Alexey Makhrov, Introduction to Diaghilev, 'Complicated Questions'

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Four articles under one title 'Complicated Questions' (see title-page) opened the first issues of the journal World of Art in 1898 and 1899. The authorship of the manifesto is disputed: although signed by Sergei Diaghilev [Diagilev], the articles are now attributed to the journal's co-editor and Diaghilev's cousin Dmitrii Filosofov [See: I.S. Zil'bershtein and V.A. Samkov, Sergei Diagilev i russkoe iskusstvo. M.: Izobrazitel'noe iskusstvo, 1982, vol. 1, p. 16]. This attribution is based on the evidence found in the memoirs of Walter Nouvel, a member of the World of Art group, and supported by the observation that other articles by Diagilev display little interest in the philosophic, social and theoretical issues which pervade these editorial articles.

The first part of the article entitled 'Our Supposed Decline' portrays the historical logic in the development of nineteenth century European art as the inevitable process of the rise and fall of artistic 'forms'; Neo-classicism was replaced with Romanticism which in turn had to give way to Realism. The author asserts the right of a new generation to go beyond accepted aesthetic conventions and to create a new art based on the principle of individualism. The core of the essay is the refutation of accusations of decadence levied against any new generation of nonconformist artists. In the context of Russian culture of the turn of the twentieth century, this argument seems to be directed against the attacks by art critics on the artists associated with the World of Art group. These artists had been represented in Diaghilev's exhibitions organised at the end of the 1890s, such as 'The Exhibition of Russian and Finnish Artists' held in St Petersburg in 1898. The author of the article was probably responding to vitriolic attacks by Vladimir Stasov, the champion of critical realism and nationality in painting. Stasov had accused Diaghilev and the artists of his circle of decadence and slavish imitation of debased Western models, and had applied Max Nordau's concepts of 'degeneration' to their art.

The subsequent parts of the 'Complicated Questions' elaborate upon the ideas expressed in the first article. 'Eternal Conflict' joins the debate between the adepts of utilitarianism in art and the notion of 'art for art's sake', which had been current in Russia since the middle of the nineteenth century (see, for instance, the 1874 discussion of Adrian Prakhov's inaugural lecture at the University by Stasov). The author defies the aesthetic views dominant in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century and based on the writings of the theorists and literary critics Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Nikolai Chernyshevskii, Dmitrii Pisarev and Nikolai Dobroliubov. The article rejects any attempt to impose an extraneous limitation on the free creativity of the artist, including Lev Tolstoi's attempt to harness art to preach religious morals. The author's view of art as 'a smile of God' and that art is 'an aim in itself, it is useful only in itself, and [...] it is free' is the antithesis of the ideas of 'tendentiousness', 'usefulness' and 'social service' which the ideologues of the Peredvizhniki, particularly Stasov, required of art. The belief in the superiority of the artist's creativity and its capacity to uncover beauty underlies the argument of the next essay entitled 'The Search for Beauty'. The author embarks on a lengthy analysis of aesthetic theories of nineteenth century thinkers, ranging from Ruskin to Chernyshevskii and from Huysmans to Tolstoi. The series culminates in the essay entitled 'The Principles of Artistic Evaluation' in which the author defines beauty in art as 'temperament expressed in images', i.e. true art allows us to grasp the personality of the artist which is expressed through his creation; an 'accord between us and the artist' is put forward as the only other criterion for critical evaluation. Although the erudition and wide ranging references to European culture displayed in the article may have appealed to the highly cultivated St Petersburg intellectual elite, they could however have left less knowledgeable readers confused and intimidated.