St Petersburg полностью

The women painted by theMir iskusstva group were usually refined Petersburg ladies, whereas the women Kustodiev painted were of the merchant class—big-boned, calm, epitomizing spiritual and physical health. Russians use the expression “Kustodiev woman” the way “Rubenesque” is used in the West. But only at first glance do Kustodiev’s works appear to be the apotheosis of triumphant flesh. As a Russian critic noted, “In the voluptuousness of the full-bodied beauties you sense the artist’s irony, anxiety, and longing—the spirit of the Russian intellectual on the cusp of two centuries.”44

Kustodiev’s ambivalence toward his constant merchant wife heroine was forcefully expressed in his illustrations for Nikolai Leskov’s short story “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” done in 1922-1923, when Shostakovich was a frequent guest at the artist’s home. The tale of the provincial merchant’s wife, Katerina Izmailova, who became a murderer out of passionate love, was interpreted by Kustodiev in Dostoyevskian, sometimes grotesque manner. (It is not surprising that Dostoyevsky was the first to publish Leskov’s story in 1865 in his journal Epokha.) Kustodiev’s drawings first appeared in a book in 1930; and it was that edition that started the renewed popularity of Leskov’s “Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District,” which had been almost forgotten by then. Shostakovich read the book and, inspired by Leskov’s tale and Kustodiev’s work, decided to write an opera based on Leskov; it was to become one of the most famous operas of the twentieth century.

Kustodiev did not live to see either the notable edition or Shostakovich’s opera. He died in 1927 at the age of forty-nine, spending the last ten years of his life in a wheelchair as the result of a sarcoma of the spine. The artist, whose canvases were filled with healthy, strong people, could barely move and sometimes suffered intolerable pain. Surgery did not help. Doctors suggested that he seek better treatment in the West. He sought permission for a long time but got his passport too late.

The writer Yevgeny Zamyatin, whose play The Flea (also based on Leskov) was produced with sets by Kustodiev that thrilled Leningraders, compared the artist to the Old Russian saints, “with the only difference that his exploit was not in the name of saving his soul but in the name of art.”45 Usually skeptical and rational, Zamyatin was amazed and touched: “What creative willpower must one have to sit like that in a wheelchair, jaws clenched with pain, and paint all those pictures.”46 And Kustodiev, when appearing before his guests, including Shostakovich, was almost always animated, amiable, and elegantly dressed, wearing a tie and white collar. His blond hair was neatly brushed, his mustache and small beard carefully trimmed. He shaved off the beard when it began to show gray, explaining to his wife, “A lot of young people visit us; sometimes there are pretty girls, and the beard ages me.”

Kustodiev complained only rarely. “Legs—well, they’re a luxury! But when my arm starts to ache, that’s a shame.”47 And it was this invalid who painted a six-foot canvas of Fyodor Chaliapin, which was not only the best depiction of the bass but a symbol of the Russian artist. In it, Chaliapin in beaver hat and “boyar” fur coat stands on a hill with a Russian landscape receding into the distance. Kustodiev enlivened the landscape with a country fair. Chaliapin was perhaps the most national of Russian performing musicians: a giant of a man who could be equally supercharged on stage as tsar or peasant. He was a man of the people and understood them. And he was also their mouthpiece, the expression of their emotions, the embodiment of their potential. Kustodiev captured this relationship of the Russian musician with his country, explaining the Chaliapin mystique in these words: “Here you have the immeasurable power of a natural gift and a peasant’s clever mind, and a refined mastered culture. A totally unique phenomenon!”48

Kustodiev’s portrait vibrates and breathes. That symphony of colors made a lasting impression on Shostakovich, not least because he had watched the artist create it. A block and tackle attached to the ceiling of Kustodiev’s studio allowed the artist to move the canvas away and toward his wheelchair without assistance. So he worked as if he were painting a church ceiling while in constant pain. For Shostakovich, it was a lesson in professional courage that he recalled some forty years later, when he began losing strength in his right hand and began training the left so he could continue composing. Kustodiev’s portrait of Shostakovich hung in the composer’s apartment in a place of honor. Bogdanov-Berezovsky liked to say that whenever he thought of that picture, he recalled the lines a young poet, a mutual friend, dedicated to the composer:

I love the spring sky,

Right after a storm.

That is your eyes.49