Nijinsky Portrait at the Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

[jps]

For those who can get to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco before September 3, I highly recommend the current (small) exhibit called "A Curious Affair: The Fascination Between East & West" for a wonderful contemporary (circa 1910) painting of Nijinsky by Jacques-Emile Blanche, in brilliant costume for the "danse Siamoise" in the ballet Les Orientales. The painting is on loan from Ann and Gordon Getty.

According to Forrest McGill's catalogue note , "Paris felt more frissons of exoticism and Orientalism in 1909, when Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes began performing. Russians were a little exotic already, and the allure of Leon Bakst's costumes, Michel Fokine's choreography, and above all the mesmerizing and outlandish dancing (and persona) of Vaslav Nijinsky fed the appetite for the beautiful and bizarre. Les Orientales, one of the early Ballets Russes productions, featured Nijinsky in a Chinese dance, a Siamese dance, and so on. Both Bakst and Fokine had attended performances by a visiting troupe of Siamese dancers in St Petersburg in 1900, and would have had memories of authentic movements and costumes. Certainly some details of Nijinsky's Siamese costume and gestures shown here are not entirely invented. The pantaloon-like lower garment and its heavy decorative apron have distinct analogies in real Siamese theatrical costumes, and the pose of Nijinsky's left hand comes directly from the gesture vocabulary of Siamese dance."

There is a small reproduction of the painting here:

http://www.asianart.org/curious.htm

Worth a detour.

[leonid17]

For those who can get to the Asian Art Museum in San Francisco before September 3, I highly recommend the current (small) exhibit called "A Curious Affair: The Fascination Between East & West" for a wonderful contemporary (circa 1910) painting of Nijinsky by Jacques-Emile Blanche, in brilliant costume for the "danse Siamoise" in the ballet Les Orientales. The painting is on loan from Ann and Gordon Getty.

Thank you so much for this post. I do not recall seeing a colour reproduction of this painting before and it appears to be a much better portrait than the painters representation of Karsavina in the Firebird costume.

Is the reproduction in the catalogue larger than that shown on the AAM website? If so, I think it is worth buying just for that.

[jps]

Is the reproduction in the catalogue larger than that shown on the AAM website? If so, I think it is worth buying just for that.

It's a generous full-page (7" x 11") reproduction in a small, modestly-priced ($12.95) catalogue. Worth having!

[BalletNut]

Thank you for the information, jps. I'll have to take the opportunity to take a look at this.