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 by chance snatched a frame, is preserved here: 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 the contemporary art folklore artistic traditions were created by Filipp 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 are transmitted.

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 later 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 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 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 impressionistic 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 almost the first to rate him as theater artist), for the Moscow Art Theatre, for the Moscow Private Russian Opera, where he began his lifelong friendship with Chaliapin, for the Diaghilev entreprise. Korovin raised 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 a 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, State Tretyakov Gallery) (Peter in the picture is simply gigantic), allowing 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 believe at once 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.

creative way 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. 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, 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, the result of which were 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 "era of Vrubel"... It was in him 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 " 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 retrospective artists in fine arts 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, 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.

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 of them participated in this association. famous artists–Benoit, 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 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. 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 the "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 Tsarskoe 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 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 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 "History of Painting of the 19th Century" by R. Muther - volume "Russian Painting", 1901- 1902; "Russian School of Painting", edition of 1904; "Tsarskoe 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, virtuoso, artistically, brought him worldwide 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 music by Debussy (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 it perfectly recreates the appearance of the era, evokes 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 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 Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia” in the Parisian “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 reassessed 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, who promoted Russian art abroad, in fact, even opening some of its stages, like the Russian XVIII 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). The subtle changing states of nature are depicted in the landscapes of another member of the Soyuz and at the same time a member of the Association 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, cleansed of 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 decorativeness. 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 a sheepfold” of 1911, as A. Rusakova, a researcher of Kuznetsov’s work, 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, as a rule, is 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 the “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, “thingness” 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 "valetovtsy", 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” 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 the “shift” of forms, from futurism - dynamics, various modifications of the 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 a 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 generalization (“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 inner strength and conciseness, keenly felt passion for primitivism. 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 colorfulness, 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 of the 10s of the 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 extraordinary complexity and inconsistency of artistic quests, 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, and balance of composition, Serebryakova comes from the high national traditions of Russian art, primarily Venetsianov and even further from 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 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 George the Victorious (“Saint Egor”), and the generalized silhouette, rhythmic, compact composition, the saturation of sounds in 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.

As in literature, in the visual arts late XIX- the beginning of the 20th century, there were many directions, each of which had its fans and opponents. A number of groupings, circles, associations of artists arose. New techniques, styles of writing, new visual genres appeared. All this stimulated public interest in painting, which, in turn, caused a real flowering of exhibition and publishing activities in this area. Aristar rkh Vasilyevich Lentulov "Vasily the Blessed" 1913 Ilya Ivanovich Mashkov "Still Life" 1913

The realistic trend, which sets as its task a creative, but at the same time the most faithful reproduction of reality, was represented in the painting of that time by I. E. Repin. In the 1990s, he created many portraits in which strong and colorful writing is combined with deep psychologism, the ability to use the model's pose and gesture to characterize her figuratively (for example, the portrait of Eleonora Duse). Ilya Efimovich Repin "Portrait of Eleonora Duse" 1891

Isaac Ilyich Levitan, who brilliantly mastered the skills of landscape painting, created the genre of "conceptual landscape" or "mood landscape" at the end of the 19th century. In his works, the state of nature is comprehended as an expression of the movements of the human soul; landscape sketches convey a whole range of commonly understood associations and experiences - from disturbing to intimate lyrical ("Evening Bells", "Above Eternal Peace", "March"). "Evening Bells" 1892 "Over Eternal Peace" 1894 "March" 1895

A notable phenomenon for that era was also the work of Viktor Mikhailovich Vasnetsov, one of the first artists who turned to Russian folklore. He painted his paintings based on Russian epics and folk tales (“Ivan Tsarevich on a gray wolf”, “Bogatyrs”), as well as on themes from national history (“Tsar Ivan Vasilyevich the Terrible”). In the murals of the Vladimir Cathedral in Kyiv, Vasnetsov tried to revive church monumental painting, which fell into complete decline in the second half of the 19th century. "Alyonushka" 1881

The most prominent representative of impressionism in Russia is Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin. In the 1990s, he used a light, as if shimmering color scheme, impulse sketch writing, and in the 1800s he turned to broad impasto, often brightly decorative, painting with thick saturated color. Working as a theater decorator, Korovin created a new type of colorful, spectacular scenery. "Portrait of F. I. Chaliapin" 1911 "Gurzuf" 1914

Repin's student, Valentin Alexandrovich Serov, can rightly be considered the central figure in the art of the turn of the century. His work was formed under the influence of realism, however, in such works as “The Girl with Peaches”, “The Girl Illuminated by the Sun”, features of early Russian impressionism are noticeable. The artist worked in different genres, but his talent as a portrait painter, endowed with a heightened sense of beauty and the ability for sober analysis, is especially significant. Since the 1990s, the impressionistic features in Serov's work have been gradually disappearing, but the principles of the Art Nouveau style have been developing more and more consistently. "The Girl with Peaches" 1887 "The Girl Illuminated by the Sun" 1888

In 1903, Moscow exhibitors established the Union of Russian Artists association. The creativity of the main core of the "Union of Russian Artists" is characterized by a democratic orientation, interest in native nature and distinctive features folk life. In the bowels of the Union, the Russian version of impressionism and the original synthesis of household genre with an architectural landscape (K. F. Yuon, "Trinity Lavra in Winter"). Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar "February Blue" 1904 Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon "Trinity Lavra in Winter" 1910

In 1907, another large art association arose in Moscow - Blue Rose. Its participants experienced, on the one hand, the influence of Borisov-Musatov's post-impressionist techniques, and, on the other hand, the Art Nouveau style. From here character traits their painting: flatness and decorative stylization of forms, the search for sophisticated color solutions, lyricism of images, orientalist motifs. orientalist Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov Still life "Bukhara" 1913

The artists of the "Jack of Diamonds" association opposed both the traditions of realism of the 19th century and the mystical-symbolist tendencies of the early 20th century. They made the identification of the original materiality and "thingness" of nature the main principle of their art. The construction of the form by color, the emphasized deformation and generalization of volumes, the deliberate rudeness and tangibility of texture, the catchy, cheerful, almost popular brilliance - thanks to all this, the artists of the "Jack of Diamonds" affirmed in painting the sensually full-blooded, colorful sides of life. A little later an important component fine style"Jack of diamonds" became futurism. Aristar rkh Vasilyevich Lentulov "Basil the Blessed" 1913

Futurism was caught in abstract art, fundamentally refusing any signs of depicting real objects in painting and graphics, and using color spots and lines, non-pictorial compositions intended to express the feelings and fantasies of the author. Theorists and practitioners of abstract art in Russia were V. V. Kandinsky (“Ladies in Crinolines”, “Improvisation 7”) and K. S. Malevich (“Black Square”). Vasily Vasilyevich Kandinsky "Improvisation 7" 1910 Kazimir Severinovich Malevich "Black Suprematist Square" 1915

Orientalism is a certain trend in the manifestations of a particular cultural tradition (literature, painting, historical and ethnographic concepts, etc.), based on a number of features on exotic features relative to this tradition itself, characteristic of the Eastern worldview in one or another of its forms. Suprematism is a trend in avant-garde art, founded in the 1st half of the 1990s by K. S. Malevich. Being a kind of abstract art, Suprematism was expressed in combinations of multi-colored planes of the simplest geometric outlines (in the geometric forms of a straight line, square, circle and rectangle). The combination of multi-colored and different-sized geometric figures forms balanced asymmetric Suprematist compositions permeated with internal movement. Abstractionism is a direction of art that has abandoned the depiction of forms close to reality in painting and sculpture. One of the goals of abstractionism is to achieve "harmonization" by depicting certain color combinations and geometric shapes, causing the viewer to feel the completeness and completeness of the composition.

RUSSIAN PAINTING OF THE END OF THE 19TH BEGINNING OF THE 20TH CENTURIES. Late 19th - early 20th centuries. important period in the development of Russian art. It coincides with the stage of the liberation movement in Russia, which V.I. Lenin called proletarian. What is the general picture of the development of Russian art during this period? The leading masters of critical realism, I.E. Repin, V.I. Surikov, V.M. Vasnetsov, V.E. Makovsky In the 1890s, their traditions found their development in a number of works of the young generation of itinerant artists, for example, Abram Efimovich Arkhipov 1862-1930, whose work is also connected with the life of the people, with the life of the peasants.

His paintings are truthful and simple, early lyrical On the Oka River, 1890, Reverse, 1896, in later, brightly picturesque, violent cheerfulness lives Girl with a jug, 1927. a vivid accusatory document to the autocracy.

The younger generation of the Wanderers also includes Sergei Alekseevich Korovin 1858-1908 and Nikolai Alekseevich Kasatkin 1859-1930. Korovin worked for ten years on his central painting On the World in 1893. He reflected in it the complex processes of the stratification of the peasantry in the modern capitalized village. Kasatkin was also able to identify the most important aspects of Russia in his work.

He raised completely new theme associated with the strengthening of the role of the proletariat. In the miners depicted in his famous painting Miners. The change of 1895, one can guess that powerful force that in the near future will destroy the rotten system of tsarist Russia and build a new, socialist society. But in the art of the 1890s, another trend was revealed. Many artists now sought to find in life, first of all, its poetic sides, therefore, even in genre paintings, they included the landscape.

Often referred to ancient Russian history. These trends in art are clearly seen in the work of such artists as A.P. Ryabushkin, B.M. Kustodiev and M.V. Nesterov. The favorite genre of Andrei Petrovich Ryabushkin 1861-1904 was the historical genre, but he also painted pictures from contemporary peasant life. However, the artist was attracted only by certain aspects of folk life - rituals and holidays. In them, he saw a manifestation of the primordially Russian, national character. Moscow street of the 17th century, 1896. historical paintings were written by Ryabushkin with peasants, the artist spent almost his entire life in the countryside.

In his historical canvases, Ryabushkin introduced some characteristic features of ancient Russian painting, as if emphasizing the historical authenticity of the images of the Wedding Eater in Moscow in the 17th century. Another major artist of this time, Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev 1878-1927, depicts fairs with multi-colored spoons and piles of colorful goods, Russian carnivals with riding on troikas, scenes from merchant life.

In the early work of Mikhail Vasilyevich Nesterov, the lyrical aspects of his talent were most fully revealed. In his paintings, the landscape has always played an important role, the artist sought to find comfort in the silence of eternally beautiful nature. He liked to depict thin-stemmed birch trees, fragile stalks of grasses and meadow flowers. His heroes are thin youths, inhabitants of monasteries, or kind old men who find peace and tranquility in nature.

Paintings dedicated to the fate of a Russian woman On the mountains, 1896, Great tonsure, 1897-1898, are fanned with deep sympathy. The work of the landscape painter and animal painter Alexei Stepanovich Stepanov (1858-1923) dates back to this time. The artist sincerely loved animals and perfectly knew not only appearance, but also the character of each animal, its skills and habits, as well as the specific features of various types of hunting. The best paintings of the artist, dedicated to Russian nature, are imbued with lyricism and poetry. Cranes are flying 1891, Elks 1889, Wolves 1910. Deep lyric poetry the art of Viktor Elpidiforovich Borisov-Musatov 1870-1905 is also permeated. Beautiful and poetic are his images of pensive women who inhabit the old manor parks and all his harmonic, music-like painting Pond, 1902. In the 80-90s of the XIX century, the work of outstanding Russian artists Konstantin Alekseevich Korovin 1861-1939, Valentin Alexandrovich Serov and Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel was formed.

Their art most fully reflected the artistic achievements of the era. The talent of K.A. Korovin equally brightly revealed both in easel painting, primarily in landscape, and in theatrical and decorative art.

The charm of Korovin's art lies in its warmth, sunshine, in the master's ability to directly and vividly convey his artistic impressions, in the generosity of his palette, in the color richness of his painting At the Balcony, 1888-1889, in Winter, 1894. At the very end of the 1890s in In Russia, a new art society is being formed, the World of Art, headed by A.N. Benois and S.P. Diaghilev, which had a great influence on the artistic life of the country.

Its main core is the artists K.A. Somov, L.S. Bakst, M.V. Dobuzhinsky, E.E. Lansere, A.P. Ostroumov-Lebedev. The activities of this group were very versatile, the artists published their own magazine World of Art, arranged interesting art exhibitions with the participation of many outstanding masters.

Their activities contributed widespread in the Russian society of artistic culture, however, they looked for only beauty in life and saw the realization of the ideals of the artist only in the eternal charm of art. Their work was devoid of the fighting spirit and social analysis characteristic of the Wanderers, under whose banner the most progressive and most revolutionary artists marched. Alexander Nikolayevich Benois 1870-1960 is rightfully considered the ideologist of the World of Art.

Like his comrades, Benois developed themes from past eras in his work. He was the poet of Versailles. A major connoisseur of French culture of the 17th and 18th centuries, Benois revered the ancient royal residence as the quintessence of the artistic spirit. great country. He sought to embody this admiration in landscapes, genres, book illustrations, theatrical scenery. In his easel works, which were based on natural impressions, the artist was well able to convey the amazing spatiality of Versailles, created near Paris by the will of the Sun King, the imagination and skill of great architects, sculptors, and gardeners.

In his historical compositions, inhabited by small, as if inanimate figures of people, he carefully and lovingly reproduced monuments of art and individual details of life Parade under Paul I, 1907. Deeply revering Pushkin, Benois created a series of illustrations for his works. The best of them for the poem The Bronze Horseman. The artist recreated the image of Pushkin's Petersburg.

Konstantin Andreevich Somov 1869-1939 was widely known as a master of romantic landscape and gallant scenes. His ordinary heroes are like ladies who have come from a distant antiquity in high powdered wigs and lush crinolines and exquisite languid gentlemen in satin camisoles. Somov had an excellent command of drawing. This was especially true in his portraits. The artist created a gallery of portraits of representatives of the artistic intelligentsia, including A.A. Blok and M.A. Kazmina 1907, 1909. In the artistic life of Russia at the beginning of the century, the artistic grouping of the Union of Russian Artists also played a significant role.

It included the artists K. A. Korovin, A.E. Arkhipov, S.A. Vinogradov, S.Yu. Zhukovsky, L.V. Turzhansky, K.F. Yuon and others. The main genre in the work of these artists was the landscape. They were the successors of landscape painting in the second half of the 19th century. AVANT-GARDISM. French avant-garde Avantgafdisme from avant advanced and garde detachment. Avant-gardism is the tendency to reject traditions and the experimental search for new forms and ways of creativity, manifested in a wide variety of artistic movements, the concept is the opposite of academicism.

According to many researchers, avant-garde is a reflection of the process of displacement of culture by civilization, humanistic values ​​by pragmatic ideology. technical age. So, at the very beginning of the twentieth century. the vague ideals of Romanticism and symbolism in the art of the Art Nouveau period, which was in deep crisis, were literally swept away by the hurricane whirlwind of technist ideas of constructivism, funcionalism, and abstractivism.

The avant-gardists opposed the illusionism of classical painting with visionism from lat. Visionis phenomenon, image. All currents of avant-garde art are indeed characterized by the substitution of spiritual content by pragmatism, emotionality by sober calculation, artistic imagery by simple harmonization, aesthetics of forms, composition by construction, and big ideas by utility. Traditional Russian maximalism, which was clearly manifested in the movement of the Wanderers and the Sixties of the 19th century, was only strengthened by the Russian revolution and led to the fact that all over the world Soviet Russia considered the birthplace of avant-garde art.

The new art conquers with unbridled freedom, captivates and captivates, but at the same time testifies to degradation, destruction of the integrity of content and form. The atmosphere of irony, play, carnivalism, masquerade inherent in some currents of avant-garde art not only masks, but reveals a deep inner discord in the artist's soul.

The ideology of avant-gardism carries within itself a destructive force. In the 1910s, according to N. Berdyaev, a hooligan generation was growing up in Russia. The concept of avant-garde conditionally unites the most diverse trends in the art of the twentieth century. constructivism, cubism, orphism, op art, pop art, purism, surrealism, fauvism. The main representatives of this trend in Russia are V. Malevich, V. Kandinsky, M. Larionov, M. Matyushin, V. Tatlin, P. Kuznetsov, G. Yakulov, A. Exter, B. Ender and others. Of the new artistic associations that have left a more or less noticeable mark on Russian art, two stand out. The first was called the Blue Rose, after the name of the 1907 exhibition, the second association bore the even more unusual name Jack of Diamonds.

S. Makovsky wrote about the Blue Rose Light exhibition. Quiet. And the pictures are like prayers So far from the vain routine. The year 1910 was marked in the work of the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky 1866-1944 with two fateful events: he created the first abstract work and wrote a treatise entitled On the Spiritual in Art.

From now on, the pictorial, theoretical, and poetic work of the great artist was subordinated to one goal - to comprehend and express the new spiritual experience that was revealed to him, born of the 20th century. Having put forward its spiritual content as the basis of art, Kandinsky believed that the innermost meaning can be most fully expressed in compositions organized on the basis of rhythm, the psychophysical effect of color, contrasts of dynamics and statics.

The artist came to his abstract constructions from natural landscapes, having overcome their realism, he created a new non-figurative world, unfolding an intense pictorial and plastic process in the space of the picture and achieving absolute integrity and completeness of the artistic image. Endowed with a sharp and subtle sensitivity, Kandinsky believed that the world is a harmonious whole in which the properties of various phenomena are closely related to each other. The same emotions could be evoked in a person by various images belonging to different spheres of life, culture, and art.

The rhythm, the emotional sound of color, the expression of lines and spots of his pictorial compositions were called upon to express powerful lyrical sensations, similar to the feelings awakened by music, poetry, and the spectacle of beautiful landscapes. To all Kandinsky's non-objective compositions, a metaphorical comparison is applicable with the music revived in colors, the carrier of inner meaning became in them coloristic and compositional orchestration, carried out by means of absolute painting with color, point, line, spot, plane, contrasting collision of colorful spots.

The painting Two ovals, written at the end of the Russian period 1915-1921, is a textbook example abstract painting Kandinsky. The continuity of movement, the intensity of the colorful sound that prevails in the picture speak of the emotional, spiritual state of the author, bear a reflection of emotional experiences.

In the late 1900s and early 1910s, the artist V.E. Tatlin 1885-1953 became close to Russian avant-garde artists, primarily Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova, poets Velimir Khlebnikov, Alexei Kruchenykh and others. In those years, the main area of ​​interest for the future creator of the famous Tower of the III International was painting and drawing; the most significant works were the canvases Sailor Self-portrait, Fish Seller, along with magnificent Models and still lifes, they impressed with an expressive generalized drawing, a clear constructiveness of the composition, testifying to the assimilation of innovative techniques of the latest art .

At the same time, they convexly showed a genetic connection with ancient Russian art, icon painting, frescoes. Tatlin studied and copied samples of ancient Russian art a lot in the summer months of his student years. M.V. Matyushin 1861-1934 played a prominent role in many undertakings of left-wing artists and poets in particular, establishing the Zhuravl publishing house, releasing many books, without which the history of the Russian avant-garde is now unthinkable.

On the initiative of Matyushin and Guro, the St. Petersburg Youth Union was created, the most radical association of the artistic forces of both capitals. The picturesque work of Matyushin, despite his close friendship with such powerful generators of artistic ideas as Kazimir Malevich, developed according to its own laws and eventually led to the creation of an original direction, called by the author of ZORVED vigilant knowledge, vision of vision knowledge.

The artist and his students carefully studied the spatial and color environment, the natural shaping of the visible organics of the natural world served them as a model and example for plastic constructions in their paintings. In Matyushin's canvas Crystal, painted in cold blue colors using a complex linear construction, the name itself was a tuning fork of both figurative and plastic meaning. Mikhail Larionov 1881-1964, along with Kazimir Malevich Black Square and Wassily Kandinsky, was the central figure of the Russian avant-garde. His paintings concentrated artistic techniques and methods of different styles and eras from impressionism, fauvism, expressionism to Russian icons, popular prints, folklore art; he also became the creator of his own pictorial system, rayonism, which preceded the era of non-objectivity in art.

A student of Levitan and Serov, Larionov was the true leader of the rebellious artistic youth, the instigator of many scandalous actions that marked the emergence of the avant-garde on the Russian public stage. However, his exceptional talent was manifested not only in the organization of art associations, the organization of outrageous exhibitions, but also in the creation of canvases, many of which can be called pictorial masterpieces.

P.V. Kuznetsov 1879-1968 was one of the organizers of the Blue Rose exhibition, which determined a whole trend in Russian art at the beginning of the 20th century. In his early works, executed under the influence of the elegiac paintings of Borisov-Musatov, Kuznetsov turned to the motifs of sleep, dreams, to unsteady and ghostly images, visions shrouded in the thinnest luminous fog.

Echoes of these Goluborozov tendencies can also be seen in Kuznetsov's Kirghiz Suite, a cycle of paintings recreating the calm, measured course of life of nomadic peoples in the Trans-Volga region, their appearance and customs, as well as the boundless expanse pierced by the sunlight of the steppes. A sophisticated sense of color, a penchant for the grotesque, a craving for romantic exoticism, originally characteristic of G.B. Yakulov 1884-1928, organically combined in his work with the style of Russian painting of the early twentieth century. At the same time, the artist also considered oriental art, in particular, Persian miniature, as his spiritual heritage, the combination of decorative traditions of oriental art and the latest achievements of European painting was given to him without effort, naturally.

Loud fame brought Yakulov his theatrical work. In expressive spectacle, in the scope and freedom of luminous painting, Yakulov groped for new possibilities of decorative and plastic spatial concepts, which were then introduced into design and stage constructions.

CONCLUSION. One generation of artists replaces another, and each of them makes a unique contribution to the treasury of Russian painting, the artistic chronicle of the country and era. The twentieth century, saturated to the limit with grandiose social, political, cultural shifts and upheavals, predetermined an unusually dynamic and rapid evolution of fine art, its figurative structure and expressive means.

But the connection of times is not broken, and today for hundreds and thousands of artists, millions and millions of viewers, the perfect creations of Russian classics, the creations of D. Levitsky and O. Kiprensky, K. Bryullov and A. Venetsianov, A. Ivanov and P. Fedotov, V. Perov and I. Kramskoy, I. Repin and V. Surikov, V. Serov and M. Vrubel remain an invaluable heritage that has found a new life in today's reality, our spiritual wealth, inspiring examples of the highest craftsmanship.

Knowledge and development of this golden fund of Russian art, creative development its best traditions are necessary to create the artistic culture of our era.

End of work -

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Russian painting from classicism to avant-garde

The art of classicism is characterized by a craving for the expression of great social content, lofty, heroic moral ideals. The main theme of the art of classicism is the triumph of public principles over personal ones, ... Absolutism expressed the idea of ​​\u200b\u200bsolid power, the eternity of the absolutist system was promoted. Although full maturity ...

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Plan

Introduction

1. Spiritual and artistic origins Silver Age

2. The originality of Russian painting of the late XIX - early XX century

3. Artistic associations and their role in the development of painting

Conclusion

Literature

Introduction

We, we rule our way to the sun, like Icarus, We are dressed with a cloak of winds and flames.

(M. Voloshin)

The system of spiritual life, which was formed and produced unusually rich fruits in the late 19th - early 20th centuries, is often referred to by the romantic term "Silver Age". In addition to the emotional load, this expression has a certain cultural content and chronological framework. It was actively introduced into scientific use by the critic S.K. Makovsky, poet N.A. Otsup, philosopher N.A. Berdyaev. Sergei Makovsky, son of the artist K.E. Makovsky, already in exile wrote the book "On Parnassus of the Silver Age", which was destined to become the most famous book of memoirs about this time.

Most researchers attribute the period of 20-25 years to the Silver Age at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. and begin it with ordinary, at first glance, cultural events of the early 90s. In 1894, the first "Bryusov" collection of "symbolist" poets was published; M.P. Mussorgsky's opera "Khovanshchina" saw the stage; the innovator composer A.N. Scriabin began his career. In 1898, a a fundamentally new creative association "World of Art", the "Russian seasons" of S.P. Diaghilev began in Paris.

The heyday of the culture of the Silver Age falls on the 10s. XX century, and its end is often associated with the political and social upheavals of 1917-1920. Thus, the broadest chronological framework of the Silver Age: from the mid-90s. 19th century until the mid 20s. XX century., That is, approximately 20-25 years at the turn of the century.

What was the turning point experienced during this period by Russian culture, and with it Russian painting? Why did this period get such a poetic name that involuntarily brings our memory back to the golden age of the Pushkin Renaissance? The answers to these questions still excite the minds of scientists, writers, and art critics. This determined the relevance of the topic of our essay.

The turn of the 19th-20th centuries is a turning point for Russia. Economic ups and downs, lost Russo-Japanese War 1904--1905 and the revolution of 1905-1907, the first World War 1914--1918 and as a consequence of the revolution in February and October 1917, which overthrew the monarchy and the power of the bourgeoisie ... But at the same time, science, literature and art experienced an unprecedented flourishing.

In 1881, the doors of a private art gallery the famous merchant and philanthropist Pavel Mikhailovich Tretyakov, in 1892 he donated it to Moscow. In 1898 the Russian Museum of the Emperor was opened Alexander III in St. Petersburg. In 1912, on the initiative of the historian Ivan Vladimirovich Tsvetaev (1847-1913), the Museum of Fine Arts (now the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts) began its work in Moscow.

The realistic traditions of the Wanderers in painting, their narrative and edifying tone were a thing of the past. They were replaced by modern style. It is easily recognizable by flexible, flowing lines in architecture, by symbolic and allegorical images in sculpture and painting, by sophisticated fonts and ornaments in graphics.

The purpose of our work is to show, in close connection with the historical and social problems of time, the processes of development of painting at the end of the 19th - early 19th century. XX centuries

To achieve this goal, you must complete the following tasks:

To give general characteristics art of the late 19th century - early. XX century;

Describe the work of prominent representatives of the painting of that time;

Find out the main trends in the visual arts of this period of time.

When writing the abstract, the book of Berezova L.G. was used. "History of Russian Culture", where the author considered the main problems of the history of the development of culture from the time of ancient Russia to the present day. The author of this monograph shares the point of view, which is discussed in modern scientific literature. It lies in the fact that culture is seen as the supporting structure of national history.

The next book that was used when working on the essay, "Domestic Art", author Ilyina T.V. This monograph is devoted to the history of fine arts. The author made an attempt to give an objective, truthful picture of the development of domestic art of the end XIX beginning XX century, to talk about the works of those Russian artists whose names are tragedy historical development our society were plunged into oblivion.

In his article Sternin G.Yu. "Russian art culture the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries" tried to select those works and most clearly characterize one or another direction master artist in order to create, as far as possible, a holistic view of the features of the development of painting in Russian art.

And also in this work, the works of art critics Vlasov R.I., Fedorov-Davydov A.A. and others were used to analyze the work of specific artists.

1. Spiritual and artistic origins of the Silver Age

End of the 19th century became an important point for Russian culture, the moment of the search for a new self-consciousness. From the point of view of socio-political and spiritual development, it seemed that everything was frozen, hiding in Russia. About this time A.A. Block wrote the poignant lines:

In those years distant, deaf

Sleep and darkness reigned in the hearts.

Victorious over Russia

Spread owl wings.

The beginning of renewal lies in the depths of national self-consciousness, where subtle changes were made in the system of values, in ideas about the world and man. What is mature in the depths of culture?

The arrow of time makes, as it were, a deflection, a break, a knot. At the end of the century, this feeling of the “end of the cycle”, the completion of the cultural circle, turned out to be especially strong. The words of the philosopher V.V. Rozanova convey this feeling of anxiety: “And from the point of historical break, ugly corners stick out, piercing spikes, generally unpleasant and painful” Berezovaya L.G. History of Russian culture.-M., 2002 -S.65. The state of spiritual discomfort was felt by the whole culture of the late 19th century.

The cultural trends of the turn of the century are sometimes referred to by art historians with the word “decadence”. Actually, decadence itself was just an artistic symptom of the state of the national soul at the moment of the “turn of the centuries”. His pessimism was not so much a denial of the previous cultural experience as a search for ways to move on to a new cycle. It was necessary to get rid of the exhausted heritage of the outgoing century. Hence the impression of the destructive, destructive nature of Russian decadence.

It might as well be considered a desperate bridging to an unknown future. Decadence preceded the Silver Age not so much in time as in attitude, in art system. Denying the old, he opened the way to the search for the new. First of all, this concerns new accents in the system of life values.

At the end of the XIX century. man for the first time felt the frightening power of science and the power of technology. AT everyday life included a telephone and a sewing machine, a steel pen and ink, matches and kerosene, electric lighting and an engine internal combustion, steam locomotive, radio ... But along with this, dynamite, a machine gun, an airship, an airplane, and poison gases were invented.

Therefore, according to Beregovaya, the power of technology of the coming XX century. made a separate human life too vulnerable and fragile. The response was the special attention of culture to the individual human soul. An aggravated personal beginning came into the national self-consciousness through the novels and philosophical and moral systems of L.N. Tolstoy, F.M. Dostoevsky, and later A.P. Chekhov. Literature for the first time really paid attention to the inner life of the soul. The themes of family, love, the self-value of human life sounded loudly.

Such a sharp change in the spiritual and moral values ​​of the decadent period meant the beginning of the emancipation of cultural creativity. The Silver Age would never have been able to manifest itself as such a powerful impulse towards a new quality of Russian culture if decadence had been limited to the denial and overthrow of idols. Decadence built a new soul to the same extent that it destroyed it, creating the soil of the Silver Age - a single, inseparable text of culture. Vlasova R.I. Konstantin Korovin. Creativity.- L., 1970.-p.32.

Revival of national artistic traditions. In the self-consciousness of people at the end of the 19th century. interest in the past, first of all, in one's own history, was caught. The feeling of being the heirs of their history began with N.M. Karamzin. But at the end of the century this interest received a developed scientific and material basis.

At the end of XIX - beginning of XX century. the Russian icon "left" the circle of objects of worship and began to be regarded as an object of art. The trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery transferred to Moscow, I.S. Ostroukhov. Under the layer of later “renovations” and soot, Ostroukhov managed to see the whole world of ancient Russian painting. The fact is that the drying oil, which was covered with icons for shine, after 80-100 years darkened so much that a new image was written on the icon. As a result, in the 19th century in Russia, all icons dating earlier than the 18th century were firmly hidden with several layers of paint.

In the 900s the restorers managed to clear the first icons. The brightness of the colors of the ancient masters shocked connoisseurs of art. In 1904, A. Rublev's "Trinity" was discovered from under several layers of later records, which had been hidden from connoisseurs for at least three hundred years. All culture of the XVIII-XIX centuries. developed almost without knowledge of its own Old Russian heritage. The icon and the whole experience of the Russian art school became one of the important sources of the new culture of the Silver Age.

At the end of the 19th century, a serious study of Russian antiquity began. A six-volume collection of drawings of Russian weapons, costume, church utensils was published - "Antiquities of the Russian state." This edition was used in the Stroganov School, which trained artists, masters of the Faberge firm, and many painters. Scientific publications were published in Moscow: "History of Russian ornament", "History of Russian costume" and others. The Armory in the Kremlin has become an open museum. The first scientific and restoration work was undertaken in the Kiev-Pechersk Lavra, in the Trinity-Sergius Monastery, in the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma. The study of the history of provincial estates began, and local history museums began to work in the provinces.

Based on the understanding of the old artistic traditions in Russia, a new one began to form. art style- modern turf. The initial characteristic of the new style was retrospectivism, that is, the understanding of the culture of past centuries by modern man. Symbolism in the intellectual spheres of culture and Art Nouveau in the artistic fields had a common worldview basis, the same views on the tasks of creativity and a common interest in past cultural experience. Like symbolism, Art Nouveau was common to all European culture. The term "modern" itself came from the name of the magazine "Contemporary Art" then published in Brussels. The term "new art" also appeared on its pages.

Art Nouveau and symbolism of the Silver Age were formed as a complex synthetic style, even rather a fusion of various styles with a fundamental openness to the cultural heritage of all times and peoples. It wasn't just a connection, c. sensory experience of the cultural history of mankind from the point of view of modern man. In this respect, for all its retrospectivism, Art Nouveau was a truly innovative style.

The refined modernity of the beginning of the Silver Age was supplanted by new trends: constructivism, cubism, etc. The art of the avant-garde defiantly opposed the search for “meanings and symbols” with constructive clarity of lines and volumes, pragmatism of color solutions. The second period of the Silver Age of Russian culture is connected with the avant-garde. Its formation, among other things, was influenced by political and social events in Russia and Europe: revolutions, world and civil war, emigration, persecution, oblivion. The Russian avant-garde matured in an atmosphere of increasing catastrophic expectations in pre-war and pre-revolutionary society; it absorbed the horror of war and the romance of revolution. These circumstances determined the initial characteristic of the Russian avant-garde - its reckless striving for the future.

"Great Utopia" of the Russian avant-garde. The avant-garde movement began in 1910 with the infamous Jack of Diamonds exhibition. Avant-garde poets, the Burliuk brothers, helped organize the exhibition, and one of the “rebels” of the Moscow School of Painting, M.F. Larionov. It featured works by Russian artists similar to European Cubists. Having united, the artists organized joint exhibitions until 1917. The core of the “Knaves of Diamonds” was P.P. Konchalovsky, I.I. Mashkov, A.V. Lentulov, A.V. Kuprin, R.R. Falk. But all Russian avant-garde artists somehow passed through the exhibitions of this association, with the exception, perhaps, of one - Petersburger P.N. Filonov.

At the same time, in the report from the exhibition, A.N. Benois first used the term "avant-garde". She really struck not only the audience, but also the artists, because against the backdrop of extravagant “jacks of diamonds”, the artists of the “World of Art” looked like conservative academics. Presented works by P.P. Konchalovsky, I.I. Mashkova, R.R. Falka, N.S. Goncharova and others were excited by thought and feeling, they gave a different image of the world. The paintings accentuated the greedy, material feeling of the world: the intensity of color, the density and negligence of the stroke, the exaggerated volume of objects. The artists were very different, but they were united by one principle - unbridled innovation. This principle formed a new artistic direction.

A follower of Cezanne, Pyotr Konchalovsky bizarrely combined living and inanimate matter in his paintings. His "Portrait of Yakulov" is a mixture of a bright, almost lively interior and a motionless sitting man, similar to an idol. Some art critics compare his manner of combining bright colors and elasticity of writing with the poetic style of V.V. Mayakovsky. Dense vigorous greenery in the paintings of R.R. Falk from his "Crimean Series" and the demonstrative materiality of "Blue Plums" by I.I. Mashkov show the special love of the early avant-garde for the objective world, which reached the point of admiring and enjoying it. Art historians note a special "Mashkov's ringing" from metal utensils in the artist's paintings.

In the works of the most interesting artist "Jack of Diamonds" A.V. Lentulova avant-garde goes to the brink of non-objective art. Parisian friends called him a futurist. The "faceted" space invented by him in the paintings, the jubilant colors give the impression of precious and shining products ("Vasily Blazhenny", "Moscow" - 1913). |

The "rebellion" of the avant-gardists against the "academicism" of modernity caused them to move towards the use of the traditions of the folk primitive, special attention to the "style of the sign", folk popular print, street action. The biggest rebels in "The Tree of Diamonds" by M.V. Larionov and his wife N.S. Goncharova strove for even greater innovation - going beyond the limits of the subject image in painting. The framework of the "knaves of diamonds" for them became cramped. In 1912-1914. they organized several scandalous exhibitions with characteristic names: "Donkey's Tail", "Target", etc.

Participants of these exhibitions, first of all, themselves; M.V. Larionov and N.S. Goncharov, emphasized the primitive.; The paradox of avant-gardism was that in striving for; novelty, artists used traditional elements from their native culture: Gorodets painting, the brightness of Maidan wooden utensils, Khokhloma and Palekh lines, icons, folk, popular prints, city signs, advertising. Due to the attraction to the primordial and natural folk art M.V. Larionova, N.S. Goncharova and their friends were sometimes called "Russian purists" (purism is the idea of ​​moral purity).

The search for a new style, however, gave different results. N.S. Goncharova considered the entry of oriental motifs into Russian culture very important and she herself worked in this direction. She coined the name of her style: "all-ness" and claimed that she could write the same subject in any style she wanted. Indeed, her paintings are surprisingly diverse. With his legendary diligence at the exhibition in 1913. she showed 773 paintings. Among them were the primitivist "Women with a rake", and a subtle retrospection of ancient Russian art "Icon-painting motifs", and the mysterious "Spanish flu", and the constructivist "Airplane over the train". M.I. Tsvetaeva defined the artist with the words “gift and labor”. Goncharova designed the famous Diaghilev production of Stravinsky's The Golden Cockerel.

M.V. Larionov is known as the inventor of "rayonism", a style that was the exit of avant-garde art beyond the bounds of the material world. The artist called his style “the self-development of the linear rhythm of things. His "radiant" landscapes are truly original and belong to a new version of avant-garde art - non-objective art or abstractionism. M. Larionov enthusiastically designed scandalous collections of the same avant-gardists in poetry - his friends, the futurist poets Krucheny, Burliuk.

The meaning and fate of the Russian avant-garde. Exhibitions of the "Donkey's Tail" and the search for M.V. Larionov and P.S. Goncharova meant the development of the Russian avant-garde according to the “fan” principle, that is, the creation of many variants of innovation. Already in the 10s. in the extraordinary variety of avant-garde trends, three predominant directions of innovative searches have been outlined. None of them was completed, so we will denote them conditionally.

1. The expressionist direction of the avant-garde emphasized the special brightness of the impression, the expression and decorativeness of the artistic language. The most indicative painting is a very "joyful" artist - M.Z. Chagall.

2. The path to non-objectivity through cubism - the maximum identification of the volume of the object, its material structure. K. S. Malevich wrote in this manner.

3. Revealing the linear construction of the world, technization artistic images. The constructivist creativity of V.V. Kandinsky, V.E. Tatlin. The Russian avant-garde made up a separate and glorious page in European painting. The direction that rejected past experience retained the same passion of feelings, love for

Expressionism - (from lat. Ehrgezzu - expression) - an artistic direction that focuses on strong feelings, a contrasting vision of the world, the ultimate expressiveness of the artistic language with rich colors and dreaminess that distinguish Russian culture as a whole.

This "Russianness" comes through even in the most "European" avant-garde artist Wassily Kandinsky, who can be called both a Russian and a German artist. Kandinsky led the Blue Rider association in Germany, worked a lot abroad. The peak of his work came in 1913-1914, when he wrote several books on the theory of new painting ("Steps. Text of the Artist"). One's own path to non-objectivity is expressed by the formula: "encrypt the objective environment, and then break with it." He does so. His works "Boats" and "Lake" are an encrypted, hardly guessed natural environment, and his numerous "Compositions" and "Im Provisions" are already freedom from it.

The non-objectivity in the development of painting reflected the growing chaos in individual and national self-identification. The maturation of the national idea remained beyond the horizon, and the feeling of rushing whirlwind time, the confusion of objects, feelings, ideas, the premonition of a catastrophe - in the present being.

We see this strange at first glance mixture of objectivity and unreality of the world in the naive paintings of M.Z. Shaga-la, in the hard energy K.S. Malevich. It was not accidental that P.N. Filonov with the ideas of one of the most mysterious Russian philosophers N.F. Fedorov (great people, great earth, fate, fate). V.V. Kandinsky was engaged in Indian philosophy, was interested in the ideas of E. Blavatsky. Abstract artists were fond of the whole range of folk art: Russian toys, African masks and cults, sculptures of Easter Island.

A noticeable influence on the Russian avant-garde of the 10-20s. turned out to be a passion for the technical capabilities of mankind and revolutionary romanticism in anticipation of a new world. It was an image of the coming 20th century. with its machine psychology, linear plasticity of industrialism. At the exhibition with the mathematical name "0.10" Malevich exhibited the "Black Square" that amazed everyone.

Of course, there was also a moment of scandal here - after all, according to the bohemian "rules of the game" one could declare oneself only through shock. But it is no coincidence that one of its "squares" decorates the grave of the famous innovator. Malevich took a step towards the complete "illogism" of art. In his "Manifesto" of 1915. he explains his discovery.

Commenting on his “Black Square”, Malevich stated that “when the habit of consciousness to see an image in pictures disappears ... only then will we see a purely pictorial work. In his opinion, only "cowardice and weakness" human consciousness bind us all - "from the savage to the academician" - to the objective world.

So, Russian painting in its passion to reach the last "brick", to the last atom in the knowledge of being, has reached the bottom. After all, "Black Square" by K.S. Malevich is the bottom, the finale of self-knowledge. Black color is not a color at all, it is the grave of all colors and at the same time the possibility of their rebirth from under the black surface. The new culture was supposed to know the world to the end, destroying all the conventions and myths of consciousness. Full exposure of the soul - for the acceptance of a new soul of the future. The pathetic futuristic aspiration of Malevich made his artistic experiment immortal. An experiment in the semantic recoding of the world, a romantic impulse to the future nourished not only painting. This was the general trend of Russian culture on the eve of the terrible events of the national breakup of 1917-1920.

Its own "black square" appeared in other areas of the culture of this time. In the summer of 1913, a congress of futurists took place, at which a new theater "Budetlyanin" was created. Even in its name one can hear aspiration to the future. The physical image of the "black square" appeared on the stage of the theater in the production of the avant-garde opera "Victory over the Sun", which glorified the victory of machines over the elements of nature.

The Russian avant-garde was unlucky in art history literature. He seemed either an ugly dwarf or a frightening giant in Russian painting. Whatever the aesthetic impression on each of us may be produced by the amazing paintings of artists of this direction, they were scandalously avant-garde for their contemporaries, and for us they are the history of Russian culture at one of the most difficult turns of its development. It was about them that A.N. prophetically wrote in 1912. Benois that "current scarecrows" will eventually "become classics." And from this point of view, the avant-garde is a form of national self-consciousness (self-identification) in the face of the new century.

Key Concepts

Avant-gardism is a conventional name for all the latest, experimental views and trends in art, which put the search for the new above all else. Avant-garde is a term attached to the innovative movement of the 1910s-1920s. (futurism, cubism, cubofuturism, primitivism, suprematism, constructivism, abstractionism, etc.).

Art Nouveau - an artistic style in Europe and Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. Art Nouveau consists of several stylistic trends, which were based on the desire to generalize and rethink the aesthetic experience of mankind. For this reason, Art Nouveau often arose as a retrospection of some former cultural tradition (neo-Gothic, neo-Russian style, neo-classic, etc.).

Urbanism - (from Latin - urban) - the process of concentrating the population, industry and culture in major cities; inherent in a large city. Accompanied by the emergence of urban mass culture.

2. The originality of Russian painting of the late XIX - early XX century

With the crisis of the populist movement, in the 90s, "the analytical method of nineteenth-century realism." Lapshina N. "World of Art". Essays on history and creative practice. M., 1977.- P.86. , as it is called in domestic science, is becoming obsolete. Many of the Wanderers experienced a creative decline, went into the "small world" Turchin V. S. The era of romanticism in Russia. M., 1981.-S.90 entertaining genre painting. The traditions of Perov 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.

Ilyina T.V. believes that in this difficult period for the country, for the painters of the turn of the century, other ways of expression, other forms of artistic creativity became characteristic - in contradictory, complicated images and reflecting 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 “kanunov”, 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. Sarabyanov D.V. History of Russian art in the second half of the 19th century. M., 1989.- P.100

Art historians note that genre painting developed in the 90s, but it developed somewhat differently. Thus, the peasant theme is revealed in a new way. The split in the rural community is emphatically accusatory 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 hopelessness of existence in hard, exhausting work in the painting "Washerwomen" (1901, State Tretyakov Gallery). He achieved this to a large extent thanks to new pictorial discoveries, to a new understanding of the possibilities of color and light, Ibid., p.101 ..

inconsistency; “subtext”, a well-found expressive detail make even more tragic the picture of Sergei Vasilievich 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 dead dog running from the 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",. S. V. Ivanov. "On the road",. "Death of a Settler." 1889 1TG 237

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),“ Moscow 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 centuries. 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.

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 designed the scenery shortly before.

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 - a healthy soil of 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, contagiously laughing 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. Lebedev G.E. Russian book illustration of the 19th century. M., 1952.-S.60.

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 a legendary city 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 - "Vision to the youth Bartholomew" (1889-1890, Tretyakov Gallery).

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 Nick" (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, Russian Museum) .

In the artist's desire for a flat interpretation of the composition, elegance, ornamentality, refined sophistication of plastic rhythms, the 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 canvases dedicated to women's fate - "Great tonsure" (1898, Russian Museum): deliberately flat figures of nuns, "chernitsa" and "belitsa", generalized silhouettes, as if slowed down ritual rhythm of light and dark spots - figures and a landscape with its light birches and almost black firs. And as always with Nesterov, the landscape plays one of the main roles. 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 (M.M. Allenov’s term), 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.

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 his lifelong friendship with Chaliapin began, for the Diaghilev entreprise. Korovin raised 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 a musical performance.

According to Sternin G.Yu., one of the largest artists, an innovator of Russian painting at the turn of the century, was Valentin Alexandrovich 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) are 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 environment of the Abramtsevo circle.

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. Russian genre painting XIX- the beginning of the XX century. Essays. M., 2004 -p.28.

Serov often writes 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 antique column, or rather, the classical statue, is reminiscent of the figure of Yermolova, 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 Great master that, choosing a different model, in the same genre of a formal portrait, in fact, with the same expressive means, he was able to create an image of a completely different character. So, in the portrait of Princess Orlova (1910-1911, "RMS") exaggeration of some details (huge hat, too long back, sharp knee angle), emphasized attention to the luxury of the interior, transmitted only fragmentarily, like a snatched frame (part of a chair, paintings, the corner of the table), 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), allowing Serov to depict the impetuous movement of the tsar and ridiculously hurrying for courtiers, leads to an image not ironic, as in the portrait of Orlova, but symbolic, conveying the meaning of an entire era.The artist admires the eccentricity 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 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”, 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 the life of 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.

It is hard to believe right away 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 Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) was more direct, although at the same time extremely 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 uncanonicity 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, MRI; "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, which bears little resemblance to reality. In this sense, Vrubel is antipodean to the Impressionists (about whom it is not accidentally said that they are the same as naturalists in literature), because he does not seek to fix a direct impression of reality. He gravitates toward literary subjects, which he interprets abstractly, striving 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 of 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, his main theme. In 1899, he wrote "The Demon Flying", in 1902 - "The Demon Downtrodden". 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 break out of reality devoid of harmony into an unreal world of dreams, but plunged into the rough reality of the earthly. This tragedy of the artistic worldview also determines the portrait characteristics of Vrubel: spiritual discord, 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 a fabulous image of "The Swan Princess" (1900, State Tretyakov Gallery), even in his decorative panels "Spain" (1894, State Tretyakov Gallery) and "Venice" (1893, Russian Museum) executed for 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" Fedorov-Davydov A.A. I.I. Levitan. Life and creation. M., 1966.- P.56 .

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, and extraordinary passion for affirming noble ideals distinguish Vrubel from many of his contemporaries.

Vrubel's work more clearly 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 marvelous pathetic symphony, that is, the most complete 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 ” 7 .

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 autocracy that has long ceased to be a cultural force 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), ancient 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 the fine arts 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.

3. Art associations and their role in the development of painting

"WORLD OF ART"

The artistic association "World of Art" announced itself by issuing a magazine of the same name at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. The publication of the first issue of the magazine "World of Art" in St. Petersburg at the end of 1898 was the result of ten years of communication between a group of painters and graphic artists headed by Alexander Nikolaevich Benois (1870-1960).

The main goal of artistic creativity was declared to be beauty, and beauty in the subjective understanding of each master. Such an attitude to the tasks of art gave the artist absolute freedom in choosing themes, images and means of expression, which was quite new and unusual for Russia.

The World of Art opened for the Russian public many interesting and previously unknown phenomena of Western culture, in particular Finnish and Scandinavian painting, English Pre-Raphaelite artists and graphic artist Aubrey Beardsley.

A distinctive feature of the artists of the "World of Art" was the versatility. They were engaged in painting, and the design of theatrical productions, and arts and crafts. However, the most important place in their heritage belongs to graphics.

The best works of Benois are graphic; among them, the illustrations for A. S. Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman" (1905-1922) are especially interesting. Petersburg became the main “hero” of the whole cycle: its streets, canals, architectural masterpieces appear either in the cold severity of thin lines, or in a dramatic contrast of bright and dark spots. At the climax of the tragedy, when Eugenie is running from the formidable giant galloping behind him - the monument to Peter, the master paints the city with dark, gloomy colors.

The work of Benois is close to the romantic idea of ​​opposing a lonely suffering hero and the world, indifferent to him and thus killing him.

The design of theatrical performances is the brightest page in the work of Lev Samuilovich Bakst (real name Rosenberg; 1866-1924). His most interesting works are associated with opera and ballet productions of the Russian Seasons in Paris 1907-1914. - a kind of festival of Russian art, organized by Dyagi-lev. Bakst made sketches of scenery and costumes for the opera "Salo-meya" by R. Strauss, the suite "Scheherazade" by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov, the ballet "Afternoon of a Faun" to the music of C. Debussy and other performances. Especially remarkable are the sketches of costumes, which have become independent graphic works. The artist modeled the costume, focusing on the system of movements of the dancer, through lines and color, he sought to reveal the pattern of the dance and the nature of the music. In his sketches, the sharpness of vision of the image, a deep understanding of the nature of ballet movements and amazing grace are striking.

One of the main themes for many masters of the "World of Art" was the appeal to the past, longing for the lost ideal world. Favorite era was the XVIII century, and above all the Rococo period. Artists not only tried to resurrect this time in their work - they drew the attention of the public to the true art of the 18th century, in fact, rediscovering the work of French painters Antoine Watteau and Honore Fragonard and their compatriots - Fyodor Rokotov and Dmitry Levitsky .

The images of the “gallant age” are associated with the works of Benois, in which the palaces and parks of Versailles are presented as a beautiful and harmonious world, but abandoned by people. Evgeny Evgenievich Lanceray (1875---1946) preferred to depict pictures of Russian life in the 18th century.

With particular expressiveness, rococo motifs appeared in the works of Konstantin Andreevich Somov (1869--1939). He joined the history of art early (the artist's father was the curator of the Hermitage collections). After graduating from the Academy of Arts, the young master became a great connoisseur of old painting. Somov brilliantly imitated her technique in his paintings. The main genre of his work could be called variations on the theme of the "gallant scene". Indeed, on the canvases of the artist, the characters of Watteau seem to come to life again - ladies in magnificent dresses and wigs, actors of the comedy of masks. They flirt, flirt, sing serenades in the alleys of the park, surrounded by the caressing glow of sunset light.

Somov managed to express his nostalgic admiration for the past especially subtly through female images. The famous work "Lady in Blue" (1897-1900) is a portrait of a contemporary of the master artist E. M. Martynova. She is dressed in the old fashion and is depicted against the backdrop of a poetic landscape park. The manner of painting brilliantly imitates the Biedermeier style. But the obvious morbidity of the heroine's appearance (Martynova soon died of tuberculosis) evokes a feeling of acute longing, and the idyllic softness of the landscape seems unreal, existing only in the artist's imagination.

Mstislav Valerianovich Dobuzhinsky (1875-1957) focused his attention mainly on the urban landscape. His St. Petersburg, unlike Benois' St. Petersburg, is devoid of a romantic halo. The artist chooses the most unattractive, "gray" views, showing the city as a huge mechanism that kills the human soul.

The composition of the painting “The Man with Glasses” (“Portrait of K. A. Syunnerberg”, 1905-1906) is based on the opposition of the hero and the city, which is visible through a wide window. At first glance, the motley row of houses and the figure of a man with a face immersed in shadow seem isolated from each other. But between these two planes there is a deep inner connection. Behind the brightness of colors is the “mechanical” dullness of city houses. The hero is detached, immersed in himself, in his face there is nothing but fatigue and emptiness.

UNION OF RUSSIAN ARTISTS

The Union of Russian Artists is an association that arose in 1903 in Moscow. Its core was Konstantin Yuon, Abram Arkhipov. Igor Grabar, Arkady Rylov. The World of Art played an important role in the emergence of the Union, although the Moscow masters in many ways sought to oppose themselves to the Petersburgers. They were far from symbolism and related ideas. Their style combined the realistic traditions of the Wanderers and the experience of impressionism in the transmission of air and light. Being under some influence of the work of Konstantin Korovin, who often participated in exhibitions of the Union, these artists gravitated towards landscape and genre painting.

The most interesting landscape painter was Konstantin Fedorovich Yuon (1875-1958). Best of all, he succeeded in lyrical winter landscapes (“March Sun”, 1915; “Winter Sun”, 1916), in which he subtly conveyed the play of light on melted snow, the gentle blueness of the sky. And in the views of the Trinity-Sergius Lavra (the best of them was painted in 1910), the contrast of white snow and bright-colored buildings, human figures acquires a purely decorative beauty, bringing these works closer to Art Nouveau.

Curious searches marked the work of Igor Emmanuilovich Grabar (1871-1960). His soft and poetic in mood landscape "February Blue" (1904) testifies to the artist's acquaintance not only with impressionism, but also with later trends in French painting. The trunks and branches of birch trees, immersed in the radiance of the cold winter sun, are painted in short strokes and resemble the pointillist technique. The same manner is visible in the excellent still-life painting “The Untidy Table” (1907), in which, thanks to a system of reflexes (color highlights), all objects are masterfully combined into a coloristic whole.

The landscapes of Arkady Alexandrovich Rylov (1870-1939), a student of A. I. Kuindzhi, are very emotional. In the painting “Green Noise” (1904), the foliage, swaying under a gust of wind, is written in juicy sweeping strokes, and the panorama going into the distance seems as bright as the foreground, which creates a sense of decorativeness.

The artist Abram Efimovich Arkhipov (1862--1930) studied with the famous Wanderers - V. G. Perov and V. D. Polenov. His genre paintings are characterized by both realistic content and a sharp social orientation. However, they are attracted not so much by this. how many chi-hundred picturesque virtues. Such is the picture of "Washerwomen" (the end of the 90s of the 19th century). Her composition, which includes only a small part of the room, is built quite in the spirit of the early works of Edgar Degas on the same theme. The swirling steam dissolves the contours of figures and outlines of faces, and the color combination of muted gray, yellow, brown and lilac tones is surprisingly rich in shades.

The work of the masters of the Union of Russian Artists, with all the charm and high technical level, was distinguished by a rather strong conservatism. Strong realistic roots have never allowed painters to go into the search for new forms and means of expression. Perhaps that is why many members of the Union of Russian Artists fit perfectly into the picture of the development of the official art of the Soviet period, making up, however, the most worthy part of it.

"BLUE ROSE"

In March 1907, at the initiative of the patron, collector and amateur artist Nikolai Pavlovich Ryabushinsky (1877-1951), an exhibition of a group of painters called "Blue Rose" was opened in Moscow. Its main participants - Pavel Kuznetsov, Sergei Sudeikin, Nikolai Sapunov, Martiros Saryan and others - were graduates of the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. At the beginning of the XX century. they were united by a deep passion for the ideas of symbolism. Some of them collaborated in the Moscow Symbolist magazines Libra and Golden Fleece. But the strongest was the influence of V. E. Borisov-Musatov. It was on the basis of his pictorial style that the young symbolist artists determined the main task of their work: immersion in the world of the most subtle, elusive feelings, hidden and complex inner feelings that cannot be explained in words.

Unlike other artistic groupings, for which the first joint exhibition became the beginning of the path, for the Moscow Symbolists it turned out to be the end: soon after that, the community began to disintegrate. However, the style of the "Blue Rose" largely determined the further work of each of them.

Among the sixteen exhibitors, Pavel Varfolomeevich Kuznetsov (1878-1968) is undoubtedly of particular interest. Until the beginning of the 10s. 20th century the artist's work was close to the manner of his teacher Borisov-Musatov and the French symbolists of the Nabis group. The landscapes of Kuznetsov in 1904-1905, for example, "Fountain", "Morning", are designed in cold colors: gray-blue, pale lilac. The outlines of objects are vague, the image of space tends to be decorative. The master paid great attention to the peculiar transmission of light, giving the landscape a feeling of softness and at the same time a feeling of piercing sadness. In the works of Kuznetsov of the 10s, especially in the so-called "Eastern Series", the unique creative style of the mature master is already clearly visible. The painting “Mirage in the Steppe” (1912) at first glance is extremely simple in content: the steppe, lonely tents, slowly walking or talking people who do not notice the magnificent radiance that filled the sky. The picture is again solved in cold colors, and bright spots (tents, human figures) only emphasize the absolute dominance of the gray-blue range. The gentle glow of a mirage is the main thing that attracts in the picture: it is he who seems to be a true reality, and people and their homes are perceived as a mirage.

A remarkable page in the history of Moscow symbolism is the early work of the Armenian painter Martiros Sergeevich Saryan (1880-1972). He could perfectly demonstrate the subtlety of sensations and symbolist understatement, as, for example, in the work "Lake of the Fairies" (1906), which is built on the game of cold tones typical of the "Blue Rose". However, the true element of the artist is the world of the East with its temperament and burning brightness of the palette. In such pictures as “Street. Noon. Constantinople "(1910)," Date Palm "(1911), the artist paints the form with rich colors and energetic strokes.

In the works of Nikolai Nikolaevich Sapunov (1880--1912), elements of symbolism and primitivism are intertwined. His canvas "Carousel" (1908), it would seem, is a typical primitivist "fair-rock picture". However, light short strokes, complex combinations of pure (i.e., not mixed on the palette) paints make one recall the refined manner of the French masters. And this turns the farcical scene into a symbolic "vision".

The images of bygone eras were of considerable importance for Sapunov, which brings him closer to the St. Petersburg masters of the World of Art. Such is the picture "Ball" (1910). resurrecting in memory the scene of the provincial ball of Pushkin's times.

Much stronger nostalgic moods are felt in the work of Sergei Yuryevich Sudeikin (1882-1946). The action of the artist’s paintings, in particular the work “In the Park” (1907), usually takes place in English parks, among dense foliage and light arbors lost in it. Couples in love secluded in boats and in the alleys of the park seem to dissolve in a gentle airy haze, their tiny figures become an organic part of nature. Diffused gloomy light gives these "scenes of the times of sentimentalism" a sense of dreaminess and an acute longing for the unrealizable.

The exhibition "Blue Rose" did not lead to the creation of a strong artistic association of Moscow Symbolists. But its name later turned into a metaphor that defines the main features of their style: intimacy, craving for reflection

So, at the turn of the century, many artistic associations arose in Russia: “The World of Art”. The Union of Russian Artists and others brought together under one roof painters inspired by the idea of ​​reviving folk culture.

Conclusion

The emergence of a new model of painting at the end of the 19th - beginning of the 20th century, which is called the Silver Age, was due to profound shifts in the national attitude and values ​​of spiritual life. The crisis of consciousness manifested itself in decadence, in an effort to get away from the stereotypes and dogmas of the age of enlightenment. The change in the foundations of national culture proceeded along three lines. First, there was a transition from a rationalistic picture of the world to attempts to understand the world in its inseparable integrity through the combination of knowledge, faith and feelings. Secondly, elements of secular religious philosophy were formed as a new worldview of culture. Thirdly, culture took off the burden of "teaching" and activated the prophetic and creative role of artistic creativity.

Changes in worldview foundations at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries. combined with creative searches in the field of artistic language. The most full-fledged result of the changes was expressed in the formation of the aesthetic system of symbolism, which became the impetus for the renewal of all spheres of culture.

At the turn of the century, Russian painting overcame national boundaries and became a world-class phenomenon. She used all the richness of the world and her own cultural traditions for the formation of the domestic version of modernity.

The important sources of the formation of the spiritual basis of the Silver Age were the culture of the provinces and small towns. Art Nouveau, symbolism and avant-garde played the role of a kind of "motor" that gave acceleration to the spiritual development of the nation, literally "pushing" it into the new 20th century.

Literature

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2. The originality of Russian painting of the late XIX - early XX century

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. The traditions of Perov 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.

Ilyina T.V. believes that in this difficult period for the country, for the painters of the turn of the century, other ways of expression, other forms of artistic creativity became characteristic - in contradictory, complicated images and reflecting 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.

Art historians note that genre painting developed in the 90s, but it developed somewhat differently. 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 hopelessness of existence in hard, exhausting work in the painting "Washerwomen" (1901, State Tretyakov Gallery). He achieved this to a large extent thanks to new pictorial discoveries, to a new understanding of the possibilities of color and light.

inconsistency; “subtext”, a well-found expressive detail make even more tragic the picture of Sergei Vasilievich 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 by chance snatched a frame, is preserved here: 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 outline 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",. S. V. Ivanov. "On the road",. "Death of a Settler." 1889 1TG 237

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),“ Moscow 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.

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 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 - a healthy soil of 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 Vasilyevich 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).

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).

In the artist's desire for a flat interpretation of the composition, 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 observed in one of the best canvases 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. 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 (M.M. Allenov’s term), 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.

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 his lifelong friendship with Chaliapin began, for the Diaghilev entreprise. Korovin raised 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 a musical performance.

According to Sternin G.Yu., one of the largest 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 outstanding figures of Russian musical culture (father is a famous composer, 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.

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 formal portrait, in fact, with the same expressive means, he was able to create an image of a completely different character. So, in the portrait of Princess Orlova (1910-1911, "RMS") exaggeration of some details (huge hat, too long back, sharp knee angle), emphasized attention to the luxury of the interior, transmitted only fragmentarily, like a snatched frame (part of a chair, paintings, corner table), 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), allowing Serov to depict the impetuous movement of the tsar and the courtiers absurdly rushing after him, leads to an image not ironic, as in the portrait of Orlova, but symbolic, conveying the meaning of an entire era.The artist admires the eccentricity 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”, 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 the pleasure walks of Elizabeth and Catherine II were conveyed by the artist of the new time, ironic, but also invariably admiring the beauty of the life of 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.

It’s hard to believe right away that the portrait of Verusha Mamontova and The Rape 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 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, MRI; "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, knows her perfectly, but creates his own fantasy world, little like reality. In this sense, Vrubel is antipodean to the Impressionists (about whom it is not accidentally said that they are the same as naturalists in literature), because he in no way seeks 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, 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 a romantic intellectual, 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: mental 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 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."

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 "era of Vrubel"... It was in him that our time was expressed in the most beautiful and saddest thing that it was capable of»7.

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 autocracy and the state that have long ceased to be a cultural force.” 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.

In pretty vicious circle detached from the broad social movement. "A significant part of the peasantry, as well as the working class, was illiterate, although at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries there were noticeable changes in the field of public education. According to the 1897 census, in Russia by 100 there were 21 literate inhabitants, including 29 among men, and only 10 among women. By 1917 ...

The very same reality. The primacy of artistic images and forms that indirectly express the content of modernity over the forms of its direct reflection is the main distinguishing feature art of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. CULTURE AT THE TURN OF THE CENTURIES Chronologically, this period is located between the beginning of the 90s and 1917. It is preceded by the 80s as a transitional decade, ...