Mystery of Nikolai Rerich
Mark Yoffe
yoffe at GWU.EDU
Wed Jul 16 15:14:31 UTC 2003
Dear colleagues,
I received number of requests to post on the list responses that I received in
regards to my Rerich inquiry.
I am still working to them, and am far from being able to share with you my
insights.
But please find them below. They offer variety of links and information.
Best, and thanks to all who replied.
>>>>>>>
Dear Mark,
You may want to try sending your question to the Shera list (historians of
Russian and East European art) at shera-list at fas.harvard.edu
Charlotte Douglas (douglas at nyu.edu)
>>>>>>>>>>>
I don't know how much this will help you in your quest for more information
about Roerich, but the Roerich Museum in Moscow does have a website:
http://www.roerich-museum.ru/
Tony Vanchu
>>>>>>>>>>
In the guestbook of Nicholas Roerich Museum in New York City, I found the
following record that might be of interest to you:
------------
Dear Friends, I am seeking funding to publish the biography of Roerich it
took over 8 years to research & write. "Rich In Glory" uncovers much
previously unknown about N.K.R.'s life & spiritual journey. Svetoslav
Roerich, Bangalore, India; Gunta Rudzite, Riga, Latvia; Valentina
Knyazeva, St Petersburg; Russell Cargill, England; Annie Cahn, Paris &
Daniel Entin all contributed. With 100 color plates, this book is a
treasure. International cooperation will be a fitting tribute to the
Roerichs. To help, please e-mail ruth drayer. ruthdrayer at zianet.com
ruth drayer <ruthdrayer at zianet.com>
La Mesilla, NM USA -
------------------------------------------
The museum itself can have of the information that you are seeking.
http://www.roerich.org/index.html
Sincerely,
Edward Dumanis <dumanis at buffalo.edu>
>>>>>>>>>>
Mark,
Please check out my dissertation on the role Roerich played in the
conception, set design, and libretto for The Rite of Spring. I've got
an extensive bibiliography there.
Hoogen, Marilyn M. Igor Stravinsky, Nikolai Roerich, and the Healing
Power of Paganism: The Rite of Spring as Ecstatic Ritual in Twentieth-
Century Europe. Diss. University of Washington, 1997.
It can be found online at Kritika.etc. at this URL:
http://www.borut.com/library/a_hoogem.htm
Good luck!
Marilyn
>>>>>>>>>>>
Mark,
I found this reference in the World Biographical Index (it is just a
citation):
Name(s)
Rerich, Nikolaj Konstantinovic;Roerich, Nikolaj Konstantinovic
Other Name(s)
auch Mykola Kostjantynovyc, auch Roerich
Occupation
Historienmaler; Genremaler; Kunstschuldirektor; Fachautor fØr ArchÄologie
Occupation Class.
552; 575; 631 --
<javascript:parent.v_load('OCN=(552%20OR%20575%20OR%20631)')> >
Year of Birth
1874
Year of Death
1947;1948
Archiv
RBA
Location
396,20-30
Source
Afanas'ev; Enciklopediceskij slovar'; Kleine Slavische Biographie; Kondakov;
Mytci; Ward C.A.--
<javascript:parent.v_load('BID=(1680%20OR%2038%20OR%202833%20OR%202788%20OR%
205495%20OR%203677)')> >
You can get it from this source, or in the Russian Biographical index on
microfiche.
Here are some more (from Biography and Geneaology master index)
Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and
magazines. Volume 15: September, 1986-August, 1988. New York: H.W. Wilson
Co., 1988.[BioIn 15]
Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and
magazines. Volume 16: September, 1988-August, 1990. New York: H.W. Wilson
Co., 1990.[BioIn 16]
Biography Index. A cumulative index to biographical material in books and
magazines. Volume 23: September, 1997-August 1998. New York: H.W. Wilson
Co., 1998.[BioIn 23]
This is from The Dictionary of Art Online:
Subject of Biography:
Roerich, Nicholas
Date of Birth:
Oct. 9, 1874
Date of Death:
Dec. 13, 1947
Text:
Biography from Dictionary of Art Online (1996)
>From The Dictionary of Art Online, edited by Jane Turner, copyright 1996 by
Macmillan Publishers Limited, London, Reprinted by special arrangement with
Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
Roerich, Nicholas
b St Petersburg, 9 Oct 1874; d Nagar, nr Kulu, Himachal Pradesh, India, 13
Dec 1947
(b St Petersburg, 9 Oct 1874; d Nagar, nr Kulu, Himachal Pradesh, India,
13 Dec 1947). Russian painter, stage designer and founder of cultural
institutions. The son of a lawyer of Scandinavian descent, he graduated from
the studio of the landscape painter Arkhip Kuindzhi at the Academy of Fine
Arts (1897) and from the faculty of law at the University of St Petersburg
(1898). He then studied in Paris with the history painter Fernand Cormon
(1900). Roerich had wide interests and made an important contribution to
Russian culture: he lectured at the Institute of Archaeology (1898); he
became secretary of the Society for the Encouragement of the Arts (1901) and
director of its school (1906); and he was the first chairman of the World of
Art (Rus. Mir Iskusstva) Society (1910). The first volume of his collected
cultural writings was published in Moscow in 1914. As a painter he exhibited
with the Academy from 1897, World of art from 1902, the Vienna Secession c.
1905 and the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1906. From c. 1903 he was a leading
member of the artists' colony at Talashkino, where he designed mosaics,
friezes, murals and furniture. As a stage designer in Russia, he worked
between 1907 and 1915 for such directors as Nikolay Yevreinov (1879-1953),
Konstantin Stanislavsky (1863-1938) and Serge Diaghilev. His designs for the
Ballets Russes productions of Prince Igor (1909) and Le Sacre du printemps
(1913; costumes at London, Theat. Mus.) have become classics.
Roerich was a painter of landscapes--some with architectural
features--and of imaginary historical scenes. Like most other Russians of
his generation, he favoured representational images and shunned abstraction.
Similarly he ignored the realism of the Wanderers. He blended various
influences--Old Russian Revival, French Symbolism, Italian primitivism, as
well as Byzantine and Oriental painting--to achieve a distinctive and
monumental style, emphasizing atmosphere rather than detail. His paintings
were stylized, with simplified outlines and the flat areas of colour for
which he became noted. He began to work with oil but changed to pastel and
then in 1906 to tempera. During his time in Russia, Roerich's painting was
strongly shaped by archaeology, legend and folklore. The Forefathers
(Oxford, Ashmolean), a Symbolist canvas in muted blue, green and yellow
tempera, painted at Talashkino in 1911, shows an ancient Slavic piper
surrounded by bears against a background of undulating hills. Based on
Slavic legend and inspired by the northern Russian countryside, it combines
the talents of the historian, folklorist and landscape painter.
Roerich left Russia c. 1917 and worked as an emigre artist in other
countries: Finland and Scandinavia (1917-19), England (1919-20) and the USA
(1920-23). His reputation as a painter, charisma as a cultural activist and
association with the Eastern philosophy of Agni Yoga (a mystical system
developed by his wife, Elena Schaposchnikova, an eminent theosophist)
attracted sponsors for his projects in the USA and India. While in New York
he founded the Master Institute of United Arts (1921) and the International
Art Center (1922). He led an American artistic-scientific expedition around
Central Asia (1924-8), then settled at Nagar in the Himalayas where he
founded the Himalayan Research Institute (1929). Meanwhile a 29-storey
residential museum was erected in New York (1929) to house his paintings and
cultural institutions as well as other collections of European and Oriental
art.
Roerich's Asian paintings were influenced by his interest in Eastern
philosophy and religion. Tibet (New York, Roerich Mus.) is another Symbolist
canvas, painted in the Himalayas in 1933 in cool blue and white tempera,
with monastery buildings, Buddhist stupas and a prayer flag clustered
together in the vortices of snow-covered Tibetan mountains. Through its
atmosphere of mystery, antiquity and spirituality it combines the approaches
of artist, archaeologist and philosopher. After seven years of campaigning,
Roerich established the Roerich Pact (1935), an international treaty for
safeguarding cultural treasures and institutions. Best known in the West as
a stage designer, he worked between 1919 and 1944 for Sir Thomas Beecham
(1879-1961), Leopold Stokowsky (1882-1977) and Leonide Massine (1896-1979),
among others. He spent his final years (1936-47) at Nagar, painting
Himalayan scenes and writing. Roerich's vast artistic heritage can be seen
in Russian museums and in other countries of the former USSR. A large
permanent exhibition of his work and that of his son Svytoslav--also a
painter, who combined Symbolism with traditional motifs from Indian
art--forms part of Moscow's State Museum of Oriental Art. Another important
collection is in the Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York.
BIBLIOGRAPHY: Sobraniye sochineniya [Collected works], i (Moscow, 1914) [no
further numbered vols pubd]; Altai Himalaya (New York, 1929/R 1983);
Shambhala, the Resplendent (New York, 1930/R 1986); Nerushimoy [The
invincible] (Riga, 1936; Eng. trans. by S. Fosdick, New York, 1974); The
Roerich Pact and the Banner of Peace (New York, 1947/R 1979); V. P.
Knyazeva: N. Ryorikh (Moscow, 1968); L. Korotkina: Nikolay Roerich
(Leningrad, 1976); K. Archer: Catalogue: The Collection of Paintings at the
Nicholas Roerich Museum, New York (London, 1984); K. Archer: The Theatrical
Designs of Nicholas Roerich (London, 1985); R. C. Hansen: Scenic and Costume
Design for the Ballets Russes, Theater and Dramatic Studies (Ann Arbor,
1985), pp. 30-33; Ye. Polyakova: Nikolay Ryorikh (Moscow, 1985); K. Archer:
An Absolutely Violent Feast for the Eyes (London, 1988); J. Decter: Nicholas
Roerich: The Life and Art of a Russian Master (Rochester, NY, 1989);
Derahava Rerikha [The power of Roerich] (Moscow, 1994) [anthol. of articles,
reminiscences and poetry about Roerich]
Profession:
Artists; Painters
Also attached is a book review that deals with him. Good luck in your
research.
mb
Michael Brewer
>>>>>>>>>>>
Alexei Bogdanov wrote:
> Dear Mark,
>
> Would you please share your findings with the others?
> I've seen only one response to your inquiry.
>
> Thanks!
> Alexei
> ====================
> Alexei Bogdanov
> University of Colorado at Boulder
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark Yoffe" <yoffe at GWU.EDU>
> To: <SEELANGS at LISTSERV.CUNY.EDU>
> Sent: Monday, July 14, 2003 10:38 AM
> Subject: Re: [SEELANGS] Mystery of Nikolai Rerich
>
> > Dear colleagues,
> > I would like to thank everyone who responded to my inquiry about Nikolai
> Rerich.
> >
> > I received a great deal of very interesting information, through which I
> am
> > working through now.
> > Thanks again
> > Best
> > MY
> >
> > --
> > Mark Yoffe, Ph.D.
> > Curator, International Counterculture Archive
> > Slavic Librarian
> > Gelman Library, George Washington University
> > Washington, DC 20052
> > Phone: 202 994-6303
> > Fax: 202 994-1340
> > HTTP: gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~yoffe
> >
> > -------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > Use your web browser to search the archives, control your subscription
> > options, and more. Visit and bookmark the SEELANGS Web Interface at:
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> >
>
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--
Mark Yoffe, Ph.D.
Curator, International Counterculture Archive
Slavic Librarian
Gelman Library, George Washington University
Washington, DC 20052
Phone: 202 994-6303
Fax: 202 994-1340
HTTP: gwis2.circ.gwu.edu/~yoffe
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