|
Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900-1920: Art, Life, & Culture of the Russian Silver Age
|
| List Price: | $50.00 |
| Price: | $31.50 & eligible for FREE Super Saver Shipping on orders over $25. Details |
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Ships from and sold by Amazon.com
32 new or used available from $26.30
Average customer review:
Product Description
Lavishly illustrated, Moscow & St. Petersburg 1900–1920 is the quintessential guide to Russia’s vibrant and influential Silver Age.
In this elegantly written narrative survey, John E. Bowlt sheds new light on Russia’s Silver Age, the period of artistic renaissance that flourished as Imperial Russia’s power waned. Much of the creative energy could be attributed to the Symbolist movement, whose proponents sought to transcend the barriers of bourgeois civility and whose unconventional lifestyles led some critics to label them Decadents and Degenerates. But, as Sergei Diaghilev declared, theirs was not a moral or artistic decline, but a voyage of inner discovery and a reinvention of a national culture.
Bowlt’s richly textured volume focuses not only on Russia’s best known artists from this period—Diaghilev and the Ballets Russes, Igor Stravinsky, Anna Pavlova and poet Anna Akhmatova—but also on lesser known movements of the period—experimental theater, Nikolai Kalmakov’s innovative painting, and the free dance practiced by followers of Duncan and Dalcroze.
Product Details
- Amazon Sales Rank: #123938 in Books
- Published on: 2008-10-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Binding: Hardcover
- 400 pages
Editorial Reviews
About the Author
John E. Bowlt is a specialist in Russian art history of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and has authored books on Symbolism, the avant-garde, and Socialist Realism. He has curated or co-curated numerous exhibitions and is currently a professor of Slavic Languages and Literature at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
Customer Reviews
A lush, invaluable reference guide to the Silver Age
This lushly illustrated volume captures the artistic explosion that was Russia's Silver Age. From Blok
and Akhmatova, to Stravinsky, Bakst, Repin, Pasternak, Vrubel and Meyerhold, the first two decades of the 20th century were a time of exciting and colorful artistic experimentation in Russia. As Bowlt (a member of this magazine's Advisory Board) writes in the introduction: "there was something unique and unrepeatable about the Russian Silver Age. It acknowledged the new art and science of the West, but tailored them to local exigencies so as to produce an effervescent cocktail..."
With thematic chapters exploring everything from ballet to Symbolism (and of course the glowering backdrop of revolution and imperial decline) and a thoroughly enthralling collection of photography and artwork (650 illustrations in all), Bowlt has assembled an uncommonly beautiful and useful reference on an era which too often is overshadowed by the hurricane of repression that inundated it.
We will never see anything again like the Silver Age, not in Russia, nor anywhere else. But, thanks to this new work, we can walk through it again, albeit at our almost incomprehensible historical remove. (Reviewed in Russian Life)
The artistic personalities and achievements represented by two outstanding decades of an artistic renaissance in Tsarist Russia
Before the domination of Communist state-sponsored and approved art with the political ascension of the Bolsheviks, Moscow and St. Petersburg, the premier cities of Russia, were home to vibrant, creative, and extraordinary communities of artists, architects, writers, dancers, and musicians. "Moscow & St. Petersburg: 1900-1920 -- Art, Life & Culture Of The Russian Silver Age" by academician and specialist in Russian art history John Bowlt (Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Southern California, Los Angeles) is a superbly written work of meticulous scholarship providing an informed and informative history of the artistic personalities and achievements represented by two outstanding decades of an artistic renaissance in a Tsarist Russia that were the last free form art movement that country was to see until the collapse of the Soviet Union. Enhanced with the inclusion of 650 illustrations (400 of which are in color), "Moscow & St. Petersburg: 1900-1920" also features a section of extensive notes, a glossary of terms and abbreviations, a bibliography for further reading, and a comprehensive index. A truly seminal work, "Moscow & St. Petersburg: 1900-1920" is especially recommended for academic library European Art History and Russian Cultural Studies reference collections in general, and the personal reading lists for students and non-specialist general readers with an interest in pre-Soviet Russian contributions to the arts in particular.
a stunning book
as I looked through it, I was amazed that it didn't contain the same tired photographs and reproductions of the period. Where the author found them is not anywhere as important as that he did and I must laud him for including them in his book. A thoroughly first rate book on a subject that something is known about but not as much as many of us would like. Definitely worth the 5 stars!
