5
HARRIS THEATER
Eye on Nijinsky – Nijinsky’s Eye
indicates the young Frenchman to be, in fact, the artist.
Georges Lepape draws Nijinsky with elegant Art Nouveau curves and flat
planes of brilliant contrasting colors as the Golden Slave or Narcissus like a
fashion plate for a
Vogue
magazine cover. When they were shown to him by
the artist, Nijinsky disapproved strongly of Lepape’s drawings.
Valentine Hugo never tired of trying to capture the mystery of Nijinsky’s
ambiguous presence, documenting in her thousands of action sketches his
boundless energy and gift for transforming himself with every role. A series
of her pencil drawings of Nijinsky in “Le Spectre de la Rose” trace a progres-
sion from decorative realism to a near abstract figure of finely sketched
intertwining circles – each successive version of this same famous pose re-
sembling more and more the drawings by Nijinsky himself. Her final version
is less a concrete representation of Nijinsky as the androgynous Rose, but
suggests rather, in faint lines, a lovely fragrance.
Leon Bakst’s beautifully drafted design for Nijinsky’s costume in “L’Oiseau
d’or,” worn by him in Paris during the first Ballets Russes season in 1909, is
more interesting as an incredibly detailed figure study in the style of Russian
orientalism than as a portrait of the 20-year-old dancer. On the other hand,
Roosen’s photograph of Nijinsky wearing this same costume fills Bakst’s ex-
otic creation with a vibrant human dimension, the dancer’s radiant face pro-
jecting joy in the act of dancing.
Max Jacob in his pencil and gouache drawing of Nijinsky in “Le Dieu bleu” seems
more interested in documenting details of Bakst’s extraordinary costume
rather than rendering the tactile values of the dancer’s pose and personality.
However, each drawing, painting, photograph, porcelain or lithograph illumi-
nates another nuance of this man who obviously was so many things to so
many people and whose fame bridges the span between Art Nouveau, Art
Deco and the Moderns. Most of the works produced during this early period
of his career are charmingly decorative. The drawings by Georges Barbier,
Roberto Montenegro in Aubrey Beardsly style, Ludwig Kainer or André Marty
document the impression Nijinsky, the first superstar, must have made on the
artist and European high society. Jean Cocteau on the other hand offers the
essence. Seeing Nijinsky sit squarely filling the page with the potent thrust
and span of his knees, or seeing him move vigorously at a rehearsal of “Le
Sacre,” his neck like a powerful tree trunk in obvious movement, one reads
and feels Nijinsky’s might and energy. Especially in Cocteau’s sketches from
or before 1913, drawn with an economy of lines, the spirit of Nijinsky springs
from the paper. The strange dichotomy of strength and softness in their
bold space defining clear lines convey at once character and conflict with the
weight of a Masaccio fresco. Surely Cocteau’s drawings of Nijinsky as Harle-
quin in “Le Carnaval,” as the Rose in “Le Spectre de la Rose,” in rehearsal or
street clothes provide the most vivid evidence of his persona. A similar pro-
jection of immediate strength is evident in Max Pechstein’s 1911 ink on paper
impression of Nijinsky in “Le Carnaval,” an improvised, but inspired study of
the ballet that was presented in Berlin that year. Pechstein captures and
halts Nijinsky’s movement with his spontaneous brush.
EYE ON NIJINSKY – NIJINSKY’S EYE cont.
