The Avant-Garde in
St. Petersburg
Dr. Julia Zarankin
September 18, 2015
Map of St
Petersburg
Strategic
location for a
WINDOW
TO EUROPE
Carl Fabergé
Imperial Jeweller
Apocalyptic Mood
• Russo-Japanese
War (1904-5)
• Revolution of 1905
• Class inequality
• Petersburg Myth
• Alexandre Benois,
illustration to Bronze
Horseman (1905)
The Bronze Horseman
Bloody Sunday
January 22, 1905
Rastrelli’s WINTER PALACE
Palace Square
October Manifesto
October 17, 1905
Ilya Repin
Isadora DUNCAN
•
•
•
•
•
•
1877-1927
First Russian tour: 1904
Caused SENSATION
Dances barefoot
Flowing movements
Dance reflects emotions
& music
• https://www.youtube.co
m/watch?v=oaFZbhbcft0
Mariinsky Theater
Imperial Theatre
Ballets Russes
• Sergei Diaghilev,
impresario
• Exported avantgarde Russian
culture to Europe
• Nijinski, Pavlova,
Karsavina,
Rubinstein
Imperial Academy of Arts
St. Petersburg
Ivan Morozov
(Konstantin Korovin, 1903)
Sergei Shchukin (1854-1936)
Picasso Three Women
(1908)
Matisse in the Hermitage!
“La Danse” 1910
Singer Sewing Machine
Company
Ivanov’s Tower
• Meeting place of the
Avant Garde
• Vyacheslav Ivanov’s
home
(Tavricheskaya, 25)
• Poet, mystic,
philosopher
Tauride Palace
Andrei Bely
• 1880-1934
• Leading
Symbolist writer
• Petersburg (1913)
• Apocalyptic
sentiment
Alexander BLOK
• Night, street, lamp, drugstore (1912)
• Night, street, lamp, drugstore,
A dull and meaningless light.
Go on and live another quarter century Nothing will change. There's no way
out.
• You'll die, then start from the beginning,
It will repeat, just like before:
Night, icy ripples on a canal,
Drugstore, street, lamp.
CUBOFUTURISM
Natalia Goncharova
Cyclist (1913)
Natalia Goncharova:
Traditional Russian Dance
(1910)
Kazimir Malevich
Knife Grinder (1912)
Kazimir Malevich, “Morning in the
Village after Snowstorm” (1912)
Mikhail Larionov
Red Rayonism (1913)
Stray Dog Café Cabaret
Anna Akhmatova
portrait by Natan Altman
Anna Akhmatova
“Poem Without a Hero”
And always something not thunder
Under the profligate frost, a rumble
Of war before it began.
But then it was heard so faintly
It scarcely touched the ear, as flakes to
The Neva’s drifts it drowned.
As though, in night’s terrible mirror
Man, raving, denied his image
And tried to disappear, –
While along the embankment of history,
Not the calendar – the existing
Twentieth century drew near.
Vladimir Mayakovsky
• 1893-1930
• Enthusiastic about
Revolution
• Futurist poet
• “Slap in the Face of
Public Taste”
Trans-Sense Poetry
(ZAUM)
• Alexei
Kruchenykh &
Velimir
Khlebnikov
invented ZAUM in
1913
• “dyr byl shchyl
ubeshshchur
skum vy so bu r l
Victory Over the Sun
• First futurist opera
• Premiered in 1913;
Luna Park in St.
Petersburg
• All male production
• Malevich, Khlebnikov
Kruchenykh
Kazimir Malevich
Black Square
Alexander Scriabin
• 1872-1915
• Atonal composer
• Synesthesia,
mystical roots of
music
• Mysterium
• https://www.youtube
.com/watch?v=V4Y
SysUn-Bk
Romanov Tercentenary
1913