Studio: international art (60.1914)

Leon Bakst's Designs for Scenery and Costume

the patent medicine—“ My dear, it must be good,
the advertisements speak so well of it:”-—and
provided that the critics supply him with a few
portable sententice. on the matter in hand he
has been content to like things not so much
for what they are as for the variety of terms in
which they can be described. In the case of work
so unavoidable as that of Bakst it is the critic’s
function to drape the obvious, to explain away
enjoyment that might seem too indiscreet or too
direct, and so to arrange things that respectability
may safely become a little wild, and audacity
remain still fairly respectable.

But to Bakst himself his work presents itself in
a much simpler light. Art, as he says, is a play-
thing, and an artist’s work will be good only when
it has been great fun doing it. Here is the real

“fantaisie sur le costume moderne,

ATALANTE”

BY LtON BAKST

“ LIKENION (DAPHNIS AND CHLOE) ”

BY LfiON BAKST

secret of his appeal. Grant him what-
ever fine and far-fetched qualities you
will—and there is plenty enough to his
credit—these designs of his charm be-
cause, behind all the intervening pro-
cesses of knowledge and calculation,
they reveal the enjoyment of the child,
exultant in the possession of paint-box
and brushes, greatly daring to draw
monsters, or princesses, or cities of an
enchanted world.

That they should thus keep the fresh-
ness and sparkle of spontaneity is the
more remarkable when one considers the
amount of solid learning that has gone
to the designing of such a series of
costumes as enrich the ballets of
Scheherazade, Le Dieu Bleu, Helene

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(By permission of Paquin)