Viktor Simov

Stanislavsky’s Designer

PAUL FRYER, Anastasia Toros

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• eBook ISBN: 9780429772412
• Topic: Letteratura
• Subtopic: Teatro

Viktor Simov is the first English-language biography of Konstantin Stanislavsky's principal scenic designer at the Moscow Art Theatre from the company's formation in 1898. His ground-breaking work included the designs for the premieres of Anton Chekhov's major stage plays, and his approach to theatre design still influences contemporary scenography.

Translated from the original Russian text written by author, editor, and literary critic Yuri Ivanovich Nekhoroshev, the book provides a revealing insight into the staging and technical practices of one of the world's most influential theatre companies. Supported by 60 illustrations representing the full range of Simov's designs, this volume provides a historical account of Simov's career and a vivid description and critical assessment of his work. The book traces the artist's development from his early years as a painter to his later experiments in early silent film design, including his work for the classic Russian science fiction film Aelita, Queen of Mars (1924).

Written for theatre scholars and students of Scenic Design and Drama courses, Viktor Simov: Stanislavsky's designer re-establishes Simov as one of the most influential theatre designers of the 20th century.

1

On the Eve of the Century

On the evening of Wednesday 14 October 1898 on Karetny Rad, in the center of Moscow, theater-goers were hurrying home from various entertainments. The doors of The Hermitage swung to and fro as people came and went. During the summer there had been a program of light entertainment, but now in late autumn, the Moscow Art Theatre had just started its first season.¹ Rumors concerning this event had abounded for some time.

One of Moscow’s most prominent businessmen, Mr. Alekseev,² also had aspirations to become a theatrical entrepreneur. He founded an artistic theater in Moscow. And other businessmen realized how lucky they were to have such a colleague. Newspapers across the country were full of enthusiasm for his First Guild Theatre.

The atmosphere! The lavish ambience! The synchronicity!

Even the famously acerbic theatrical reviewer V. Doroshevich³ claimed that it was not only artistic, but super First Guild artistic!

The press ridiculed the organizers, who seemed to treat the theater as a temple within which the actors were given priestly status. And in fact, it is strange that instead of vaudevilles and popular melodramas, which would have been financially successful, the organizers chose to produce Aleksey Konstantinovich Tolstoy’s historical drama Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich.⁴

The play is long and boring. Compared to The Seagull by the humorist Chekhov, recently panned in St. Petersburg as not only bad, but absolutely atrocious, this is a non-starter. It’s not a Seagull, it’s a Dodo. The first performance by the Moscow Art Theatre finished at 2 a.m. But in the next morning’s edition of The Courier, it was noted that the performance left too many impressions to give an immediate detailed response. However, the reviewer added that the season’s opening was an unqualified success, stating that Tsar Fyodor Ioannovich was brilliantly staged in a way few other performances in Moscow have ever been.⁵

In subsequent articles and reviews, the democratic aspirations of the Moscow Art Theatre were noted. However, one critic stingingly remarked that the audience that night was hardly what might be considered representative of “The Moscow Public”. Apart from the several members of the Moscow elite in the stalls and boxes, the audience was mostly made up of many new faces. Much later, N.Y. Efros⁶ recalled that many people who came to that performance by the newly-formed Moscow Art Theatre, had been highly skeptical, searching for flaws, trying to find faults and getting satisfaction from finding them.

Little by little however, the bright rays of the performance, the hot artistic light pouring from the stage into the auditorium began to disperse the skeptical fog and negative criticism. Instead of skepticism came enlightenment. The chill of distrust gave way to the warmth of admiration. Five days later, the newly-formed theater company produced Gerhart Hauptmann’s The Sunken Bell (Die versunkene Glocke)⁷ and two nights after that, Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. This was followed by The Seagull on 17 December.⁸ The stylized image of the Seagull used in this production became an emblem for the company.

FIGURE 1.1 The Seagull (Chekhov), Act 1, 1898.

Source: Stanislavski Centre Archive, Rose Bruford College of Theatre and Performance.

At the head of this young company were K.S. Stanislavsky, V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko and V.A. Simov. Stanislavsky was already by this time a well-known actor and director, whose dream was to revolutionize the traditional theater. V.I. Nemirovich-Danchenko was a professional theatrical critic and playwright and an experienced drama teacher. The artist and scenographer, V.A. Simov was a representative of the progressive art movement known as “The Wanderers” (Peredvizhniki);⁹ he was in love with the history of Russia, her soul and her evocative landscape.

The founders of the Moscow Art Theatre, while protesting against conventional art, shared the dream of introducing drama to Russia’s poorer classes, offering them an aesthetic experience, which would lift them from the darkness of their everyday lives. The company quickly established an audience including students, teachers, agricultural workers and doctors who gradually fell in love with the performances that reflected their own uncertain destinies. Ever-growing success and loud acclaim proved that a new theater had been born in Russia, one that opened up new possibilities for realistic artistic productions. In 1898 the work of the Moscow Art Theatre was only recognized by Russian audiences but, by 1906, its fame had spread internationally, due in no small part to the work of Viktor Simov, who for the first ten years was the company’s only scenographer.

The failure of Chekhov’s The Seagull on the stage of the Imperial Alexandrinsky Theatre was not an accident.¹⁰ New trends in art, new aesthetic programs fueled by new ideas were being born. Their appearance was due to the intensification of the whole of Russian life. At the end of the 19th century the proletarian liberation movement began to have an impact on imperialism and thus brought about a huge change in Russian politics and the arts. The literary works of L.N. Tolstoy, A.P. Chekhov, M. Gorky, A.I. Kuprin and I.A. Bunin that depicted all layers of society were highly successful, Critical realism, which represented the inner world of the individual and stripped bare the true face of high society, enriched literary genres. Writers paid much more attention to themes based on the moral bankruptcy of the nobility and the first works concerning the lives of the proletariat began to appear.

In the early 1890s D. Merezhkovsky¹¹ tried to establish symbolism as a means of counteracting and discrediting contemporary materialistic literature. He saw a literary renaissance in divine idealism and believed that only mystical content could freely show in full measure the extent of religious feeling in Russia. To demonstrate this Merezhkovsky offered symbolic images as a medium of expression. Brusov¹² however, found salvation not in mysticism but in the spiritual world of the poet. The appearance of new movements, such as social realism in the works of Gorky, were also a natural phenomenon of this era. On the basis of conflicting methods, new stylistic forms were developed, which were fundamentally opposite to each other in psychological content.

The year the Moscow Art Theatre opened also saw the first publication of the magazine “Mir Iskusstva” (“The World of Art”), which marked another stage in the development of Russian visual art.¹³ In the first issue Sergei Diaghilev wrote an article entitled “Complicated Questions”, in which he sharply criticized the “tendentious” and “utilitarian” in contemporary art. At the same time he did not absolutely reject the social significance of the divine nature of the artist, whose destiny is to love only beauty. This sense of unique individualism was attractive to the symbolists who willingly submitted articles. The magazine drew together artists from different creative backgrounds, who were united by the desire to create new ways of developing Russian painting, other than those promulgated by The Wanderers. This association, which had become an institution in the development of Russian national art, was undergoing a difficult time: the national ideals that it represented had outlived themselves and the “new” Wanderers took no account of the current social changes. Apart from internal disputes among its members, a number of talented artists who were trying to enrich art emotionally were leaving the association or taking part in exhibitions organized by “Mir Iskusstva” and, from 1903, in those also organized by the Union of Russian Artists.¹⁴

On these waves of turbulent change appeared the sail of a young theater company. Stanislavsky and Nemirovich-Danchenko, auditioned actors and selected them carefully, not only judging them on their current skills, but also anticipating how each talent might be further developed. Their goal was the broad renewal of a stale repertoire. They were opposed to mannered acting, false pathos, verbose recitation, slovenly production and second-rate scenic design. They invited a “Wanderer”, Viktor Simov, to be their art director and scenographer. Why a Wanderer? Why develop an innovative program and then appoint a person representative of the established aesthetic system? To understand this paradox, we need to make a journey back in time.

It wasn’t by chance that the Moscow Art Theatre was founded in Moscow. V.G. Belinsky¹⁵ noted that when it came to science, art and literature, Muscovites had more knowledge, space, taste, culture and education than even the most literate of St. Petersburgians. The spread of democratic culture was largely due to Moscow University and The Maly Theatre.¹⁶ After the monopoly of the imperial theaters was abolished,¹⁷ private theaters such as A.A. Brenko’s Troupe, the Korsha Theatre and the Mamontov Opera, emerged in Moscow. In 1888 The Society of Art and Literature,¹⁸ an informal artistic club, was founded, which had an interest in drama and opera as well as other cultural areas. Apart from The Tretyakov Gallery, lovers of the visual arts could also visit the permanent exhibitions organized by the Society of Art Lovers, founded in 1881, and the exhibitions held by students of The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture,¹⁹ which is where the creative life of the future scenographer of the Moscow Art Theatre began.

Viktor Simov was born on 14 April 1858. His father was a surveyor but after his father died when he was four-years old, he was brought up by his mother in difficult financial circumstances; she taught French, gave music lessons and took in lodgers to help make ends meet. Viktor’s talent for painting emerged very early. A drawing he made while he was studying at high school was awarded a medal and the art teacher drew his mother’s attention to her son’s ability. After reaching his senior year, Simov decided to enter The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, or the Moscow Academy, as it was generally known.

The Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture (MSPSA) originated in a small group of enthusiasts whose guiding spirit was E.I. Makovsky.²⁰ The school grew and developed with almost no official support and yet by the mid-1860s, it had achieved the right to award Arts degrees and a range of medals up to the status of silver; gold medals could only be awarded by the Imperial Academy of Arts. Thanks to the democratic program practiced in the school, students could choose freely what subjects they wished to paint. Previously there had been a prescriptive general education course, which continued at the Academy. It became common practice to paint genre pictures, which showed ordinary people going about their daily lives. It was the dream of many talented young artists to be accepted into this school. Once accepted, they were treated with tolerance and benevolence. Most of the teachers were members of the “Wanderers”, for whom the school became a focal point in Moscow. From 1871 onward V.G. Perov was the ideological artistic director.²¹ In pursuit of advanced democratic aesthetics he saw the role of art as serving the ideals of justice. He instilled in the students a love of life, and the ability to see in life both its beauty and its ugliness. He encouraged students to take their plots, characters and types from reality in order to depict life in all its severity and simplicity. Perov taught “the art of seeing”; to observe precisely, to reflect on the regularity of being and to express everything one understands and feels with simplicity and serenity, because only the real can be meaningful and only the natural can fully engage the viewer.

Perov’s pedagogical system was unique in one respect; when the students had “adjusted” to the perception of surrounding life, he allowed them to make sketches of the scenes to show how the characters helped to develop the plot. In this way, Perov’s approach resembled Stanislavsky’s system. He rigorously assessed the value of placing this or that character in a composition – why it is shown as it is, and most importantly, what purpose it serves. He applied the same clarity and brevity to accessories. He encouraged young artists to see dramatic moments in life, to feel the pictorial drama and to use skill in composing paintings.

On Perov’s advice, Simov and his fellow-students, Levitan and Kasatkin,²² made precise observations of what occurred on the streets, on the boulevards, in Sokolniki Park, in villages and on country roads, and quickly filled their albums with scenes from real life. In recalling Perov, Simov recalled both the authority and the knowledge of his teacher: when the students brought the sketches they had made over the summer to him, he felt that Perov’s laconic notes and terse statements concerning the general principles of painting, were worth more than a year’s lectures. The shared enthusiasm for art, the mutual respect and sincere friendship with teachers, all stimulated Simov’s desire to study. He was awarded two silver medals in the student’s drawing and painting competitions. Like most of the students at the school, he also worked at home. His works at that time were of course influenced by Perov, Savrasov and Pryanishnikov,²³ but nevertheless, there are noticeable indications of individual visual development.

Simov was very short of money, so in the summer of 1880 he started looking for a job. In June, he went to Tula Province (not far to the south of Moscow) to the estate of the landowner Madame Pleshcheeva, where he gave drawing lessons to her children. Even though he was living in luxury, he wanted to get to know the lives of the peasants from every perspective. In a letter to N. Kasatkin he wrote:

I went to a meeting of all the villagers, which was held in the local church. There was an en...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• Editor’s Note
• Foreword (From Moscow Art Theatre: One Hundred Years)
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Yuri Ivanovich Nekhoroshev: The Last Literary Critic of the Era of Social Realism
• 1. On the Eve of the Century
• 2. The Curtain Rises
• 3. Life Upside Down
• 4. The Philistines and Other Plays
• 5. Pictures from the Past
• 6. Crossroads
• 7. On New Tracks
• 8. The Designer’s Method
• Appendix A: V.A. Simov – Fragments from Memories
• Appendix B: A Chronology of Simov’s Work in the Theater
• Index