This exhibition, which opened on the 105th anniversary of the death of the genius of Russian modernism, embodied the artist’s dream: his “opera” majolica “sounds” here to the music to which it was dedicated.
... "Spring", a drunken young lady with her palm to her ear, seems to be listening to Rimsky-Korsakov's "The Snow Maiden" along with the thin-faced "Girl in a Wreath": the characters from the operas of the great composer, created by the hands of the great artist, have gathered here in full force. The Abramtsevo Museum-Reserve, the Glinka and Bakhrushinsky museums, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and others donated Vrubel's masterpieces, rare furniture, scenery sketches and photographs to the Chaliapin Museum - and their own Abramtsevo opened in Moscow.
Pushing back the curtain, you will see in the window here not the Garden Ring with trolleybuses, but... the Abramtsevo house of the Mamontovs (which had a ceramic workshop where Vrubel created his masterpieces), and in the next window - artists near its fence. At the exhibition, the windows of the museum became frames for photographic landscapes, and its halls became the living rooms of the Abramtsevo house, inhabited by its guests and owners. Savva Mamontov himself (here is a full-length portrait of him on a transparent panel) “looks” carefully at the “Firebird” dish, Korovin in a frock coat “approaches” his sketches for “The Snow Maiden”...
But the main thing at the exhibition, of course, is Vrubel, his majolica and his music.
Here sculptures of various genres, tiles, vases, ashtrays, flowerpots and all this, shown under Rimsky-Korsakov, form one musical and sculptural suite. Here is the hall of “Sadko”, the opera for which Vrubel not only composed the scenery and costumes, but also, inspired by it, created its characters in ceramic flesh. In the corner there is a golden Sea King with curly waves, Princess Volkhova in green glaze with a metallic sheen, fish with bright scales swimming on a blue panel, the famous plate where the characters seem to be intertwined in a musical staff running in a circle.
Vrubel aspired to become not only a sculptor, but, as it now seems, also a composer. In majolica, he made his way to true musical harmony through the play of edges and colors, sometimes unexpected. In the hall of "The Snow Maiden", an opera that also became a revelation for Vrubel, in addition to the important Berendey in a golden caftan, there is a rarely exhibited "The Melted Snow Maiden". This is a tile on which there is only a blue spot surrounded by white and brown: but there really is nothing left of the Snow Maiden except frozen water and snow on the thawed ground.
There was also a place for the singer himself in the Chaliapin House. Vrubel created a sculpture of the Assyrian king, impressed by Chaliapin’s Holofernes - and Fyodor Ivanovich, thinking about the “Demon”, sketched this: a tangle of hair, a chased profile, a look full of torment... “From Vrubel - my Demon,” he wrote about the drawing and then sung by Chaliapin.
The Overthrow of the Demon and the Humility of the Master
A Vrubel exhibition opened at the Tretyakov Gallery
The exhibition, which they had been trying to implement for so long, finally took place - the money for it was provided by Surgutneftegaz, and the catalog was published by the Pinakothek magazine. Compared to the Vrubel exhibition in Düsseldorf (the artist’s first retrospective in Europe, which took place a year ago), this one is somewhat narrowed: here, alas, there are no fundamentally important early things from the Kiev Museum and the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg - transporting paintings and graphics to Moscow would probably more troublesome than going to Germany. EKATERINA Kommersant-DEGOT asked several questions about Vrubel to the author of probably the most interesting book about him, Doctor of Art History MIKHAIL ALLENOV.
— What surprises are there in this exhibition? What does it confirm about Vrubel’s reputation?
“We are greeted here with a warning that everything is somehow especially illuminated.” And indeed, everything turned out a little like slides or reproductions, the painting became a little flat. We are used to seeing Vrubel in the natural gloom of the lower halls of the Tretyakov Gallery - much was not visible there, and he had a mysterious depth. Now everything is visible very well, but it is somewhat technical. In addition, Vrubel - a master of cold color, with a shift to the blue-violet part of the spectrum - somehow warmed up inappropriately. But above all, the exhibition confirms that he is a very good and rich artist. The exhibition is very “nutritious”, there are a lot of good things. Vrubel could have said: “I am a master” - like Bulgakov’s hero. By the way, he had the same hat - Nadezhda Ivanovna Zabela sewed it for him for migraines. It is not very clear where Bulgakov got this cap, but there are too many coincidences... Berlioz's name is Mikhail Alexandrovich, like Vrubel's; he has Kyiv roots; in the chase scene along Spiridonovka, a purple knight is mentioned - this is Vrubel’s stained glass window, which was in the house on Spiridonovka. Berlioz is, of course, a reference to the romantic manifesto, Berlioz's Symphony Fantastique, the cutting off of the head imitates the ending of the fourth movement, The Procession to the Execution, where the hero is beheaded and then wakes up, like Berlioz, at Satan's Sabbath. I think that Bulgakov, who knew Vrubel’s works well in Kyiv, needed Vrubel, this thrice-romantic master, for such topics.
- Why does this most romantic master of Russian art appear so late?
— In Russian art there was no romanticism in its initial stage - mythological, medieval, as in Germany. The Alexander era was the culmination of Peter's Europeanism ("A hundred years have passed, and the young city..."), there was still no place for Slavophilism, extracted from the atmosphere of German philosophizing. Empire romanticism was programmatic Westernism. Even the first versions of pseudo-Gothic and pseudo-Naryshkin style were not inspired by nationalist impulses. But in Vrubel’s time everything was different.
The Kiev religious revival with the St. Vladimir Cathedral and the activities of Prakhov - he participated in all of this. Then there was the Moscow Mamontov circle, and Savva Mamontov considered himself the successor and disciple of Chizhov, one of the adherents of early Slavophilism. The very air of Abramtsev, Aksakov’s nest, was saturated with Slavophile fluids, and it was very easy for Vrubel to enter this layer of the romantic tradition. Although national romanticism was not an all-consuming artistic ideology for him, Westernism and Russian fairy-tale motifs coexist in a very whimsical way. Neo-romanticism for him is something like sublimated eclecticism - after Ivanov, this is the second eclectic genius of Russian art. So, since Russia did not have its own “medieval romanticism,” Vrubel in his experiments was guided rather by the Germans - Böcklin, Stuck, Klinger. But he's much better. He has nobility. Although there is a lot of this, somewhat cheap, modernity. At one time there was such a figure of reasoning - they say, there was such a bad modernity, and Serov and Vrubel were influenced by it. In fact, it was they, of course, who created it; they are modernity. In both romanticism and modernity, the moment of playing to the public is strong - Bryullov’s ingredient, if we keep in mind the Russian tradition. By the way, Vrubel’s type of physiognomic mask—disastrous beauty “before the dark abyss” (huge eyes, sallow pallor, parched lips)—is already in “The Death of Pompeii.” And clasped hands, a bowed head, a mournful intonation - all this is extremely characteristic of Russian art in general, and of the Wanderers in particular. “The Seated Demon” is, in fact, almost “Christ in the Desert” by Kramskoy, and Vrubel could not help but think about it. After all, he was one of the smartest Russian artists, which is rather rare in Russian art.
— What is the controversy with Kramskoy?
— Kramskoy’s “Christ in the Wilderness” belongs to the line of social Christianity, in which the gospel plot is interpreted as an eternal collision, repeated in different historical settings, which goes back to Ivanov’s “The Appearance of the Messiah.” Kramskoy has before us the morning of his decision to accept the sacrificial path - Christ was led into the desert by a certain spirit and was there tempted by the devil. But Vrubel’s Demon is not a devil at all; it is impossible to imagine him as controlling the devils who roast sinners in hell, or as a tempter in general. Rather, this is the spirit that led Christ into the desert and which, somewhere at a distance from him, worries about his forty-day temptation. Vrubel painted “The Seated Demon” at the same time as Ge wrote the painting “What is Truth?”, which also fits into Kramskoy’s line. Ge, as he usually does, creates a situation of a gaping pause, silence - Christ does not answer Pilate’s question. This is the end of the situation where “in the beginning was the word”—now the word is dead. The conflict, most fully expressed in the first half of the century by Ivanov (“The Appearance of the Messiah”) and Fedotov (“The Major’s Matchmaking”), has been exhausted—an event that is initiated by a word, a message. (Fedotov’s matchmaker, who announces the arrival of the major, is the same forerunner as Ivanov’s Baptist.) The exhaustion of this purely Russian tradition, which focused on mise-en-scène formed by words, logically led to the fact that Christ had to be replaced by the Demon. Precisely Vrubel's, since Vrubel said that the Demon is the soul.
- Why does the romantic program undergo such a finale - the overthrow of the Demon?
— “The Demon Defeated,” written after “Sitting” and “Flying,” is usually considered unexpected. But “The Flying Demon” looks completely defeated (just turn the reproduction over) - it, one might say, is already diving, there is no defiant victoriousness in it. And the sitting Demon is clearly not triumphant. Then they liked to see in the Demon a kind of alter ego of Vrubel and interpret this image as a Nietzschean superman. Vrubel, apparently, was against this and wanted to punish demonic pride. It is easy to notice that a completely different demon has been defeated - this one was a Michelangelo-like athlete, and this one is a withered creature with an almost childish grimace of resentment on his feeble-hearted face, with a theatrical mask on his face, and openly strained plastic makeup. The entire “Demon Defeated” with its mountain landscape in the distance is written like a fading stage lighting - in addition, we must take into account that initially all the blue and pink colors were very luminescently bright (now these splashes have been preserved only in fragments). Vrubel wanted to call this painting “icon”, and, apparently, it was really something like a gold-colored icon. But as he experimented with pigments, they began to fade before the eyes of the first viewers of the picture. It was almost a performance: Vrubel, already affected by the disease, continued to work on the painting right in front of the audience. He showed a kind of movie in which the Demon’s face changed, the picture changed - he showed the denouement and extinction of an enchanting performance, the hero of which was the Demon. The candles go out, the makeup and props begin to show through - it’s done brilliantly. Going out to the public, turning the exhibition into the artist’s atelier, where he works (as it later became clear, in a state of insane passion)—this was an act. And here the artist and his hero, of course, sharply diverge. This is not an apologetics of demonism, but a criticism of it. Here it becomes clear why Vrubel loved Ibsen so much, in whom, especially the late one, all demonic figures fail. This is a debunking of the demonic idea that dares to replace the world. And there is a deep rhetorical logic in the fact that after the 90s, this - for Vrubel - era of writing, his later drawings, made in a psychiatric hospital, represent a return to nature.
M.A. Vrubel. Lilac. 1900. Oil on canvas
The Tretyakov Gallery has one of the most complete collections of works by Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856 - 1910). I suggest once again walking through the most unusual and most beautiful hall of the Tretyakov Gallery. Mystical panels, mysterious paintings and sculptures, a majolica fireplace - all this is presented in this room, and against the background of the pearl-gray-blue background of the walls it looks great.
An artist of universal possibilities, Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel was born on March 17, 1856 in Omsk. He glorified his name in almost all genres of fine art: painting, graphics, decorative sculpture and theatrical art.
At first, in the 1880s, when Vrubel created his best works, they were simply not known; in the 1890s, people started talking about his works mainly with indignation and ridicule; at the beginning of the 20th century, they were already peering with fascination at “The Defeated Demon.” But then, when he was terminally ill, his fame only grew, and in the last years of his life it simply thundered. “For fame in the artistic field,” on November 28, 1905, he was awarded the title of Academician of Painting - just at the time of the complete cessation of artistic activity. Vrubel's popularity reached its highest point at the time of his death.
The central work of the exhibition is the panel “Princess of Dreams”. About him at https://galik-123.livejournal.com/307000.html.
Princess Dreams, 1896
The fireplace “Mikula Selyaninovich and Volga” sparkling with all colors, restored in 1996 and repeatedly shown at various foreign exhibitions. The history of its creation - https://galik-123.livejournal.com/311965.html.
Faust. Triptych, 1896
Farewells of the King of the Sea to Princess Volkhova, 1899
Prophet, 1898
In addition to well-known painting masterpieces, the permanent exhibition includes the graphic part of the collection in special display cases.
Defeated Demon and Seated Demon, 1890
The hall exhibits majolica - sculptural chamber suites on the themes of N.A. Rimsky-Korsakov's fairy-tale operas "Sadko" and "Snow Maiden", the head "Girl in a Wreath" and other works.
Sea queen
Watercolors by Vrubel from the Kyiv Museum of Russian Art - https://galik-123.livejournal.com/188220.html
Art critic, historian and art theorist N.A. Dmitrieva compared Vrubel’s creative biography with a drama in three acts with a prologue and epilogue, and each time the transition to a new stage occurred abruptly and unexpectedly. By “prologue” we mean the early years of learning and choosing a vocation. Act one - 1880s, stay at the Academy of Arts and move to Kyiv, studies in Byzantine art and church painting. Act two is the Moscow period, which began in 1890 with “The Seated Demon” and ended in 1902 with “The Defeated Demon” and the artist’s hospitalization. Act three: 1903-1906, associated with mental illness, which gradually undermined the physical and intellectual strength of the painter. For the last four years, having gone blind, Vrubel lived only physically.
The Russian Museum presents an exhibition dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the birth of Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910). These are paintings and graphic works of the artist, sculpture, objects of decorative and applied art, made using the majolica technique, belonging to the collection of the Russian Museum.
The exhibition will feature paintings by Vrubel that are well known to the viewer: “Hamlet and Ophelia” (1884), the panel “Morning” (1897), “The Hero” (1898), “The Flying Demon” (1899), “The Six-Winged Seraph” (1904) ), - and rarely exhibited graphic works: anatomical studies, watercolors of costume class, programs of the academic era, numerous portraits and self-portraits of the artist, late graphic cycles “Insomnia”, “Campanula”, “Shells”, as well as the artist’s last work - “Vision” Prophet Ezekiel" (1906), created during the tragic years of illness, resisting which the artist continued to create. “The creative power survived everything in him. The man died and was destroyed, but the master continued to live” (V. Ya. Bryusov).
It is intended to show as fully as possible the works of Vrubel, made by him in the 1890s using the majolica technique in the Abramtsevo ceramic workshop: sculptures, tiles, the Sadko dish. Especially for the exhibition, the famous fireplace “Volga and Mikula” (1899-1900), created for the 1900 World Exhibition in Paris, will be reassembled from 130 fragments. Visitors to the exhibition will be able to familiarize themselves with unique archival materials from the Manuscripts Department of the Russian Museum: photographs, letters, programs of concerts in which N. I. Zabela-Vrubel took part, created according to the artist’s sketches. Of particular interest are the artist's personal belongings - the shell that inspired him to create the graphic cycle of 1904, a Chinese tea box and a travel candlestick.
The exhibition was prepared with the support of OJSC VNESHTORGBANK and the Severstal company.
Nikolai Nikolaevich Ge.
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel - painter, monumentalist, sculptor, decorator, founder of Russian pictorial symbolism and art nouveau style.
Self-portrait. 1905
Mikhail Vrubel was born on March 17, 1856 in Western Siberia, in Omsk. His father was a military lawyer, which forced the family to change their place of residence frequently. The artist's mother died when little Misha was only three years old. Four years later, his father remarried the pianist Wessel, thanks to whom Mikhail became closely acquainted with classical music. In 1863 the family moved to Kharkov, in 1864 to St. Petersburg, then to Saratov; in 1867 - again to St. Petersburg; and in 1870 - to Odessa, where Mikhail Vrubel graduated from the famous Richelieu Gymnasium with a gold medal. His artistic abilities manifested themselves very early. Already at the age of five, Misha drew enthusiastically; during his life in St. Petersburg, his father took him to classes at the school of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts; in Odessa, the teenager attended the drawing school of the Society of Fine Arts. At the age of nine, he copied Michelangelo from memory.
According to Father Mikhail, an indispensable condition for choosing a profession was “benefit for society.” As a result, Mikhail Vrubel ended up at the Faculty of Law of St. Petersburg University in 1874, but did not give up his dream of becoming an artist - he read a lot, attended exhibitions, and took evening classes at the Academy of Arts, where he became a student in 1880.
At the Academy, Mikhail Alexandrovich met Serov, one of the two painters with whom he was closest. Vrubel met another, Korovin, a little later - in 1886.
At the Academy, the young artist studied with Chistyakov and Repin. Vrubel left the Academy in 1884, having been invited (on Chistyakov’s recommendation) by the famous art critic Prakhov to Kyiv to participate in the restoration of ancient paintings of the St. Cyril Church.
"Hamlet and Ophelia, like the Demon and Tamara." 1888
The next six years of his life were connected with Kiev. Here, under the leadership of Prakhov, he studied Byzantine icon painting, worked in the St. Cyril Church, and then in the Vladimir Cathedral. In his own works he clearly attempted to modernize Byzantine aesthetics, and his work was not traditionally religious. His iconographic “darings” caused bewilderment: in 1889Vrubelwas removed from this job. Same yearHemoved to Moscow - the “Mamontov” period began in his life, associated with the Moscow house and the Abramtsevo estate near Moscow, which belonged to the famous art lover and philanthropist Savva Mamontov.
The range of Vrubel's artistic interests grew significantly at this time. He became interested in sculpture, ceramics, theatrical production design, design, and decorative panels. In 1890, he showed his “Seated Demon,” conceived in Kyiv. This painting, initially assessed ambiguously, became a symbol of the coming era of symbolism and religious reformation.
Faust. Triptych. 1896
In 1896, Vrubel's first exhibition was held, which was the result of a scandal. Mamontov, who was responsible for the artistic design of the All-Russian Industrial and Agricultural Exhibition in Nizhny Novgorod, ordered two panels from Vrubel for the decoration of the art department. The artist presented the works “Princess Dream” and “Mikula Selyanovich”, which were rejected by the selection committee of the Academy of Arts “as non-artistic”. In response, Mamontov quickly built a special pavilion with a huge inscription on the roof “Vrubel Panels,” in which eight paintings by the artist and two of his sculptures were presented. Immediately after the Nizhny Novgorod exhibition, Vrubel married singer Nadezhda Zabela. Soon Zabela became the leading artist of the Mamontov Private Opera. The next five years turned out to be the most fruitful for Vrubel in his work and life. During these years, the artist created almost all of his famous paintings. He became close to members of the World of Art association, participated in their exhibitions, as well as exhibitions of the Vienna Secession, “36”
"The Swan Princess". 1900
In the 1890s, Vrubel designed several Moscow mansions. In 1901, Vrubel had a son. The child was born with a congenital defect - “cleft lip”. which made a painful impression on the artist. In 1899, Mikhail Vrubel lost his father, whom he loved devotedly.
Acquaintances began to notice certain oddities in Vrubel’s behavior, and at the beginning of 1902, Bekhterev discovered that he had an incurable disease (tames of the spinal cord), which threatened with madness. The great psychiatrist's predictions very soon came true. After the death of his young son in 1903, Vrubel became an almost permanent resident of psychiatric clinics. Not long before this, he painted a picture, terrible in its doom, “The Defeated Demon.” DiedVrubelApril 14, 1910 at the St. Petersburg clinic of Dr. Bari. His last words were: “Stop lying around, get ready, Nikolai, let’s go to the Academy...”. Blok gave an inspirational speech at the artist’s funeral, calling Vrubel the author "drawings stolen from eternity"" And " a messenger of other worlds."In 1955, an exhibition known as “50 Newly Discovered Drawings by Vrubel” was held in the exhibition hall of the Moscow Union of Artists, created from the collections of Professor I.N. Vvedensky and F.A. Usoltsev, psychiatrists who treated Vrubel. Today, Vrubel’s works are contained in the collections of the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, and the M.A. Vrubel Museum of Fine Arts in Omsk.
"By the night". 1900
Andrei Konchalovsky about Mikhail Vrubel
The name of Vrubel is inextricably linked with the Konchalovsky family. My great-grandfather, writer, publisher and translator Pyotr Petrovich Konchalovsky (1839-1904), through Valentin Serov, met Vrubel and invited the young artist to illustrate Lermontov’s “Demon” and “Hero of Our Time”.
Illustrations for Lermontov's poem "The Demon". Flying demon. Black watercolor. 1890-91
Vrubel’s drawings were rejected, they were passed with difficulty, and only thanks to the fact that Konchalovsky defended them, almost all of them were included in the anniversary collected works of M.Yu. Lermontov. And finally, Mikhail Alexandrovich was the best man at the wedding of my grandparents.
"The demon watching Tamara dance." Golden watercolor. 1890-91
More interesting things about Mikhail Vrubel - from the book of my mother, Natalya Petrovna.
“...Vrubel appeared in the Konchalovsky family in 1891 along with a group of artists invited to illustrate the anniversary edition of Lermontov. This publication was led by Pyotr Petrovich, who by that time was in charge of Kushnarev’s publishing house and a bookstore in Petrovskie Lines. His daughter Lelya helped him in the store. The Konchalovsky boys would run there after school, hang out among the interesting audience, drink tea and hot pies at Lelya’s, in the room behind the cabinets where artists were constantly visiting.
Lermontov's edition was illustrated by such masters as Polenov, Surikov, Repin, Viktor Vasnetsov, and among the young ones, Pyotr Petrovich attracted Serov, Vrubel, Korovin, Pasternak, Apollinary Vasnetsov.
The Konchalovskys became very close friends with Mikhail Alexandrovich Vrubel. He knew how to talk to children as if they were adults, seriously, and for this the Konchalovsky boys adored him. For them, Vrubel’s original talent was discovered earlier than for the adults around him.
Vrubel rented a room near Chistye Prudy, on the corner of Kharitonyevsky and Mashkov lanes, in the same house where the Konchalovsky family lived, on the floor below, and began to visit them every day, dined there and was constantly in the company of young people. He amazed everyone with his amazing culture and knowledge, and enthusiastically organized masquerades, games, charades, and performances. They staged excerpts from “Woe from Wit” by Griboyedov and “The Forest” by Ostrovsky, and the young people were so carried away by this that they were soon ready to perform in paid performances. A performance was staged for the benefit of the students of the gymnasium where the boys studied. Vrubel staged The Barber of Seville by Beaumarchais. Together with Petya, he wrote the scenery and directed it himself. Max played Almaviva, Petya played Figaro, Vita played Rosina. The remaining roles were played by friends of the young Konchalovskys.
Vrubel enthusiastically came up with different versions of scenes and easily found ways out of difficult situations. Max, for example, had neither hearing nor a voice, and during the course of the action he had to perform a serenade. Then Vrubel suggested that Max - Almaviva turn to Peta - Figaro with the following words: “Sing for me, today I’m not in the voice!” And Petya sang for himself and for his brother. The performance was a success...” (From the book by N.P. Konchalovskaya “The Priceless Gift”).