind of synthesis: symbolist poets performed at it, modern music was performed. The aesthetic platform of the participants of the exhibition also had an effect in subsequent years, and the name of this exhibition became a household name for a whole trend in art in the second half of the 900s. The entire activity of the "Blue Rose" also bears the strongest imprint of the influence of the Art Nouveau style (plane-decorative stylization of forms, whimsical linear rhythms).

The works of Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov (1878–1968) reflect the basic principles of the Blue Bears. His work embodies the neo-romantic concept of "beautiful clarity" (an expression of the poet M. Kuzmin). Kuznetsov created a decorative panel-picture in which he sought to abstract from everyday concreteness, to show the unity of man and nature, the stability of the eternal cycle of life and nature, the birth of the human soul in this harmony. Hence the desire for monumental forms of painting, dreamy-contemplative, purified from everything instantaneous, universal, timeless notes, a constant desire to convey the spirituality of matter. A figure is only a sign expressing a concept; color serves to convey feelings; rhythm - in order to introduce into a certain world of sensations (as in icon painting - a symbol of love, tenderness, sorrow, etc.). Hence the reception of a uniform distribution of light over the entire surface of the canvas as one of the foundations of Kuznetsov's decorative effect. Serov said that P. Kuznetsov's nature "breathes". This is perfectly expressed in his Kyrgyz (Steppe) and Bukhara suites, in Central Asian landscapes. (“Sleeping in the sheepfold” of 1911, as the researcher of Kuznetsov’s work A. Rusakova writes, is an image of a dreamy steppe world, peace, harmony. The depicted woman is not a specific person, but a Kyrgyz woman in general, a sign of the Mongolian race.) High sky, boundless desert, gentle hills, tents, flocks of sheep create an image of a patriarchal idyll. The eternal, unattainable dream of harmony, of the fusion of man with nature, which at all times worried artists (Mirage in the Steppe, 1912, State Tretyakov Gallery). Kuznetsov studied the techniques of ancient Russian icon painting, the early Italian Renaissance. This appeal to the classical traditions of world art in search of its own great style, as correctly noted by researchers, was of fundamental importance in a period when any traditions were often denied altogether.

The exoticism of the East - Iran, Egypt, Turkey - is embodied in the landscapes of Martiros Sergeevich Saryan (1880-1972). The East was a natural theme for the Armenian artist. Saryan creates in his painting a world full of bright decorativeness, more passionate, more earthly than that of Kuznetsov, and the pictorial solution is always built on contrasting color relationships, without nuances, in sharp shadow comparison (“Date Palm, Egypt”, 1911, maps. , tempera, GTG). Note that the oriental works of Saryan with their color contrasts appear before the works of Matisse, created by him after traveling to Algeria and Morocco.

The images of Saryan are monumental due to the generalization of forms, large colorful planes, the general lapidarity of the language - this is, as a rule, a generalized image of Egypt, whether, Persia, native Armenia, while maintaining vital naturalness, as if written from life. Saryan's decorative canvases are always cheerful, they correspond to his idea of ​​creativity: “... a work of art is the very result of happiness, that is, creative work. Consequently, it should ignite the flame of creative burning in the viewer, contribute to the identification of his natural desire for happiness and freedom.

Kuznetsov and Saryan created a poetic image of a colorful and rich world in different ways, one based on the traditions of ancient Russian icon art, the other on ancient Armenian miniatures. During the Blue Rose period, they were also united by an interest in Oriental motifs and symbolic tendencies. An impressionistic perception of reality was not characteristic of the Blue Rose artists.

The "Goluborozites" worked a lot and fruitfully in the theater, where they came into close contact with the dramaturgy of symbolism. N.N. Sapunov (1880–1912) and S.Yu. Sudeikin (1882-1946) designed the dramas of M. Maeterlinck, one Sapunov - G. Ibsen and Blok's "Balaganchik". Sapunov also transferred this theatrical fantasy, the lubok stylization of the fair into his easel works, sharply decorative still lifes with paper flowers in exquisite porcelain vases (“Peonies”, 1908, tempera, State Tretyakov Gallery), into grotesque genre scenes in which reality is mixed with phantasmagoria (“Masquerade”, 1907, State Tretyakov Gallery).

In 1910, a number of young artists - P. Konchalovsky, I. Mashkov, A. Lentulov, R. Falk, A. Kuprin, M. Larionov, N. Goncharova and others - united in the Jack of Diamonds organization, which had its own charter, arranged exhibitions and published its own collections of articles. The “Jack of Diamonds” actually existed until 1917. As post-impressionism, primarily Cezanne, was a “reaction to impressionism”, so “Jack of Diamonds” opposed the vagueness, untranslatability, the subtlest nuances of the symbolic language of the “Blue Rose” and the aesthetic stylism of the “World of Art” . The "Knave of Diamonds", carried away by the materiality, "materiality" of the world, professed a clear construction of the picture, emphasized objectivity of the form, intensity, fullness of color. It is no coincidence that the still life becomes a favorite genre of the “Valetovites”, just as the landscape becomes a favorite genre of the members of the Union of Russian Artists. Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov (1881-1944) in his still lifes ("Blue Plums", 1910, State Tretyakov Gallery; "Still Life with Camellia", 1913, State Tretyakov Gallery) fully expresses the program of this association, as Pyotr Petrovich Konchalovsky (1876-1956) - in portraits (portrait of G. Yakulov, 1910, Russian Museum; "Matador Manuel Hart", 1910, State Tretyakov Gallery). The subtlety in conveying the change of moods, the psychologism of the characteristics, the understatement of the states, the dematerialization of the painting of the "Blue Bearers", their romantic poetry are rejected by the "Valetovites". They are opposed by the almost spontaneous festivity of colors, the expression of the contour drawing, the juicy pasty broad manner of writing, which convey an optimistic vision of the world, creating an almost farcical, square mood. Konchalovsky and Mashkov in their portraits give a vivid, but one-dimensional characterization, sharpening one feature almost to the point of grotesque; in still lifes, they emphasize the plane of the canvas, the rhythm of color spots (“Agave”, 1916, State Tretyakov Gallery, - Konchalovsky; portrait of a lady with a pheasant, 1911, Russian Museum, - Mashkov). The "Knave of Diamonds" allow such simplifications in the interpretation of the form, which are akin to a popular popular print, a folk toy, painting tiles, a signboard. The craving for primitivism (from the Latin primitivus - primitive, initial) manifested itself in various artists who imitated the simplified forms of art of the so-called primitive eras - primitive tribes and nationalities - in search of gaining immediacy and integrity of artistic perception. The “Jack of Diamonds” also drew its perceptions from Cezanne (hence sometimes the name “Russian Cezanneism”), or rather, from the decorative version of Cezanneism - Fauvism, even more - from Cubism, even from Futurism; from cubism “shift” of forms, from futurism - dynamics, various modifications of form, as in the painting “Ring. Belfry of Ivan the Great” (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery) by A.V. Lentulov (1884–1943). Lentulov created a very expressive image, built on the motif of old architecture, the harmony of which is broken by nervous, sharp perception modern man driven by industrial rhythms.

P.P. portraits Falk (1886-1958), who remained faithful to cubism in understanding and interpreting form (it is not for nothing that they speak of Falk's "lyrical cubism"), developed in subtle color-plastic harmonies that convey a certain state of the model.

In the still lifes and landscapes of A. V. Kuprin (1880–1960), sometimes an epic note appears, there is a tendency to generalize (“Still Life with a Pumpkin, a Vase and Tassels”, 1917, State Tretyakov Gallery, rightly called by researchers “a poem glorifying the painter’s tools”) . Kuprin's decorative beginning is combined with an analytical insight into nature.

The extreme simplification of the form, the direct connection with the art of signage is especially noticeable in M.F. Larionov (1881-1964), one of the founders of the "Jack of Diamonds", but already in 1911 broke with him and organized new exhibitions: "Donkey's Tail" and "Target". Larionov paints landscapes, portraits, still lifes, works as a theater artist of the Diaghilev entreprise, then turns to genre painting, his theme is the life of a provincial street, soldiers' barracks. The forms are flat, grotesque, as if deliberately stylized as a child's drawing, popular print or signboard. In 1913, Larionov published his book "Luchism" - in fact, the first of the manifestos of abstract art, the true creators of which in Russia were V. Kandinsky and K. Malevich.

Artist N.S. Goncharova (1881–1962), Larionov's wife, developed the same tendencies in her genre paintings, mostly on a peasant theme. In the years under review, in her work, more decorative and colorful than the art of Larionov, monumental in its inner strength and laconicism, a passion for primitivism is keenly felt. Describing the work of Goncharova and Larionov, the term "neo-primitivism" is often used. During these years, A. Shevchenko, V. Chekrygin, K. Malevich, V. Tatlin, M. Chagall are close to them in terms of artistic worldview, the search for an expressive language. Each of these artists (the only exception is Chekrygin, who died very early) soon found his own creative path.

M.Z. Chagall (1887–1985) created fantasies transformed from the boring impressions of small-town Vitebsk life and interpreted in a naive-poetic and grotesque-symbolic spirit. With surreal space, bright colors, deliberate primitivization of form, Chagall turns out to be close to both Western expressionism and primitive folk art (“I and the Village”, 1911, Museum of Contemporary Art, New York; “Over Vitebsk”, 1914, coll. Zak. Toronto; "Wedding", 1918, State Tretyakov Gallery).

Many of the masters named above, close to the "Jack of Diamonds", were members of the St. Petersburg organization "Union of Youth", which took shape almost simultaneously with the "Jack of Diamonds" (1909). In addition to Chagall, P. Filonov, K. Malevich, V. Tatlin, Yu. Annenkov, N. Altman, D. Burliuk, A. Exter and others exhibited in the Soyuz. L. Zheverzheev played the leading role in it. Just like the "valetovtsy", members of the "Union of Youth" published theoretical collections. Until the collapse of the association in 1917. The "Union of Youth" did not have a specific program, professing symbolism, and cubism, and futurism, and "non-objectivity", but each of the artists had his own creative face.

The most difficult to characterize P.N. Filonov (1883–1941). D. Sarabyanov correctly defined Filonov's work as "lonely and unique." In this sense, he rightly puts the artist on a par with A. Ivanov, N. Ge, V. Surikov, M. Vrubel. Nevertheless, the figure of Filonov, his appearance in Russian artistic culture 10s of XX century. natural. With his focus on “a kind of self-developing movement of forms” (D. Sarabyanov), Filonov is closest to futurism, but he is far from it with the problems of his work. Rather, it is closer not to the picturesque, but to the poetic futurism of Khlebnikov with his search for the original meaning of the word. “Often starting to paint a picture from any one edge, transferring his creative charge to the forms, Filonov gives them life, and then, as if not by the will of the artist, but by their own movement, they develop, change, renew, grow. This self-development of forms by Filonov is truly amazing” (D. Sarabyanov).

The art of the pre-revolutionary years in Russia is marked by the unusual complexity and inconsistency of artistic searches, hence the successive groupings with their own program settings and stylistic sympathies. But along with the experimenters in the field of abstract forms in the Russian art of that time, the "World of Art" and "Goluborozites", "allies", "knaves of diamonds" continued to work at the same time, there was also a powerful stream of neoclassical currents, an example of which can be the work of an active member of the "Mir art” in his “second generation” Z.E. Serebryakova (1884–1967). In her poetic genre canvases with their laconic drawing, palpably sensual plastic modeling, balanced composition, Serebryakova comes from the high national traditions of Russian art, first of all Venetsianov and even further - ancient Russian art ("Peasants", 1914, Russian Museum; "Harvest", 1915 , Odessa Art Museum; "Whitening of the canvas", 1917, State Tretyakov Gallery).

Finally, brilliant evidence of the vitality of national traditions, the great ancient Russian painting is the work of Kuzma Sergeevich Petrov-Vodkin (1878–1939), an artist-thinker who later became the most prominent master of art of the Soviet period. In the famous painting Bathing the Red Horse (1912, Fri), the artist resorted to a figurative metaphor. As it was correctly noted, the young man on a bright red horse evokes associations with the popular image of St. George the Victorious (“Saint Egor”), and the generalized silhouette, rhythmic, compact composition, the saturation of contrasting color spots that sound in full force, and the flatness in the interpretation of forms lead in memory of an ancient Russian icon. A harmoniously enlightened image is created by Petrov-Vodkin in the monumental painting “Girls on the Volga” (1915, State Tretyakov Gallery), in which he also feels his orientation towards the traditions of Russian art, leading the master to a true nationality.