Description |
1 online resource (6 min.) |
Series |
Australasian video online |
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Hidden treasures : inside the National Gallery of Australia |
Summary |
The Ballet Russe attracted artists to Paris from all over Europe but particularly from Russia. The impresario, Serge Diaghilev, had been barred from employment in any service to the Russian Crown after falling out with the Imperial Theatre in St Petersburg. Instead, he dedicated his talents to promoting the arts of Russia outside Russia and introducing the Russian avant-garde to Paris. Among the first he lured there was Natalia Goncharova. The costumes she designed for his ballet Le Coq D'Or - now in the National Gallery of Australia's collection - were exactly what he wanted. The saturated colours and bold designs became the trademark of his performances. While other European modernists were looking to alternative traditions for their inspiration, to what they referred to as the 'primitive' art of Africa and Oceania, Goncharova drew on her own. She looked to early Russian religious icons and folk art. Around the time that Goncharova left Russia, Alexandra Exter was returning, keen to participate in the Bolshevik experiment of 1917. She too loved theatre design, believing it to be the most democratic and inclusive of the arts. However, her costumes were inspired by the abstract geometry of revolutionary Russian constructivism. Among her work preserved in the National Gallery is her costume design for a Martian guard in the 1924 science-fiction film Aelita†The Queen of Mars, and two marionettes that were to take the place of actors in another silent film, where they were intended to epitomise the commercialism of streetlife in New York. Although Exter died in poverty and obscurity in 1949, she still had the two marionettes with her, preserved as fond memories of her first flush of enthusiasm for the new order, a symbol of the optimism of those early days of the Russian Revolution |
Notes |
Title from resource description page (viewed November 18, 2014) |
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In English |
Subject |
Goncharova, Natalii︠a︡ Sergeevna, 1881-1962.
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Exter, Alexandra
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Exter, Alexandra. |
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Goncharova, Natalii︠a︡ Sergeevna, 1881-1962. |
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Costume design.
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costume design.
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Costume design.
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Genre/Form |
Documentary films.
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Documentary films.
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Documentaires.
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Form |
Streaming video
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Author |
Hughes, John.
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Churcher, Betty, 1931-2015.
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Film Australia (Organization)
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National Film and Sound Archive (Australia)
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