An exhibition of Nicholas Roerich opened at the New Tretyakov Gallery

Another blockbuster exhibition has opened at the New Tretyakov Gallery – a retrospective of Nicholas Roerich (1874–1947). The artist’s 150th anniversary is celebrated only next year, but the anniversary celebrations can be considered open, he believes Alexey Mokrousov.

Recognition comes in different forms. Today the name of Nicholas Roerich does not leave the newspaper pages. Either it appears in scandalous chronicles in connection with the dispute between the International Center of the Roerichs and the Russian state, or it ends up in opera reviews: in the recent production of “Sadko” at the Bolshoi Theater, Dmitry Chernyakov used his sketch along with the scenery of other pre-revolutionary authors. Howard Lovecraft mentions his landscapes in The Ridges of Madness, and even in modern video games (Uncharted 2) and tabletop role-playing games (Call of Cthulhu) Roerich appears at least fleetingly.

However, it is difficult to call him a great artist. It lacks the deceptive simplicity of Serov, the rapid virtuosity of Korovin, and the decorative sophistication of Golovin. Nevertheless, a retrospective at the Tretyakov Gallery is inevitable – it was not for nothing that Stasov took Leo Tolstoy to introduce the young artist as soon as Tretyakov bought his diploma painting “The Messenger”. It is not for nothing that the textbook “Overseas Guests” adorn the permanent exhibition in Lavrushinsky.

But Roerich is interesting primarily for his scale. In some ways he is close to another hero of the recent exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery, Igor Grabar, no less a scientist and scientist than an artist, with the difference that Roerich was dominated by a professional archaeologist, who made many discoveries in his youth, and then an ideologist. All his life he was drawn to great ideologies; Tibetan Buddhism and Blavatsky were not his only passion. The exhibition reflects these interests selectively, replacing talk about connections with diplomats, intelligence officers and freemasons with extensive quotes from Roerich himself, sometimes eloquent, sometimes relevant.

The Russian period of creativity is divided into sections “Paganism”, “The Beginning of Rus’”, “Holiness” and “Earthly and Heavenly Battle”; The “Heroic Frieze”, intended for the living room of the industrialist Philadelph Bazhanov in St. Petersburg, is also shown here; Bazhanov also ordered the fireplace “Volga and Mikula” based on Vrubel’s sketch. The living room has now been reconstructed, the spectacle is impressive, but rather in size than in the quality of the painting.

Among the more than a hundred exhibits, there are many items from non-metropolitan museums, and among the participants is the National Gallery of Armenia, which has recently been usually announced, but does not deliver works to Moscow. The Maitreya cycle, executed in Western China, was brought from Nizhny Novgorod. The cycle was bequeathed to the museum in Nizhny by Maxim Gorky, who received it as a gift from the Soviet government, although Roerich himself, having arrived in Moscow in 1926, along with the Message of the Mahatmas and the land for the Lenin mausoleum (I wonder what happened to it) donated the paintings to the USSR – “Maitreya” was intended specifically for the Tretyakov Gallery. The exhibition does not include Novosibirsk, where there is a large collection of Roerich and where the Roerich renaissance in the USSR largely began in the 1960s – his most ardent admirers there were affectionately called “Roerichites.”

The eastern, conventionally mystical section was given the shape of a circle by the architect Evgeniy Ass, the so-called wheel of samsara. There are three parts here – “The Indian Way”, “The Himalayas”, “Cryptograms of the East”. And in the end – the theater, which today seems to be perhaps the main thing in the artist’s artistic heritage.

The most grandiose exhibit in the New Tretyakov Gallery is the backdrop for “Polovtsian Dances,” one of the main hits of “Russian Seasons,” shown for the first time after the initial restoration. Usually these short dances from the opera “Prince Igor” were shown as part of the combined programs of the Diaghilev troupe; in Paris, fans rented a box at the Opera for the evening in order to stop by ten minutes before the end of the first part, when the Polovtsians were usually given, to watch them and leave.

The four-month restoration of the huge 10 by 23 meter set before the opening of the exhibition is just the beginning of a lot of work. The group of restorers led by Andrei Golubeiko would deserve awards from the professional community, but it seems we don’t have any.

In these yurts painted on the theatrical backdrop against the backdrop of the endless sky, Roerich’s archaeological interests also manifested themselves. The exhibition shows Polovtsian stone idols – a good match for the fascination with myths and the past, which determined so much in the artist’s fate.

Like many future artists and people of art of his time – for example, Wassily Kandinsky – Roerich studied at the Faculty of Law: the son of a successful St. Petersburg notary simply had no choice. At the same time, he entered the school at the Imperial Academy of Arts, studied under Arkhip Kuindzhi, but his legal education also came in handy – both when he headed the School of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, receiving the rank of state councilor for his public work, and when, together with Alexander Benois, he became a colleague of the chairman of the Gorky Commission “, which the Council of Workers’ and Soldiers’ Deputies legitimized as the “Commission on Arts”, and the Provisional Government – as the “Special Meeting on Arts”, and when in the 1930s they worked on the “Roerich Pact”, dedicated to the protection of museums and museum works in during the wars. The pact was signed by the countries of both Americas, but in Europe, which generally did not like the artist, they did not, but Roerich himself was twice nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize in the 1930s. As a result, the pact became the basis of the 1954 Hague Convention on the Protection of Cultural Property. It is unknown what would have happened if the Nobel Prize had been given. Probably, he would have been allowed to return to his homeland in 1946, after 19 years of living in the Himalayas. But who knows how the state councilor would have been received there.