The role and significance of scenography in theatrical art. The concept of scenography

Theatrical and decorative art (often also called scenography) - type fine arts related to artistic design theatrical performance, i.e. creation on theater stage the living environment in which the heroes of a dramatic or musical-dramatic work act, as well as the appearance of these heroes themselves. The main elements of theatrical and decorative art - scenery, lighting, props and props, costumes and makeup of actors - constitute a single artistic whole, expressing the meaning and character of the stage action, subordinated to the concept of the performance. Theatrical and decorative art is closely related to the development of the theater. Stage performances without elements of artistic design are an exception.

The basis of the artistic design of the performance is the scenery depicting the place and time of the action. The specific form of scenery (composition, color scheme, etc.) is determined not only by the content of the action, but also by its external conditions (more or less rapid changes in the scene of action, the peculiarities of perception of the scenery from auditorium, combining it with certain lighting, etc.).

The image embodied on stage is initially created by the artist in a sketch or model. The path from sketch to layout and stage design is associated with the search for the greatest expressiveness of the scenery and its artistic completeness. In the work of the best theater artists, a sketch is important not only as a working plan for stage design, but also as an independent work of art.

A. M. Vasnetsov. Set design sketch for N. A. Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera “The Legend of the Invisible City of Kitezh and the Maiden Fevronia.” 1906.

Theatrical decoration includes stage framing, a special curtain (or curtains), visual design of the stage space of the stage, wings, background, etc. The ways of depicting the living environment on stage are diverse. In the traditions of Russian realistic art, pictorial solutions predominate. In this case, written planar elements are usually combined with constructed ones (volumetric or semi-volumetric) into a holistic image, creating the illusion of a single spatial environment actions. But the basis of the decoration can also be figurative and expressive structures, projections, draperies, screens, etc., as well as a combination in various ways Images. The development of stage technology and the expansion of methods of depiction do not, however, negate the importance of painting as the basis of theatrical and decorative art in general. Selecting the image method in each special case determined by the specific content, genre and style of the work embodied on stage.

Costumes of the characters, created by the artist in unity with the scenery, characterize the social, national, and individual characteristics of the characters in the play. They correspond in color to the decorations (“fit” into big picture), and in a ballet performance they also have a special “dance” specificity (they must be comfortable and light and emphasize dance movements).

With the help of lighting, not only a clear visibility (visibility, “readability”) of the scenery is achieved, but also various seasons and days, illusions are depicted natural phenomena(snow, rain, etc.). Color lighting effects can create a feeling of a certain emotional atmosphere of stage action.

Dolls by S. V. Obraztsov from his variety numbers: “Tyapaya (“Lullaby” by M. P. Mussorgsky) and a doll’s head on a finger (“We sat with you...”).

Theatrical and decorative art changes with the development of artistic culture as a whole. It depends on the dominant artistic style, on the type of dramaturgy, on the state visual arts, as well as from the arrangement of theater premises and stages, from lighting technology and many other specific historical conditions.

Theatrical and decorative art reached a high level of development in Russia at the turn of the 19th-20th centuries, when outstanding artists came to the theater. They brought great pictorial culture to the design of performances, sought the artistic integrity of stage action, the organic participation of fine art in it, the unity of scenery, lighting and costumes with drama and music. These were artists who first worked at the Mamontov Opera (V. M. Vasnetsov, V. D. Polenov, M. A. Vrubel, etc.), then at the Moscow Opera Art Theater(V.A. Simov and others), in the imperial musical theaters (K.A. Korovin, A.Ya. Golovin), Diaghilev’s “Russian Seasons” (A.N. Benois, L.S. Bakst, N.K. Roerich and others). A powerful stimulus for the development of theatrical and decorative art was provided by the creative pursuits of advanced directing (K. S. Stanislavsky, V. I. Nemirovich-Danchenko, V. E. Meyerhold, choreographers M. M. Fokin and A. A. Gorsky).

E. Zmoiro. Model of the scenery for the performance of the Central children's theater“Skates” based on the play by S. V. Mikhalkov. 1976.

In Soviet theatrical and decorative art, the traditions of Russian theatrical and decorative classics were continued and developed. His innovation was due to new ideas, themes, images related to the development of drama and theater socialist realism. Outstanding masters of this art were the artists F. Fedorovsky, V. Dmitriev, P. Williams, N. Akimov, N. Shifrin, B. Volkov, Yu. Pimenov, V. Ryndin, S. Virsaladze, A. Vasiliev and many others. Along with all other types artistic creativity theatrical and decorative art (through connections with theater and stage action) reflected the entire diversity of life in our country, the history of our society.

Artists also participate in the creation of films, television plays, variety and circus performances. Spectacular arts are perceived by millions of spectators, and therefore the role of the artist here is very important.

End of work -

This topic belongs to the section:

Spatial plastic = visual – graphics, painting, sculpture

And types of art are historically established forms of creative activity with the ability artistic realization life.. types of art.. spatial plastic fine graphics painting sculpture..

If you need additional material on this topic, or you did not find what you were looking for, we recommend using the search in our database of works:

What will we do with the received material:

If this material was useful to you, you can save it to your page on social networks:

All topics in this section:

Define the concepts: choir, vocal ensemble, trio, duet, solo
-Choir (ancient Greek χορός - crowd) - a choral group, a singing group, a musical ensemble consisting of singers (choristers, choir artists); joint sound

I.S. Bach - life and creative path (genres, polyphony, secular and ecclesiastical principles)
In every music - Bach In the music of Bach there is something universal, universal, all-encompassing. As the poet Joseph Brodsky wrote, “in every music there is Bach, in each of us there is God.” Bach - revealed

History of the composition
The first part was composed during Bach's stay in Köthen, and the second - when Bach served in Leipzig. Both parts were widely circulated in handwritten form, but the collection was typographically

Meaning of the work
The title of the work suggests the use keyboard instrument(nowadays these works are usually played on the piano or harpsichord), the tuning of which allows the music to sound the same

Story
Construction began in 1163, under Louis VII of France. Historians disagree about who exactly laid the first stone in the foundation of the cathedral - Bishop Maurice de Sully or Pope Alexander III

Aesthetics of the High Renaissance in Italian fine art (Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael Santi, Michelangelo Buonarotti)
Rafael Santi, Michelangelo Buonarotti). The art of this era, with all the variety of particular forms, has the most important common feature

– the desire for a truthful reflection of reality.
Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo da Vinci, perhaps more than all other figures of the Renaissance, is suited to the concept of Homo universale. This extraordinary man knew everything and was able to do everything - everything that he knew and was able to do
Rafael Santi Among artistic treasures

The Uffizi Gallery in Florence contains a portrait of an unusually handsome young man in a black beret. This is clearly a self-portrait, judging by the way the gaze is directed - this is how they look when
Michelangelo Buonarotti

And the third mountain peak of the Renaissance is Michelangelo Buonarotti. His long life is the life of Hercules, a string of feats that he performed, mourning and suffering, as if not of his own free will, but forced
Painting of the Sistine Chapel

Ironically, the most completed of his works was not sculptural, but pictorial - painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Although Michelangelo reluctantly accepted this commission, he did not consider himself painting
V.A/. Mozart - life and creative path

Childhood years. Salzburg. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was born on January 27, 1756 in the city of Salzburg. Salzburg, located in the Alps, was at that time the capital of
Ideals in the sculpture of Ancient Greece. Myron “Disco-thrower”, Phidias “Athena the Virgin in the Parthenon”, Alexander “Aphrodite of Milo”, “Nice of Samo-Francia” is a perfect creation of ancient culture, in many ways still retaining the meaning of a norm and example. Modern ideas about Greek sculpture are incomplete, many

Synthetic arts and image. Types of Synthetic Arts
Synthetic arts are those types of artistic creativity that represent an organic fusion or a relatively free combination of different types of arts that form

Interior of Hagia Sophia. Kyiv. Palace of Versailles. Mirror gallery
The synthesis of arts taking place in the culture of the 19th-20th centuries was caused by the fact that visual techniques began to be used not only in painting and sculpture, but also in literature and music. These days it is widely

Theater and screen are two facets of visual imagery. Theaters of the Republic of Tatarstan
Theater (Greek - main meaning - a place for spectacles, then - spectacle, I look, I see) - a spectacular form of art, which is a synthesis of various arts - literature, music, choreography

History of cinema
Cinematography - (from the Greek movement, write, draw; that is, “recording movement”) branch human activity which involves creating moving images.

The history of cinema begins
Theaters of the Republic of Tatarstan

Almetyevsk Tatar State Drama Theater Address: Republic of Tatarstan, Almetyevsk, Lenin St., 37 Director: Ismagilova Farida Bagisovna Chief Director
Fine arts of acting

This is the art of creating by an actor, with the help of his own psychophysical apparatus, a living image that exists in time and space.
Originating in ritual performances, the art of acting

From opera to operetta
opera (Italian opera - business, work, work; lat. opera - works, products, works, plural from opus) - a genre of musical and dramatic art in which the content is embodied by musical means

Jacopo Peri
At the end of the 16th century, attempts to introduce monophonic singing (monody) into such works brought opera to the path on which its development quickly advanced. The authors of these attempts called their musical

Ballad opera
Human creative activity develops in two different directions, expressing, on the one hand, the desire to reflect in drawing, sculpture or color some objects and phenomena of the surrounding world

Frontal composition
The simplest type of frontal composition is a planar composition. A characteristic feature of a planar composition is the distribution of form elements in two directions in one plane

Volumetric composition
It is a form that has a relatively closed surface and is perceived from all sides. Volumetric composition8 always interacts with the environment. Wednesday may

Depth-spatial composition
It is made up of material elements, volumes, surfaces and space, as well as the intervals between them. This type of composition is used everywhere in architecture: from

The artist and artistic technologies: from pencil to computer. Arts relay. Cinema, television, video, computer, animation
A revolution in the cartoon world itself occurred in 1995, when Pixar's Toy Story appeared - the first full-length cartoon, made entirely on a computer. New technology

Epilogue. The future of animation
In the next decade, we will see a merger and a new division of two arts - cinema and 3D animation. This process it's already underway: blockbuster movies with superheroes, simple plots and a lot of special

Photography is an expansion of the visual possibilities of art. Camera, photograph, image. Choosing a location, subject and shooting angle
Each type of art has its own language and carries artistic information through its own system of signs. In photography, such pictorial signs are light, shadow and tone.

Light and shadow. Views from
Correct composition

So, an inexperienced person holds a video camera in his hands and films everything, rushing from one object to another, up and down, left and right. What is the result? You've probably had to at least once
Selecting a background, perspective

A photograph in which you can feel the depth of space immediately attracts attention. Such pictures look better and are more interesting to look at. Alternation of plans - foreground, middle and distance

Synthesis of arts, mixing of styles, genres, types of art, experiments with form, color, composition are becoming increasingly common.
3) Style trends appear - symbolism, modernism, avant-garde style movements - fauvism, expressionism, cubism, futurism, abstractionism, surrealism and so on. 4) Sa

A distinctive feature of the Renaissance is
***secular nature of culture and interest in man and his activities ***interest in ancient culture, it’s like its “rebirth” is taking place

He created allegorical images that were captivating in their sublimity and gave the world the ideal of female beauty
The nickname “Botticello” - “barrel” - was inherited from his older brother Giovanni.

Birth of Venus, 1482 Spring, 1477-1478 Uffizi Gallery, Flo
With his work, he contributed to the transition from Gothic to new art, glorifying the greatness of man and his world

energetic black and white modeling plastic physicality three-dimensionality of figures monumentalization and
Early medieval architecture

Instead of an inspired Gothic space - a rational one with visually clear boundaries.
Instead of the tension of Gothic broken lines - strict, in most cases rectangular Composition. Basic laws of composition The basic laws of composition were formulated by the famous

Soviet graphic artist
Kibrik E.A. in the article “Objective laws of composition in the fine arts.” (Journal "Questions of Philosophy", 196

Russian landscape artists
1) Man is inextricably linked with nature, he is part of it. And the enjoyment of nature, the desire to find in it consonance with one’s feelings, one’s ideals, has always been a source of creativity for writers The concept of musical genres Musical genre is a multi-valued concept that characterizes various genera and types

musical creativity
in connection with their origin, as well as the manner and conditions of their execution and perception. Concept

Primary and secondary musical genres
O.V. Sokolov proposed the principle of genre classification, combining the division of genres into artistic and applied and their division into musical (instrumental) and

Evolution of genres
The cavalry marches (fast, usually on g), counter, solemn, and mourning marches “branched off” from the military march. Another way of genre development is interaction, synthesis of already layers Main genres of European professional music

Nowadays, when deciding the artistic design of a play, one can talk more about scenography rather than about scenery. Throughout the history of the theatre, the scenery has characterized the location of the action being depicted. But since then, the director has often worked directly on the image of the performance, its emotional interpretation... In the new conditions, scenography has become necessary, which over time began to increasingly win the hearts of both the audience and the artists-creators of the performance.

Scenography is a type of artistic activity that is based on the design of a performance, performance, and the creation of a visual image that is perceived by spectators and participants as a single whole, existing in stage form, time and space.

Scenography is the science of artistic and technical means of creating and staging a performance. All artistic, decorative and technical means that are used in the implementation of a stage program or event are considered by scenography as elements that create an artistic form of performance.

In practical terms, scenography is the creation of a visual image of a performance by designing the venue with scenery, lighting, staging equipment, as well as by creating costumes for the actors in the spirit of the script. In fact, staging a performance and creating the right perception among spectators and participants depends on how organically the elements of the performance are selected in the process of scenography. The choice of image method in each individual case is determined by the specific content, genre and style of the work embodied on stage. The pads are fixed above the tablet on horizontal rods.

In the play “Aslă Arăm” the frame of the stage box was used, consisting of wings, arches, backdrop white, a decoration depicting a rural landscape, in this case the village outskirts, was attached to the backdrop. A large painting that served as the backdrop for the performance. It is hung at the back of the stage, stretching across its entire width. In the foreground of which you can see a river meandering in the lowland, hills, and in the background, on the horizon, a forest is depicted. The appearance of rural peace and space, the grandeur of rural nature is created. Birch trees are depicted on both sides. This decoration was chosen taking into account the combination of its color with the lighting in which this stage performance takes place, and is designed to ensure that the result is a picturesque setting of the play being performed, which not only does not harm the performance with its excessive simplicity or pretentiousness, but also contributes to strength and expressiveness spectator perception. There is a varied choice of ways to depict the living environment on stage.

The production of this play is dominated by scenic solutions. In this case, written planar scenery is usually combined with volumetric ones into a single complex, which allows one to depict on stage the illusion of a single spatial environment of action. The decoration is also based on figurative and expressive structures (a stove with a stove bench, a bench, a table and a chair) depicting the internal everyday living environment of the Baba and the Old Man’s hut, against the backdrop of a screen with a door and window opening, draped with curtains, surpans and other draperies, a second screen , depicting Smart Matryona’s house from the outside, a bench in front of the house, a picket fence, as well as a dummy apple tree on which real apples are suspended, which Matryona picks and eats during the action. The combination of various methods of depiction made it possible to most successfully solve the main problem - to fit both Matryona’s house and the old people’s house, in which actions take place in alternate sequence, into one stage space. . The development of stage technology and the expansion of methods of depiction do not, however, negate the importance of painting as the basis of theatrical and decorative art in general. Rugs cover a wooden floor that is not very attractive in appearance.

Costumes characters

Stage costume and why is it important both for the actor and for the production as a whole? Theater costume- this is a component of the actor’s stage image, these are external signs and characteristics of the portrayed character that help the actor’s transformation; a means of artistic influence on the viewer. It is wrong to think that a suit is limited to just clothes. This also includes makeup, hairstyle, shoes, accessories (umbrellas, scarves, scarves, briefcases, bags, hats, jewelry). Only in such a complex of things is the concept of a costume complete. For an actor, a costume is matter, a form, inspired by the meaning of the role.

The costume is able to express the psychological characteristics of the hero, i.e. betray the properties of his character (kindness, stinginess, arrogance, modesty, daring, panache, coquetry, etc.) or state of mind and mood. A person's character is always reflected in his appearance. How the suit is worn, what details are added to it, what combinations it is put in - all these are features that reveal the character of the owner. And the actor must remember this. An elegant lady in a normal state of mind cannot be careless in her suit. A responsible officer cannot afford not to fasten all the buttons on his uniform. On the other hand, it is precisely such deviations from the norm that will give out special emotional condition hero.

The costumes of the characters are also chosen in unity with the scenery, and characterize the social, national, and individual characteristics of the characters in the play.

Grandfather costume represents the clothes of a village man of the early 20s: an embroidered shirt, a shabby jacket, riding breeches, felt boots, and a hat with earflaps.

Grandmother costume- this is the everyday clothing of village Chuvash women, the usual Chuvash village cut dress, apron, everyday scarf, tied according to the village custom of Chuvash women, dark stockings, galoshes and hand-knitted woolen socks.

Stepanida's (neighbor) costume is a colorful dress, an embroidered dark apron suitable for all occasions, an equally unsightly scarf, dark stockings and rubber galoshes.

Matryona's costume emphasizes her beauty, hard work, and neatness. Despite the fact that she is constantly busy with work, Matryona is dressed in light, clean clothes with rich embroidery (dress and apron, a scarf thrown over her shoulders), which shows that she is also a needlewoman, leather boots, the scarf is tied back, like a girl.

The Soldier's costume is represented by a soldier's uniform - a tunic, an overcoat, riding breeches, leather boots and a belt.

The costumes of the folklore group "Surpan" are the folk costumes of our area - homespun dresses of the middle-class Chuvash - ulacha kĕpe, national headdresses surpan, hushpu, tukhya and masmak and national breast decorations.

Costume sketches are presented in Appendix No. 2

The content of the article

SCENOGRAPHY, a type of artistic creativity that deals with the design of a performance and the creation of its visual and plastic image that exists in stage time and space. In a performance, the art of scenography includes everything that surrounds the actor (scenery), everything he deals with - plays, acts (material attributes) and everything that is on his figure (costume, makeup, mask, other elements of transformation his appearance). At the same time, as expressive means, scenography can use: firstly, what is created by nature, secondly, objects and textures of everyday life or production, and thirdly, what is born as a result of the creative activity of the artist (from masks, costumes, physical props to painting, graphics, stage space, light, dynamics, etc.)

Prehistory – prescenography.

The origins of scenography are in pre-scenography actions of ritual and ceremonial pre-theater (both ancient, prehistoric, and folklore, preserved in their residual forms to this day). Already in pre-scenography, a “genetic code” appeared, the subsequent implementation of which determined the main stages of the historical development of the art of scenography from antiquity to the present day. In that " genetic code"contains all three main functions that scenography can perform in a performance: character, play, and designating the location of the action. Character - involves the inclusion of scenography in the stage action as an independently significant material, material, plastic, visual or some other (by means of embodiment) character - an equal partner of the performers, and often the main character. The acting function is expressed in the direct participation of scenography and its individual elements (costume, makeup, mask, material accessories) in the transformation of the actor’s appearance and in his performance. The function of designating the scene is to organize the environment in which the events of the play take place.

Character function was predominant at the stage of pre-scenography. At the center of ritual ritual actions was an object that embodied the image of a deity or some higher power: various figures (including ancient sculptures), all kinds of idols, totems, stuffed animals (Maslenitsa, Carnival, etc.), different types images (including the same wall paintings in ancient caves), trees and other plants (up to the modern New Year tree), bonfires and other types of fire, as the embodiment of the image of the sun.

At the same time, pre-scenography performed two other functions: organizing the scene and playing a game. The location of ritual actions and performances was of three types. The first type (generalized scene of action) is the most ancient, born of mythopoetic consciousness and carrying the semantic meaning of the universe (square - the sign of the Earth, circle - the Sun; different options for the vertical model of the cosmos: world tree, mountain, pillar, ladder; ritual ship, boat , boat; finally, a temple as an architectural image of the universe). The second type (specific place of action) is the environment surrounding a person’s life: natural, industrial, everyday: forest, clearing, hills, mountains, road, street, peasant yard, the house itself and its interior - the bright room. And the third type (pre-stage) was a hypostasis of the other two: any space, separated from the audience and becoming a place for play, could become a stage.

Game scenography – Antiquity, Middle Ages.

From this moment the theater itself begins, as an independent type of artistic creativity, and begins game scenography, as the historically first design system for his performances. At the same time, in the most ancient forms theatrical performances, especially in ancient and eastern (which remained closest to the ritual pre-theatre), scenographic characters continued to occupy a significant position, on the one hand, and generalized scenes of action, as images of the universe, on the other (for example, the orchestra and proscenium in ancient Greek tragedy). The share of game scenography increased as historical movement theater from mythopoetic to secular. The peak of this movement was the Italian commedia dell'arte and Shakespearean theater born of the Renaissance. It was here that the system of performance design, based on the play-action-manipulation of actors with elements of scenography, reached its culmination, after which for several centuries (up to the 20th century inclusive) it was replaced by another design system - decorative art, the main function of which was the creation of an image places of action.

Decorative art – Renaissance and Modern times.

Decorative art(whose elements existed earlier, for example, in the ancient theater and in the European medieval - simultaneous (simultaneously showing different places of action: from heaven to hell, located on the stage in a straight line frontally) decoration of square mysteries), as a special system for designing performances, was born in the Italian court theater of the late 15th–16th centuries, in the form of the so-called. decorative perspectives that depicted (similar to the paintings of Renaissance painters) the world around a person: the squares and cities of an ideal city or an ideal rural landscape. The author of one of the first such decorative perspectives was the great architect D. Bramante. The artists who created them were universal masters (architects, painters, and sculptors at the same time) - B. Peruzzi, Bastiano de Sangallo, B. Lanci, and finally S. Serlio, who in the treatise About the stage formulated three canonical types of perspective scenery (for tragedy, comedy and pastoral) and the main principle of their arrangement in relation to the actors: performers in the foreground, painted scenery in the background, as a pictorial background. The perfect embodiment of this Italian decoration system was the architectural masterpiece of A. Palladio - the Olimpico Theater in Vincenzo (1580–1585).

The subsequent centuries of the evolution of decorative art are closely connected, on the one hand, with the development of the main artistic styles of world culture, and on the other, with the intra-theater process of development and technical equipment of the stage space.

Thus, the Baroque style became decisive in the decorative art of the 17th century. Now it has become an environment that surrounds them on all sides and is created in the entire volume of the stage-box space. At the same time, the types of locations themselves have expanded significantly. The action was transferred to the underwater kingdoms and to the celestial spheres. Decorative paintings expressed the baroque idea of the infinity and boundlessness of the world, in which man is no longer the measure of all things (as was the case in the Renaissance), but only a small particle of this world. Another feature of the 17th century scenery. – their dynamism and variability: on stage (and on “earth”, and under “water”, and in “heaven”) many of the most fantastic, mythological metamorphoses, events, and transformations took place. Technically, instantaneous changes from one picture to another were first made with the help of telarii (trihedral rotating prisms). Then, backstage mechanisms and a whole system of theatrical machines were invented. Leading masters of decorative baroque of the 17th century. – B. Buontalenti, G. and A. Parigi, L. Furtenbach, I. Jones, L. Burnacini, G. Mauro, F. Santurini, C. Lotti, and finally G. Torelli, who implemented this Italian system of performance design in Paris, where at the same time another decorative style was emerging - classicism.

His canon was close to the canon of Renaissance perspectives: the scenery again became the background for the actors. She was, as a rule, united and irreplaceable. Instead of vertical baroque decorations directed towards the sky - horizontal ones again. The idea of the infinity of the world was opposed by the concept of a closed world, organized rationally, according to the laws of reason, harmoniously harmonious, strictly symmetrical, commensurate with man. Accordingly, the number of places of action was reduced (compared to Baroque). It again (like Serlio) came down to three main plots, which, however, now acquired a slightly different character - more and more interior.

Since the authors of classicist scenery were most often the same masters (Torelli, J. Buffequin, C. Vigarani, G. Beren), who at the same time, in other performances, were the authors of baroque scenery, there was a natural interpenetration of these two styles, resulting in the formation new style formation: baroque classicism, which then, at the beginning of the 18th century. moved into classicist baroque.

On this basis, the art of decorative baroque of the 18th century developed, which was most vividly represented throughout the century by outstanding Italian masters from the Galli Bibbiena family. The head of the family, Ferdinando, created on stage images of “spiritualized architecture” (the expression of A. Benois), the fantastic baroque compositions of which he deployed, however (unlike the baroque theater artists of the previous century) on the planes of a painted backdrop, wings or curtain. Ferdinando’s brother Francesco, his sons Alessandro, Antonio and especially Giuseppe (who reached the true heights of virtuosity and power in the compositions of the “triumphant baroque”), and, finally, his grandson Carlo worked in the same spirit. Other representatives of this direction of decorative art are F. Juvarra, P. Righini and G. Valeriani, who brought the style of “triumphant baroque” to the Russian court scene, where for two decades (40s and 50s of the 18th century) he decorated productions of the Italian opera seria.

Parallel to the decorative baroque in the art of stage performances of the 18th century. There were other stylistic trends: on the one hand, coming from the Rococo style, on the other, classicist. The latter were associated with the aesthetics of the Enlightenment, and their representatives G. Servandoni, G. Dumont, P. Brunetti and most of all P. di G. Gonzaga, an outstanding decorator already at the turn of the 19th century. and the author of a number of theoretical treatises written during the years of his work in Russia. Following in many ways the experience of Bibbien, these artists made significant changes, first of all, in the nature of decorative images: they painted, although idealized (in the spirit of classicism), but nevertheless, as if real motives, they strived (in the spirit of Enlightenment aesthetics) for verisimilitude and naturalness. This orientation of the artists anticipated - especially in the work of Gonzago - the principles of decoration of the romantic theater of the first half of the 19th century.

The leading position in decorative art was no longer occupied by Italian artists, and German, whose leader was K.F. Schinkel (one of the last major artists universal type: outstanding architect, skilled painter, sculptor, decorator); in other countries, prominent representatives of this trend were: in Poland - J. Smuglevich, in the Czech Republic, then in Vienna - J. Plaiser, in England - F. de Lauterburg, D.I. Richards, the Grieve family, D. Roberto, K. Stanfield; in France - Ch. Sissery. In Russia, the experience of German romantic scenery was realized by A. Roller, his students and followers, one of the most famous was K. Waltz, who was called “the magician and wizard of the stage.”

First characteristic quality romantic decoration - its dynamism (in this regard, it is a continuation of the baroque decoration of the 17th century at a new stage). One of the main objects of stage implementation was the state of nature, most often catastrophic. And when these terrible elements played out their stage “roles”, lyrical landscapes opened up before the audience, most often at night - with the moon peeking out from behind the disturbing ragged clouds; or rocky, mountainous; or river, lake, sea. At the same time, nature in all its manifestations was embodied by artists not by depicting it on the plane of a theatrical backdrop, but with the help of purely stage machinery, light, movement and various other techniques for “revitalizing” the entire three-dimensional volume of stage space and its transformation. Romantic decorators turned the stage into an open world, unrestricted by anything, capable of accommodating all the diversity of all possible places of action. In this regard, Shakespeare was a model for them; they relied on him in the struggle against the classicist canon of the unity of place and time.

In the second half of the 19th century. Romantic scenery evolves first to the recreation of real historical scenes, only romantically colored and poetically generalized. Then - to the so-called “archaeological naturalism” (which was embodied first in English productions of the 50s by Charles Kean), then in the Russian theater (works by M. Shishkov, M. Bocharov, partly by P. Isakov under the authoritative patronage of V. Stasov) and, finally, to the creation on stage of detailed decorative pictorial compositions on historical topics(productions of the Meiningen theater and performances by G. Ewing).

The next stage in the development of decorative art (directly following from the previous one, but based on completely different aesthetic principles) is naturalism. In contrast to the romantics, who, as a rule, turned to creating pictures of the distant past on stage, in the performances of naturalistic theater (A. Antoine - in France, O. Brahm - in Germany, D. Grain - in England, finally, K. Stanislavsky and artist V.Simov - in the first productions of the Moscow Art Theater) the setting was modern reality. On stage, a kind of “cut-out from life” was recreated, as a completely real setting for the existence of the hero of the play.

The next step in this direction was made in the productions of the Moscow Art Theater, primarily in Chekhov's, where Stanislavsky tried to psychologically “revive” a static “cut from life”, give it the quality of variability over time, depending on the state of nature at different times of the day and at the same time on the internal characters' experiences. The theater began to look for ways (mainly with the help of a light score) to create a stage “atmosphere” and a stage “mood,” new qualities in the design of performances that can be described as impressionistic. The influence of impressionism was translated somewhat differently into musical theater- in the sets and costumes of K. Korovin, who, in his words, sought to create picturesque “music for the eyes” on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, immerse the audience in the dynamic element of color, convey the sun, air, “color breathing” of the surrounding world.

Late 19th – early 20th century. a period in the development of the decorative art of world theater, when Russian masters took the leading position in it. Coming to the stage from the fine arts, they - first in Moscow, at the Mamontov Opera (V. Vasnetsov, V. Polenov, M. Vrubel, beginners Korovin and A. Golovin), then in St. Petersburg, where the World of Art society was created ( A. Benois, M. Dobuzhinsky, N. Roerich, L. Bakst, etc.) – enriched the theater with the highest visual entertainment, and in their direction they were neo-romantics, for whom main value was the artistic heritage of past centuries. At the same time, the masters of the “World of Art” circle began scenic quests associated with the revival - on the basis of modern plastic and theatrical culture(especially Symbolism and Art Nouveau styles) - pre-decorative ways of designing performances: on the one hand, gaming (ballet costumes by L. Bakst, “dancing” with the actors, and in the dramatic experiments of Vs. Meyerhold - designed by N. Sapunov, S. Sudeikin, K. Evseev, Y. Bondi accessories for the game), on the other - character (picturesque panels by N. Sapunov and curtains by A. Golovin staged by the same Vs. Meyerhold, expressing the theme of the performance).

This experience of Malevich became a project facing the future. The stage ideas announced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were also of a design nature. the Swiss A. Appiah and the Englishman G. Craig, because although both of them managed to partially realize these ideas on stage, nevertheless, they received their true and multifaceted development in the subsequent theatrical quests of artists of the 20th century. The essence of these discoveries outstanding masters was that they turned decorative art towards the creation of images of a generalized stage environment in the stage space. For Appiah, this is the world at the earliest mythopoetic stage of its existence, when it was just beginning to emerge from chaos and acquire some harmonious universal arch-architectural forms, built as monumental platforms and pedestals for the rhythmic movement along them - in an open luminous space - of characters in musical dramas R. Wagner. In Craig, on the contrary, these are heavy monoliths of cubes and parallelepipeds, powerful walls, towers, pylons, pillars surrounding the small figure of a man, opposing and threatening him, rising to the full height of the stage space and even higher, beyond the visibility of the audience. And if Appiah created an open primordial stage environment, then Craig, on the contrary, created a tightly closed, hopeless environment in which they had to play out bloody stories Shakespearean tragedies.

Effective scenography is modern times.

The first half of the 20th century. world scenography developed under the strong influence of modern avant-garde artistic directions(expressionism, cubo-futurism, constructivism, etc.), which stimulated, on the one hand, the development the latest forms the creation of specific places of action and the revival (following Appiah and Craig) of the most ancient, generalized ones, and on the other hand, the activation and even coming to the fore of other functions of scenography: gaming and character.

Back in the mid-1900s, artists N. Sapunov and E. Munch composed dramas by G. Ibsen for productions by Vs. Meyerhold and M. Reinhardt ( Hedda Gabler And Ghost) the first scenery, which, while remaining an image of interior scenes of action, at the same time became the embodiment emotional world the main characters of these dramas. Then experiments in this direction were continued by N. Ulyanov and V. Egorov in the symbolist performances of K. Stanislavsky ( Drama of life And Human life). The pinnacle of this search was M. Dobuzhinsky’s decorations for the stage play Nikolay Stavrogin at the Moscow Art Theater, which are considered a harbinger of psychological decoration, which, in turn, to a large extent absorbed the experience of the decorative art of expressionist theater. The essence of this direction was that the rooms, streets, city, landscapes depicted on stage appeared expressively hyperbolic, often reduced to a symbolic sign, subject to all sorts of distortions of their real appearance, and these distortions conveyed the hero’s state of mind, most often overdramatized, on the verge of tragic grotesque. The first to create such decorations were German artists (L. Siewert, Z. Klein, F. Scheffler, E. Barlach), then they were followed by set designers from the Czech Republic (W. Hoffmann), Poland (V. Drabik), Scandinavia, and especially Russia. Here, a number of experiments of this kind were carried out in the 1910s by Yu. Annenkov, and in the 1920s by artists of the Jewish theater (M. Chagall, N. Altman, I. Rabinovich, R. Falk), and in Petrograd-Leningrad - M. Levin and V. Dmitriev, who in the 1930s–1940s became a leading master of psychological decoration ( Anna Kar enina, Three sisters, The last victim at the Moscow Art Theater).

At the same time, decorative art also mastered the types of specific locations. This is, firstly, the “environment” (a common space for both actors and spectators, not separated by any ramp, sometimes completely real, such as a factory floor in Gas masks at S. Eisenstein, or organized by the art of artists A. Roller - for productions by M. Reinhardt in the Berlin circus, London Olympic Hall, in the Salzburg church, etc., and by J. Stoffer and B. Knoblock - for performances by N. Okhlopkova at the Moscow Realistic Theater); in the second half of the 20th century. design of the theater space as " environment"became the main principle of the work of the architect E. Guravsky in the "poor theater" of E. Grotovsky, and then in the most different options(including natural, outdoor, industrial - factory floors, train stations, etc.) has become widely used in all countries. Secondly, there was a single installation built on the stage, depicting the “house-dwelling” of the play’s heroes with its different rooms, which were shown simultaneously (thus reminiscent of the simultaneous decoration of square medieval mysteries). Thirdly, the decorative paintings, on the contrary, dynamically replaced each other with the help of the rotation of the stage circle or the movement of the truck platforms. Finally, throughout almost the entire 20th century. The World of Art tradition of stylization and retrospectivism remained viable and very fruitful - the recreation on stage of the cultural environment of past historical eras and artistic cultures- as specific and real habitats of the heroes of a particular play. (Senior world artists continued to work in this spirit - already outside Russia, and in Moscow and Leningrad - such different masters as F. Fedorovsky, P. Williams, V. Khodasevich, etc. Among foreign artists, the English H. Stevenson followed this direction , R. Whistler, J. Boyce, S. Messel, Motley, J. Piper; Poles V. Dashevsky, T. Roszkowska, J. Kosinsky, O. Akser, K. Frych;

In the process of reviving the most ancient, generalized places of action, following Appia’s projects, the most significant contribution was made by the artists of the Moscow Chamber Theater: A. Exter, A. Vesnin, G. Yakulov, brothers V. and G. Stenberg, V. Ryndin. They embodied A. Tairov’s idea that the main element of design is the plasticity of the stage platform, which, according to the director, is “that flexible and obedient keyboard with the help of which he (the actor - V.B.) could most fully reveal your creative will." The performances of this theater presented generalized images that embodied the quintessence of the historical era and its artistic style: Antiquity ( Famira Kifared And Phaedra) and Ancient Judea ( Salome), Gothic Middle Ages (Annunciation And Holy I Joanna) and Italian Baroque ( Princess Brambilla), Russian 19th century. ( Storm) and modern urbanism ( Human, which was Thursday). Other artists of the Russian theater followed this same direction in the 1920s (K. Malevich, A. Lavinsky and V. Khrakovsky, N. Altman - when they created “the whole universe” on stage, the entire globe as a scene of action Mystery-Buff, or I. Rabinovich, when he composed “all of Hellas” in the production Lysistrata), as well as artists in other European countries (German expressionist E. Pirkhan in performances directed by L. Jessner or H. Heckroth in a series of productions of G. Handel’s operas in the 1920s) and in America (the famous project of the architect N. Bel-Geddes for stage version Divine Comedy).

The initiative in the process of activating play and character functions also belonged to the artists of the Russian theater (in the 1920s, as in the 1910s, they continued to occupy a leading position in world scenography). A whole series of performances were created that used rethought principles of the game design of commedia dell'arte and Italian carnival culture (I. Nivinsky in To Princess Turandot, G. Yakulov in To Princess Brambilla, V. Dmitriev in Pulcinella), Jewish folk performance Purimspiel(I. Rabinovich in Sorceress), Russian popular print (B. Kustodiev in Lefty, V. Dmitriev in A story about a Fox, a Rooster, a Cat and a Ram), finally, circus performances, as the oldest and most stable tradition of play scenography (Yu. Annenkov in The first distiller, V. Khodasevich in circus comedies staged by S. Radlov, G. Kozintsev in Marriage S. Eisenstein in Sage). In the 1930s, this series was continued by the works of A. Tyshler at the Gypsy theater "Romen", and on the other hand, productions by N. Okhlopkov designed by B. G. Knoblok, V. Gitsevich, V. Koretsky and, above all, Aristocrats. The visual image of all these performances was built on the varied performances of the actors with costumes, material accessories and stage space, which were designed by artists in various styles: from world-artistic to cubo-futuristic. Theatrical constructivism also appeared as one of the variants of this kind of scenography in his first and main work - the production Generous cuckold Vs. Meyerhold and L. Popova, where a single constructivist installation became an “apparatus for playing.” At the same time, in this performance (as in other productions by Meyerhold), the play scenography acquired the modern quality of functional scenography, each element of which is determined by the expedient need for it for the stage action. Having been developed and rethought in the German political theater of E. Piscator, and then in the epic theater of B. Brecht, finally, in the Czech Theatregraph - the light theater of E. Burian - M. Kourzhil, the principle of functional scenography became one of the main principles of the work of artists in the second theater half of the 20th century, where it began to be understood broadly and, in a certain sense, universally: as the design of stage action equally in all three ways inherent in the “genetic code” - gaming, character and organization of the stage environment. A new system has emerged - effective scenography, which took on the functions of both historically previous systems (game and decoration).

Among the great variety of experiments of the second half of the 20th century. (French researcher D. Bablé described this process as kaleidoscopic), carried out in theaters different countries, who used and newest discoveries the post-war wave of the plastic avant-garde, and all sorts of advances in engineering and technology (especially in the field of stage lighting and kinetics), two most significant trends can be identified. The first is characterized by the mastery of a new meaningful level by scenography, when the images created by the artist began to visibly embody in the performance the main themes and motives of the play: fundamental circumstances dramatic conflict forces opposing the hero, his inner spiritual world etc. In this new capacity, scenography became the most important and sometimes the defining character of the performance. This was the case in a number of performances by D. Borovsky, D. Leader, E. Kochergin, S. Barkhin, I. Blumbergs, A. Freibergs, G. Guniya and other artists of the Soviet theater of the late 1960s - the first half of the 1970s, when this trend has reached its culmination. And then a trend of the opposite nature came to the fore, which manifested itself in the works of masters primarily of Western theater and took a leading position in the theater of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The direction born of this trend (its most prominent representatives are J. Svoboda, V. Minks, A. Mantei, E. Vonder, J. Bari, R. Koltai) can be designated by the phrase stage design, taking into account that the same phrase in English-language literature generally defines all types of performance design - decorative, game, and character). The main task of the artist here is to design the space for the stage action and provide material, material and light for every moment of this action. At the same time, in its initial state, space can often look completely neutral in relation to the play and the style of its author, and not contain any real signs of the time and place of the events taking place in it. All the realities of the stage action, its place and time appear before the viewer only during the performance, when its artistic image is born, as if from “nothing”.

If we try to present the picture of modern world scenography in its entirety, then it contains not only these two trends - it consists of an incomprehensible variety of the most heterogeneous individual artistic solutions. Each master works in his own way and creates a very different design of stage action - depending on the nature of the dramatic or musical work and on its director’s interpretation, which is methodological basis effective scenography systems.

Victor Berezkin

Literature:

Paul. Die Theaterdecoration des Klassizismus. Berlin, 1925
Paul. Die Theaterdecoration des Barock. Berlin, 1925
Mariani Valerio. Storia della Scenografia Italiana. Firenze, 1930
Ricci Corrado. La scenografia Italiana. Milano, 1939
Janos. Baroque and Romantic Stage Design. New York, 1950
F.Ya.Syrkina. Russian theatrical and decorative art of the 2nd half of the 19th century. M., 1956
Denis. Eathetique generale du decou de theater de 1870 a 1914. Paris, 1963
Zenobiusz. Kierunki scenografii wspolezesnej. Warsaw, 1970
M. Zaklady teoreticke scenografie.1.dil.Uvodni uvahy. Praha, 1970
M.N. Pozharskaya. Russian theatrical and decorative art of the late 19th – early 20th centuries. M., 1970
S. A Short History of Scene Design in Great Britain. Oxford, 1973
M.V. Davydova. Essays on the history of Russian theatrical and decorative art of the 18th – early 20th centuries. M., 1974
Denis. Les Revolutions Scenques du XX siècle. Paris, 1975
F.Ya.Syrkina, E.M.Kostina. Russian theatrical and decorative art. M., 1978
Ptackova Vera. Ceska scenografie XX stoleti. Prague, 1982
Strzelecki Zenobiusz. Wspolczesna scenografie polska. Warsaw, 1983
R.I.Vlasova. Russian theatrical and decorative art of the early twentieth century. The legacy of St. Petersburg masters. L., 1984
Die Maler und das Theater in 20. Jahrhundert. Frankfurt, 1986
Berezkin V.I. The art of scenography of the world theater. From the origins to the middle of the twentieth century. M., 1997
Berezkin V.I. The art of scenography of the world theater. Second half of the twentieth century. M., 2001
Berezkin V.I. The art of scenography of the world theater. Masters. M., 2002

Scenography is scenery, costumes, makeup, lighting - everything that the production designer sets, that is, the spatial definition of the environment. Scenography is also the plastic capabilities of the cast, without which the spatial composition of a theatrical work is impossible (the actor is a module of this space, he sets and determines it; even if the actor is in this moment not on stage, the viewer still knows what he should be like in this environment). In addition, scenography represents what the director builds into a mise-en-scène drawing: these are the technical capabilities of the stage and the architectural design of the space. In theatre, as in no other form of art, technology and the technical capabilities of the stage play an important role, which must correspond to the dynamics of the human body. The role of the architectural certainty of the theater building is also important, primarily the topography of the stage, interior and exterior data. The director plays a key role in creating the spatial solution of the performance. It determines the main objectives of the stage work and sets the parameters of spatial certainty. And if a theater artist was always concerned mainly with the issues of revealing the content of the work through decoration, then the director - the scenography of the performance in its full coverage of the entire set of spatial solutions. And this is understandable, since the main burden of the visual significance of the theatrical image is borne by the actor through the creation of the mise-en-scene drawing of the performance. It is mise-en-scene that is the main professional task of the director. But it should be noted that sometimes the spatial solution of the performance proposed by the artist, or a certain technical technique, determines the entire solution of the stage work. And the main thing is that all these professionally defined moments (such as mise-en-scene, artistic solution of space and technical certainty) are so closely intertwined that the role of each of them is difficult to define. Scenography includes the syncretism of theatrical art, as a result of which it is possible to synthesize spatial forms of creativity. It develops through the use of the entire range of material spatial views art based on the laws of visual aesthetic perception. At the same time, scenographic imagery is built and is largely determined by the achievements and level of development of individual spatial arts. The development of “simple” forms of art, in which a certain type of spatial type of material dominates, is a kind of “laboratory experiment” for scenography, as a result of which one of its facets is tested. That's why theater artists and directors in their searches often use techniques from spatial arts: painting, graphics, architecture, etc.

When creating the scenery for the play “All Boys Are Fools!” or And then one day!” The theme and idea of the production material were taken into account. When you saw the set design, you could immediately read the end-to-end action of the performance: The backstage of the stage was decorated with multi-colored balls, shaped like cartoon characters. Two screens were placed on the proscenium, with the help of which the technical group changed the scene of action, throwing pre-prepared templates. On the backdrop there was a canvas in the form of a fence made of pencils with the inscription “All the little ones are fools!

The content of the article

Prehistory – prescenography.

The origins of scenography are in pre-scenography actions of ritual and ceremonial pre-theater (both ancient, prehistoric, and folklore, preserved in their residual forms to this day). Already in pre-scenography, a “genetic code” appeared, the subsequent implementation of which determined the main stages of the historical development of the art of scenography from antiquity to the present day. This “genetic code” contains all three main functions that scenography can perform in a performance: character, play, and designating the location of the action. Character - involves the inclusion of scenography in the stage action as an independently significant material, material, plastic, visual or some other (by means of embodiment) character - an equal partner of the performers, and often the main character. The acting function is expressed in the direct participation of scenography and its individual elements (costume, makeup, mask, material accessories) in the transformation of the actor’s appearance and in his performance. The function of designating the scene is to organize the environment in which the events of the play take place.

Character function was predominant at the stage of pre-scenography. At the center of ritual ritual actions there was an object that embodied the image of a deity or some higher power: various figures (including ancient sculptures), all kinds of idols, totems, stuffed animals (Maslenitsa, Carnival, etc.), various types of images (including the same wall drawings in ancient caves), trees and other plants (up to the modern New Year tree), bonfires and other types of fire, as the embodiment of the image of the sun.

Game scenography – Antiquity, Middle Ages.

From this moment the theater itself begins, as an independent type of artistic creativity, and begins game scenography, as the historically first design system for his performances. At the same time, in the most ancient forms of theatrical performances, especially in ancient and eastern ones (which remained closest to the ritualistic pre-theater), scenographic characters continued to occupy a significant position, on the one hand, and, on the other, generalized scenes of action, as images of the universe (for example, orchestra and proscenium in ancient Greek tragedy). The increase in the share of play scenography occurred as the historical movement of theater from mythopoetic to secular. The peak of this movement was the Italian commedia dell'arte and Shakespearean theater born of the Renaissance. It was here that the system of performance design, based on the play-action-manipulation of actors with elements of scenography, reached its culmination, after which for several centuries (up to the 20th century inclusive) it was replaced by another design system - decorative art, the main function of which was the creation of an image places of action.

Decorative art – Renaissance and Modern times.

The leading position in decorative art was no longer occupied by Italian artists, but by German ones, whose leader was K.F. Schinkel (one of the last major artists of the universal type: an outstanding architect, a skilled painter, sculptor, decorator); in other countries, prominent representatives of this trend were: in Poland - J. Smuglevich, in the Czech Republic, then in Vienna - J. Plaiser, in England - F. de Lauterburg, D.I. Richards, the Grieve family, D. Roberto, K. Stanfield; in France - Ch. Sissery. In Russia, the experience of German romantic scenery was realized by A. Roller, his students and followers, one of the most famous was K. Waltz, who was called “the magician and wizard of the stage.”

The first characteristic quality of romantic decoration is its dynamism (in this regard, it is a continuation of the baroque decoration of the 17th century at a new stage). One of the main objects of stage implementation was the state of nature, most often catastrophic. And when these terrible elements played out their stage “roles”, lyrical landscapes opened up before the audience, most often at night - with the moon peeking out from behind the disturbing ragged clouds; or rocky, mountainous; or river, lake, sea. At the same time, nature in all its manifestations was embodied by artists not by depicting it on the plane of a theatrical backdrop, but with the help of purely stage machinery, light, movement and various other techniques for “revitalizing” the entire three-dimensional volume of stage space and its transformation. Romantic decorators turned the stage into an open world, unrestricted by anything, capable of accommodating all the diversity of all possible places of action. In this regard, Shakespeare was a model for them; they relied on him in the struggle against the classicist canon of the unity of place and time.

In the second half of the 19th century. Romantic scenery evolves first to the recreation of real historical scenes, only romantically colored and poetically generalized. Then - to the so-called “archaeological naturalism” (which was embodied first in English productions of the 50s by Charles Kean), then in the Russian theater (works by M. Shishkov, M. Bocharov, partly by P. Isakov under the authoritative patronage of V. Stasov) and, finally, to the creation on stage of extensive decorative painting compositions on historical themes (productions of the Meiningen theater and performances by G. Iwing).

The next step in this direction was made in the productions of the Moscow Art Theater, primarily in Chekhov's, where Stanislavsky tried to psychologically “revive” a static “cut from life”, give it the quality of variability over time, depending on the state of nature at different times of the day and at the same time on the internal characters' experiences. The theater began to look for ways (mainly with the help of a light score) to create a stage “atmosphere” and a stage “mood,” new qualities in the design of performances that can be described as impressionistic. The influence of impressionism was translated into a somewhat different way in musical theater - in the scenery and costumes of K. Korovin, who, in his words, sought to create picturesque “music for the eyes” on the stage of the Bolshoi Theater, immerse the audience in the dynamic element of color, convey the sun, air, “color breathing » the surrounding world.

Late 19th – early 20th century. a period in the development of the decorative art of world theater, when Russian masters took the leading position in it. Coming to the stage from the fine arts, they - first in Moscow, at the Mamontov Opera (V. Vasnetsov, V. Polenov, M. Vrubel, beginners Korovin and A. Golovin), then in St. Petersburg, where the World of Art society was created ( A. Benois, M. Dobuzhinsky, N. Roerich, L. Bakst, etc.) – enriched the theater with the highest visual entertainment, and in their direction they were neo-romantics, for whom the main value was the artistic heritage of past centuries. At the same time, the masters of the “World of Art” circle began scenic quests related to the revival - on the basis of modern plastic and theatrical culture (especially the Symbolism and Art Nouveau styles) - of pre-decorative methods of designing performances: on the one hand, gaming (ballet costumes by L. Bakst, “ dancing" together with the actors, and in the dramatic experiments of Vs. Meyerhold - accessories for the game were decorated by N. Sapunov, S. Sudeikin, K. Evseev, Y. Bondi), on the other hand, character-based (picturesque panels by N. Sapunov and curtains by A. Golovin in the productions of the same Vs. Meyerhold, expressing the theme of the performance).

This experience of Malevich became a project facing the future. The stage ideas announced at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries were also of a design nature. the Swiss A. Appiah and the Englishman G. Craig, because although both of them managed to partially realize these ideas on stage, nevertheless, they received their true and multifaceted development in the subsequent theatrical quests of artists of the 20th century. The essence of the discoveries of these outstanding masters was that they turned decorative art towards the creation of images of a generalized stage environment in the stage space. For Appiah, this is the world at the earliest mythopoetic stage of its existence, when it was just beginning to emerge from chaos and acquire some harmonious universal arch-architectural forms, built as monumental platforms and pedestals for the rhythmic movement along them - in an open luminous space - of characters in musical dramas R. Wagner. In Craig, on the contrary, these are heavy monoliths of cubes and parallelepipeds, powerful walls, towers, pylons, pillars surrounding the small figure of a man, opposing and threatening him, rising to the full height of the stage space and even higher, beyond the visibility of the audience. And if Appiah created an open, primordial stage environment, then Craig, on the contrary, created a tightly closed, hopeless environment in which the bloody stories of Shakespearean tragedies were to be played out.

Effective scenography is modern times.

The first half of the 20th century. world scenography developed under the strong influence of modern avant-garde artistic movements (expressionism, cubo-futurism, constructivism, etc.), which stimulated, on the one hand, the development of the latest forms of creating specific places of action and the revival (following Appia and Craig) of the most ancient, generalized, and on the other hand, the activation and even coming to the fore of other functions of scenography: gaming and character.

Back in the mid-1900s, artists N. Sapunov and E. Munch composed dramas by G. Ibsen for productions by Vs. Meyerhold and M. Reinhardt ( Hedda Gabler And Ghost) the first scenery, which, while remaining an image of interior scenes of action, at the same time became the embodiment of the emotional world of the main characters of these dramas. Then experiments in this direction were continued by N. Ulyanov and V. Egorov in the symbolist performances of K. Stanislavsky ( Drama of life And Human life). The pinnacle of this search was M. Dobuzhinsky’s decorations for the stage play Nikolay Stavrogin at the Moscow Art Theater, which are considered a harbinger of psychological decoration, which, in turn, to a large extent absorbed the experience of the decorative art of expressionist theater. The essence of this direction was that the rooms, streets, city, landscapes depicted on stage appeared expressively hyperbolic, often reduced to a symbolic sign, subject to all sorts of distortions of their real appearance, and these distortions conveyed the hero’s state of mind, most often overdramatized, on the verge of tragic grotesque. The first to create such decorations were German artists (L. Siewert, Z. Klein, F. Scheffler, E. Barlach), then they were followed by set designers from the Czech Republic (W. Hoffmann), Poland (V. Drabik), Scandinavia, and especially Russia. Here, a number of experiments of this kind were carried out in the 1910s by Yu. Annenkov, and in the 1920s by artists of the Jewish theater (M. Chagall, N. Altman, I. Rabinovich, R. Falk), and in Petrograd-Leningrad - M. Levin and V. Dmitriev, who in the 1930s–1940s became a leading master of psychological decoration ( Anna Kar enina, Three sisters, The last victim at the Moscow Art Theater).

At the same time, decorative art also mastered the types of specific locations. This is, firstly, the “environment” (a common space for both actors and spectators, not separated by any ramp, sometimes completely real, such as a factory floor in Gas masks at S. Eisenstein, or organized by the art of artists A. Roller - for productions by M. Reinhardt in the Berlin circus, London Olympic Hall, in the Salzburg church, etc., and by J. Stoffer and B. Knoblock - for performances by N. Okhlopkova at the Moscow Realistic Theater); in the second half of the 20th century. the design of the theatrical space as an “environment” became the main principle of the work of the architect E. Guravsky in the “poor theater” of E. Grotovsky, and then in a variety of options (including natural, natural, street, industrial - factory workshops, train stations and etc.) has become widely used in all countries. Secondly, there was a single installation built on the stage, depicting the “house-dwelling” of the play’s heroes with its different rooms, which were shown simultaneously (thus reminiscent of the simultaneous decoration of square medieval mysteries). Thirdly, the decorative paintings, on the contrary, dynamically replaced each other with the help of the rotation of the stage circle or the movement of the truck platforms. Finally, throughout almost the entire 20th century. The World of Art tradition of stylization and retrospectiveism remained viable and very fruitful - the recreation on stage of the cultural environment of past historical eras and artistic cultures - as specific and real habitats of the heroes of a particular play. (Senior world artists continued to work in this spirit - already outside Russia, and in Moscow and Leningrad - such different masters as F. Fedorovsky, P. Williams, V. Khodasevich, etc. Among foreign artists, the English H. Stevenson followed this direction , R. Whistler, J. Boyce, S. Messel, Motley, J. Piper; Poles V. Dashevsky, T. Roszkowska, J. Kosinsky, O. Akser, K. Frych;

In the process of reviving ancient, generalized scenes of action following Appia’s projects, the most significant contribution was made by the artists of the Moscow Chamber Theater: A. Exter, A. Vesnin, G. Yakulov, brothers V. and G. Stenberg, V. Ryndin. They embodied A. Tairov’s idea that the main element of design is the plasticity of the stage platform, which, according to the director, is “that flexible and obedient keyboard with the help of which he (the actor - V.B.) could most fully reveal your creative will." The performances of this theater presented generalized images that embodied the quintessence of the historical era and its artistic style: Antiquity ( Famira Kifared And Phaedra) and Ancient Judea ( Salome), Gothic Middle Ages ( Annunciation And Holy I Joanna) and Italian Baroque ( Princess Brambilla), Russian 19th century. ( Storm) and modern urbanism ( Human, which was Thursday). Other artists of the Russian theater followed this same direction in the 1920s (K. Malevich, A. Lavinsky and V. Khrakovsky, N. Altman - when they created “the whole universe” on stage, the entire globe as a scene of action Mystery-Buff, or I. Rabinovich, when he composed “all of Hellas” in the production Lysistrata), as well as artists in other European countries (German expressionist E. Pirkhan in performances directed by L. Jessner or H. Heckroth in a series of productions of G. Handel’s operas in the 1920s) and in America (the famous project of the architect N. Bel-Geddes for stage version Divine Comedy).

Among the great variety of experiments of the second half of the 20th century. (French researcher D. Bablé described this process as kaleidoscopic), carried out in theaters of different countries, using the latest discoveries of the post-war wave of the plastic avant-garde, and all kinds of achievements in technology (especially in the field of stage lighting and kinetics), two most significant trends can be identified . The first is characterized by the development of a new meaningful level by scenography, when the images created by the artist began to visibly embody in the performance the main themes and motives of the play: the root circumstances of the dramatic conflict, the forces opposing the hero, his inner spiritual world, etc. In this new capacity, scenography became the most important and sometimes the defining character of the performance. This was the case in a number of performances by D. Borovsky, D. Leader, E. Kochergin, S. Barkhin, I. Blumbergs, A. Freibergs, G. Guniya and other artists of the Soviet theater of the late 1960s - the first half of the 1970s, when this trend has reached its culmination. And then a trend of the opposite nature came to the fore, which manifested itself in the works of masters primarily of Western theater and took a leading position in the theater of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. The direction born of this trend (its most prominent representatives are J. Svoboda, V. Minks, A. Mantei, E. Vonder, J. Bari, R. Koltai) can be designated by the phrase stage design, taking into account that the same phrase in English-language literature generally defines all types of performance design - decorative, game, and character). The main task of the artist here is to design the space for the stage action and provide material, material and light for every moment of this action. At the same time, in its initial state, space can often look completely neutral in relation to the play and the style of its author, and not contain any real signs of the time and place of the events taking place in it. All the realities of the stage action, its place and time appear before the viewer only during the performance, when its artistic image is born, as if from “nothing”.

If we try to present the picture of modern world scenography in its entirety, then it contains not only these two trends - it consists of an incomprehensible variety of the most heterogeneous individual artistic solutions. Each master works in his own way and creates a very different design of stage action - depending on the nature of the dramatic or musical work and on its director's reading, which is the methodological basis of the system of effective scenography.

Victor Berezkin

Literature: