Alexandre Benois

“ Despite the trammels of the Academy, the lack of culture among the artists, and their humble position in society, despite the vagueness of their aspirations and the eternal compromise between the impulses of the mind divided between the general movement and the scholastic precepts,—despite all this, there rests on these Russian artists the reflection of Romanticism, and all of them, unconscious, weak, and bewildered, as they often were, are nevertheless true children of their time. ”

“ The portraits of Levitzky (1735–1822) are equally interesting to the historian and to the painter. He painted a great many of the prominent leaders of the brilliant reign of Catherine, and he depicted them with perfectly convincing vividness. He succeeded, like no one else in Russia, in expressing the characteristic tone and glow, the whole outward "manner of living" of the beau-monde of his time, and at the same time he created a series of superb specimens of painting, hardly inferior in their technical perfection to the best works of Western schools. ”

“ The stream of outside life could not penetrate beyond the high hermetically sealed walls of the Academy. At home,—the stifling atmosphere of middle-class vulgarity and coarseness; at school,—the arid and merciless grind of a rigid education. ”

“ His art has neither the concentrated strictness of Perov, nor the cheerful convincing power of Savitzky or Yaroshenko, nor the mighty artistic temperament of Repin. Vladimir Makovsky, among all his surly, even gloomy and thoughtful fellow-painters, is the "jester," having always a smile on his face, ever tipping the wink at the spectator to make him laugh. But Makovsky's laughter is neither Fedotov's broad, hearty laughter, nor Perov's malicious grin. ”

“ Fedotov was lost for art when still young, because of a grave mental disease, which was shortly followed by death. If we take into consideration that he was all of thirty when he began to devote himself seriously to painting, it becomes clear that his art is more a brilliant "introduction" than a complete ensemble. This wide-awake artist, who with a truly astonishing rapidity developed from an awkward self-taught man into a brilliant painter—some of the "still-life's" in his pictures are worth the "old Dutchmen"—died before giving expression to the best that was in him. ”

“ This feature in a talented, and naturally very delicate painter can be accounted for only by the general morbid state of our culture.
The same discouraging feature mars the art of another admirable Moscow painter—Golovin. He is one of the richest colourists of modern Russian art, less original, but perhaps more delicate than Vrubel. Golovin's favourite colour gamut, light, silvery, with fascinating streaks of fresh, vernal green, hazy azure, and patrician red, fascinates like soft music. ”

“ This is not the case with a series of phenomena in our painting, which are just now being born, or which are just receiving a definite shape and becoming conscious of themselves. It would be absurd to demand an "historical" attitude toward them. We ourselves are in the very midst of the whirlwind which sways our contemporaries, and we can neither analyse it nor foresee into what it may turn, nor divine its future significance. Besides, modern art criticism is just now raising the question whether there is any sense whatever in weighing and estimating artistic phenomena. ”

“ If we follow, in the history of painting, the attitude of artists of different epochs and nations toward their art, if we consider what is to them more essential: painting itself or the ideas painting conveys, we notice two fundamental currents in artistic activity. One has sprung from an exclusive quest for beauty, the source of the other is the desire to impress, by means of painting, something amusing, or instructive, or denunciatory. ”

“ Only an art, self-sufficient, but unified for a common purpose, only a school, both as technique and as ideas, can bear fruits of beauty, which will be worthy of those borne by the famous "schools" of former ages, and even surpass them in nutritive powers and in fascination. It is hardly necessary to insist, however, that these wishes are helpless in the face of life's decrees, and that the future of Russian art depends upon the unrevealed destinies of the Russian nation. ”

“ Men moulded by such an existence could not walk hand in hand with the inspired creators of Russian literature, who absorbed both the exquisite culture of the eighteenth century and the passionate striving for spiritual regeneration which seized aching humanity after the French Revolution. Only those among the alumni of the Academy who, owing to their foreign origin, possessed a culture superior to that of their Russian comrades, created something beautiful and daring. Such was the case of Bruni and Bryullov. ”

“ He treated Russian themes from the viewpoint of a man of Western culture—in fact, from the viewpoint of a citizen of the world. There is not a trace in his painting of naïve nationalism, of a stubborn and stupid tendency to set himself apart from the rest of the world, characteristic of many of his contemporaries. Vereshchagin was a typical Russian nobleman, a man of broad views, of an open intellect, of an innate nobility of intentions, and absolutely alien to petty and narrow patriotism. ”

“ The figures of the naked youths in the above-mentioned picture as well as the stroke, firm, and to a certain extent agreeable in its sureness and smoothness, reveal in the master a great fund of technical knowledge. But this found almost no application, partly because Ivanov was too much absorbed by his duties at the Academy and by casual icon orders—which plagued the life out of most of our artists,—and partly because, his knowledge remained mere knowledge and found no response in the inner world of the artist, who remained, to his dying hour, nothing but an old-fashioned bureaucrat. ”

“ There are no weak points in Vrubel's artistic personality. He is everywhere the same magnificent virtuoso, the same phantast of a fiery temperament, the same genuine artist, never yielding to timid vulgarity, all flame and enthusiasm. ”

“ In virtue of all his merits and failings Somov may count together with Vrubel, upon one of the most prominent places in the history of Russian painting. It is highly probable that Somov's art, excessively spiced, suffocatingly perfumed, over-refined, and morbidly delicate as it is, will undergo a re-estimation in the future, but it can be safely predicted that no other artist of the beginning of the twentieth century has mirrored with greater faithfulness the peculiar charm of our super-refined epoch, which knows so much and believes so little. ”

“ ONE of the peculiar traits of Russian Realism was that the boldest and most resolute followers of an art based on the study of the surrounding world very willingly abandoned this reality and turned to history, that is to a domain where the immediate connection with actuality is, naturally, lost. Courbet, Monet, Dégas did not attempt historical painting, and it is even hard to picture how artists, so passionately enamoured of living life could seek for inspiration in the graveyards of the ages. ”

“ His original and noble style, his silvery quiet colours waited for walls and broad surfaces, to unfold their full power and splendour. Untimely death has snatched away the artist and deprived Russian art of a master whom we could ill spare. ”

“ Somov reproduces bygone ages without any scientific pedantry; his themes are taken from commonplace, everyday life. Somov's personages are not human beings that love and suffer, they are rather marionettes, but such marionettes as had partaken of life's enticements and "would not taste of death." Somov's art is steeped in quiet sadness and scepticism. He loves his world infinitely, and at the same time he mocks at its vanity. In Somov's presentation life is a brilliant and delicate game with a very strange beginning and a disconsolate, gloomy end. ”

“ It is in this atmosphere that K. Makovsky was brought up, and its reflection lies on the whole of his output. His colours are derived from the palette of Neff and Zichy, his themes have the insipidity peculiar to all "costume" painters; as a fantastic artist he does not go beyond the sensuality which marks all the salon art which flooded the art market in the middle of the nineteenth century, at the moment of the triumph of materialism. ”

“ This happened not only because Moscow was the heart of Russian life in its most characteristic form, but also because the Capital possessed an art school where absolute freedom, at times degenerating into confusion and looseness, reigned supreme. The spirit of the fifties and the sixties, which hailed as its ideal the emancipation of human personality, was, naturally, inimical to all sorts of restraint, to all traditions binding the creative effort, and, consequently, to the Petrograd Academy with its Areopagus. ”

“ Syerov never painted "scenes from Russian life," but his landscapes, like the best ones of Levitan, in revealing the distinctive poetry of modern Russian art and in unfolding the master's intimate knowledge of Russian nature, testify to the depth of self-consciousness and to the maturity of Russian society. Only a mature personality can assume a conscious attitude toward the charm of the surrounding world. ”

“ In some respects this artist could even pass for an innovator. The splendour of his colours, a correct rendering of sun effects, a beautiful, picturesque technique in places,—all this was a real revelation for the generation of Russian artists of the sixties and seventies. Unfortunately, in vitality of talent Semiradsky was inferior to Makovsky. His compositions on antique themes are little more than excellent landscapes and "still-life's," among which, to meet the demands of historical painting, are placed, for no apparent reason whatever, lifeless and dull figures. ”

“ It is nevertheless true that Kiprensky was drawn irresistibly to what it is customary to call Romanticism,—at least, to some of its characteristic aspects. Neither the Academy nor our bureaucratic society, indifferent to problems of art, was able to check this impulse. Regardless of the example of Ugryumov, Yegorov and Shebuyev, Kiprensky took a greater interest in the old colourists, than in the cold, white plaster-of-Paris casts. Colour was his main concern; he preferred it to drawing. Yet, education is second nature. ”

“ He has never aimed at studying colours in nature, never endeavoured to render the delicate charm of relationships, the stir of life, the poetry of the unexpected. Malyavin, the true, mature Malyavin is nothing but "the singer of Russian peasant women." He paints them in all their ugly majesty and in all the richness of their dazzling colours. He loves the Russian "baba" (peasant woman) as the pagan does his idol ”

“ Perov was a true child of his times. A man endowed with a great gift of observation—searching, daring, passionately devoted to his work, he is incontestably a fine manifestation of Russian culture, but his pictures are cheerless as such. They are stories in colour, which would be clearer and more impressive if told in words. What he was concerned with is not pictorial themes, but tales which can be told by means of painting. ”

“ Young Russian literature—it made its appearance under Elizabeth—presently found itself represented by men who could compare favourably with the greatest European talents. Russian letters at one proud, easy sweep soared up to the highest summit of Western culture, but neither Russian life as a whole nor particularly Russian art, was able to keep pace with literature. The fabulous precocity of Russian literature can be explained by the fact that during the long reign of Catherine II the higher class of society achieved a remarkable degree of refinement and culture. ”

“ Hence, his illustrations rarely correspond to what he illustrates, but they always show him as a virtuoso and a master of style. Bakst is a wonderful,—the most wonderful next to Somov,—"calligrapher" of Russian art,—that is why the best he did belongs to the field of purely ornamental illustration, such as vignettes and head-and-tail pieces. His ornamental resourcefulness is inexhaustible, and his firm knowledge of the human body enables him to master easily the most complex compositions. In addition, his gift for assimilation is wonderful: he mimics artistic manners with absolute precision. ”

“ A more sincere, enthusiastic artist can hardly be found. But, unfortunately, his sincerity and enthusiasm are misplaced. When one admires Malyutin's amusing fancy, his sense of colour, his true artistic character, one regrets that all these high qualities are absolutely distorted and maimed by a wholly wrong theory, which is deeply rooted in the artist's mind; namely, that the fundamental principle of the Old-Russian æsthetics is coarseness, absurdity, puerility, and superficiality. ”

“ The landscape is replete with the mysteriousness of loneliness and all the fascination of deep forests, of marsh pools, and of a grey, pensive day. This picture shows that Vasnetzov housed the soul of a true artist, which could not come to expression and unfold itself owing to various circumstances, such as defective schooling, an insufficient understanding of the problems of art, orders unsuited to his talent, the success of his worst pictures, and an infatuation with false nationalistic ideas. ”