The quintessential guide to Russias vibrant and influential Silver Age, now in paperback
In this elegantly written narrative survey, John E. Bowlt sheds new light on Russias Silver Age, the period of artistic renaissance that flourished as Imperial Russias 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.
Bowlts richly textured volume focuses not only on Russias 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 Kalmakovs innovative painting, and the free dance practiced by followers of Duncan and Dalcroze.
Praise for Moscow & St. Petersburg:
This book will serve as a reference resource . . . . This ambitious English-language publication aims to cover not only every art group of the time but every aspect of the Russian culture. The pictorial layout of John Bowlts book renders the sheer proliferation of new ideas immediately apparent. The highly charged text charts the medley of productions, groups, and individuals, all loosely associated with the symbolist movement, that make up the vast canvas. As the leading specialist in the Russian 20th-century avant-garde, Professor Bowlt is well qualified to place the silver age in context. The Art Newspaper
