Russian Roots of the Fin de siècle Avant-Garde in France: A View of Modernity

Abstract

What is often considered modernity had a quiet entry into existence in St. Petersburg and not Paris. The largest collection of Modern French art is in Russia, and that placement puts Russia at the center of global discourse about art, culture, and what it means to be modern. The loss of knowledge of connectedness resulted in the fracturing of an understanding of modernity. The question begins in Russia, not in literature but in music and, more importantly, in ballet. The artistic straitjacket of late Imperial Russia made property of various artists that had taken Western aesthetics and bent them to Russian cultural perspectives, thus creating the hot house that allowed late Imperial Russia to cultivate and mature the seeds of Early Modern France into something not seen before or new - something modern. The invasion of Paris by the Russian artists began with the Ballet Russes. Russian money then pivoted the aesthetic nucleus of artistic intellect and sensibility to conquer Parisian artistic attention through its presentation of the Western art form now cloaked in a haze of orientalism with its elaborate Russian strangeness to the Western aesthetic perspective. While Russian merchants invested in Russian avant-garde, it was their patronage of certain French avant-garde artists that both influenced which artist was valued in the West as well as what was represented. It mattered who paid an artist for a work of art. The insurrection of modernity through painting happened within the Shchukin collection. This thesis explores the complex question of the intersection of culture and how the Russian Revolution interrupted the interchange of culture between Russia and differing modernities.