RUSSIAN ART IN EUROPE.

Until recently, Russian Art stood apart from the great paths of international artistic intercourse. Neither its past nor its present were represented in European galleries. Russia’s parti
cipation in international exhibitions remained accidental and left no deep trace. It is true that the numbers of Russian artists who had left the mothercountry and had settled on the banks of the Seine the great centre of modern art — were constantly growing. These artists in voluntary exile may have added to the prestige of Russia in the “World City”, but they remained unknown in Russia, and did not themselves know their country. Russian art was finding its own way or assimilating and transforming the inheritance of the West in the seclusion of isolated, local, provincial existence. From the Western point of view Russia’s contri
bution was represented by the pacifist canvasses of Verestchaguin, as noble in their humanitarian pathos as they were poor in ar
tistic craftsmanship. The first endeavour to find a way into Europe was made by Mr. Serge Diaghilev who organised in 1906 the first exhibition of Russian paintings at the autumn “Salon” in Paris. The pictures were selected not with lukewarm official eclecticism, but with a justifiable creative bias. Although this first contact with the pulse of the World of Art was not very fruitful, the date remains significant. Diaghilev showed to Europe the icon which in those days had not been adequately studied in Russia and remained within the province of archeologists. Diaghilev himself approached it instinctively, not scientifically. The Parisian public, however, was not in the least prepared for such a revelation. The very sources of Russian icon-painting — Imperial Bysantium, the successor of the Hellenic genius — were obscure to that public in spite of the works of Diehl and Schlumberger. The entire cultural tradition of the Renaissance stood between the public and the style of icon-painting. Another reason of the
failure of this “advance” was that the new generation of painters did not have in its ranks any masters of “picture”. It was a generation of illustrators and specialists in decorative art who
were attracted by the romanticism of the past. Their reflex and applied art was foreign to the French who had been trying for a century to solve the fundamental problems of the pictorial art proper. Diaghilev correctly gauged the situation and directed the activities of his contemporaries — Bakst, Alexander Benois, Roerich, Golovin, Anisfeld, Madame Gontcharova, Larionov — towards one goal — the theatre.
This new departure was entirely successful. Russian decorative painting produced a revolution in the theatrical settings and restored the unity of scenic art. On the other hand, the brilli
ance of colour and design of the decorative art of the stage, inspired by the primitive popular Russian cartoon and Eastern exoticism, screened from the West once again the more intimate and mysterious features of Russian art, the searchings and achieve
ments that had developed among the younger generation, the successors of the “World of Art” group of the nineties.
The situation has now changed. Under pressure of circumstances, Russian painters have flocked to Europe, not in a phalanx, but “in loose formation”, halting for a while in Berlin, then in Paris. At present they have sailed across the Atlantic to the legendary land of patrons of art and “limitless possibilities”. Alongside with the “Russian Parisians”, Europeans of long stand
ing, new groupings of emigre artists are coming into being.
The national features of the former have been completed obliterated by their surroundings, whereas the emigrés impress themselves upon the new world. Not only does their art preserve its peculiar
stubborn and acute originality, but it become crystallised and does not develop. Their clock stopped at the hour of their departure from Russia.
The art of those who have remained in Russia also finds its way into Europe. Individual artists from Petrograd and Moscow exhibit their work privately and under official auspices, and the visits of prominent Russian theatrical companies with their artistic staffs have become an everyday occurrence. There is a continuous “cross-examination” between Europe and Russia, the Russia that has been compelled to come to Europe by reason of social and national catastrophes. This centrifugal process which has scattered our art all over the world renders it more than ever imperative that Russia’s contribution to plastic and pictorial art be defined and described, and its past and present intrinsic value and significance demonstrated.
“Where is my House?” — This question was put to a Russian poet by a mysterious lady in a side-street of Soviet Moscow.
Russian Art, scattered all over the world, is asking, the same question. What Oedipus will answer it?
Twenty years ago, the Russian painter Benois published an essay “The School of Russian Painting”. This was a patriotic paradox, a militant cry. How are we to define or discern the very essence of the “Russian School”? Its destiny is without parallel. Our art had two beginnings, both under the aegis of foreign art — classical Byzantium and decadent Barocque. Twice it joined in the movement of a style that was either fully developed or on the decline. Twice it was “colonised”. Historians have helped us to realise that the new impulse given to Russian culture by Peter the Great was not spontaneous and had been slowly pre
pared. In the domain of art, however, the change was of the nature of a momentous cataclysm. The Russian ceremonious Rococo art of the several “Versailles” — palaces in and around Petrograd — likewise originated without any preparation, spontaneously, at the word of command. One of the modern historians of Russian art,
Mr. Victor Nikolski, argues that the wonderful perfection of the Russian portrait painters of the 18th century, so rapidly attained, was due precisely to the inveterate tradition of icon-painting.
This argument, however is purely speculative. We are really confronted with two distinct periods of creative art, and they are divided by a gulf. Another historian of art, the French writer Louis Reau regards Russian art in its entirely as reflex and characterised mainly by the absence of originality. We vaguely perceive the error of this friend of Russia who knows our country so well and has studied all the Russian sources of information. A Russian writer Mr. Paul Muratov in a recent remarkable article draws a distinct line between the Byzantine models in Russia and the original Russian variations of the iconographic and formal conceptions of Byzantium. The Russians substituted abstract designs for naturalistic imitations. Hypothetically, on the strength of the investigations begun by Stchokotov, the author suggests that the common and continuous foundation of all Russian art should be traced to the character of the Russian “Kustar” work (the work of the peasants). For have we not witnessed the expansion of the Western joyous battle-cry of “Pure Art” into the loud tocsin of decorative art, a georgeous feast of colour? Is it not the destiny of Russian art to transform all artistic conceptions of foreign lands on the lines of ornamental design and an orgy of colour? Is not the European picture to be reproduced in the shape of a Russian primitive cartoon? This does not seem likely. For there are saps in the Russian soil capable of changing Western