Contemporary Painting
ber, normal painting of Repin, his conscientious service of art, in the sense in which the school of the sixties understood it, his rationality have turned in Malyavin into a bacchic feast of colour, into most dashing display of skill, into a hazy and lax monomania. Malyavin has something in common with Bénard: by some peculiarities of his technique he approaches the Scottish artists; finally, his kinship to Zorn cannot be denied. Yet, technically Malyavin is weaker and at the same time more powerful and interesting than these artists. He has less conscious skill and culture; his views are more limited, the colours coarser, the painting more slovenly,—but there is more "authenticity" in his art; he is freer, more elemental; he is a true artist, savage, revelling in red fustian stuff like a Negro,—a genuine artistic temperament strange to cold calculations in his work. In this respect he approaches the Impressionists.[1] Yet Malyavin is by no means an Impressionist. He has never aimed at studying colours in nature, never endeavoured to render the delicate charm of relationships, the stir of life, the poetry of the unexpected. Malyavin, the true, mature Malyavin is nothing but
- ↑ As has been seen, Impressionism has not as yet appeared on the Russian soil. Only lately Russian residents of Paris and München, such as Tarkhov and Yavlensky, have been converted to the Impressionistic faith. The Impressionistic æsthetics guide Grabar, at least to some extent, in his latest pictures. (Author's note.)
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