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On
the cover this month
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Design by Alexander Golovin,
Mir iskusstva (World of Art), vol. 1, 1899
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Mir iskusstva (World of Art), St Petersburg: 1898–1904
The National Library holds the only complete set of this journal in Australia. The periodical was established with the backing of two patrons of Russian art, Savva Mamontov and Princess Maria Tenisheva and went into production with Serge Diaghilev as its editor-in-chief. The journal set out to counteract the Realism movement, so popular at the time, and to propagate the idea of art for art’s sake. Diaghilev’s manifesto for the publication embodied many of the ideas that were later to shape his very successful Ballets Russes.
Although the journal has been in the National Library of Australia for 30 years, having been acquired as part of a larger consignment of Russian books from a Brisbane-based professor, Andrew Field, it was only recently ‘rediscovered’ during the creation of an online catalogue record |
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