Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013 - 74

book

review

Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design 1880-1930
By John E. Bowlt, Nina and Nikita D. Lobanov-Rostovsky, and
Olga Shaumyan; Woodbridge [UK], Antique Collectors Club,
2012; 424 pp. Cloth, $95.
Reviewed by Joseph Brandesky
This impressive volume illustrates the development of Russian theatre design from
pre-revolutionary times until the forced
implementation of Socialist Realism by the
Soviets in 1930. It is also the culmination
of almost fifty years of collecting by Prince
Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky, born in 1935 in
Bulgaria, the son of a Russian family who
fled after the 1917 October Revolution.
Educated as a geologist and economist at
Oxford and Columbia University and New
York University, Lobanov worked as a
banker and began collecting costume and
theatre designs by Russian-born designers,
especially those associated with Diaghilev, in 1960. By 1976,
the Lobanov-Rostovsky collection had grown to over 1,000
items by 176 artists, many of them well-known masters of modernist art and design: Bakst, Exter, Goncharova, Malevich, etc.
In 2008, 810 items from the collection were acquired by the
International Konstantinovsky Charitable Fund in St. Petersburg
and went on exhibition there at the St. Petersburg State Museum of Theatre and Music. This gave an impetus to catalog
the collection and present full documentation. Masterpieces of
Russian Stage Design 1880-1930 represents the first step in
accomplishing that admirable goal. A second volume, An Encyclopedia of Russian Stage Design, scheduled for publication in October 2013, contains the catalogue raisonné of the
Lobanov-Rostovsky collection.

Short history
Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design 1880-1930 is the
best short course on the history of Russian theatre design to
date. Introductory information includes necessary sections on
transliteration issues, iconographic references, abbreviations,
and terms and acronyms that are useful for readers unaccustomed to Russian art history and culture. A very interesting
section in the introduction is an illuminating September 2008
conversation between Nina and Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky and
the American scholar John Bowlt, professor of Slavic languages
and literatures at the University of Southern California, which
describes, among other things, how the collection began and

theatre design

& technology

s u m m e r 2013

developed as well as their feelings concerning its return to Russia. This section is a worthy prelude to the major essays in the
volume which are organized into four sections: "Between East
and West," "The Silver Age," "The Avant Garde," and "Theatre
of Revolution."
Each of the sections is well organized and conveys the
issues and aesthetics between and among artists and movements during a given time, all illustrated with images from
the Lobanov-Rostovsky collection. This volume includes 241
full-page plates of designs from the collection. Reference numbers provided in the texts correspond to both this volume and
the collection as a whole. This will prove useful when crossreferencing items in Volume II. Readers should note that the
placement of the plates in this volume does not correspond to
content in essays, but instead relies on an alphabetical (by artist name) arrangement.
The final section of the book consists of fourteen addenda
that should not be missed. Comparisons and contrasts between
twentieth-century Western and Russian art movements are
found here as well as the Russian art movements represented
by the Lobanov-Rostovsky collection. The organization of the
addenda is meant to ease readers ability to search the collection for specific items, such as Ballets and Operas Produced or
Projected by Sergei Diaghilev, Plays Produced or Projected by
Vsevolod Meierkhold and Alexander Tairov, and Women Artists in the Lobanov-Rostovsky Collection, to name but a few.
A complete list of bibliographic entries, an index, and a list of
illustrations completes the volume
The Lobanov-Rostovsky Collection has been the source of
many exhibitions, essays, and volumes on Russian theatre designs in past years. Readers and viewers all over the world have
benefitted from the work of these lifelong collectors and from
the books and essays of their champion, John Bowlt. In Masterpieces of Russian Stage Design, the full collection is explored
in ample scale and explicated in thoughtful detail. Readers familiar with Russian theatre design will find it stimulating and
useful, while those less familiar will be dazzled by the variety,
talent, and sheer scope provided by a survey of fifty years of
Russian modernism on stages.
Joseph Brandesky, professor of theatre at the Ohio State
University at Lima, is a specialist in Russian and Czech
theatre and travels often to St. Petersburg, Moscow, and
Prague for research; his article "Spectacular St. Petersburg:
100 Years of Russian Theatre Design," based on an exhibit
at the Columbus Museum of Art and the McNay Art Museum
in San Antonio, appeared in the Spring 2002 TD&T

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Theatre Design & Technology - Summer 2013