Bakst on classicism: “The paths of classicism in art”

Leon Bakst-painter, designer, and dandy-was also a writer. In addition to his set and costume designs, a legacy of elegant line and sumptuous color, Bakst left behind him a small number of written works. This literary corpus, though diminutive, is useful to scholars, opening a new window on the artist's genius. Of particular interest is an essay, really the second half of an essay, called Paths of Classicism in Art, which appeared in the third number of the magazine Apollon in 1909. Following a discussion of the history of classicism in European painting in part one, the rest analyzes select aspects of the artistic scene of its time and attempts to predict the future. In so doing, it reveals some of the concerns that were central to Bakst's work in the ballet. The essay begins unexpectedly, on a strident note, a political fusillade. Borrowing the rhetoric of his exiled compatriot, Prince Peter Kropotkin, Bakst confronts readers with the spectre of cultural Anarchism. Referring to a cataclysm that has sundered the old from the new, he calls to mind images of artistic bombs sparking revolution, yet he then promises that this cataclysm is really nothing but the calm and steady alteration of taste in accord with the dictates of Fashion. Fashion, as he says, must be written with a capital letter. There are Fashions in art, just as there are Fashions in clothing, and