Russian Ballet (book)

Last updated
Russian Ballet, David Bomberg, 1919 RussianBalletBomberg.jpg
Russian Ballet, David Bomberg, 1919

Russian Ballet is an artist's book by the English artist David Bomberg published in 1919. The work describes the impact of seeing a performance of Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, and is based on a series of drawings Bomberg had done around 1914, [1] while associated with the Vorticist group of avant-garde artists in London. Centred on Wyndham Lewis and Ezra Pound, the movement flourished briefly from 1914–1915, before being dispersed by the impact of the First World War. The only surviving example of a vorticist artist's book, the work can be seen as a parody of Marinetti's seminal futurist book Zang Tumb Tumb , using similar language to the Italian's work glorifying war (for example, the phrase "Methodic discord startles ..." [2] [ page needed ]), but instead praising the impact of watching the decidedly less macho Ballets Russes in full flow.

Contents

Bomberg was the most audacious painter of his generation at the Slade, proving ... that he could absorb the most experimental European ideas, fuse these with Jewish influences and come up with a robust alternative of his own. His treatment of the human figure, in terms of angular, clear-cut forms charged with enormous energy, reveals his determination to bring about a drastic renewal in British painting. —Richard Cork [3]

The book was the last time that Bomberg would work in a vorticist idiom. After witnessing the carnage of the First World War at first hand, he was to lose his faith in modernism and instead develop a looser, expressive style, based predominantly around landscapes. [3]

Vorticism and the English Avant-garde

Bomberg had been expelled from the Slade art school in 1913 due to his modernist leanings, and after a brief flirtation with Futurism, had put on a major one-man exhibition of Abstract art at the Chenil Gallery, Chelsea, July 1914. The exhibition included paintings such as The Mud Bath and Ju-Jitsu. [4] The show was enthusiastically reviewed by T. E. Hulme. [3] Visited by Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Brâncuși and Marinetti among others, [5] the exhibition earned 'him the admiration of many experimental artists both in London and abroad. [3]

The foreword of the Chenil Gallery catalogue, 1914, contained a defiant text not dissimilar to Wyndham Lewis' Manifesto in Blast 1, and one that could just as easily apply to the drawings done around this time that would serve as the basis of Russian Ballet;

I appeal to the Sense of Form. In some of the work I show in the first room, I completely abandon Naturalism and Tradition. I am searching for an Intenser expression. In other work in this room, where I use naturalistic Form, I have stripped it of all irrelevant matter. I look upon nature, while I live in a steel city. Where decoration happens, it is accidental. My object is the construction of Pure Form. I reject everything in painting that is not Pure Form. I hate the colours of the East, the Modern Mediævalist, and the Fat Man of the Renaissance. —David Bomberg, 1914 [6]

While usually considered a vorticist, Bomberg had refused to sign the Vorticist manifesto published in BLAST, July 1914, or allow Lewis to reproduce his work in the magazine alongside contributions from T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Edward Wadsworth, Ford Madox Ford and Jacob Epstein, among others. The only official connection was when he agreed to exhibit with the Vorticists at their single English exhibition at the Doré Gallery, London, in July 1915. His work was placed in a separate room as part of the 'invited to show' section. [3]

Origins of Russian Ballet

The first series of watercolours of Dancers came about when Bomberg followed his then-girlfriend Sonia Cohen down to Southbourne to watch her 'cavorting around' in an open-air summer dance school. [7] A bit later, while Bomberg was living in a 'house for artists' in Primrose Hill, [8] he met Alice Mayes, a dancer for Kosslov's Ballet Company (stand-ins for Diaghilev's company) who had been invited to the house to demonstrate 'Russian Dance Steps.' [7] One of these drawings was reproduced on the cover of his friend John Rodker's first edition of poetry, 1914. [9]

Diaghilev's company had first visited London in 1911, returning regularly before war broke out. In 1914, when the drawings are thought to have been done, their London programme included Strauss' La légende de Joseph and Rimsky-Korsakov's Le Coq d'Or , with sets designed by Natalia Goncharova. After the war, the ballet made a triumphant return to London with the premiere of La Boutique Fantasque by Rossini with sets by André Derain. [10] It seems likely that this much-heralded return prompted Bomberg to revisit the earlier drawings and publish them as a book, cashing in on the attendant publicity. If so, the plan failed; Bomberg, his wife Alice Mayes and a friend were ejected from the stalls when Diaghilev discovered them attempting to sell the newly printed book to the assembled patrons;

Russian Ballet" was not a programme, nor even a Souvenir. It was an effort of David's while he was hanging about waiting for the Canadians to decide what they would do about his drawings for the War Memorial, just to keep him happy and relaxed.... In one of his madcap moods, he and a friend (and I) went among the people in the stalls pretending to be selling programmes at 2/6d a time. Of course, Diagileff soon got wind of what was going on and naturally would have none of it, the buyers were reimbursed and the "programmes" collected and together with David and friend and myself, were chased up into the nine-penny gallery where we belonged. David took his hundred unsold copies to Henderson's Bomb Shop in Charing Cross Road, where they were put out for sale and about ten were sold [until] Henderson withdrew them as unsaleable. —Alice Mayes [11]

The book

Methodic Discord Startles ..., a double spread in Russian Ballet, 1919 Bomberg-MethodicDiscord.jpg
Methodic Discord Startles ..., a double spread in Russian Ballet, 1919

Russian Ballet is a small softback book featuring 6 coloured lithographs, each one facing a line from a poem celebrating the experience of watching the Ballet Russe. The prints are almost entirely abstract, and evoke the disorientating mood without recourse to specific detail. The entire poem, also written by Bomberg, reads:

—Methodic discord startles
—Insistent snatchings drag fancy from space
—Fluttering white hands beat—compel. Reason concedes
—Impressions crowding collide with movement round us
——the curtain falls—the created illusion escapes
—The mind clamped fast captures only a fragment, for new illusion [12]

Bomberg, who had trained as a lithographer, [13] printed the images; his wife sewed the binding.

The book was supposedly printed in an edition of 100. [14] After being withdrawn from Henderson's Bomb Shop, Charing Cross Road, the remaining stock was bought by Jacob Mendelson, who had helped finance the project in the first place with a £30 investment. [1] These remainders stayed in storage until the 1960s, when interest in Bomberg began to be rekindled. No sooner had Mendelson started to sell off the copies that had been in storage for 40 years, than most of the remaining books were destroyed in a fire. [1]

Demobilization

Bomberg had spent time in the trenches of the Western Front, first with the Royal Engineers from November 1915, then with the King's Royal Rifle Corps from 1916. The experience destroyed his faith in mechanized progress. [3] He was demobbed in 1918, and given a commission by the Canadian War Memorials Fund, though he was warned to ’steer clear of Cubism and Futurism’. [13]

His first version of ‘Sappers at Work: A Canadian Tunnelling Company’ [15] retained 'much of the freedom of colour and structure he had developed in the pre-war period, but [introduced] recognizable figures that no longer conform to the mechanistic vision of the Mud Bath.' [3] It was rejected out of hand as a 'futurist abortion.' [13] It was while he was going through the protracted negotiations that led to the acceptance of the second version, an almost photorealist work, [16] that he decided to revisit the drawings that became Russian Ballet. This return to Vorticist ideas would be the last time Bomberg dealt in abstraction; despite being one of the first artists in Europe to develop a fully realised abstract style, the new work he developed in the twenties would tend toward expressive, loosely handled landscapes.

Posthumous reception

More-or-less ignored for the rest of his life, Bomberg's reputation has continued to grow since his death in 1957. His work is now held in a number of major museums worldwide, including the Tate, National Galleries of Scotland, National Gallery of Canada, Ashmolean, Cleveland Museum of Art and Philadelphia Museum of Art. Russian Ballet has entered a number of prestigious collections including the V&A, British Library, Tate, UCLA and the National Gallery of Australia.

Notes

  1. 1 2 3 Tate Online
  2. ↑ Russian Ballet, Bomberg, Henderson's, 1919
  3. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Essay on Bomberg by Richard Cork, Oxford Art Online
  4. ↑ "Hi-Jitsu ca. 1913". Tate Online . Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  5. ↑ David Bomberg, Lipke, Evelyn Adams & Mackay, 1967.
  6. ↑ David Bomberg, 'Works by David Bomberg', Chenil Gallery Catalogue, 1914
  7. 1 2 Sonia Cohen quoted on Tate etc
  8. ↑ Probably Stewart Gray's 8 Ormonde Terrace.
  9. ↑ Simon Grant. "David Bomberg: Major painting re-discovered". Tate Online. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  10. ↑ Diaghilev's Ballet Russe
  11. ↑ Alice Mayes, Bomberg's first wife, Quoted in Lipke p. 114, reproduced in Tate Online
  12. ↑ Russian Ballet at the Internet Archive
  13. 1 2 3 Archive for Jewish London
  14. ↑ "?". Archived from the original on 22 February 2013. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  15. ↑ "1914-1918 war - Art of the First world War". Archived from the original on 11 May 2000. Retrieved 11 August 2010.
  16. ↑ "1914-1918 war - Art of the First world War". Archived from the original on 10 January 2001. Retrieved 11 August 2010.

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sergei Diaghilev</span> Russian art critic and impresario

Sergei Pavlovich Diaghilev, also known as Serge Diaghilev, was a Russian art critic, patron, ballet impresario and founder of the Ballets Russes, from which many famous dancers and choreographers would arise.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vaslav Nijinsky</span> Russian ballet dancer and choreographer

Vaslav or Vatslav Nijinsky was a Russian ballet dancer and choreographer of Polish ancestry. He is regarded as the greatest male dancer of the early 20th century. He was celebrated for his virtuosity and for the depth and intensity of his characterizations. He could dance en pointe, a rare skill among male dancers at the time, and was admired for his seemingly gravity-defying leaps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Vorticism</span> British modernist art movement formed in 1914

Vorticism was a London-based modernist art movement formed in 1914 by the writer and artist Wyndham Lewis. The movement was partially inspired by Cubism and was introduced to the public by means of the publication of the Vorticist manifesto in Blast magazine. Familiar forms of representational art were rejected in favour of a geometric style that tended towards a hard-edged abstraction. Lewis proved unable to harness the talents of his disparate group of avant-garde artists; however, for a brief period Vorticism proved to be an exciting intervention and an artistic riposte to Marinetti's Futurism and the post-impressionism of Roger Fry's Omega Workshops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Bomberg</span> British painter

David Garshen Bomberg was a British painter, and one of the Whitechapel Boys.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michel Fokine</span> Russian choreographer (1880–1942)

Michael Fokine was a Russian choreographer and dancer.

<i>Blast</i> (British magazine) Vorticist magazine

Blast was the short-lived literary magazine of the Vorticist movement in Britain. Two editions were published: the first on 2 July 1914 and featured a bright pink cover, referred to by Ezra Pound as the "great MAGENTA cover'd opusculus"; and the second a year later on 15 July 1915. Both editions were written primarily by Wyndham Lewis. The magazine is emblematic of the modern art movement in England, and recognised as a seminal text of pre-war 20th-century modernism. The magazine originally cost 2/6.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">William Roberts (painter)</span> British painter (1895–1980)

William Patrick Roberts was a British artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Léon Bakst</span> Belarusian artist (1866–1924)

Léon Bakst, born Leyb-Khaim Izrailevich Rosenberg was a Russian painter and scene and costume designer of Jewish origin. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes. He designed the décor for such productions as Carnaval (1910), Spectre de la rose (1911), Daphnis and Chloe (1912), The Sleeping Princess (1921) and others.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Natalia Goncharova</span> Russian-French artist (1881–1962)

Natalia Sergeevna Goncharova was a Russian avant-garde artist, painter, costume designer, writer, illustrator, and set designer. Goncharova's lifelong partner was fellow Russian avant-garde artist Mikhail Larionov. She was a founding member of both the Jack of Diamonds (1909–1911), Moscow's first radical independent exhibiting group, the more radical Donkey's Tail (1912–1913), and with Larionov invented Rayonism (1912–1914). She was also a member of the German-based art movement Der Blaue Reiter. Born in Russia, she moved to Paris in 1921 and lived there until her death.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edward Wadsworth</span> English painter

Edward Alexander Wadsworth was a British artist initially associated with the Vorticism movement. In the First World War he was part of a team involved in the transfer of dazzle camouflage designs to ships for the Royal Navy. After the war his maritime landscapes and still-life compositions using tempera were infused with a surrealistic mood - although he never exhibited with the British surrealists. In the early thirties and in the early forties his work was mainly abstract. He made a significant contribution to the development of modern art in Britain in the inter-war years.

Helen Saunders was an English painter associated with the Vorticist movement.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alexandre Benois</span> Russian painter (1870–1960)

Alexandre (Alexander) Nikolayevich Benois was a Russian artist, art critic, historian, preservationist and founding member of Mir iskusstva, an art movement and magazine. As a designer for the Ballets Russes under Sergei Diaghilev, Benois exerted what is considered a seminal influence on the modern ballet and stage design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ballets Russes</span> Itinerant ballet company (1909–1929)

The Ballets Russes was an itinerant ballet company begun in Paris that performed between 1909 and 1929 throughout Europe and on tours to North and South America. The company never performed in Russia, where the Revolution disrupted society. After its initial Paris season, the company had no formal ties there.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jacob Kramer</span> British artist (1892–1962)

Jacob Kramer was a Russian Empire-born painter who spent all of his working life in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Léopold Survage</span> Russian-French painter

Léopold Frédéric Léopoldowitsch Survage was a Russian-French painter of Finnish origin. Trained in Moscow, he identified with the Russian avant-garde before moving to Paris, where he shared a studio with Amedeo Modigliani and experimented with abstract movies. He also gained commissions for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes.

<i>The Mud Bath</i> Painting by David Bomberg

The Mud Bath is a 1914 oil-on-canvas painting by David Bomberg. The work is considered a masterpiece of Bomberg's work in this period. Bomberg was a founder member of the London Group, and the painting is considered a leading example of Vorticism, although Bomberg resisted being described as a Vorticist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lilian Holt</span> British artist

Lilian Thirza Charlotte Holt (1898–1983) was a British artist, also known by her married name, Bomberg. She was a founding member of the Borough Group. Her dedication to her partner and family limited her career and opportunities as an artist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Horace Brodzky</span>

Horace Ascher Brodzky was an Australian-born artist and writer most of whose work was created in London and New York. His work included paintings, drawings and linocuts, of which he was an early pioneer. An associate in his early career of many leading artists working in the Britain of his period, including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska, Mark Gertler, and members of the Vorticism movement, he ended his life relatively neglected.

Henderson's, better known as The Bomb Shop, was a bookshop at 66 Charing Cross Road, London known for publishing and selling both radical left and anarchist writing and modernist literature. The shop was founded in 1909, and was a father and son operation run by Francis Riddell Henderson, formerly the London representative of Walter Scott Publishing. The shop was bought by Eva Collet Reckitt, and became the first of the Collet's chain of left-wing bookshops.

The Chenil Gallery was a British art gallery and sometime-music studio in Chelsea, London between 1905 and 1927, and later the location of various businesses referencing this early use.

References

This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.