The works of artists of the Palekh lacquer miniature craft in the field of design of theatrical productions of the 1930s - 1970s (Palekh and Theater)

Lavrov Dmitrii Evgen'evich ORCID: 0000-0002-2607-7220 PhD in Art History Senior Educator, the department of Museology, Saint Petersburg State University 199034, Russia, g. Saint Petersburg, nab. Universitetskaya, 7-9, aud. 91 agitlak@mail.ru Other publications by this author

         The famous and often quoted words of the writer A.M. Gorky about Palekh as a "small miracle born of the Revolution", as a rule, are given only to illustrate the well-known fact that Palekh artists in Soviet times, moving from icon painting to papier–mache painting, created a new, unique and unprecedented art - Palekh lacquer a miniature. In reality, the Paleshans, in fact, having left iconography and painting of churches, during the rather short Soviet period, instead mastered almost all types of applied and fine art: secular monumental painting and easel painting, sculpture and art postcards, posters and book illustrations, jewelry and children's cartoons, porcelain and enamel painting, painting according to parchment, pebbles and glass, it is truly difficult to name an area in which the Palekh masters would not have left any significant creative heritage. One of such areas, of course, is the design of theatrical productions, which, despite its rich history, still undeservedly remains (as, indeed, all of the above) a little-known page in the history of the Palekh craft.

The Palekh artists came into close contact with theatrical art immediately after the Revolution, during the Civil War, during the tragic period of the former icon painters' search for a new use of their creative powers and, more importantly, earnings. Thus, it is widely known that the later famous Palekh miniaturist I. P. Vakurov in 1919, having found himself in Perm, mastered the specialties of a theater decorator and make-up artist, working in one of the factory clubs of the city ^{[2, p. 103]}. Another former Palekh icon painter, I. I. Golikov (1886-1937), worked as a theater decorator from the autumn of 1918 to the winter of 1921: first at the Shuisky Demonstration Theater with director N. P. Matrin, then (after Nikolai Petrovich moved) – at the famous A. N. Ostrovsky Kineshma Theater. Especially famous are the decorations made by I. I. Golikov for the production of "Thunderstorm" and "Snow Maiden", which received rave reviews from both the director of the theater and the head of the city department of culture M. P. Sokolnikov. The latter later became an honored Artist of the RSFSR and an influential patron of the Palekh artists, with whom he was able to get to know them closely for the first time precisely on the material of theatrical productions ^[20]. The new Palekh art was not ignored by many other famous figures of the Soviet theater: for example, on the tenth anniversary of the lacquer craft (in March 1935), among the many telegrams received by Palekh artists were congratulations from leading theater actors and directors of the USSR. Such was, for example, the joint message of K. S. Stanislavsky and V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, in which these People's Artists of the RSFSR, addressing the paleshans, wrote: "You have created a wonderful, deeply original art; in it an amazing sense of style is combined with exceptionally high technical skill and filigree elegance of execution" ^[16].

The first collective work of Palekh artists in the field of design of theatrical productions was the scenery and costumes for the play "Stenka Razin", made in early 1935 for the Ethnographic Theater of Leningrad ^[24]. Four artists from among the founding masters of the Palekh lacquer craft worked on the difficult order: A.V. Kotukhin, I. V. Markichev, D. N. Butorin and I. I. Golikov, who already had, as noted, considerable and very successful experience in the design of theatrical productions.

The sketches preserved in the State Museum of Palekh Art allow us to trace the history of creation, as well as the artistic features of the sketches of the scenery for this performance. There were eleven sets made by the paleshans (according to the number of departments of the theatrical performance), while each set showed the background of the stage according to its main plot. So, I. I. Golikov created two sketches: "The View of Astrakhan and the Volga", as well as "Thundercloud" (the last sketch served as the scenery of the final scene of the play) ^[24]. I. V. Markichev created three sketches: "The battle of the tsar's ships with the ships of Stenka Razin", "The Meeting of the struga Razin with the Persian ships" and "Stenka Razin leaves to die on a white stone" ^{[17, p. 121]}. It is interesting to trace the changes made by I. V. Markichev in various versions of the first of these sketches: if in the early sheets an important place in the composition was occupied by the image of a double-headed eagle on the sail of the tsar's ship, into which Stepan Razin shot an arrow from a bow ^{[4, p. 29]}, then in the final sketch (and the finished decoration) the image of a double-headed eagle disappears, which clearly reduced the propaganda message of the work ^[25]. The director of the Ethnographic Theater, the famous Soviet theater critic V. N. Vsevolodsky-Gerngross, personally came to Palekh to accept the order, the fulfillment of which coincided with the solemn celebration of the decade of the Palekh craft in March 1935, who expressed such obvious pleasure from the work done that it gave eyewitnesses the opportunity to call this first experience of cooperation of the collective of Palekh artists with the theater "brilliantly successful" ^[5].

         In the second half of the 1930s, Pavel Dmitrievich Bazhenov (1904-1941) was the most active of the Palekh artists in theatrical works, who designed five performances during this short period: "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes" for the Rybinsk Children's Theater in 1936 ^[27]; staging of the farce opera "Heroes" for the Moscow Chamber Theater 1936 ^{[1, p. 106]}, "Ruslan and Lyudmila" of the Leningrad Puppet Theater (sketches were created in 1937, the production was carried out in 1938-1939) ^{[21, p. 27]}; "The Tale of the Dead Princess" for the Rybinsk interdistrict Collective Farm Theater of the Yaroslavl region 1937 ^[7]; staging of the ballet "The Tale of the Priest and his employee Balda" for the State Academic Bolshoi Theater in 1940. (due to the Great Patriotic War, the performance was not carried out) ^{[17, p. 119]}. The most famous and sensational of them at the time, of course, is the opera-farce "Bogatyrs" staged by the director of the Chamber Theater A. Ya. Tairov in the fall of 1936 to the music of A. P. Borodin and the text of Demyan Bedny. It is widely known that this production was defeated by the political authorities of the USSR as a "falsification of the people's past" (the causes and course of these events are described in detail in K. A. Bogdanov's brilliant scientific study of 2009 "Vox populi. Folklore genres of Soviet culture" ^{[1, pp. 105-107]}, so we will not repeat them); the author of the opera text Demyan Bedny was later, in fact, "excommunicated" from the press, however, as can be seen from the list of theatrical works by P. D. Bazhenov just given, for the Palekh master himself, the scandal did not have negative consequences. The reason for this is quite clear: P. D. Bazhenov, an extraordinarily versatile master, about whom already in the early 1930s one of the luminaries of Palekh N. M. Zinoviev spoke as an artist of "great artistic talents" ^{[8, p. 149]}, was known to contemporaries (and not only in Palekh) precisely as an extraordinarily talented a decorator and portraitist, able, in particular, to perfectly convey in the sketch of a theatrical costume the acutely individual characteristic of the portrayed character ^{[11, pp. 40-41]}. Regardless of past and modern assessments of the 1936 production of The Heroes, it should be recognized that the comically grotesque, caricatured nature of the costumes and faces of the opera characters seen by P. D. Bazhenov perfectly corresponded to the director's plan to show legendary characters (Prince Vladimir the Red Sun and epic heroes) as parody "antiheroes" of the textbook history of the Baptism of Russia. In fact, P. D. Bazhenov only perfectly fulfilled the will of A. Ya. Tairov himself (it is noteworthy that in the wave of critical reviews about the opera, it was the work of P. D. Bazhenov, unlike the work of the director and the author of the text, that was not seriously attacked). In the future, the theatrical works of the Palekh artist were awarded numerous praises, and above all – for his fantastic, one-of-a-kind ability to perfectly convey the character, individuality, life lived and even the future actions of the character of a particular theatrical production with a few lines. Thus, the sketches of the characters and costumes of the "Tales of the Dead Princess" created by P. D. Bazhenov for the Rybinsk Interdistrict Theater in 1937 received the highest appreciation from contemporaries; in particular, one of the critics enthusiastically wrote: "When you look at the sketches of costumes written by Bazhenov for the "Dead Princess", it is hard to believe that these are costumes. A flirtatious queen is about to come off the sheet, and a beggar guslar will strike the strings with knobby fingers, and a fat mammy will start gossiping" ^[27]. Without any doubt, if not for the untimely death of P. D. Bazhenov, who was called to the front of the Great Patriotic War in the autumn of 1941 ^{[12, p. 476]}, this artist would have been able to enrich the post-war Soviet theatrical art extraordinarily.

         The period of the Great Patriotic War, for all its catastrophism for the Palekh fishery, was also marked by the design of theatrical productions. It is enough to point out that such work was one of the first carried out by the Palekh fishery after the resumption of its economic activity in 1942. It was a major order of the Moscow Bolshoi Theater for the design of sketches of costumes and scenery for the ballet by I. I. Schwartz "Wonderland" staged by L. V. Yakobson ^{[12, p. 477]}. Despite the fact that the production exceeded its budget and, due to lack of funds, was not carried out at that time ^{[28, p. 232]}, it nevertheless made a significant contribution to the mastery of Palekh artists (who, as is known, did not undergo special training in decorative skills) with professional skills in the field of theater. In particular, such an invaluable experience was gained by the prominent Palekh master N. M. Zinoviev, who created sketches of scenery and costumes for the ballet (stored in the State Museum of Palekh Art) ^{[26, p. 151]}.

         In the post-war period (the second half of the 1940s – the first half of the 1950s), the greatest success in the design of theatrical productions of the Palekh craft fell to the share of the artist Nikolai Mikhailovich Parilov (1891-1962). A student of the famous I. I. Golikov, N. M. Parilov in 1937 created sketches of scenery and costumes of puppets for the production of "The Tale of Tsar Saltan" at the Leningrad Puppet Theater (which has endured more than a hundred performances) ^{[15, p. 38]}, and in 1946 he, together with his assistants G. K. Bureev and A. M. Kurkin, designs the opera by N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov "The Golden Cockerel" for the Saratov Opera and Ballet Theater named after N. G. Chernyshevsky ^[19]. Created within five months, these sketches of Palekh masters (located in the State Museum of Palekh Art, as well as in the State Theater Museum named after A. S. Bakhrushin in Moscow) became a major event in the history of Soviet theatrical design, and the chief supervisor of the works N. M. Parilov in 1947 received the Stalin Prize of the second degree ^[22]. In April – June 1949, N. M. Parilov, at the head of a larger group of Palekh artists (which included T. I. Zubkova, A. A. Kotukhina, G. M. Melnikov, A.M. Kurkin and A.V. Zaitsev), designed a production of A. K. Lyadov's ballet "The Tale of the Dead Princess and the Seven Heroes" for the Leningrad Maly opera academic theater ^[23]. The ballet, shown during the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the birth of A. S. Pushkin, became the first collective work of young front-line soldiers (G. M. Melnikov, A.M. Kurkin, A.V. Zaitsev) ^[14], who subsequently worked just as fruitfully on the design of Soviet theatrical productions. The method of brigade work (successfully applied by N. M. Parilov in the design of the Saratov production of the Golden Cockerel) was used with great success by the masters of the Palekh craft and further: so, in 1960, five Palekh artists – V. V. Bolshakov, A.V. Borunov, G. M. Melnikov, V. N. Smirnov and A.M. Kurkin – the production of "Red Devils" (by P. A. Blyakhin) was designed for the Moscow Drama Theater named after N. V. Gogol ^{[17, pp. 120-122]}.

         The turn of the 1960s - 1970s became important in the history of theatrical productions, during which the Palekh masters created several stage works. So, in 1967, craft artists designed the ballet "Wonderland" for the Leningrad Academic Opera and Ballet Theater named after S. M. Kirov (now Mariinsky); sketches of the curtain, scenery and costumes were performed by a group of paleshan (I. V. Livanova, B. M. Nemtinov) ^{[17, p. 121]}. The same period was marked by the fruitful cooperation of artists of the Palekh craft with the famous dancer, artist of the Soviet ballet Mahmud Alisultanovich Esambaev. In December 1968 M. A. Esambayev came to Palekh for an excursion and wrote in the museum's book of reviews words of warm appreciation to the art of local artists ^[9]. M. A. Esambayev especially became close to the family of the famous Palekh masters Boris Nikolaevich and Kaleria Vasilyevna Kukuliev, who created talented sketches of costumes "Peacock" and "Peacock" in 1971 at the request of the great dancer. "Russian" ^{[13, p. 9]}. Both dances in these Palekh costumes became among the most outstanding and beloved by the audience in the works of M. A. Esambayev.  

Finally, one of the largest theatrical works performed by Palekh masters in the 1970s was the design of "Choreographic Miniatures" for the Leningrad Ballet Troupe of L. V. Yakobson in 1971. The famous artist Anna Aleksandrovna Kotukhina (1915-2007), who already had considerable experience in this field, became the head of the young Palekh masters (A. S. Peskova, A. N. Klipova, V. M. Khodova), who already had considerable experience in this field (in the late 1940s, she worked as part of the N. M. Parilov group on the design of the ballet "The Tale of the Dead Princess" for the Leningrad Maly Opera Academic Theater). The work on "Choreographic Miniatures" became the first experience in the theatrical design of the famous Palekh artist Valentin Mikhailovich Khodov, who later recalled that the group had to work "in very time-consuming conditions" ^[10]. Despite the lack of experience and sufficient time, V. M. Khodov, who was fond of P. D. Bazhenov's work in his youth, created a number of interesting sketches that became the basis for subsequent productions by L. V. Yakobson ("The Firebird", "The Snow Maiden", "Russian Folk Games and Dances") ^{[3, p. 77]}. Russian Russian actors' brooch "Buffoons" from 1972 from the State Museum of Fine Arts of Tatarstan (Kazan) ^{[17, p. 111]}, the casket "Russian Entertainers" from 1980 from the collection of the All-Russian Museum, it is interesting that this experience of V. M. Khodov had an impact on the themes of his lacquer miniatures, in which images of Russian wandering actors took a firm place. decorative, applied and folk art (Moscow) ^{[18, p. 130]} and many other works.

Thus, the artists of the Palekh craft in the 1930s - 1970s made an extremely important contribution to the history of the art of design of Soviet theatrical productions. Musical by nature, meeting the most daring ideas of talented directors, but at the same time extremely original and easily recognizable by the audience, Palekh art, being embodied in numerous theatrical productions, has invariably evoked a warm response, appreciation and wide success among both the audience and professional critics.  The exhibition "Palekh and the Theater" held in the summer of 2017 at the State Museum of Palekh Art ^{[6, p. 70]}, which showed many of the sketches mentioned in the article, firsthand showed the importance of the contribution of local masters to the development of Soviet theater and became another proof of the versatility of their artistic genius.