Ancient Russia in the domestic decorative art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries

This article is devoted to the decorative art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, characterised by an appeal to the culture of past eras, in particular, Ancient Russia. During this period, many domestic artists of the first row acted as stage decorators. The author of the article, having studied samples of decorative art by a number of Russian artists, investigated the question of the reason for choosing Old Russian art as a source of inspiration for them, and also pointed out the general features and specifics of their artistic approaches to the stage design of theatrical works. The approaches of V.M. Vasnetsov to creating sets and costumes for the play The Snow Maiden to the music of N.I. Rimsky-Korsakov were studied, as well as the artist’s experience of turning to ethnographic material, which made it possible to embody the authentic national ornament and traditional clothing of the Eastern Slavs on the stage. The scenographic work of M.A. Vrubel was studied, which was no longer a stylisation of the authentic forms of ancient Russian culture, methods and expressive means of folk art, but their rethinking and free interpretation. Vrubel’s stage ideals were embodied in Rimsky-Korsakov’s plays The Tsar’s Bride and The Tale of Tsar Saltan. When creating the composition, Vrubel focused the attention of the viewer on the kinship of Russian culture with nature, that is, with that world of reality from which fantastic folk performances poured. The author also analysed the sets and costumes created by N.K. Roerich for the productions of The Snow Maiden and I.F. Stravinsky’s ballet The Rite of Spring in various theatres in the world. It is emphasised that Roerich’s decorative art was imbued with the ideas of the unity of nature and man, a sense of infinity and greatness of nature, shown with a deep philosophical meaning. At the other extreme of the decoration interpretation of the Old Russian theme in the late 1900s and 1910s, there was the design of the opera The Golden Cockerel by Rimsky-Korsakov, solved by I.Ya. Bilibin as a painted graphic stylisation for a Russian folk picture, and the set design of N. S. Goncharova, presented as a free, temperamental pictorial fantasy in the spirit of popular print. As a result of the study, the author came to the conclusion that Russian decorative art of the late 19th - early 20th centuries, which showed the audience the era of Ancient Russia on the stage, not only is of cultural and historical value for us, but also has practical significance for modern scenographers, and thus requires a serious further study.