Tuesday, October 11, 2022
7:30 PM
Join music, art, literary, and dance historian Victoria Martino in a five-week lecture series, celebrating the 150th anniversary of Diaghilev by rediscovering and redefining the scope of his immeasurable influence on modern culture.
Who was Sergei Diaghilev? What did he do? Condemned by his own country as the ultimate exemplar of bourgeois decadence and depravity, he was excised from Soviet cultural history. Yet, in the international world of art, music, dance, and theater, he was revered, even idolized, as the greatest impresario of all time. Creator, critic, curator, Diaghilev played all these roles, defining for many the very meaning of contemporary art in the 20th century. In his role as founder and director of the legendary Ballets Russes, Diaghilev commissioned and patronized a veritable lexicon of artists, choreographers, composers, dancers, and designers: from Matisse to Picasso, Fokine to Massine, Debussy to Stravinsky, Nijinsky to Pavlova, Bakst to Chanel.
Influenced by the dance innovations of Isadora Duncan, Richard Wagner’s concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, and the synaesthetic theories of Charles Baudelaire, Diaghilev finally achieved his ultimate synthesis of the arts with his creation of the Ballets Russes, which opened in 1909 at the Théâtre du Châtelet in Paris. Dancers included Anna Pavlova, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Mikhail Fokine. The Ballets Russes toured throughout Europe and the Americas uninterruptedly for two decades, from 1909 to 1929.
About Victoria Martino:
Victoria Martino is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard University and the University of California. A specialist in European modernism, she has written and lectured extensively on artists of the early 20th century, including (among others) Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Arnold Schoenberg, and the German avant-garde periodical PAN. She has curated numerous museum exhibitions in Europe and the United States and has published over 60 catalogue essays and scholarly articles. Martino has been a guest professor at universities in Australia and the United States, and she has participated in international scholarly symposia. A professional art critic, she has published exhibition reviews in THE Magazine, New York Arts, the Berkshire Review for the Arts, The Huffington Post, and many European journals.
The lectures will be in person at the Athenaeum Music & Arts Library. There are no physical tickets for these events. Your name will be on an attendee list at the front door. Doors open at 7 p.m. Seating is first-come; first-served. These events will be presented in compliance with State of California and County of San Diego health regulations as applicable at the time of each lecture.
Masks optional. If you have a fever, cough, or flu-like symptoms, please stay home.