Léon Bakst : the theatre art /

This appropriately sumptuous book offers a pictorial and biographical overview of Bakst's scenic and costume design for the theater. More than 200 illustrations, many in color, testify to the rhythmic mystery, primitive vitality, exotic opulence, and passionate enthusiasm for the eroticized female body of Bakst's work. Above all, this volume showcases the talents of one of the century's great colorists. Bakst collaborated with Russia's great innovators in ballet, music, and directing, with whom he helped establish the Ballets Russes-World of Art style. Diaghilev's exportation of this style to the world established a strong Russian presence in the realm of international culture, which after Bakst's artistic model, appeared exotically "other". One of the book's revelations, achieved via the intermittent juxtaposition of designs with production photographs, is the softening of Bakst's idealized eroticism, especially as regards nudity, in the transformation of page to stage. The book contains new visual and epistolary materials, a select bibliography, and several appendixes, most notably a comprehensive list of all Bakst's production work (1901-28) and exhibitions (1910-90). Recommended. S. Golub; Brown University