Leon Bakst 1866 —1924

LEON BAKST (Born: Lev Samoylovich Rosenberg Лев Самойлович Бакст (Розенберг) (Russian, St. Petersburg 1866 - Paris 1924)

Certain trends that had developed under Post-Impressionism and Symbolism, a form of expression that lies between Romanticism and Expressionism, found expression in experimental art groups which interested Leon Bakst, from the beginning of the 20th century. Often shortlived, these trends produced new definitions of artists and their work, as well as the role of art in society. The main centres for these new ideas included Paris, Berlin, and Dresden. The first two decades of the 20th century were marked by a rapid series of artistic innovations, which often appeared to contrast with each other, but which were all connected by a desire to break with the past. This common aim led to the naming of certain groups of artists as "avant-garde", a term with military connotations that conjured up the image of an advance force expressing an artistic perception that only later w ould become part of the wider culture.

IT ALL BEGINS IN 1905.

In Paris, Fauvism bursts noisily into the Salon d'Automne, and the demise of Bouguereausounds the death knell of academic painting. The same year witnesses the birth of Expressionism, with the formation of Die Brucke in Dresden. From now on, there will be no break in activity. Cubism
in 1908, with Picasso and Braque; Futurism in 1909, setting the trend of the pugnacious manifesto
-in just four years, the first revolution of modern art is set in motion.

That revolution is preceded, or accompanied, by the death of its great percursors: Gauguin dies in
1903, Cezanne in 1906. As the World's Fair of 1900 pauses for a moment on the threshold
between the past and the future, the new century declares itself a fighter resolved to win.

A group of Russian artists and writers active 1898-1906, revived as an exhibiting society, 1910-24. SERGE DIAGHILEV provided the motive force for the formation of the group in St Petersburg in 1898, and for the publication of its journal, Mir Iskusstva, from 1898 to December 1904 for which Bakst wrote. The Nevsky Pickwickians, grouped around Alexandre Benois, preceded the World of Art and formed its initial core. In the first issue of the journal Diaghilev, who with Benois had a wide knowledge of recent western European art, declared his commitment to a renaissance of Russian art, avoiding pale reflections of foreign trends yet also resisting a narrow nationalism. The World of Art provided a focus for Symbolist and Aesthetic tendencies in Russia, but its diversity of talents meant that it had only a limited degree of stylistic coherence.

The artistic group was founded in 1898 by a group of students that included Alexandre Benois, Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Filosofov, Leon Bakst, Eugene Lansere. The starting moments for the new artistic group was organization of the Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists in the Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts in Saint-Petersburg.

The magazine was cofounded in 1899 in St. Petersburg by Alexandre Benois, Leon Bakst, and Sergei Diaghilev (the Chief Editor). They aimed at assailing low artistic standards of the obsolescent Peredvizhniki school and promoting artistic individualism and other principles of Art Nouveau. The theoretical declarations of the art movements were stated in the Dyagilev's articles "Difficult Questions", "Our Imaginary Degradation", "Permanent Struggle", "In search of the Beauty", "The fundamentals of the artistic appreciation" published in the N1/2 and N3/4 of the new journal.

Apart from three founding fathers, active members of the World of Art included Mstislav Dobuzhinsky, Eugene Lansere, and Konstantin Somov. Exhibitions organized by the World of Art attracted many illustrious painters from Russia and abroad, notably Mikhail Vrubel, Mikhail Nesterov, and Isaak Levitan.
In its "classical period" (1898-1904) the art group organized six exhibitions: 1899 (International), 1900, 1901 (At the Imperial Academy of Arts, Saint Petersburg), 1902 (Moscow and Saint Petersburg), 1903, 1906 (Saint Petersburg). The sixth exhibition was seen as a Dyagilev's attempt to prevent the separation from the Moscow mebers of the group who organized a separate "Exhibition of 36 artists" (1901) and later "The Union of Russian Artists" group (from 1903).

In 1904-1910, Mir Iskusstva as a separate artistic group did not exist. Its place was inherited by the Union of Russian Artists which continued officially until 1910 and unofficially until 1924. The Union included painters (Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Boris Kustodiev, Philip Maliavin, Zinaida Serebriakova), illustrators (Viktor Vasnetsov, Ivan Bilibin, Konstantin Somov, Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva), restorators (Igor Grabar), and scenic designers (Nicholas Roerich, Serge Sudeikin).
In 1910 Benois published a critical article in the magazine "Rech'" about the Union of Russian Artists. Mir Iskusstva was recreated. Some said that the inclusion of the Russian avant-garde painters demonstrated that the group became an exhibition organization rather than an art movement. In 1917 the chairmen of the group became Ivan Bilibin. The same year most members of Jack of Diamonds enter the group.
The group organized numerous exhibitions: 1911, 1912, 1913, 1915, 1916, 1917, 1918, 1921, 1922 Saint-Petersburg, Moscow). The last exhibition of Mir Iskusstva was organized in Paris in 1927. Some members of the group entered the Zhar-Tsvet (Moscow, organized in 1924) and Four Arts (Moscow-Leningrad organized in 1925) artistic movements.

LEON BAKST - Biography

Bakst attended the Imperial Academy of Arts at St. Petersburg but was expelled after painting a too-realistic "Pietà." He returned to Russia after completing his studies in Paris and became a court painter. He was a cofounder with Sergey Diaghilev of the journal Mir Iskusstva ("World of Art") in 1899. Bakst began to design scenery in 1900, first at the Hermitage court theatre and then at the imperial theatres.

From 1898 - 1906, Leon Bakst taught at the celebrated Svanseva School where Chagall had won a scholarship. Bakst, who was a major link with the West and an influential advocate of symbolist painting was Chagall's teacher at the celebrated school. It was thru Bakst, who wrote for the periodical Mir Iskusstra (The World of Art), that Chagall acquired a finely tuned sense of his role as an artist and must have been helped towards new means of visual expression.
In 1906 Bakst went to Paris, where he began designing stage sets and costumes for Diaghilev's newly formed ballet company, the Ballets Russes. The first Diaghilev ballet for which he designed decor was Cléopâtre (1909). He became chief set designer and costume designer for Sergei Diaghilev, who founded the Ballets Russes. He worked on the ballets Scheherazade and Carnaval (both 1910), Le Spectre de la rose and Narcisse (both 1911), L'Après-midi d'un faune and Daphnis et Chloé (both 1912), and Les Papillons (1914).

Bakst achieved international fame with his sets and costumes, in which he combined bold designs and sumptuous colours with minutely refined details to convey an atmosphere of picturesque, exotic Orientalism. In 1919 Bakst settled permanently in Paris. His designs for a London production of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty in 1921 are regarded as his greatest work.

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