(music} Samantha: We're here in
the Paper Study Center with Léon Bakst's "Costume design
for the ballet The Firebird". Born Lev Rosenberg in
Belarus. the Russian artist Léon Bakst is best known
for his stage designs for the Ballets Russes,
the pioneering company founded by impresario
Sergei Diaghilev in 1909. In the 1910s and 20s, the Ballet Russes was instrumental in
fostering collaborations. The company was responsible for the 1913 Succès de scandale, The
Rite of Spring, whose dissident music by Igor
Stravinsky and equally modern choreography by Vaslav Nijinsky
shocked Parisian audiences. This costume designed by
Léon Bakst was for the ballet The Firebird, which
premiered in Paris in 1910. Léon Bakst was apparently so enchanted by this magical character
drawn from Russian folktales, that he made several
designs for her costumes, including this one dating from 1913. The very finished, elaborate
look of this drawing suggests that rather than a real working study for a costume, this
was more a finished work in which Bakst immortalized
the look of the character that meant so much to him. Bakst is generally
associated with symbolism, with its sinuous lines
and opulent exoticism, the very stylized posed of the figure and the silver touches of metallic paint. In a yellow and orange
arabesques that emanate from the firebird's skirt,
these forms are repeated in her headdress and
in the peacock feathers that adorn the costume. At the same time, there's
a freeze-like flatness to the picture, as if this
figure were compressed in the two dimensions
of the picture plane. This effect is heightened
by the flat, decorative pattern of the firebird's
skirt and this pattern comes from Russian folk
art, which makes sense considering the ballet source
material and Bakst's heritage. But we might also think of
this flat, geometric quality as being influenced by
avant-guarde aesthetics in Paris at the time, particularly cubism. Bakst had been visiting Paris
since the early 20th century and settled there permanently in 1912 when he was exiled from St. Petersburg. Critics of the day noted
Baskt's use of color and they referred to his palette as "violent, shrieking orgies of color." This drawing then, speaks
to the close relationship between mere decoration
and real radicality that existed at this transitional
moment for modernism. (music)