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Has anyone visited the exhibition of Nijinsky's art works that I read about on the following link.

I would like to hear your appreciations.

http://www.newyorkblade.com/2007/1-5/arts/thearts/najart.cfm

The author of the article loosely implies Nijinsky was influenced by Kazimir Malevich," Nijinsky’s works are notable historically, intentionally or not, for their adherence to Suprematism, the Russian abstract art movement of the day, founded by Kazimir Malevich and famous for simple geometric compositions. Following Malevich’s example, Nijinsky’s pieces straddle the figurative and the abstract, though the impetus for Nijinsky’s work is presumably more personal than conceptual."

I am not sure that Nijinsky ever saw Malevich's work as the only probable opportunity would have been a St.Petersburg exhibition in 1911 and Nijinsky was abroad for 11 months of that year.

Was Nijinsky a 'conceptual artist'? What does one think about his ballets, did his concepts or ideas they take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns? I think so.

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Leonid--thanks for this note, as I cannot keep up with all the Chelsea shows, and this is about to close. However, I may be able to get there tomorrow or Saturday because it's just a few blocks away. Don't expect expert impressions from me though. Raw ones may be the best I can muster, knowing nothing of Malevich to begin with.

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Well, we have to be grateful to Blade for letting us know about this, although the press release I got at the gallery is perhaps better written. I'll type one section:

'As symptoms of a psychological disturbance became increasingly evident, Nijinsky moved with his family to Switzerland. He kept a diary obsessively, and at one point covered his bedroom walls with drawings including the haunting image of a single staring eye [it is not quite accurate to call these 'disembodied' as the Blade writer termed them]. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia in 1919, and spent the rest of his life in and out of hospitalizatino. This body of artwork was created during the early years of that tumultuous period. The works in the show were all created between 1918 and 1919.

'The body of Nijinsky's artwork includes twenty-one gouache on paper abstractions, as well as a series of compulsive pencil and crayon drawings, approximately thirty in number. Vaslav Nijinsky's artwork has been exhibited at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris, and was recently feature in the 'Inner Worlds outside" exhibition at Whitechapel in London." [in that case, did you see it yourself, Leonid?]

The staring-eye paintings were arresting and beautiful and would have been so no matter who had painted them. Mostly arrangements of extremely rich red and blue with some white in some of them, these are stunning and there were about 17 of these at the gallery--cumulatively they stay in the mind much more than the drawings and are quite powerful. I did a bit of googling on Malevich, and of the few reproductions I was able to see, 'Black Circle', 'Black Square' and a couple of others are obvious as relatives of Nijinsky's staring eyes. The woman at the gallery said the red was a scarlet, although I would have called it cerise since it is rich and noble, but I may mistakenly think of scarlet as having to have a slight touch of the brassy to it. She said that it was a matter of the colour being water-based. The blue we both thought of as close to midnight blue. The strange thing about these paintings, symptomatic apparently of Nijinsky's deteriorating condition, is that they are very soothing to look at because of the deep colours (some of the Midnight Blues are pools with some black in them as well). Some are very simple, at least one fairly complex and from a distance suggesting something figurative, but only in the way a cloud would. I wouldn't feel 'haunted' by one of these staring eyes. They are surely like the very opposite of Big Brother's Eye, especially knowing the context.

The 'compulsive' drawings are compulsive in some way (I said to the lovely girl 'maybe in what is envisioned', she said something about the 'movement he created', frankly I couldn't pick up on anything especially compulsive), but they are never disorderly; in fact, literally all of the work is very careful and neat. And this is in no way detrimental. There's an example of the main variety of these crayon and pencil drawings in the Blade link. I was far less struck by these as works of art, and would have paid little attention to them outside of context.

But there were 3 pencil drawings that were figurative there, 2 seeming to be very much ballet-derived. One was very much like a male circus figure (isn't that from Diaghilev's ballets?), and there is one of a ballerina with her head bent almost at right angle to her shoulders which is very delicate. These are very striking and truly lovely. After an hour, I have already forgotten what the 3rd one was.

However, it's those paintings of the staring eye that are truly remarkable. I really didn't expect to see anything that extraordinary, and if there had been only one or two I might not have been so struck. But the groupings (in 4's usually) of the 17 or so of these are incredibly moving.

The gallery was 'closed today', despite claiming to be open through today, so I had to beg to get in--'I have to write about this for Ballet Talk!'-- as they were getting ready for a new show. This particular building in Chelsea, at 529 W. 20th Street has a few other very good shows in it right now, including some most unusual paintings by Louis Renzoni at street level. Two of these feature a kind of portrait of Grace Kelly and Marilyn Monroe in imagined surroundings and they are very original, and their titles do not include their names. Renzoni's other paintings are not of well-known people and they were also quite beautiful.

I'm truly sorry the show has closed, as I think I could have managed to get some BT people down to see these. Those staring eye paintings I will never forget. They are so strong that, even though it would be lovely to own one, you don't have to: They produce images in the mind the second you recall them.

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Well, we have to be grateful to Blade for letting us know about this, although the press release I got at the gallery is perhaps better written. I'll type one section:

I'm truly sorry the show has closed, as I think I could have managed to get some BT people down to see these. Those staring eye paintings I will never forget. They are so strong that, even though it would be lovely to own one, you don't have to: They produce images in the mind the second you recall them.

I am most grateful to read your report and especially the effort you went to see the exhibition. I have always been interested in Nijinsky's art work having seen some examples before in exhibition and auction catalogues. Once again thank you.

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Thanks for the kind words and special thanks again to Leonid, without whom I would not have seen this incredibly rare work. After a few hours, I see I was not quite 'on' when describing the drawing of the ballerina. The head is rather in a parallel line to her left shoulder, as if lying on it straight down. It's a very strange drawing, and I think I'll not try to describe it further.

And while I still find the Staring Eye paintings soothing, I do now think they are also very haunting. They remind one of the silence in the eyes of deer, and these are paintings that have a physical presence as did their creator--some art reproduces much better than other does: These would not reproduce well. I have especially also noticed this with Georgia O'Keeffe's paintings, which were such a natural for commercial uses such as posters (because they would still be pretty, at least the flowers would be), but you get nothing of the material thing that such artists are made of unless you see the actual object. This is probably even more true with Nijinsky's small, living paintings.

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