Léon Bakst (1866-1924), born Lev Rosenberg, was a
Russian painter and designer for the theatre who is associated with the Golden
Age of Illustration.
The Léon Bakst Collection at Spirit of the Ages
includes art images from some of Bakst's seminal work. As a valuable reference resource, options are also provided
for purchasing a range of gifts, including reproduction prints, posters and greeting cards.
His formal training was undertaken
at the St Petersburg Academy of Arts, during which time he also worked part-time
as a book illustrator.
At the time of his first exhibition in 1889, he took
the pseudonym Léon Bakst - a name derived from a combination of his first name,
Lev, and his grandmother's maiden name, Baxter.
A survey of Bakst's career was provided by Gerald
Siordet in The International Studio (1913) - a portion of his comments
follow:
Above, we show a vintage
photograph of Léon Bakst
Art, as he says, is a plaything, and an artist's work
will be good only when it has been great
fun doing it. Here is the real secret of his appeal. Grant him
whatever fine and far-fetched
qualities you will - and there is plenty enough to his credit - these designs of his
charm
because, behind all the intervening processes of knowledge and calculation, they reveal the
enjoyment of
the child, exultant in the possession of paint-box and brushes, greatly daring to
draw monsters, or princesses, or cities of an enchanted world.
That they should thus keep the freshness and sparkle of
spontaneity is the more remarkable
when one considers the amount of solid learning that has gone to
the designing of such a
series of costumes as enrich the ballets of Schéhérazade, Le Dieu Bleu, Hélène de
Sparte, or
Signor d'Annunzio's mediævalist experiments, S Sebastien and Pisanelle. Bakst is a real
student,
a genuine scholar in costume. His designs are no mere archæological resuscitations of the
wardrobes of the past; neither are they the summary, impressionistic stock-in-trade of the
quick-change artist. He is, indeed, a kind of bright, particular chameleon. He will settle into
the strange, distorted
glamour of the East, or the simple graces of archaic Greece, or the
fierce, gay medley of the Middle Ages,
and presently will bring you forth not dresses merely
but personages who move with ease and
certainty each in his own time, and yet retain the
stamp of their creator.
This particular receptivity of mind, which at the same
time recreates and rearranges, is of all
qualities that most fitted to adapt itself to the art of the
theatre, in which scenery and costume
are most telling only when they make no attempt to conceal, rather
welcome, the presence
of conscious recognised artifice - in fact, when the art that makes them is
considered as itself
a plaything. It is hardly possible to find a single design by Bakst which is not from this
point
of view "amusing".
We invite you to take the time to peruse the wonderful
artwork from Léon Bakst that is included in the Collection - to view images from any one of
Bakst's
suites or paintings listed below, simply 'click' on the hyperlinks embedded
within the titles and the images.
.jpg)
.jpg)
