Art Nouveau in the context of realism: Ilya Repin at the turn of two centuries

Davydova Ol'ga Sergeevna ORCID: 0000-0002-6834-3291 PhD in Art History  Leading Scientific Associate, Scientific Research Institute of Theory and History of Arts of the Russian Academy of Arts Russia 125445 Moscow Levoberezhnaya Street, 4 building 1, flat 56 davydov-olga@yandex.ru Other publications by this author

... almost all of our identity is determined by the seal that time imposes on our feelings.

Charles Baudelaire. The Artist of Modern Life (1860)

The dramatic basis of Ilya Repin's art is imbued with dynamic emotional sensitivity and psychologically mobile expression, which led the artist beyond the boundaries of tendentiously expressed ideas or conventionally conveyed beauty. In the history of Russian art of the second half of the XIX century, Repin's "line" is associated with the assertion of the legitimacy of the creative principle, in which the content and artistic form are equivalent. It cannot be said that this balance was given to Repin himself without a struggle, especially considering the time in which the artist lived, saturated with various aesthetic ideas: "Art is the most unsubstantiated thing. Everything here is a personal mood, a personal impression" ^{[13, p. 400]}, – Repin remarked in an 1891 letter to the editor Alexei Suvorin, continuing to develop the idea he found back in the 1870s. "But may God save me from the struggle with the parties! I have so much to fight with the cause, that is, with my art ..." ^{[13, p. 99]}, – Repin wrote to Ivan Kramskoy, reflecting on the nature and possibilities of Russian realism of the Wanderers (the charter of the Partnership was approved in 1870), and about modern French trends (first of all, about impressionism), whose plastic virtues Repin tested in the "modernist" for that time painting "Paris Cafe" (1874-1875, MAGMA). Striving for the synthesis of semantic weight, depth of sensory experience and plastic novelty of language, Repin followed an intuitive path, then turning to ideologically inspired creativity in the spirit of revolutionary-democratic subjects of the wanderers ("Arrest of a propagandist", 1880-1889, 1892, GTG; "Before Confession", 1879-1885, GTG; "Did not wait", 1883-1898, 1883-1888, GTG), then being carried away by impressions of a lyrical, landscape or romantic nature, which gave freedom to artistic language. At the same time, the main thing for Repin always remained an interest in a person, in the sensual manifestation of his spiritual life within the framework of a realistic picture of the world. In the most successful works, Repin really finds that form of organic artistic utterance in which the plot and extra-literary imagery achieve a meaningful and aesthetic balance. It is no coincidence, for example, that the critic and artist of another generation, Alexander Benois, recalled his impression of the composition "We did not wait" (1883-1888, GTG) shown at the 12th traveling exhibition of 1884, in which Repin depicted the scene of the prisoner's return to his native home: "... after seeing the picture, <...> I somehow I even forgot about the plot itself – to such an extent I was fascinated by its "capacity", I was so captivated by the gray light pouring through the windows, the combinations of these most ordinary, simplest, everyday colors seemed so beautiful to me" ^[3]. It is noteworthy that, despite Benoit's characterization, Repin's attraction to the synthesis of artistic and substantive foundations, which determines the objectively natural intonation of Repin's realism, could be appreciated in the West earlier than in Russia. For example, the French critic Louis Reo wrote in 1912: "For Repin, more than for other Russian artists, painting existed by itself, and not only as a means of expressing ideas and telling stories" ^{[20, p. 276]}.

There were objective reasons for the development of such interpretative nuances in the evaluation of the artist's work. In his intuitive understanding of the tasks of art, as well as in his age, Repin found himself between two extreme trends of Russian art in relation to each other – between the realism of the Wanderers, who absorbed the ascetic aesthetics of the 1860s, and the aestheticism of the Fin de si?cle Art Nouveau artists. The artistic scale of Ilya Efimovich's own talent allowed him to express in his works the principles of both the first direction and the second approach to understanding the tasks and nature of creativity. In the 1890s. Repin is increasingly inclined to think about the naturalness of the existence of an artistic image in a special illusory creative reality. For example, in 1894 he wrote to his student Marianna Verevkina: "The world is vast and powerful in its forms, infinitely diverse. And the smoke of censers and the groan of the hungry does not confuse the fragrance of roses and the charms of flowers ... <...> I wholeheartedly wish our art liberation from other stronger and more pressing areas of intellectuality. The image is his principle [italics Repin – O.D.]. Don't just think that I'm against ideas. God forbid – this is the highest and most direct manifestation of the Spirit ... <...> But the world of ideas is philosophy, a special specialty. <...> In life, everything is scattered in special pieces. And we profane the art of form, light, beauty when we turn away from it, if it is devoid of morality and philosophy" ^{[14, p. 54]}.

For a generation of traveling artists and critics close to them, such as Repin's friend Vladimir Stasov, the leading creative task was the idea. It was primarily her that the artist's senior colleagues wanted to see in Repin's work, and it was precisely on the basis of Repin's removal from the deliberate exaggeration of the ideological side of art that periods of divergence arose between Repin and the tendentious Stasov, as well as some other members of the Traveling Exhibitions Association. In 1891, speaking out against the infringement of the rights of young artists, Repin left the association, but continued to give works for exhibitions. For the generation of artists of the "World of Art" circle, who formed artistic tastes in the 1890s-1900s in the polemic with the wanderers, the leading vectors were individualism, freedom of poetic imagery and refinement of visual aesthetics. Due to the artistic fullness of Repin's plastic language, miriskusniki were ready to recognize the freedom of creativity in his works as well.

The problem of the relationship between Repin's creativity and innovative processes associated with the revolution in artistic thinking at the turn of the XIX–XX centuries under the influence of Art Nouveau aesthetics has a complex nature. Firstly, it is not so easy to assess the consequences of those revolutionary moments in the process of developing and mastering new artistic principles in art, which are associated with the formula "Repin is a realist". It is important to keep in mind that in the Russian art of the XIX century, the turn to realism meant in many ways the transition of art from conventional academic antiquity to modernity, which was no less radical than at the beginning of the XX century – a turn to symbolism and abstraction. Repin, until the end of his earthly journey, was obsessed with the rushing and stormy element of creative search, craving for inner renewal, continuing to trust the power of moods, which he always appreciated. The hidden expression, the sweep of writing, the accurate accuracy of drawing, the ability to see with large coloristic plans, symphonically organizing and orchestrating the rhythmic texture of color – these are the plastic qualities that Repin diligently perfected from work to work.  Remaining within the boundaries of realistic creativity in terms of language, Repin shrewdly reflected on the symbolism that had taken possession of the minds of Russian artists since the 1890s (from Ilya Efimovich's letters it is obvious that already in 1893 the artist read Henrik Ibsen, attended creative meetings of Dmitry Merezhkovsky). Perhaps it was the flexibility of Repin's artistic thinking, while maintaining his own individual position, that attracted young people to him.

By the 1900s. Ilya Repin was already a well-deserved master who survived not only a wave of claims for innovative moves in individual creativity, but also managed to test himself as a teacher and academician. Privately, Repin began teaching in the mid-1870s, when he discovered extraordinary abilities in his first and favorite student, Valentin Serov, whom Repin called "Anton". In 1895-1898 . Repin directed the St. Petersburg Drawing School of Princess M. K. Tenisheva. In 1892, the artist, along with other wanderers, was invited to the reformed Imperial Academy of Arts, receiving at the same time the title of professor "for fame in the artistic field" ^{[15, p. 542]}. Repin worked as the head of the painting workshop at the Academy of Fine Arts until 1907. And his workshop, despite the peculiar teaching system devoid of a clear methodology (which was quite understandable, since Ilya Yefimovich categorically did not recognize scholasticism either in his work or in the work of others), attracted a consistently large stream of novice artists, so sometimes I had to refuse admission due to lack of places. Repin's circle of students included many outstanding masters of Russian art of the turn of the century, whose names are already directly related to the latest modernist trends of the early XX century. Russian Russian expressionists Marianna Verevkina and Alexander Yavlensky, impressionist Igor Grabar, the "classic" of Russian Art Nouveau Valentin Serov, and many other masters of Russian art with different personalities – Anna Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Osip Braz, Boris Kustodiev, Philip Malyavin, Nikolai Feshin, Isaac Brodsky. Repin's pupil was also the artist's son Yuri Repin, a talented, deeply original master, tragically and unfairly forgotten due to the ideological post-revolutionary situation and being returned to the context of the history of Russian art in our days ^[5]. At one time, Konstantin Somov also visited Repin's workshop, but Ilya Yefimovich did not accept his poetics, remaining invariably critical in his assessments of the young artist's drawing skills. It is significant that Repin did not share the passion for old Dutch art of Konstantin Andreevich's father, the curator of the Hermitage Gallery of Paintings Andrei Ivanovich Somov. Such an attitude is psychologically quite understandable. Ilya Efimovich thought in large formats and big plans, he was delighted with the art of Masaccio, Veronese and Titian, preferring an open emotional dynamic in everything. Perhaps that is why, apart from Serov, Sergei Diaghilev, who attracted Repin as a budding art critic of a new type, aroused admiration and confidence in the creative energy of the personality of Repin, above all, attracted Repin as a budding art critic of a new type: "Today I am waiting for Diaghilev to talk about his magazine affairs. What kind of exhibition is he, Diaghilev, doing again – an international one here in St. Petersburg – it will be very interesting. Yes, he moves, he is at the height of the needs of time – really, well done!"– wrote Repin on September 13, 1898 ^{[14, p. 142]}.

At the first stage of the development of new aesthetic searches, Repin supported the plans of the artists of the Mir Iskusstvo group, which incurred the indignation of Vladimir Stasov, who considered the innovatively minded youth to be a "poor spirit of the leper farmstead" (For more information, see: ^{[16, 17, 18]}). However, the cloudless union was soon overshadowed. Repin's tact towards the previous generation of peredvizhniki led to the inevitable "party" tension in the dialogue of the recognized master of realism with aesthete artists. Repin's break with the editorial board of the magazine "World of Art", which he agreed to join, followed quickly enough. Already in the tenth issue for 1899, Repin's letter "To the address of the "World of Art"" ^[11], originally published in the magazine "Niva" (1899, No. 15), was reprinted. Russian Russian National Art School, such masters as Vasily Vereshchagin, Vladimir Makovsky and other peredvizhnik artists, whose individual works were proposed to be removed from the Alexander III Museum (now the Russian Museum), served as the immediate reason for the breakup from Repin's point of view.  In addition, Repin was outraged by the editorial staff's attitude to the Polish artist Jan Matejko, whose coloristic and emotional gift Ilya Yefimovich especially appreciated. Sergei Diaghilev was not slow to respond to Repin's agitated letter, making a visual comparison of the artist's expressions exalted in a fit of indignation with his own statements, more correct in tone, as the editor-in-chief of the magazine ^[6]. The attempt to show the inconsistency of Repin's aesthetic views only intensified the conflict that flared up.  Biased claims, offensive exaggerations and caricature parodies were expressed a lot on both sides. A certain role in mutual unfair reproaches was played by both creative passion and personal motives, which cannot be overlooked, for example, in the publication of Repin's "anti-decadent" article under the colorful title "In Hell at the Python" ("Stock Exchange Vedomosti", 1910, May 15, No. 11715). The main creative motive of Repin's accusations was the unprofessionalism of the teaching manner of the teachers of the Elizaveta Zvantseva Art School, whose head was Lev Bakst. Repin's article caused a great controversy in the press, in which Alexander Benois, Sergei Diaghilev, Sergei Makovsky, Alexander Rostislavov and others participated. At an earlier stage, the conflict between Bakst and Repin was caused by the sharply expressed condemnation with which Repin reacted to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's painting "Dream" (the article "Critics of Art" was published in the "Stock Exchange Vedomosti", 1910, March 2).  At the same time, it cannot be said that Repin did not understand the expressive advantages of the artists' deliberate appeal to the simplification and primitivization of the drawing. For example, after looking closely at the works of Arnold Beklin, Ilya Yefimovich enthusiastically recognized the legitimacy of the artistic language of the master symbolist, who adjusted the technique to the mood of the image. 

Bakst defended Petrov-Vodkin with an "Open Letter" against Repin, stating that "the "drawing" Vodkin is stricter, more skillful and, most importantly, more artistic" ^{[1; 2, pp. 71-72]} of Repin's drawing.   And yet the stressful clashes between the young innovators and Repin were not of a globally negative nature. It is no coincidence that in the caricature poems published by the St. Petersburg Newspaper in the same 1910 (April 25), the truce of the two camps was noted: "As luck would have it, the ruin of the earth / Repin and Bakst reconciled, / And in Vodkin's picture / They have gone far from the earth" (cit. according to: ^{[2, p. 155]}). A decade earlier, there was no final break between Repin and other artists of the Mir Iskusstvo magazine, although Repin continued to resent the overseas wisdom of St. Petersburg aesthetes. In one of the protest speeches about the distortion by the staff of the "World of Art" of his speech at the celebrations in honor of Karl Bryullov at the Academy of Arts Ilya Efimovich wrote: "The author of the "Bryullov Celebration" <...> is indignant at the too strong position of the "Antonov Apples" in Russia, which is no less depressing for real art than the "already faded orange groves" of Bryullov's time. He apparently has an irresistible desire to breed southwestern figs (in his pocket) on the island of Golodae and Ostend oysters in Teriok" ^[12]. It is interesting to recall that Konstantin Korovin's memoirs preserved a comical episode about how Mikhail Vrubel, who was visiting the Mammoth estate "Abramtsevo" and imagining himself in Normandy, swallowed snails collected in a lake near Moscow instead of oysters, and Repin reacted with great sympathy to this game.  The magazine "World of Art" followed, of course, not only the mistakes, but also the creative successes of Ilya Efimovich, in particular, his work on the canvas "The Same meeting of the State Council". Repin also took part in some landmark exhibitions organized by Sergei Diaghilev, in particular, in the first International exhibition of paintings of the magazine "World of Art" in 1899, in the "Historical and Artistic Exhibition of Portraits" in 1905 and in the exposition "Two Centuries of Russian painting and Sculpture" at the Paris Autumn Salon in 1906. 

Despite the great public outcry of his work, Repin, in fact, always remained independent and independent in his judgments, not afraid to change his point of view on a previously unrecognized phenomenon if, after an independent acquaintance with it, he understood its artistic meaning. Moreover, the leading beginning in this process of comprehending the true merits of the phenomenon was the criterion of poetry, which is close to Russian symbolist artists. The scale of Repin, an artist – "an artist whom we especially revered" ^{[4, p. 169]}, as Alexander Benois admitted – did not let go of the masters of the "World of Art". For Alexander Benois, one of the leading "creative minds" ^{[10, p. 396]} of the "World of Art", it was especially upsetting to see Repin as an enemy, since since the early 1880s Alexander Nikolaevich was strongly influenced by the lively energy of Repin's works, in which he saw courage, simplicity, "authenticity", freshness of painting techniques: "thanks to Repin's paintings," Benoit wrote, "I have awakened an interest in general in more serious contemporary art, both Russian and foreign" ^{[4, p. 253]}. In 1885, Alexander Benois personally met the artist in the apartment of his brother-watercolorist Albert Benois, while Repin was painting a portrait of his wife. Recalling this episode, Alexander Benois formulated an important feature that first of all determined Repin's influence on a generation of young artists: "... I benefited myself from what I managed to see during those five or six times when, stealthily, not daring to move, in silent ecstasy, I watched the master peering inquisitively in the model, how he then confidently interferes with the paints on the palette and how he puts them on the canvas “without a misfire”. After all, nothing is so similar to magic as just such an appearance of a living image from under the brush of a great artist. <...> The benefit was that I generally saw how it was done, how real art was created, and not that ersatz of it, which almost everyone around me was content with" ^{[4, p. 254]}. It is worth noting that later, in the mid-1890s, Repin visited the apartment of Alexander Benois, where he also met with other miriskusniki. The artists participated in general masquerade balls, went to each other in disguise, received nicknames of the same strength of the artistic enthusiasm. So, for example, Mikhail Kuzmin gave a sharp caricatured characteristic not only to Ilya Repin – "a sewer man trotting on a horse with his back to the horse", but also to "chimney sweep" Korney Chukovsky, "sworn poet" Alexander Blok, "clerk from the cloth department (for respectable buyers)" Konstantin Somov ^{[7, p. 148]}. Repin first of all inspired a sense of the reality of the creative process, awakened the ability to speak in the first person (this principle of developing "in oneself" was developed by the artist in his younger years).  In fact, he was one of the first Russian masters who openly declared the right to individualism by his own work, which was appreciated in the artist and his younger contemporary Mikhail Vrubel, whose plastic language was developing in a more radical direction.

Ilya Repin's unique role in the history of Russian art, associated with the awakening of individualism, was also understood by anarchically minded representatives of the avant-garde movements of the early XX century, "who prepared the tunnels to the Serov pedestal after the capture of Repin" (words from a letter by K. S. Malevich to M. V. Matyushin and I. S. Shkolnik. [Between February 12 and March 7, 1913], see: ^{[9, p. 49]}).  It is no coincidence that even the genius of suprematism Kazimir Malevich, during the violent outburst of futuristic anger at traditional art, ranked Repin as a "mediocre fire chief", "the head of firefighters", "extinguishing everything new" (cit. according to: ^[19]), internally retained a latent interest in the subject world and Repin's professional skills at the beginning and end of his creative career. Other brutalist avant-gardists also paid tribute to the master of realism, and not only by mentioning him in the enemy camp of unnecessary classics. So, for example, in February 1915, D. D. Burlyuk and V. V. Kamensky visited Repin's estate "Penaty", who read poems in honor of the artist at lunch, for which Malevich punished his colleagues by excommunication from participating in the "First futuristic exhibition "Tram B"" (opened on March 3, 1915): "...let the guys be more serious about the case, and not chasing two hares. Either one thing, or Repin or futurism" ^{[9, p. 66]}.

The generation of symbolists and avant-gardists argued with Repin at the same time, but despite all the protests, they were guided by him and even secretly (or openly) loved him. It is no coincidence, for example, that Eugene Lancere, making sometimes childish grumbling remarks on the pages of his "Diary", still wrote: "I bought postcards in Kozlov – Repin: "What a space", only with snow. This is one of my weaknesses" ^{[8, p. 607]}. In the "Diary" of Eugene Lancer there is another very revealing entry. In an effort to define art in terms of the creative temperaments of artists, Lancere divided them into two types – "subjectivists" and "objectivists". He referred to the latter not only Ingres, Bryullov and David, but also Repin, Malyavin, Levitan, Serov, noting that "on this path success is only for mighty talents", "striking with the revelation of truth, opening a window into nature" ^{[8, p. 424]}. Considering the dialectic of the development of the history of art as the history of artistic images, such statements essentially outweigh all the polemical subjectivism of "party" disputes. Such an idealistic approach to understanding creative relationships was inherent in Ilya Yefimovich Repin himself, who believed that "an artist can only influence an artist with art" ^{[14, p. 49]}.