Baryshnikov joined the American Ballet Theatre (ABT) in 1974 and danced with that company for four years, during which time he rechoreographed the Russian classics The Nutcracker (in 1976) and Don Quixote (in 1978). He danced with the New York City Ballet under George Balanchine in 1978–79, but from 1980 to 1989 he returned to the ABT as that company's artistic director. In 1990, he created the White Oak Dance Project, a small touring company of experienced dancers.
In addition to his ballet career, Baryshnikov played a leading role as dancer and actor in the motion pictures The Turning Point (1977), White Nights (1985), That's Dancing! (1985), and Dancers (1987). He played a dramatic role in the Franz Kafka play Metamorphosis (1989) and appeared as a recurring love interest of lead character Carrie Bradshaw in the television series Sex and the City (2003–04).
Vertov, Dziga
▪ Soviet director
pseudonym of Denis Arkadyevich Kaufman
born Jan. 2, 1896, [Dec. 21, 1895, Old Style], Belostok, Russia
died Feb. 12, 1954, Moscow
Soviet motion-picture director whose kino-glaz (“film-eye”) theory—that the camera is an instrument, much like the human eye, that is best used to explore the actual happenings of real life—had an international impact on the development of documentaries and cinema realism during the 1920s. He attempted to create a unique language of the cinema, free from theatrical influence and artificial studio staging.
As a newsreel cameraman during the Russian Civil War, Vertov filmed events that were the basis for such factual films as Godovshchina revolyutsii (1919; The Anniversary of the October Revolution) and Boi pod Tsaritsynom (1920; Battle of Tsaritsyn). At age 22 he was the director of a government cinema department. The following year he formed the Kinoki (the Film-Eye Group), which subsequently issued a series of manifestos against theatricalism in films and in support of Vertov's film-eye theory. In 1922 the group, led by Vertov, initiated a weekly newsreel called Kino-pravda (“Film Truth”) that creatively integrated newly filmed factual material and older news footage.
The subject matter of Vertov's later feature films is life itself; form and technique are preeminent. Vertov experimented with slow motion, camera angles, enlarged close-ups, and crosscutting for comparisons; he attached the camera to locomotives, motorcycles, and other moving objects; and he held shots on the screen for varying lengths of time, a technique that contributes to the rhythmic flow of his films. Outstanding among Vertov's pictures are Shagay, Sovyet! (1925; Stride, Soviet! ), Shestaya chast mira (1926; A Sixth of the World), Odinnadtsatyi (1928; The Eleventh), Chelovek s kinoapparatom (1928; The Man with a Movie Camera), Simfoniya Donbassa (1930; Symphony of the Donbass), and Tri pesni o Lenine (1934; Three Songs of Lenin). Vertov later became a director in the Soviet Union's Central Documentary Film Studio. His work and his theories became basic to the rediscovery of cinéma vérité, or documentary realism, in the 1960s.
Tarkovsky, Andrey Arsenyevich
▪ Soviet film director
born April 4, 1932, Moscow
died Dec. 29, 1986, Paris
Soviet motion-picture director whose films won acclaim in the West though they were censored by Soviet authorities at home.
The son of a prominent Russian poet, Tarkovsky studied filmmaking at the All-Union State Cinematography Institute and graduated in 1960. His diploma work, Katok i skripka (1960; The Steamroller and the Violin), won a prize at the New York Film Festival, and his first full-length feature film, Ivanovo detstvo (1962; Ivan's Childhood), about the experiences of an orphaned boy on the Russian Front during World War II, established his international reputation. His next film, Andrey Rublyov (1965), the story of a medieval Russian icon painter, was acclaimed as a masterpiece for its vivid evocation of the Middle Ages. His subsequent films included Solyaris (1971; Solaris), Zerkalo (1975; A Mirror), and Stalker (1979).
Tarkovsky's films were notable for their striking visual images, their symbolic, visionary tone, and their paucity of conventional plot and dramatic structure. Several of his films were barred from domestic distribution by the Soviet authorities, and in 1984 Tarkovsky decided to remain in the West after having filmed Nostalghia (1983; Nostalgia) in Italy. His last motion picture, also made in western Europe, was The Sacrifice (1986).
Paradzhanov, Sergey Yosifovich
▪ Armenian director
original name Sarkis Paradzhanian
born Jan. 9, 1924, Tbilisi, Georgia, U.S.S.R.
died July 20, 1990, Yerevan, Armenian S.S.R.
Armenian director of lyrical, visually powerful films whose career was curtailed by official harassment and censorship.
Paradzhanov studied music at the Tbilisi Conservatory and cinema at the State Institute of Cinematography. In 1952 he joined the Kiev Dovzhenko Studios, but the early motion pictures that he directed were never released in the West. His fifth feature film was Teni zabytykh predkov (1964; Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors), a richly impressionistic fantasy based on a novella by Mykhaylo Kotsyubysky with a Ukrainian setting. Although it won 16 international awards, including the grand prize at the 1965 Mar del Plata Festival in Argentina, his overt rejection of the official aesthetic of Socialist Realism brought him into conflict with Soviet authorities.
Paradzhanov went even further with Tsvet granata (1969; The Colour of Pomegranates, or Sayat Nova), in which he used ancient Armenian music to enhance symbolic episodes drawn from the colorful life of 18th-century Armenian poet Sayat-Nova. In 1974 he was tried on a range of charges, including homosexuality, currency offenses, and “dealing in anti-Soviet legislation,” and was sentenced to five years at hard labour. An international campaign led to his release in 1978, but he was arrested again in 1982. He was finally allowed to resume filmmaking in the later-1980s era of glasnost.
Pushkin Fine Arts Museum
▪ museum, Moscow, Russia
formally State Fine Arts Museum in the Name of A.S. Pushkin , Russian Gosudarstvenny Muzey Izobrazitelnykh Iskusstv Imini A.S. Pushkina
collection in Moscow, Russia, of ancient and medieval art and western European painting, sculpture, and graphic arts. It was founded in the 1770s at Moscow University. Especially noteworthy are its holdings of French art from the late 19th and early 20th centuries gathered by the Russian collectors S.I. Shchukin and I.A. Morozov.
The museum is in a Neoclassical-style building dating from 1812. It is unrelated, except in name, to the Alexandr Pushkin Museum, also in Moscow, that specializes in the life and times of that author and has specialized collections of contemporary literature, portraits, and drawings and watercolours of St. Petersburg and Moscow.
Tretyakov Gallery
▪ museum, Moscow, Russia
in full State Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Gosudarstvennaya Tretyakovskaya Galereya,
Moscow art museum founded by Pavel M. Tretyakov in 1856. It contains the world's finest collection of 17th- and 18th-century Russian icons, having more than 40,000 of them.
There are also 18th-century portraits, 19th-century historical paintings, and works of the Soviet period. The museum is organized into Early Russian Art, Art of the 18th Century, Art of the First Half of the 19th Century, Art of the Second Half of the 19th Century, Art of the Early 20th Century, and Soviet Art.