The decorative art of Léon Bakst . appreciation by Arsène Alexandre, notes on the ballets of Jean Cocteau.
Arsène Alexandre (1859 - 1937)
Category
Books
Date
1913
Materials
Place of origin
England
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Sissinghurst Castle Garden, Kent
NT 3134807
Caption
In 1910 the young Russian dancer Vaslav Nijinsky, soon to become the most celebrated dancer in the Western world, became enchanted by ancient Greek vases and Egyptian friezes. He was inspired to choreograph a ‘moving bas-relief, all in profile, a ballet with no dancing but only movement and plastic attitude’. Together with Sergei Diaghilev, impresario of the itinerant ballet company the Ballets Russes, and Léon Bakst, its most celebrated designer, Nijinsky arranged his choreography to Claude Debussy’s avant-garde musical composition ‘Prélude à l’après-midi d’un faune’ (1894), itself inspired by the symbolist poem ‘L’après-midi d’un faune’ (1876) by Stéphane Mallarmé. The resulting ballet, where dancers moved only in profile, was a turning point in dance history, a reimagining of ballet as a continuously moving painting. Léon Bakst’s ravishing costume designs for 'Faune', of which this plate is an example, are a triumph, reflecting both his technical drawing skill and theatrical vision. For the lead role, danced by Nijinsky, Bakst designed a tight-fitting cream body-stocking with brown piebald spots, giving the impression of the skin of a faun. This was accompanied by a belt of vine leaves, a short tail, two golden horns and pointed ears. Bakst’s design occupies the entirety of the page, and as Nijinsky envisioned, shows the dancer only in profile. There is a tension between the human and the non-human in the stance of the legs, in the rendering of the hands and in the ill-defined profile. As Nikinsky’s sister Romola observed of the finished costume, it was ‘the very image of an adolescent Faun, a young being half animal, half human. In the costume, as in Nijinsky’s expression, one could not define where the human ended and the animal began.’ Ultimately, the 1912 premiere of Nijinsky’s ‘L’Aprés-midi d’un faune’ stunned audiences and critics with its audacious artistic decisions and notable abandonment of conventional ballet. It's easy to see how this book appealed to the artistically attuned Vita Sackville West and Harold Nicolson, who acquired it for their library at Sissinghurst Castle.
Summary
Bibliographic description
[10], 51, [5] p., [78] leaves of plates : ill., (front. (port.) ; 41 cm. Small pressed flower at p.21. Binding: Half vellum with inlaid gold decoration, marbled paper over boards, green spine title label gold lettered.
Makers and roles
Arsène Alexandre (1859 - 1937)