Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2002 - 20

were dazzlingly laid before an audience who
viewed its mirror image onstage. Preparations
and rehearsals for Masquerade began in
1912. Over the course of the next five years,
Golovin generated four thousand sketches of
costumes, props, sets and makeup. The production, which cost three hundred thousand
gold rubles to stage, opened at the
Aleksandrinsky Theatre on 25 February 1917. A
few days later when Nikolai II abdicated the
Russian throne, the age that Meyerhold
depicted onstage at the Aleksandrinsky
Theatre ended.
The World of Art group made innumerable contributions to Russian and world culture. The artists supported by the group
experimented freely, bringing new Western
ideas and methods to Russian audiences as
well as nurturing Slavic traditions. The constant search for and openness to new artistic
means was a hallmark of the times and would
become a way of life for many artists by 1917.
As soon as an aesthetic approach could be described and imitated, the impulse to find new
forms arose. New groups were constantly being
formed and discarded by artists searching for untested means of expression. Silver Age artists, mir
isskusstniki among them, led the way to these
experiments, beginning with their attempts to
embody new forms through symbolism.

Act III:

Symbolism and Other
Experiments in Form
Russian symbolism as a literary movement can be
traced from approximately 1890 to 1910, but its
influence in the visual arts continued to be keenly
felt by artists after this time, as evidenced by
their frequently extreme reactions against it.
Designers like Nikolai Kalmakov reflect the
tumultuous decades before and after the revolution when aesthetic discussions moved from
symbolist subjectivism expressed in syncretic,
evocative images, to futurist dynamism with its
rejection of traditional art, and finally to
constructivist explorations of geometrical forms.
Nikolai Kalmakov's (1873-1955) costume sketches (figs. 11 and 12) for Leonid
Andreev's play, Anathema (1909), illustrate
mystical and grotesque characteristics typical
of many works of the period. His finely drawn
renderings for this production clearly convey
the metaphysical atmosphere of Andreev's allegorical drama of existence.
The publication of Filippo Tommaso
Marinetti's (1876-1944) Manifesto of Futur-

ist Painters in 1909 had a profound effect on
artists worldwide. Marinetti posited a utopian
vision of humanity invigorated by technological advancements. Russian artists were quick
to embrace futurist aesthetics and linked it to
their expectation of societal changes. An important figure in the development and sponsorship of Russian futurist events was Levkii
Zheverzheev (1881-1942), a wealthy St. Petersburg businessman and collector.
In 1909, Zheverzheev financed the organization of a group of artists called the Soyuz
molodezhi or Union of Youth. The membership
of the group encompassed such luminaries
as Vsevelod Meyerhold, the poet Vladimir
Mayakovsky (1894-1930) and the artists Pavel
Filonov (1883-1941) and Kazimir Malevich
(1878-1935).
Zheverzheev
financed
Mayakovsky's debut in St. Petersburg (November 1912) at the Troitsky Theatre of Miniatures
as well as Marinetti's visit to the city in 1914.
But he made theatre history through his sponsorship of the 1913 futurist productions of a
play, Vladimir Mayakovsky: A Tragedy, and an
opera, Victory Over the Sun. The former production was a monodrama performed by the
poet with costumes by Filonov and sets (lost
during the great flood of 1924) designed by
Iosif Shkolnik. Designs for Victory Over the Sun,
written by Aleksei Krychenikh (1886-1969) with
music by Mikhail Matiushin (1861-1934), were
executed by Malevich, and nineteen of them
were subsequently purchased by Zheverzheev.
In 1917, his collection was nationalized and
he was named the first curator of the State Museum for Theatre and Music, the collection
from which the exhibit, "Spectacular St. Petersburg," was drawn.
The aggressive angularity of Malevich's
costume designs (fig. 2) and set designs from
the production stand in rather sharp opposition to the lyrical representations seen in the designs by artists of the previous generation. In
performance, Malevich used colored lights on the
brightly colored cardboard costumes to emphasize their geometric lines. Matiushin commented
on the costumes made for the Strongmen: "He
gave them shoulders on the level of their
mouth and made heads in the shape of a cardboard helmet-it created the impression of
two gigantic human figures." (Volkov 1995,
277)
Malevich and other former futurists experimented with cubism and neoprimitivism
as they sought inspiration in a variety of
manipulations of form. Suprematism and
rayonism were two of the best-known Russian

movements to result from their searches. The
experiments led inevitably to a movement
called constructivism. In 1920, designer and
architect Vladimir Tatlin (1885-1953) described the new movement as an opportunity
to unify "...purely artistic forms with utilitarian intentions..." (Bowlt 1988, 207). The effect of this aesthetic on theatre design can be
seen in an increased emphasis on linear abstraction. Designers were freed from objective,
representational referents as well as the symbolic, mystical associations applied by previous generations of artists. The results spanned
the gamut from geometrical whimsy to mechanical abstractions that appeared utilitarian
only from the perspective that it served the
needs of a given production concept.
Vladimir Schuko (1878-1939) graduated from the Academy of Art in 1904 and
joined the staff of designers at the Bolshoi
Drama Theatre in Petrograd after its creation
in 1918. He designed many of the classics, including Shakespeare, frequently using perspective scenery in the Renaissance style. But
in the twenties Schuko adapted his style to accommodate constructivist aesthetics. His designs for Antony and Cleopatra (fig. 13)
(1923) suggest a move in this direction, but
also illustrate his ties to the past generation.
Although the costumes reflect a sharp angularity, he is not quite ready to reduce the human
figure to an intersection of planes as seen in
designs by Moscow-based constructivists such
as Aleksandra Exter (1884-1949), Aleksandr
Vesnin (1882-1950) and Liubov Popova
(1889-1924).
Three Leningrad constructivists, Elizaveta
Iakunina (1892-1964), Moishe Levin (1896-
1946) and Tatiana Bruni (b. 1902), studied with
the grand master of theatricalism, Vsevelod
Meyerhold. Iakunina and Levin graduated from
Meyerhold's Courses of Stage Design and Technology in Moscow while Bruni graduated from
a similar course taught in Petrograd.
Iakunina's costume renderings for Richard
Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier (1928) illustrate her
attempt to meld abstract constructions onto a
human form (figs. 14 and 15). Her design for
Sophie provides a good example as we see an
elegantly drawn female figure with a skirt in
the shape of an inverted diamond while ribboned sleeves obscure her hands.
Although Levin's designs for Mikhail
Saltykov-Shchedrin's Death of Pazukhin
(Leningrad State Drama Theatre, 1924)
predate Iakunina's, they are an elaboration on
the theme of geometric abstraction as a means
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Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Spring 2002