St Petersburg полностью

Altman’s painting became a kind of an aesthetic manifesto for the “Punin group.” As Punin later wrote, “This portrait rejected the traditions of impressionism and introduced the problem of constructivist forms. We were particularly interested in forms then.”73 Contemporaries found cubist influences in Altman’s portrait, but in a conversation with me in 1966 Altman denied that vehemently: “They decided that I was a Cubist, and a bad one at that. First they christen a brunet a redhead, and then they say that he’s a false redhead. But I never was a Cubist.” I remember well how his small gray brush of a mustache curled mockingly as he spoke. Georges Braque, whose photo had been cut out of a French Communist newspaper and was attached to Altman’s easel, looked somewhat uncomfortable listening along with me.

Punin avoided the word “cubism” in his review of Altman’s portrait in Apollo in 1916. “It’s significant that in this work Altman did not seem to have the desire to show beauty (at least the beauty of Akhmatova’s eyes), character, give expression—all that is typical of the impressionist. His sole aim was to reveal form—the form of the body (in particular, the kneecap, collarbone, foot, phalanxes, and so on), the bench, stool, flowers, and shawl.”74

Describing the portrait later, the poet Benedikt Livshits also mentioned “the imperial folds of blue silk” and directly tied Altman’s painting to the acmeist experiments in literature: “Acmeism is feeling around for heavyweight correlates to itself in painting.”75 Obviously, acmeists were flirting with cubism, selecting and noting works close to them, usually the ones that used cubist techniques. Besides Altman’s cubist-like portraits, landscapes, and still lifes, this wing of Petersburg art was distinguished by the sharp, angular portraits by his friends Lev Bruni and Boris Grigoryev and, in a later period, Yuri Annenkov, as well as by some of the cubistically constructed still lifes by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin.

A true union of Russian cubism and acmeism did not take place, however, because in Russia cubism tied itself to literary futurism. At the same exhibit of Mir iskusstva in 1915 where Altman’s Akhmatova portrait appeared, there was a portrait by Miturich of the modernist composer and later intimate friend of Akhmatova, Arthur Lourié. Punin wrote that Miturich’s brush strokes were “unique and error-free. Their loveliness lies in their distinctively feminine yet dry manner. I would not call Miturich a lyric poet, but there is a tender poetry nevertheless in his works.”76 One might have thought Punin was writing about Akhmatova’s poems.

There was a clear correlation between the ideas of the Punin group and the aesthetics of the acmeists. Just as the acmeists “overcame” symbolism, the young artists of Petersburg were “overcoming” impressionism. They were still tied by personal relations to the older members of Mir iskusstva and exhibited together with them, but they were attracted by more radical ideas. But the decisive move toward the more avant-garde happened a bit later, and for the time being, in Punin’s words, the young rebels were all “entwined in their specifically Petersburg, Mir iskusstva ‘graphic’ attitudes toward their material.”77

Altman told me that when he arrived in Petersburg from Paris, he encountered Akhmatova once again at the artistic cabaret The Stray Dog.78 Now a legendary establishment, which opened on New Year’s Eve 1912 and survived until spring 1915, it was a favorite hangout for the artistic elite of Petersburg in that period.

The role of The Stray Dog for Russian culture is comparable to that of the Left Bank cafés in Paris. But The Stray Dog was more elitist and refined than La Coupole, Les Deux Magots, or Closerie des Lilas. After all, they functioned as ordinary cafés, distinguished by their colorful clientele. To get into The Stray Dog, located deep in the cellar of a house on the corner of Italyanskaya Street and Mikhailovskaya Square that had once belonged to the Jesuits, guests had to sign a thick volume bound in pigskin before entering. This ritual in itself turned The Stray Dog, which had no waiters, into a private club. Serious lectures and futurist poems were read there, clever plays were performed, and avant-garde exhibitions mounted.

For example, when the actor Boris Pronin, the manager of The Stray Dog (also known as the “Hund-direktor”) announced “Caucasus Week,” the cellar featured talks describing trips to the Caucasus, an exhibit of Persian miniatures, and evenings of Oriental music and dance. In the same manner, the establishment had a “Marinetti Week,” with the participation of the famous visiting Italian futurist, and a “Paul Fort Week” for the Parisian poet who in 1912 was elected “Prince of Poets” by his contemporaries.