Mir iskusstva

Mir iskusstva (Russian: «Мир искусства», means World of Art) was a Russian magazine and the artistic movement, with the idea of promoting a pictorial renewal of Russian art by synthesizing several artistic forms including theater, decoration and the art of the book. It inspired and embodied, which was a major influence on the Russians who helped revolutionize European art during the first decade of the 20th century. In fact, few Europeans outside Russia actually saw issues of the magazine itself.

“World of Art” (1898 – 1927) is an art association that was formed in Russia in the late 1890s. Under the same name there was a magazine published since 1898 by members of the group. Inspired by Europe and its major capitals, marked by Art Nouveau, symbolism and the cult of beauty, the works of the group’s painters have a refined character.

From 1909, several members of the movement also participated in productions of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes company based in Paris.

Background
Art life in the Russian Empire at the end of the 1890s was complicated and acquired a new color and ambiguity. A new generation of artists has come to the forefront of artistic life, disappointed in officially supported academism and critical of the Wanderers’ democratic society.

A new art society arose in St. Petersburg and initially brought together several young artists and people who had different, not always art education (Alexander Benois studied at the Law Faculty of St. Petersburg University. Sergey Diaghilev and Dmitry Filosofov are lawyers in their first education who graduated from St. Petersburg University).

Artists were united by a craving for retrospectivism, the search for ideals in the art of the era of Peter I, in the baroque of the middle of the 18th century, in the Empire of the times of Paul I. The search for ideals in the art of the previous centuries logically turned figures of society to rediscovering the artistic significance and heritage of Baroque, Russian Rococo, early classicism of the 18th century centuries, empire and culture of the Russian estate, to rediscover the artistic significance of ancient architecture, graphics, porcelain, which were in a state of crisis or stagnation. The installations of young artists had signs of noble culture and respect for the cultural heritage of Western Europe.

The critic V.V. Stasov distinctly felt estranged from the democratic attitudes of the new society and therefore was hostile to its members and saw representatives of decadence in them.

A compromise position was developed by the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, whose leadership also felt the crisis state of late classicism and the death of academism. It was because of this that the Alexander Academy of Arts left without completing the course, Alexander Benois and Konstantin Somov. Leon Bakst studied at the Academy semi-officially as a volunteer.

The state of educational affairs at the Academy somewhat improved the appointment of the artist Ilya Repin as rector. But Benoit, and Somov, and Leon Bakst continued to improve their skills already abroad.

The Mir iskusstva magazine
In 1894, Alexander Benoit began his career as a theorist and art historian, writing a section about Russian artists for the German collection History of Painting of the 19th Century. In 1896-1898 and 1905-1907 he worked in France. He became one of the organizers and ideologists of the art association “World of Art”, participated in a new art publication that had the same name as the magazine “World of Art”. The magazine was founded when Benoit was absent, the process was led by Diaghilev, for which he secured the funds of Princess Tenisheva and Moscow philanthropist Savva Mamontov. The publication was suspended for a short time, which was affected by the disappointment of the philanthropist Tenishevoi and the malicious bankruptcy of Savva Mamontov. An influential artist V. A. Serov came to the rescue to save the publication, who took care of providing the state support to the magazine. The editorial secretary was D. Filosofov.

Foundation
The artistic group was founded in November 1898 by a group of students that included Alexandre Benois, Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Filosofov, Léon Bakst, and 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 co-founded in 1899 in St. Petersburg by Alexandre Benois, Léon Bakst, and Sergei Diaghilev (the Chief Editor). They aimed at assailing 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 Diaghilev’s articles “Difficult Questions”, “Our Imaginary Degradation”, “Permanent Struggle”, “In Search of Beauty”, and “The Fundamentals of Artistic Appreciation” published in the N1/2 and N3/4 of the new journal.

Classical period
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 Diaghilev’s attempt to prevent the separation from the Moscow members of the group who organized a separate “Exhibition of 36 artists” (1901) and later “The Union of Russian Artists” group (from 1903). The magazine ended in 1904.

In 1904-1910, Mir iskusstva did not exist as a separate artistic group. 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, Zinaida Serebriakova, Sergei Lednev-Schukin), illustrators (Ivan Bilibin, Konstantin Somov, Dmitry Mitrohin), 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. Nicholas Roerich became the new chairman. The group admitted new members including Nathan Altman, Vladimir Tatlin, and Martiros Saryan. Some said that the inclusion of Russian avant-garde painters demonstrated that the group had become an exhibition organization rather than an art movement. In 1917 the chairman of the group became Ivan Bilibin. The same year most members of the Jack of Diamonds entered 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.

Art
Like the English Pre-Raphaelites before them, Benois and his friends were disgusted with anti-aesthetic nature of modern industrial society and sought to consolidate all Neo-Romantic Russian artists under the banner of fighting Positivism in art.

Like the Romantics before them, the miriskusniki promoted understanding and conservation of the art of previous epochs, particularly traditional folk art and the 18th-century rococo. Antoine Watteau was probably the single artist whom they admired the most.

Such Revivalist projects were treated by the miriskusniki humorously, in a spirit of self-parody. They were fascinated with masks and marionettes, with carnaval and puppet theater, with dreams and fairy-tales. Everything grotesque and playful appealed to them more than the serious and emotional. Their favorite city was Venice, so much so that Diaghilev and Stravinsky selected it as the place of their burial.

As for media, the miriskusniki preferred the light, airy effects of watercolor and gouache to full-scale oil paintings. Seeking to bring art into every house, they often designed interiors and books. Bakst and Benois revolutionized theatrical design with their ground-breaking decor for Cléopâtre (1909), Carnaval (1910), Petrushka (1911), and L’après-midi d’un faune (1912). 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 Isaac Levitan.

Philosophical and aesthetic views

Ethical and aesthetic
For the Moscow artisans and their like-minded people, an unambiguous distinction was made between ethical and aesthetic spheres. The same topic touches on the important question of the purpose of art and its motivation. An ethical component cannot be forcibly brought into art.

In general, all violence against a work of art, the forced imposition of goals on it from the outside contradicts the freedom and independence of art, reducing it to a “philistine formula”, thereby illegally enslaving. “Who can deny the social significance of art…; but the demand responsiveness of art to our care, employment and willing – a very dangerous thing… “. Thus, the creative process can be called involuntary actualization of ideas already invested in the beginnings of true art, a figure of human genius in images.

“Immoral” art, that is, which does not contain any orientation toward morality in general, remains art. But at the same time, what was created only for the purpose of immoral influence is not art. “Preaching instead of art some kind of exercise in virtue, we must completely distinguish this activity from the field of aesthetics and give it pleasure to flourish in the field of moral and pedagogical notations, leaving alone distant and alien art. “

From here comes the criticism of the Wanderers. Actually, they are called “pseudo-realists” or “decadents of realism.” Peacekeepers consider the Wanderers to be carriers of the “ utilitarian “ views on art described above. “Pseudo-realists”, proceeding from the installation of imposing on the artistic, some external installations (reflecting “true” reality with moral subtext), reject the traditional techniques and forms of academism on these principles. The originality attributed to this phenomenon is, from the point of view of the artists of the world, flimsy, while devoid of any sincerity (in an aesthetic sense).

Definition of beauty
In their vision of beauty, members of the association avoid two extreme, diametrically opposing opinions: 1) nature as beauty is the only source of all creativity; 2) the foundation of aesthetics lies purely in the imagination of man. Both of these views take place simultaneously, but they do not exhaust their subject separately from each other and ultimately come to the negation of art. The first – by preferring the art of reality (therefore, it comes down to utilitarianism), the second – by the requirement to look at idealization as something real and attainable. Neither nature itself, nor imagination as the beginning of beauty is its cause. They serve only as a means of its manifestation.

From art is required to place accents, highlight some personality, the most important. Therefore, the central source of beauty is the personality of the creator: “… he must enter us into his kingdom, show clearly, really those images that are closed to us without him. ” Only an artist is able to give an idea its real embodiment. The human personality is a concentration of creative power and combines both principles of beauty, qualitatively surpassing them: “The highest manifestation of the personality, regardless of what form it will pour out, is beauty in the field of human creativity…”; “Beauty in art is temperament expressed in images…”. Therefore, all works of art, first of all, are the result of self-expression of the creator and do not exist without this idea of self-expression.
Moreover, the whole history of art is the development of an artistic personality. Even taking into account the absence of the individual in itself in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, we can justifiably and quite legally imagine the whole era as an individual.

Aesthetic assessment
Peacekeepers saw a clear difference between assessment and cognitive activity. While in the field of aesthetics, it is important to understand that value judgments as such are not cognitive. Therefore, the world artists considered “scientific criticism”, manifested in various classifications, definitions and similar microscopic work, incompatible with the artistic evaluation of a work of art. In other words, it can not be true or false, as its definite interpretation: “We are, of course, not the preachers of lies, but we are not slaves of the truth… We are especially thirsty beauty generation”.

They associated the first with a tendency that appeared back in the days of French enlightenment and, again, associated with the utilization of art. Such an assessment has many problems that it is unable to solve, for example, the question of the relative value of talent.

The second is based on a special relationship between the creator and the “us” perceiving. However, the essence of the aesthetic assessment is not that the recipient “dissolves” in the work of art. On the contrary, he discovers his “I” in him, thereby seeing himself in the personality of the artist.

Despite the apparent subjectivity of this criterion, it has a fairly objective character. It depends on the degree of commonality of views. So, true works of art, reflecting the genius of the creator, remain in history, being unforgettable. The closer the personality of the creator to the perceiver, the higher the aesthetic assessment of the work.

“A work of art is not important in itself, but only as an expression of the personality of the creator”
– “World of art”

The “International Painting Exhibition”
Before the international exhibition of the magazine Mir iskusstwa came into being in 1899, Sergei Djagilev had traveled through Europe for a few months. He visited private collections and artists’ studios, bought pictures and arranged for the purchase in private collections in Russia. Princess Marija Klawdijewna Tenischewa and Sawwa Momontow, who financed Mir Iskusstwa from 1898 in equal parts, made it possible for the majority of the works to be transported to St. Petersburg.

The exhibition was opened on January 22, 1899 in the rooms of the private museum, which later became the “Stieglitz Museum of Applied Arts” in St. Petersburg, by Baron Alexander von Stieglitz. The exhibition catalog, which was also the second edition of the magazine Mir iskusstwa, featured 61 artists and 322 pictures and drawings. Among others, pictures by James McNeill Whistler, the French Albert Besnard, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Gustave Moreau and Pierre Puvis de Chavannes were shown. From Germany, the exhibition showed paintings by Franz von Lenbach and Max Liebermann. Switzerland was represented by Arnold Böcklin, Italy by Giovanni Boldini, Belgium by Leon and Finland by Akseli Gallen-Kallela. Russian art featured works by Léon Bakst, Alexander Benois, Konstantin Somow, Apollinarij Wasnezow, Alexander Golowin and Jelena Polenowa.