May 3, 1870
Alexander Benois was born in St. Petersburg. One of the key figures of the Silver Age, he was an artist, writer, stage designer, and the ideologist of the "World of Art" movement.
The hackneyed saying "there's no accounting for taste" is fundamentally true. What's important is that this personal, subjective, "utterly unprincipled" taste exists at all, that a person is irresistibly drawn to something, and that they possess the ability to enjoy what this taste leads them to.
At the gymnasium, he met future "World of Art" members Dmitry Filosofov and Konstantin Somov. He attended the Academy of Arts as an auditor but never graduated.
No matter how talented young people were, they, confined from early youth within the walls of the artistic barracks, were inevitably forced to always be re-interpreted in one, once and for all, way, turning into boring and deceitful academics.
In the late 1890s, he founded the "World of Art" association, which promoted new Russian and Western European art. The magazine of the same name was dedicated to the work of Russian Symbolists.
In 1903, Benois created a series of illustrations for Pushkin's poem "The Bronze Horseman." Publishers deemed them "decadent." The illustrations were acquired and published by Sergei Diaghilev. They caused a sensation—the public hailed the work as a masterpiece.
The coming Ham! I will not serve him, even at the moment of social democracy's triumph. In my anguish, I will cry out: "Long live Apollo!"
In 1907, he worked on the ballet "Le Pavillon d'Armide," staged by Michel Fokine. He created sumptuous costumes for the dancers, but the management forbade rehearsals in them. An incident occurred before the premiere: the actors didn't recognize each other in their costumes. The ballet was a success. It opened Diaghilev's first Ballets Russes in Paris.
Versailles is not an ode to royal power, but a poem of life, a poem of humanity in love with nature, dominating this very nature.
In 1922, he published the album "Versailles"—watercolors with his own text. He briefly headed the Hermitage Art Gallery. In 1926, he emigrated. In his book "My Memories," he described the atmosphere of the Silver Age's explorations. He died in 1960 in Paris.