Dueling Demons Mikhail Vrubel`s Demon Seated and Demon

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Dueling Demons
Mikhail Vrubel’s Demon Seated and Demon Downcast
Sara Elizabeth Hecker
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements
For the Degree of Master of Arts in Art History
at
Savannah College of Art and Design
© May, 2012 Sara Elizabeth Hecker
The author hereby grants SCAD permission to reproduce and to distribute publicly paper and
electronic thesis copies of document in whole or in part in any medium now known or hereafter
created.
Signature of Author and Date _______________________________________/___/___
________________________________________________________________/___/___
Margaret Betz, Ph.D.
Committee Chair
________________________________________________________________/___/___
Andrew Nedd, Ph.D.
Committee Member
________________________________________________________________/___/___
Stephen Wagner, Ph.D.
Committee Member
Dueling Demons
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of the Department of Art History
in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the
Degree of Master of Arts in Art History
Savannah College of Art and Design
By
Sara Elizabeth Hecker
Savannah, GA
May, 2012
There rise the most brilliant of visions
Through the torments that tear at my heart,
And fade – the most brilliant of visions,
Consumed in the fire of the dark…
~Aleksandr Blok, “On the Field of Kulikovo,” 1908
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank the members of my thesis committee, Dr. Margaret Betz, Dr. Andrew
Nedd, and Dr. Stephen Wagner, for their valuable input, time, and consideration during the
completion process of this thesis.
Table of Contents
List of Illustrations ………………………………………………………………………………..1
Abstract……………………………………………………………………………………………2
Dueling Demons: Mikhail Vrubel’s Demon Seated and Demon Downcast………………………3
Illustrations………………………………………………………………………………………71
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………..74
List of Illustrations
Fig. 1: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Seated, 1890, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow, Russia.
Fig. 2: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Downcast, 1902, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery,
Moscow Russia.
Fig. 3: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara Dancing, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for
The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Fig.4: Mikhail Vrubel, Rider, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The Demon
by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Fig. 5: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara and Demon, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration
for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Fig. 6: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon and Angel with Tamara’s Soul, 1891, Black watercolor,
whitewash on paper, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The Museum of
Russian Art, Erevan, Armenia.
2
Dueling Demons
Sara E. Hecker
May, 2012
This thesis examines, by means of extensive research, the social and biographical
influences of Russian artist Mikhail Vrubel, in relation to the theme of the Demon. Vrubel's
oeuvre has yet to be thoroughly examined from an art historical perspective, or for its cultural
and social implications. Through a thorough description of the works discussed, the literary
aspects of Vrubel's demon will come into light as well as the artistic influences that aided in
Vrubel's development as an artist. Vrubel's personal life will also be discussed, most notably
his isolation from the many artistic movements circulating throughout Russia during the era as
well as his marriage, the death of his son, and his descent into madness. This introduction to his
work and style will aid in leading up to the utilization of methods of interpreting how his demon
changed throughout his artistic career as well as his personal life. This will be accomplished by
developing a dialogue between each theory and its relation to the demon as seen in these works.
By examining the development of this theme over a twelve year period of Vrubel's
career, it becomes evident that the biographical, social, and cultural details of his life and time
played a variable role in the direction of his life and art. Through analysis, it will be shown
that the concept of the Demon, for Vrubel, was more than an idea placed onto canvas but also
an idea that haunted the artist in every aspect of his life.
3
Dueling Demons
Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) was one of Russia’s most innovative artists
working at the beginning of the twentieth century. His work was produced in an alternately
hostile and sympathetic environment, receiving both praise and disdain for his unusual outlook
on life. Gradually, Vrubel’s work has come to be viewed as an integral part of Russian culture.
His influence on later generations of Russian artists is indispensible for the development of the
Russian avant-garde. The lasting value of Vrubel’s work is not dependent on the idiosyncracies
of individual artists but in the widespread diffusion of his attitudes and visual methods in all their
diversity. These stimulated the growth of Russian modernism and were absorbed in it. Vrubel’s
greatest artistic legacy lies in the work of one pervasive theme: the demon. In art the demon can
represent madness within the artist, serving as a muse or a destructive force. Why does Vrubel
look to the Demon throughout life, adapting him to his constantly changing world?
The evolution of Vrubel’s Demon will be examined here, using the theories of Arthur
Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud. As well as these theories, I will be
examining the means by which Vrubel’s Demon progressed in accordance with the
4
developments of Russian Symbolism during the Russian Silver Age of art as well as the ideas of
a national identity and his growth as an artist within the Abramstevo Circle and World of Art
movement. The development of Vrubel’s Demon is best seen in two works that nearly bookend
his career: Demon Seated of 1890 and Demon Downcast of 1902.
Demon Seated (fig. 1) depicts the figure of the Demon sitting atop a mountain. There is
tension in his muscles and interlocked fingers which sharply contrasts with the slumped body
and melancholy expression of his face. He appears passive and introverted; all the force of his
strength is contained. He is proud, solitary, and sensitive, the antithesis of the feminine, yet
possessing feminine attributes in the long hair, soft face, and pouty mouth. His eyes are filled
with a longing for love in a cold and alienated world. Vrubel, in a letter to his sister Anna,
described this Demon as “a spirit uniting in itself masculine and feminine qualities . . . a spirit,
not so much evil as suffering and sorrowing, but in all that a powerful spirit . . . a majestic
spirit.”1 The evening setting amidst an ethereal landscape that is distant and disengaged assists
in the feelings of sadness and solitude. 2 There is a sense of an uneasy equilibrium between the
wistful landscape and the forlorn expression that suggests places and events cannot affect the
immortal soul confined there. 3 The body of the Demon is turned toward the viewer, knees,
forearms, and hands jutting forward, almost beyond the picture plane, but the head tilts away in
self-absorbed reverie, while the almost childlike gesture of embracing the knees creates a magic
circle of psychologically enclosed individual space. The visual impact of the figure overrunning
1
E.I. Ge, “Poslednie gody zhizni Vrubelja,” in Vrubel. Perepiska, Vospominanija o xudoznike, 221; as cited in
Richard H. Byrns, “The Artistic World of Vrubel’ and Blok,” The Slavic and East European Journal, Vol. 23, No. 1
(Spring, 1979), 46.
2
Roberta Reeder, “Mikhail Vrubel: A Russian Interpretation of ‘fin-de-siècle’ Art,” The Slavonic and East
European Review, Vol. 54, No. 3 (July 1976), 331.
3
Nina Khachiyan, “Vrubel’s Demons,” Accessed 18 March 2011,
http://www.ninakhachiyan.com/writtenwords5.php.
5
the boundary of the canvas is physically threatening yet he is psychologically self-contained. 4
Demon Seated is the generalized depiction of the soul. The inner focus of the eyes, the
intensity of the huddled movement of the body, and the clasped hands all isolate the figure and
produce an image of profound introspection. Enlarged flowers and broad color patches, fill the
whole area to the right and force their way to the foreground. They are visually pitted against the
area to the left of the Demon, towards which his face is turned: a void. The planes are complex
and not uniform, alternating in shape and direction, creating tensions. The colors suggest
movement as they move down to more open, faceted, crystalline forms. The sunset has a
menacing glow, suggestive of the fires of hell. The irregularity and abrupt juxtaposition of
shapes suggest the technique of mosaics. The elusive spatial balance is enclosed within a
shallow space, which may be called proto-Cubist because the boundaries are ambiguous and the
volumes contrast and expand, appear and disappear rhythmically. The circular movement,
ambiguities, and emptiness on the left versus the press of form on the right, all act as metaphors
for the claustrophobic state of mind of the Demon. 5
In Demon Downcast (fig. 2) he is altogether a different being. The calm and reserve
present in Demon Seated have dramatically altered. There is a prevailing sense of catastrophe in
the strange mountainous landscape. He is thrown among jagged mountains, peacock-feathered
wings outspread, body twisted and broken; he is crushed both physically and psychologically.
Yet, his lips are firmly compressed, nostrils flared, and his eyes stare rigidly ahead, the
melancholy replaced by scorn. The juxtaposition of the blue and purple with tan and black gives
the scene a subdued yet ominous atmosphere, suggesting a struggle between light and dark, and
4
5
Aline Isdebsky-Pritchard, The Art of Mikhail Vrubel, (1856-1910) (Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press: 1982), 99.
Ibid., 101-102.
6
beauty in death. 6 What is most disconcerting about the image is the contrast of this chaotic fall
from grace with the disturbing, windless landscape.
There is a new intensity of despair felt by the Demon in his failure to forge new human
bonds and transcend his lack of faith, of love. The Demon's appearance in 1902 is strikingly
different than Demon seen in 1890. The wings on this Demon have given way to agitated
peacock-like feathers; the right arm is folded over his head in a companion gesture to the left
arm, expressing a more concentrated tension and grief which mingle with the facial expression of
mistrust, horror, and sadness. Ekaterina Gay, Vrubel's sister-in- law, wrote of the evolving face
in Demon Downcast: "There were days when the Demon was very awe-inspiring then it would
take on a facial expression of deep sorrow and a new kind of beauty."7
Mikhail Vrubel was born on March 5, 1856, in Omsk, Siberia, to a family with a mix of
Russian, Polish, and Tatar heritage. At an early age Vrubel suffered several traumatic losses,
among them his mother when he was just three years old. His father remarried a few years later
and had another four children. Despite such a young age, Vrubel retained memories of his
mother in her final illness, as well as the deaths of his younger brother and sister, who appear to
have died quite young, as well. Growing up, the arts were favored in the household, in
particular, music, a strong influence on Vrubel's own art. Vrubel's wife Nadezhda Zabela wrote,
following his death, that Vrubel's "love for music was perhaps even greater than for all the other
arts."8 The complexity and diversity of his personality was evident in his early years; a rapid
shift in mood and an intense imagination made him an exceptional observer with a phenomenal
6
Byrns, 46.
Ekaterina Gay, “Poslednie gody zhizni Vrubelya,” Iskusstvo I Pachatnoe (Kiev, 1910), no. 8-9, 342; as cited in
Isdebsky-Pritchard, 114-119.
8
E.P. Gomberg-Verzhbinskaya and Yu. N. Podkopaeva, Vrubel, Perepiska – Vospominaniya o Khudozhnike
(Moscow-Leningrad: Iskusstvo, 1963) (hereafter cited as Correspondence); N.I. Zabela, the artist’s widow, “M.A.
Vrubel,” Correspondence, 204; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 2.
7
7
visual memory. His father suffered from similar symptoms, thus giving his future illness
possible hereditary factors. 9
Vrubel's first major commissions as an artist were for the restorations of St. Kirill's in
Kiev. His participation there would lead to the development of a Byzantine style that would be
seen in his subsequent work. During his stay in Kiev, Vrubel developed a tendency to drink too
much, throw away money, and participated in numerous amorous escapades in which he would
disappear without warning. His lack of self-discipline and loose manner of living created
unusual patterns of thought and temperament bringing about aberrant behavior. Because of his
activities he committed numerous offenses against societal conventions and had lapses into
fantasy, such as believing in his father was dead. On top of that he suffered from frequent
migraines. Despite these issues, his work showed no signs of his emotional instability. Also
while in Kiev, he became fascinated with creating images relating to classic Russian folktales.
More importantly however, Vrubel saw Anton Rubenstein's opera The Demon for the first time
in Kiev, inspiring the subject that would be a constant throughout the rest of his artistic career.
As Vrubel began focusing more and more on his art, he decided to make his own
discoveries and find a subject of fundamental scope, eventually turning to Mikhail Lermontov's
epic poem The Demon in 1885. By mid-1885 he had begun his first depiction of the Demon.
This first image Vrubel destroyed but its influence on later incarnations of the Demon is apparent
in the depth of idea and expression. 10
In May of 1890, Vrubel had begun a new version of the Demon. In a letter to Anna he
described him as "a half-nude, winged, youthful, dejectedly thoughtful figure who sits, hugging
his knees, against the background of a sunset and contemplates a flowering meadow from which
9
Ibid., 15.
10
8
small branches weighed down by flowers are straining toward it."11 This is the Demon he came
to believe would make him famous; this would be the Demon Seated.
Later that year and working into 1891, Vrubel was commissioned to illustrate
Lermontov's poem for a special anniversary edition with eleven illustrations appearing in the
final publication. Art critic Vladimir Stasov wrote of Vrubel's illustrations for Lermontov's
poem: "Vrubel in his Demons has given us the most awful examples of revolting and repulsive
decadence."12 Although many did not like Vrubel's illustrations, the special edition is now
remembered and celebrated for his artistic contribution. The Demon of Lermontov's creation
was on a quest to "incarnate the spirit of exile," and this more than anything else, aided in the
development and viewpoint of Vrubel's Demon. 13
The period before the onset of his illness at the beginning of 1902 was one of intense
activity, marked by opposing experiences of growing recognition, vilification, and neglect, all of
which increasingly provoked Vrubel. By the end of 1901, his was unable to tolerate
contradiction; he could not sleep, and began to talk incessantly.
Vrubel became violent,
excitable, quarrelsome, and obsessed with affirming his own genius. He developed feelings of
religious guilt and atoned by lack of food and rest. Between 1903 and 1905, Vrubel's illness
continued to be marked by wild mood swings, strange behavior and hearing voices. In May of
1903, his son contracted pulmonary disease and died suddenly. The death of his son caused
great torment for him, for he saw it as punishment for his past transgressions. After March of
1905, he remained permanently hospitalized. Until his vision and coordination completely
ceased to function in February of 1906, Vrubel remained creatively active, with only brief
11
Correspondence, 77; as cited in Isdebsky-Prtichard, 4-22.
Sergei Durylin, “Vrubel i Lermontov,” Literaturnoe Nasledstvo (1948), no. 45-48, 582; as cited in IsdebskyPritchard, 23.
13
Mikhail Lermontov, The Demon, Accessed 18 March 2011, http://www.friendspartners.org/friends/literature/19century/lermontov2.html.
12
9
periods in which his work suffered. He died in April of 1910. Sadly, his illness gave him the
most recognition and praise of his career, with his first one-man show, with 114 objects, in Kiev
in 1910. Alexandre Benois, in article in the newspaper Speech predicted that the last decade of
the nineteenth century in Russia would be remembered as “Vrubel’s epoch.”
14
Vrubel’s inspiration from the opera and the poem fueled his theme, as well as the work of
Nikolai Gogol and Aleksandr Pushkin, which aided in feeding a deep interest in the literary and
philosophical classics. 15 Above all, Vrubel associated the figure of the Demon with some
romantic, transcendental world of love and death, and nothing exemplified this ideal better than
Mikhail Lermontov's epic poem The Demon, first published in 1842. The 1891 jubilee editions
of Lermontov’s poems were published in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of the poet’s death.
Vrubel was approached to provide illustrations for the I. N. Kushnerev edition. For The Demon,
he provided twenty-two illustrations done in watercolor and gouache; eleven of them were
published. 16 The poem opens with a fallen angel flying among the clouds. He sees below the
beautiful princess Tamara and falls in love (fig. 3). In an attempt to avoid his lonely fate, he
decides to seduce her, but discovers that she is engaged. The Demon is soon torn between his
love for Tamara and his own destructive nature. Following his heart, he desperately and
deliberately wishes death upon her fiancé (fig. 4). In mourning, Tamara begins a new life in a
convent and the Demon follows her there. At last giving in to his love, they embrace, and she
perishes in his arms (fig. 5). The Demon tearfully watches as an angel carries Tamara's soul to
heaven. In the end, the Demon is left in the lonely, desolate state in which he began (fig. 6). 17
14
Aleksandre Benois, Eulogy, reprinted from Rech of April 3, 1910, Iskusstvo i Pechatnoe Delo (1910), no.5, 191;
as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 32.
15
Mikhail Guerman, Mikhail Vrubel: The Artist of the Eves (St. Petersburg: Aurora; Bournemouth: Parkstone,
1996), 8.
16
Isdebsky-Pritchard, 104.
17
Mikhail Lermontov, The Demon.
10
As Lermontov recounts, he was originally a pure creature, a “happy firstling of creation,”
who is now burdened by eternal flight until he sees Tamara dancing. The scene is festive, in
celebration of her pending marriage. The Demon sees her and is moved, “his memory traced the
joys that he had known above.”18 He becomes jealous of the groom and selfishly kills him. He
pursues Tamara until she finally gives in. Because of this selfishness, Tamara dies. But even in
her death, the Demon refuses to admit his role in her demise, choosing instead to continue his
revolt against the world. This creature represents for the first time, according to Maurice Bowra,
the concept of a Demon as an ordinary human with “its selfish passions, uncontrolled appetite,
cowardly refusals, and cold absorption in itself.”19 It is this Demon where Vrubel found what he
had been so desperately seeking.
Vrubel's Demon, however, should be seen as more of a visual, rather than a literal,
interpretation. Lermontov's Demon is haughty, arrogant, and proud. His love for Tamara is
more an obsession to possess someone rather than to love someone. Vrubel's Demon, as seen in
Demon Seated, is infused with a symbolism that is "replete with thought and always obscure in
its depth" becoming almost godlike, in his final moments, as seen in Demon Downcast. 20 In fact,
neither Demon Seated nor Demon Downcast illustrates any passage in Lermontov’s narrative. If
literary inspiration is to be seen in Demon Seated it is found in an earlier Lermontov poem of
1829, entitled “My Demon”:
Among the fallen leaves stands his immovable throne.
There, among still winds, he sits dejected and somber. 21
In this passage a literary interpretation can be perceived with the “immovable” aspect
18
Ibid.
Eugene Kayden, Mikhail Lermontov, The Demon and Other Poems, trans. and intro. by Kayden, additional text by
Sir Maurice Bowra (Yellow Springs, Ohio: The Antioch Press, 1965), xix-xx; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 95.
20
Guerman, 60.
21
Durylin, “Vrubel i Lermontov,” 551; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 100.
19
11
singled out by Vrubel for expression. One can sense the emptiness and misery felt by the
Demon. His body seems out of proportion with the enclosed landscape around him. His figure
almost overruns the boundaries of the canvas, invading the viewer's space. Yet, through the
childlike gesture of holding his knees and looking away from the viewer into the distance, he is
psychologically self-contained. The mosaic-like quality of the landscape depiction provides an
almost circular movement throughout the canvas from the pressing forms of the flowers on the
right to the menacing glow of the sunset, suggestive of the fires of hell, on the left. Tears have
formed in his eye with one rolling down his cheek (Fig. 9). All of this conveys the Demon's
humanity and his striving to go beyond the limitations of common consciousness. 22 Vrubel saw
this Demon as misunderstood; here is a figure, not of darkness, but of light; a benevolent,
otherworldly figure who has been cast out from heaven.
As with Demon Seated, Demon Downcast has no true literary counterpart in Lermontov.
According to Aline Isdebsky-Pritchard, Vrubel’s Demon in this work is found in John Milton’s
Paradise Lost, a source used by Lermontov. Milton’s Satan is described as:
Cast out from Heaven…
Hurled headlong flaming from the ethereal sky
He lay vanquished, rolling in the fiery gulf,
Confounded but immortal. But his doom
Reserved him to more wrath; for now the thought
Both of lost happiness and lasting pain
Torments him: round he throws his baleful eyes,
That witnessed huge affliction and dismay,
Mixed with obdurate pride and steadfast hate. 23
Milton’s imagery seems directly projected onto Vrubel’s canvas. His fate is to struggle within
his own spirit, remaining locked within its own battleground. He is hideous, misshapen, and as
rigid as stone. He has fallen from a great height, and one can sense and see the power of his
22
23
John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book I: lines 37-63; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 117-120.
12
collision with the landscape. But his head remains upright, wearing a thorny crown that alludes
to Christ’s sufferings, and an expression of deep existential anxiety which still contains great
pride and determination.
Lermontov's Demon contained romantically heroic dimensions centering on ideas and
emotions having to do with the individual's capacity for good and evil. His Demon was
irrational and complex, whose encounter with the Angel only intensifies his destructive urge.
Vrubel explained his own vision of the Demon as "generally misunderstood. The Demon is
confused with the devil and evil spirits. But ‘the demon’ means ‘the soul,’ and it incarnates the
eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit seeking reconciliation of its stormy passions with a
knowledge of life, it finds no answer to its doubts either on earth or in heaven."24
The story of the Demon and Tamara provides an excellent metaphor for Vrubel's own
belief in genuinely experiencing life, whose significance is crowned with the final gift of death.
In Stepan Yaremich's M.A. Vrubel, written in 1911, he writes that:
He heroically suffered the greatest deprivations without ever lulling his thought
with the idea of some impossible unearthly joy...he maintained that all of our
marvelous earthly patrimony consists precisely in the acceptance of everything:
the festive and gloomy, joys, pains, and contradictions. It is only necessary to
find the balance, to concentrate one's attention on the present, and to be true to the
conviction that the end is the climax of it all. Life is woven of contradictions and
the inevitable end contains the highest, most harmonious solution to the problem
of being...in Vrubel's own words: "it is death which, by abolishing all
contradictions, is the categorical imperative.”25
The Demon embodies Vrubel's concept of the soul's essence as active and disruptive in the
"eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit" and in creative conflict with the world. The
Demon is subjected to passion and torment; he is the victim of events and of his response to
them. If the figure of the Demon seems unexpectedly peaceful, it is only in contrast to the inner
24
25
Nikolai Prakhov, Correspondence, 304; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 94
Stepan Yaremich, “M.A. Vrubel,” Mir Iskusstva (1901), no. 2-3,116; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 96.
13
torments of Lermontov's hero and to all of Vrubel's other works on the subject. This relative
repose is expressed in the position of the Demon, almost geometric in its stability: a broad-based
conical mass, culminating in the top of the head, slowly rises across the center of the canvas, and
closes the arms and shoulders within a diamond shape. The body itself is composed of smaller
geometric units, whose facets do not represent actual muscular structure, but are rather their
visual equivalents. The substances are neither cloth nor flesh; they are sculptural in essence.
Details of the shoulder convey the way in which the body is actually constructed of a mass of
independent sculptural units. These units have the consistency of some dark, hard material, and
the colors are indefinite tans and grays. The scale of the painting makes this method very
evident. Sudden jumps in color value build up the planes which are the units forming open
volumes, resembling early Cubism, and the total figure has the underlying structural solidity of
that style.
The face of the Demon, shown in profile, is pensively sad rather than despairing. Its
visible eye is filled with tears, while a large tear rolls down along the nose. Lermontov uses tears
in the poem to express the Demon's momentary freedom from his usual state of alienation and it
serves a similar function for Vrubel. It is a measure of the Demon's humanity. Tears also
connote the experience of suffering, which Vrubel welcomed as an integral aspect of life.
The Demon's androgyny is a further expression of its general harmony; he is "the spirit
conjoining within itself the masculine and feminine genders."26 The two aspects of gender are
matched so that neither outbalances the other: the heavy long black hair, the large eye, the
wistful expression, the sensitive fleshy mouth may be considered as feminine. These features are
countered by the masculine low brow and protruding ear, the powerful neck, enormous
shoulders, and large back and arm muscles. The emphasis here is not so much on power of
26
Correspondence, 140; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 102-103.
14
personality as on immersion in thought. The androgyny of the Demon is a symbol of its doomed
quest for integrity of spirit.
Beyond representing to Lermontov's solitary outcast and the struggle of the sentient
individual soul between good and evil impulses, the Demon is also a concrete force of nature,
with its roots in the material universe. Perhaps Demon Seated was contemplating the calm
before the storm, which began with the assassination of Aleksandr II by anarchists in 1881
continuing with social unrest and strikes, a humiliating defeat by Japan in 1905, and brutal
pogroms and savage repression of all opposition, all of which created a pervasive hunger for
change.
27
Vrubel, with his demon, perhaps anticipated the apocalyptic release of society's
headlong lurch towards self-destruction. 28 Wounded to the depths of his soul by the evil world,
he had a need for redemption, yet simultaneously he declared his readiness to welcome the chaos
which comes to destroy him and his beautiful, ordered world. 29
This existential anxiety is present in other aspects of the work and in the era itself. Far
from just literary inspiration, Vrubel lived a rapidly changing Russian culture, a volatile mix of
great expectations and ominous visions. This era produced great and everlasting works of art,
poetry, and music that became known as the Russian Silver Age, a name that implies art, dusk,
and the reflected brilliance of the moon and stars, in the Tsarist cultural years of 1892-1917.
Both the chaos of unknowing and the possibility of faith were tidied away "beyond the limits of
cognition," as Avril Pyman notes, but it was strongly felt mankind could not do without "moral
law" and without some sense of individual worth and purpose. 30 By 1900, the rapid
27
John E. Bowlt, Moscow and St. Petersburg 1900-1920: Art, Life, and Culture of the Russian Silver Age (New
York: The Vendome Press, 2008), 34.
28
David Elliot, New Worlds: Russian Art and Society 1900-1937 (New York: Rizzoli International Publishing,
1986), 44.
29
Avril Pyman, A History of Russian Symbolism (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 139.
30
Ibid., 2.
15
industrialization and unprecedented social change in Russia brought a sense of a country that had
lost its soul. The old Empire, bolstered by an impassive autocracy, had begun to break up. And
as the cracks of absolutism began to show, the whole apparatus of tsarist autocracy would soon
be swept away in a raging and uncontainable flood. 31 Serge Diaghilev, founder of the Ballet
Russes, said it plainly in a 1905 speech entitled "At the Hour of Reckoning," given in 1905,
speaking of the World of Art's undisguised nostalgia for Russia's Imperial glory, and, at the same
time, an awareness that such glory was fast fading:
Do you not feel that the long gallery of portraits of people great and small . . . is
but a grand and convincing reckoning of a brilliant, but, alas, mortified, period of
our history? . . . We are witnesses to a great historical moment of reckoning and
ending in the name of a new, unknown culture. 32
Early in the twentieth century, faith faded and the bearing of another's burdens sapped
initiative and self-sufficiency. Deeply disoriented, the Russian intelligentsia began to grope for
lost certainties and, for the vulnerable and psychologically unstable, there was the possibility of
experimenting with drugs, alcohol, sexual perversion, and every kind of evil, behind which there
often lurked an obsessive desire to prove the existence of supreme good. 33 The decadence that
resulted from these thoughts and depictions marked the years that were swiftly moving toward
the cruel reality of social revolution and artists of the era wanted to show the isolation of the
individual in a world of unique feeling. The Russian Symbolist movement, according to
Aleksandr Blok, sought to connect across “the abyss which lies between man and nature in the
contemporary world.”34 Symbolism was the culmination of these historical processes which
have their origin in the cult of beauty through pessimism. The artist's journey within the self to
31
Elliot, 7.
Sergei Diaghilev, “V chas istogor” in Vesy (Moscow, 1905), no.4, 45-46; as cited in Bowlt, Moscow and St.
Petersburg, 177.
33
Pyman, 3.
34
Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sočinenij (8 Vols.; Moscow: GIXL, 1962), V, 421; as cited in Byrns, 38.
32
16
find stability was sought in an idealization of the past.
Still there was another, more cataclysmic but positive direction: the doctrine that the
cosmos was born of chaos. So there arose a new kind of nostalgia for the distant past and the far
future which would come into being after some great catastrophe. There was a yearning towards
some new more vital culture conjured out of catastrophe by a superhuman effort of will.
Philosopher Lev Shestov said, "the most important and meaningful thoughts are born into the
world naked"; it is essential to probe beyond the bounds of reason, to open windows, and to
move freely in the sphere of the unbounded. 35 It was possible to venture beyond the certainties
of the here and now because art is necessarily subjective and often imprecise. Words, colors,
sounds, and shapes could be used not so much to explain as to suggest; to provoke echoes and
reactions; to awaken memory, and stir premonition; hence, the Symbolist notion that the artist
sees the world as transparent and that we can afford insights beyond established truth.
Dmitrii Merezhkovsky, a prominent poet of the Silver Age, wrote "that to relieve man of
social injustice would simply set his mind and senses free to feel more acutely the anguish of
mortality in the uncreated, purposeless void of existence."36 And for Shestov, those who
persisted in asking these eternal, accursed questions, the quest led out into the realm of tragedy.
Tragedy replaces juridical guilt by the irrational but not unreasonable concept of tragic guilt.
The tragic hero can be slain by society, but can only be judged by the gods. Shestov wrote,
"Despair is the most solemn and the greatest moment of our life. Up till now we have had to do
with people and the laws of humanity, now, with eternity and the absence of laws."37 This road
would lead to a new acceptance of the moral imperative, whether as tragic courage, existential
35
Lev Shestov, Apofeoz bezpochvennosti, Opyt adogmaticheskogo myshleniia, ed. I.B. Ivanov (Leningrad: Izd-vo
Leningradskogo universiteta, 1991), 69-70; as cited in Pyman, xi.
36
Ibid., 4.
37
Shestov, Apofeoz bezpochvennosti, 83; as cited in Pyman, 5.
17
choice, or acceptance of the implications of the cross of Christ. 38 But, as the rigid institutions of
tsarist Russia were eroding, a new-found freedom began to flourish and a tide of modern art and
ideas swept across the country, bridging the void between the exotic past and the modern world.
Most European countries revered the art of their own past. In Russia, the situation was slightly
different. Prior to the westernizing reforms of Peter the Great in the early eighteenth century,
there had been no secular art in Russia. For almost seven hundred years, Russian art had been
confined to icons and religious objects which were seen as objects of worship not as aesthetic
objects. Thus, Russia was suffering a crisis of identity and many began searching for their Slavic
roots. Art subjects referred to the once-glorious history and soul of the Slavs. 39 Nikolai
Ryabushinsky, the publisher of The Golden Fleece magazine, wrote of the journey artists were
on in the preface of the first edition of 1906:
We embark on our path at a formidable time. Around us, like a raging whirlpool,
seethes the rebirth of life. In the thunder of the fight, amid the urgent questions
raised by our time, amid the bloody answers provided by our Russian reality, the
eternal for many fades and passes away...Art is eternal for it is founded on the
unchanging...Art is whole for its single source is the soul. Art is symbolic for it
bears within it the symbol...Art is free for it is created by the free impulse of
creation. 40
Born at the twilight of the Imperial Order, the Russian Silver Age coincided with major
social and political dislocations signaled by the Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution,
World War I, and the October Revolution, a tragic cycle which informed and enriched Russia's
modernism, distinguishing it from its European counterparts. Artists responded to these events,
investigating concepts of violence, denial, shock, and utopian vision. The outcome of these
38
Ibid., xii-5.
Elliot, 28.
40
Nikolai Ryabushinsky, “Preface,” The Golden Fleece, Moscow, January 1906, mo.1, p.4; as cited in John E.
Bowlt, ed., Russian Art of the Avant-Garde: Theory and Criticism, 1902-1934 (New York: The Viking Press, 1976),
8.
39
18
investigations created something unique and unrepeatable in the Russian Silver Age. It
acknowledged the new art and science of the West but modified them to local custom so as to
produce an eclectic mix of traditions. Thus, Russian Symbolism developed out of several ideas
such as the denial of the world of appearances, the search for a more pristine artistic form, the
transcending of established social and moral codes, and the emphasis on the inner world. 41
Aleksandr Benois, an artist and critic, described the era as a "hysterical, spiritually tormented
time," and the Russian Silver Age witnessed a generation of artists who trod the fatal path of
self-immolation and who squandered their mental energies as they sought to register a higher
harmony. 42 They grappled with the daunting concepts of Good and Evil, God and Satan, and in
cognition and knowledge. Some, such as Vrubel, sacrificed their strength on the altar of
aesthetic dreams. 43
The Symbolists made every effort to escape the present by looking back to an Arcadian
landscape of pristine myth and fable or forward to a utopian synthesis of art, religion, and
organic life. It represented an entire world view and a way of life which engendered intense
dreams, religious explorations, decorative rhetoric, and various kinds of metaphysical creativity.
Symbolists’ emphasis on the private experiences and on the work of art as a reflection of the
inner world was allied with their desire to produce works that were aesthetically unique as well
as containing elements of national character. The quest for a national identity informed their
philosophy, with an emphasis on the study of nature and the revival of styles from the Middle
Ages as well as Russian Orthodoxy as sources for inspiration. Because of this turn in style and
inspiration, Russian Symbolists aspired to transcend the impersonal conventions of sociopolitical
41
Bowlt, Moscow and St. Petersburg, 26-28.
A. Benois, Istoriia russkoi zhivopisi v XIX veka, (St. Petersburg: Evdokimov, 1901-1902), 271-272; as cited in
Bowlt, Moscow and St. Petersburg, 26.
43
Ibid., 26-30.
42
19
reality and of false, mimetic reproduction, so as to reach the spiritual plane of existence. 44
Vrubel's images of prophets, saints, and demons all express the nervous tension and feverish
energy of the Russian Silver Age. 45
Symbolism in Russia is best characterized by poet Andrei Bely's theory which is
ultimately a theory of nature as the purpose of human culture. The symbol is an image taken
from nature and transformed by creativity. It should, according to Bely, arise "naturally and
involuntarily from the depths of reality."46 Symbolism is a fusion of form and content, of
experience and objective reality, with the artwork as form and nature as content. The religious
and folkloric character of the movement lies in that it creates a living form which has not yet
been found in nature. 47 Vrubel had been drawn to these styles ever since his restoration work in
Kiev at St. Kirill’s when he began to appreciate Byzantine art, especially the use of line and
drapery. It was there, as well, that he began a relentless search for a new pictorial vocabulary
and a desire to say something new. 48 Vrubel wanted his work to be imbued with his own
imagination, work that would come to be characterized, as seen in both Demon Seated and
Demon Downcast with patches of color, broken silhouettes, and a nervous, shattered surface. 49
It was not just painting and sculpture that defined the era but also music. The spirit of
music commanded a special place in Russian Symbolism. Bely contended that the more an art
form aspired toward music, the more closely it approached the ultimate revelation. 50 Music, like
painting, is largely based on perspective and the need to arrange compositions at a certain
44
Ibid., 67.
Ibid., 67-69.
46
Andrei Bely, Simvolism (Moscow, 1910); as cited in John Elsworth, Andrei Bely’s Theory of Symbolism, accessed
15 May 2012. http://fmls.oxfordjournals.org/content/XI/4/305.full.pdf, 321-332.
47
Elsworth, 321-332.
48
Camilla Gray, The Russian Experiment in Art, 1863-1922 (London: Thames and Hudson, Ltd., 1971), 29-32.
49
Guerman, 88.
50
A. Bely, “Formy iskusstva” in Mir Iskusstva, 1902, Vol.8, Section III (Literature Chronicle), 347; as cited in
Bowlt, Moscow and St. Petersburg, 90.
45
20
predetermined distance to hear or see a sequence of rhythm and sounds and line. In painting,
line forms the entire construction so as to transmit a sensation of rhythmic dynamism, especially
through the verticals, horizontals, diagonals in various planes and through the rapid perspective
achieved by a sequence of horizontals. An emphasis on rhythm as John Bowlt interpreted is an
attempt to transcend and rupture the boundaries of the form and content, to interconnect aesthetic
units, and, thereby, to create an organic and synthetic whole. Because of the strong connection
between music and art, the Symbolists strove to apprehend a superior structure beyond the
outward flesh of things, thus there was a constant aspiration to move from the mundane to the
celestial, from darkness to light, while recognizing the dimensions and perimeters of the world of
appearances. 51
Some were aware of the transformation, if not demise, that awaited Imperial Russian
society, and the Russo-Japanese War, the 1905 Revolution, and World War I were accepted as
harbingers of Russia's ultimate decomposition. The almost hysterical energy with which artists
tried to disguise this rupture with their ornaments and facades could be expressed, as Bowlt
suggests, as a desperate attempt to ignore the impending doom. 52 Out of this struggle, several
artistic circles formed, each having their own way of putting into expression the world they saw
disintegrating in front of them. One such group was the Symbolist members of Mir iskusstva, or
the World of Art group. This group of artists sought to leave the social and political alienation of
reality for a more subjective, individual, and expressive form of personal feelings and thoughts
which were more in tune with Symbolist doctrine.
Founded by industrialist and entrepreneur, Savva Mamontov, the World of Art circle was
hostile to the Academy and 19th century Realism. The members of this group put their attention
51
52
Ibid., 80-92.
Ibid., 201.
21
to artistic craft, the cult of retrospective beauty, and assumed distance from the ills of
sociopolitical reality. They emphasized the need for a distinctive nationalism in Russian art and
their primary hope was to create a new artistic code through the recognition and rediscovery of
bygone cultures. Vrubel was, himself, occupied with the primordial state of man, as seen in
Demon Downcast, which Bowlt implies could be the embodiment of an archaic and cohesive
strength lacking in the disrupted society of pre-Revolutionary Russia.
The World of Art also looked to past epochs for a corroborative cultural flowering that
could be studied and emulated, among them the late 17th and 18th centuries. To the members of
Mir iskusstva, a work of art is important not in itself, but as an expression of the personality of
the artist. They were more interested in the creative personality than in the end product. They
wanted art to be absolutely free of all set tasks and foregone conclusions, an art where every
answer comes from the artist's own, subjective experience. The artists of genius are in reality
only transferring to the world a drama which is being played out in their own souls. They
transfer that drama in order to show us that the struggle which is now going on in us is eternal.
Merezhkovsky believed that the most precious fruits of human trial and suffering are those rare
moments when the two worlds attain a reconciliation, albeit unconscious and incomplete, a
fragile equilibrium bridged by a motif of mingled music which we think of as discord but feel as
harmony. 53 Many would come to see Vrubel’s work as the incarnation of an archaic and pure
condition and of an elemental cohesion lacking in the imperfect fabric of contemporary society. 54
Vrubel found a home within the Mir iskusstva group but still kept his style very much his own
with a tendency toward a world of fantasy and painterly fable, a sort of mystical symbolism. 55
53
Dmitrii Merezhkovsky, “Pushkin,” Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, vols. XVIII (St. Petersburg, 1906), 156; as cited
in Pyman, 128.
54
Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg, 69.
55
Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, xxiii.
22
Because of his inclination to remain individual, Vrubel's art often looked not only
forward but backward. Wishing to portray an emotion or idea rather than a simple scene, his
work is evidence of a deep, burning individuality and a multi-faceted symbolism with roots in
the classical tradition, yet continuously drawn to the future. 56 Vrubel’s style has linked him to
Cezanne, and also considered pre-Cubist, by Stuart Grover in his article “World of Art
Movement in Russia.” Demon Seated’s planes of color almost give a vague sense of boundary
between figure and landscape, and an almost total absence of depth. 57 The political events of the
age also seemed to have had no real interest for him, but to say that it did not affect his outlook
would be erroneous. This is evident in the changes in the Demon's scornful expression in Demon
Downcast from the original pensive Demon in Demon Seated. Vrubel himself once stated that
the broken contours "with which artists normally delineate the confines of a form" were, in fact,
"an optical illusion that occurs from the interaction of rays falling onto the object, reflecting from
its surface at different angles."58 Bowlt names Vrubel as the most original artist of the Russian
Silver Age, whose "fertile imagination produced work of extreme power and originality."
Vrubel approached the act of painting as a constant process of experimentation, returning to his
canvases again and again, erasing, repainting, modifying. His tireless restructuring of forms, his
release of ornamental energy, and his intense elaboration of the surface prompted critics to speak
of the crystalline formations, and "Cubist" faceting of his painting, to which the strangely
lapidary flowers in his Demon Seated bear strong testimony.
The notion of full flowering and of putrefaction was central to the Silver sensibility. The
Decadents, such as Viktor Borisov-Musatov, even referred to their artistic productions as flowers
56
Guerman, 7.
Stuart R. Grover, “World of Art Movement in Russia,” Russian Review, Vol. 32, No.1 (January 1973), 38.
58
Nikolai Prakhov, Stranitsy proshlogo, (Kiev, 1958), 159-160; as cited in Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde,
93.
57
23
cast upon the tomb, the idea of art as a wreath placed over the void of death because, in some
sense, according to Bowlt, the artists of Russia's fin de siècle were engaged in a highly ritualized
dance of death, and Vrubel was no exception. The image of the celestial bloom or the full and
wilting flower connects with the notion of Decadence and in turn, connects with the states of
mind, often altered through lifestyles and the use of alcohol and drugs, which Vrubel was known
to use. 59
There is also a sense of ethereality, dreaminess, and musicality in Vrubel's work. He
developed an intuitive view of the Slavic soul giving his work a quasi-religious and mystical
idealism in appearance. A proto-modernist, Vrubel sought to harmonize figures within their
landscape by using strong ambient moods of color. He revealed in the mosaic-like structures,
freer handling and decorative scale of his work, an aspiration towards the analogy of music, in
their reliance on mood above content. 60
Vrubel also understood how the figures of myth and legend had first formed in the
popular imagination, emerging from the gnarled shapes of trees, the crouching potency of stone
and boulder, and the play of life and air on tossing blossom. Vrubel absorbed and sought to
show what Viktor Vasnetsov described as their "Russian nature and human types, our present
life, our past, our fantasies, dreams, and faith."61 The most important thing was to encapsulate
the moment, to convey a mood. Vladimir Stasov, of the Wanderers generation, considered
Vrubel a decadent and could see "nothing but madness and monstrosity, anti-art and
repulsiveness." 62
59
Bowlt, Moscow & St. Petersburg, 201-213.
Elliot, 9-30.
61
Viktor Vasnetsov, quoted in N.M. Belogrlazova, Abramstveo Gosudarstvennyi iskoriko-khudozhestvennyi i
literaturnyi muzei zapovednik (Moscow, 1987); as cited in Pyman, 104.
62
Vladimir Stasov, “Vystavki,” Novosti i Birzhevaia Gazeta, No. 27 (27 Jan 1898), quoted from Izbrannye
socheneniia, vol. III (Moscow, 1952), 218-219; as cited in Pyman, 108.
60
24
The Demon changed as Vrubel's grasp of the world disintegrated. Consequently, the
Demon became a psychological portrait of the Silver Age which existed naturally in a real and
contemporary landscape, giving the viewer a chance to gradually penetrate his mysterious
world. 63 Vrubel's Demon Seated starts out as the personification of the romantic spirit, full of
hope and searching for love, beauty, harmony, and truth. He finds it in the love of a woman, but
quickly loses it. In the end, he is crushed, disillusioned and cast out into a world which has no
place for him. Throughout, Vrubel somehow is able to convey the duality of the age with a
strange combination of the sadness and despondency characteristic of Symbolism, as well as a
form of intellectual hope and romanticism. Vrubel's development of the Demon theme
demonstrates his technique in exhibiting how the visual, psychological, and philosophical ideas
of the time can interact as an expression of the creative process. 64
The contrast in Demon Seated and Demon Downcast, separated by only twelve years,
demonstrates how much can change in a short time. Vrubel had the ability to show a
combination of the nervous disquiet of the time with the monumentalism of the past. 65 When
Vrubel began painting Demon Seated, modern art in Russia had only just begun to flourish.
Social reform, rapid industrialization, and growing resentment for the Tsarist regime are only a
few instances that describe this grave, gloomy period of expectation, doubt and despair, which
caused the artist to refine man's individuality, mortality, and solitude, as seen in Demon Seated. 66
Vrubel sought experience and subject matter beyond the norm and explored spiritual mysticism
through a deep self-analysis and awareness of the subconscious. 67 As indicated by Bowlt,
Vrubel weighed the spiritual torment of the age against the judgments of the past that had stood
63
Guerman, 90-124.
Isdebsky-Pritchard, xx.
65
Ibid., 44.
66
Bowlt, Russian Art of the Avant-Garde, 5.
67
64
25
the test of time, investigating the concepts of violence, denial, shock and utopian vision. 68 His
Demon Downcast represented the tragedy of the intelligentsia who sought knowledge and
freedom through a struggle between experience and error. 69 This Demon reveals the individual
soul's highest aspiration as it struggles to transcend the social pressure of the commonplace. 70
According to Aleksandr Blok, a Symbolist poet and contemporary of Vrubel’s, the Demon
became "a symbol of the times…a spirit of revolt against society and an intermediary towards
other worlds.” 71
Just as the Demon of Demon Seated represents Vrubel’s era, so the Demon of Demon
Downcast wholly represents the era as well. The left-hand side of the image, though chaotic at
first glance, is expressing a sense of calm within the smooth flow of the wings and rocks. This
peaceful atmosphere serves to mask somewhat the turbulent chaos of sharp edges and broken
lines forming on the right. The resolved yet horrified expression, broken forms of the body and
landscape, all acts together as a vision of the end of the old order and the intensifying will to
overturn and destroy. 72 Demon Downcast corresponded to a time when Vrubel wrote that "art
was trying with all its might to illusionize the soul and to wake it from the trifles of the
commonplace through powerful imagery."73 Bowlt further suggests that Demon Downcast
represents the many platitudes occurring during the end of the nineteenth century such as the
rapid modernization of Russian society, the insistent capitalization of the economy, and the
tendency to envision rather than implement. 74 Thus the resulting image displays the struggle
between the eternal individual, the Demon may be cast down but he expresses all that is strong
68
Khachiyan, “Vrubel’s Demons.”
70
71
Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sočinenij, 423; as cited in Byrns, 46.
72
73
Corresponence, 113; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 40.
74
69
26
and elevated. This Demon represents an archetype: the quest for the universal and tragic in
nature with the fall from grace predetermined. His fate is to struggle within his own spirit. He is
hideously misshapen and has the rigidity of stone. The crown upon his head alludes to Christ's
sufferings and the expression is of deep existential anxiety yet still possesses pride and
determination. With the violent, broken, and opposing rhythms of the body and landscape, it is
suggested by Isdebsky-Pritchard that Vrubel’s painting had the foreknowledge of an impending
apocalyptic crisis. 75
Demon Downcast was first shown at a World of Art exhibition in 1902. By December of
1901, Vrubel was having difficulty relating to everyone and his letters discussing a group
organization clearly foretell the advent of his illness. Vrubel experienced a crisis while painting
Demon Downcast; this Demon eluded a single interpretation. As the story goes, it was on the
morning of the 1902 Mir Iskusstva exhibition in a cul-de-sac known as Passazh off the Nevsky
Prospekt, that Vrubel was discovered, beside himself, with an empty champagne bottle, having
spent the entire night retouching his visionary canvas of Demon Downcast, a long, grey, broken
figure lying crushed amidst a tangle of peacock feathers and cruel landscape of blue, brown, and
violet rock. To Bely, there was an attempt at a "piecing together of the broken bits of a once
whole reality...an accumulation of the primitive associations of a soul which has renounced will
and laid down its arms before the face of fate. The condition of Hell is isolation." 76
An image, like a poem, can become a performance, and the artist's interpretations of a
scene can provide commentary upon his own views of the world. 77 The Demon of Vrubel's
world was, much like him, spurned by the everyday and left with nothing but to contemplate his
own soul, the fallen angel who knows good but feels power to be a curse; a spirit with an
75
Andrei Bely, “Oblomki mirov,” Vesy No.5 (1908); as cited in Pyman, 300.
77
Byrns, 44.
76
27
overdeveloped emotionality who is overcome by passion which leads to the all-consuming
suffering beyond which lies utter loneliness. 78 For the destructive passions of Vrubel’s own
time, the young, pensive figure of Demon Seated seemed the new spirit of self-restoration. He
recognizes his own uniqueness and looks toward the light for renewal but that light is a sunset.
These tensions are unbearable, creating a duel between tremendous power and powerlessness.
This Demon, as Mikhail Guerman asserts, possesses both "health and strength, and radical
pessimism” yet, “an ardent faith in redemption." 79 Vrubel’s canvas vibrates as if it were
breathing with the dull purples, silvery lilacs, and ashen pinks creating a new flesh simply
through the act of painting.
In opposition, the Demon of Demon Downcast is the representation of Merezhkovsky’s
social injustice of man, which Pyman says is the man who has “set his mind and senses free only
to become more acutely aware of the anguish of mortality in the uncreated, purposeless void of
existence."80 He is the suppressed dream, unneeded power, and loneliness which Vrubel allows
to enter the viewer through the language of painting. With Demon Downcast he was able to
convey, in a single motif, the drama of the age and the dilemma of eternity.
Believing that artistic activity was more than a reflection on nature, but also an
intellectual pursuit, Vrubel became an avid follower of both Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich
Nietzsche. 81 Let’s examine these in turn, Vrubel's Demon exemplifies Schopenhauer's Will
versus Representation and Nietzsche's Apollonian versus Dionysian concepts. Both theorists
advocated ways to overcome a frustration- filled and necessarily painful human condition through
artistic forms of awareness that manifests itself through the concept of the Dionysian will of
78
Guerman, 55.
Ibid., 56-59.
80
Pyman, 4.
81
Ibid., 35.
79
28
instinctual desires and the Apollonian representation of rationality. Somewhere amidst the moral
order and sober rationality of culture lies a life force containing the emotive, primordial nature of
human beings which society suppresses. The artist can attempt to bridge that gap between the
truth of nature and the myth of culture, thus finding a means to pass through the suffering of life
and attain beauty. 82
Demon Seated illustrates Schopenhauer's world of Representation whereas Demon
Downcast illustrates the world of Will. Schopenhauer’s theory of Will and Representation has
several key elements that can successfully be applied to Vrubel’s work. The general concept of
his theory is that Representation is the world as it appears to the mind. This can also be called
the Idea. Will is the world as it exists outside of thought behind the world of appearance. 83 "The
objective world, the world as representation, is not the only side of the world, but merely its
external side, so to speak, and the world has an entirely different side which is its innermost
being, its kernel, the thing- in- itself. This we shall call ‘Will,’ after the most immediate of its
objectifications."84
The world as Will is beyond description because we cannot know anything concrete
about it and is, therefore, the underlying transcendental ground of the world as Idea or
Representation. Schopenhauer proposes that it is possible at least, non-representationally, to
arrive at an understanding of the world as Will. He suggests that we can only experience a
transient world of chance appearance individuated by the mind's innate categories and concepts
under the principle of sufficient reason in which a true non-transcendental explanation exists for
82
Jae Emerling, Theory for Art History (New York: Routledge, 2005), 26-30.
Dale Jacquette, ed., Schopenhauer, Philosophy, and the Arts (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 2.
84
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, Volume I & II. E.F.J. Payne, trans. (New York:
Dover Publication, Inc., 1969), 30-31.
83
29
every aspect of the world as Representation. 85 Therefore, one can go beyond knowledge of
transcendental reality through specifying another sense of nonrepresentational knowledge of the
thing- in-itself, and by identifying a field of application in which this "knowledge" can function,
from which standpoint the mind can gather nonrepresentational knowledge about the nature of
the real transcendental world, becoming, "not merely the knowing subject, but that we ourselves
are also among those realities we require to know, that we ourselves are the thing-in- itself.”86
The world in reality, independent of the mind, is known as the thing-in- itself. The thingin-itself, as Will, is the inner nature of everything and is described as a monstrous blind urging,
an un-individuated force and power, or an endless undirected striving. Access to the thing- initself is an individual experiential will that we experience in everyday wanting and desiring, and
it is particularly in the frustration of our wants and desires that we acquire some idea of the world
as Will. Experience of willing discloses the nature of reality as whatever immediately objectifies
desire, striving, urging. There is, however, a fine distinction between knowledge in the narrow
sense, to which the thing-in-itself is unknowable representationally, and nonrepresentational
knowledge that is not acquired by ordinary cognition, but by direct acquaintance with willing as
the most direct manifestation of reality in the world of appearance. Will as thing- in-itself is only
non-representationally revealed in something Schopenhauer described as much like a mystical
experience. 87
Although nature and the figure of the Demon are somewhat fragmented in Demon Seated,
the image still represents objects that do exist within the real world of appearance. The figure of
the Demon displays a calm reserve, although his strong, muscular body is tense. He appears,
physically, to be on the verge of attack, but even though he appears tense, his shoulders are
85
Jacquette, 4-5.
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol. II, 195.
87
Jacquette, 2-7.
86
30
slumped over and he sits in a child-like position while the forlorn expression on his face conveys
that his tendency for self-destruction is immobilized. 88 He is experiencing true sadness as he sits
on top of the world, looking as far as he can see. He is contemplating the world where there is
something more to be found, not just the flowers closing in upon him safely, or the fiery sunset
of destruction. He must decide if he wants safety or to brave new offerings and journey into the
unknown. The tear rolling down his cheek could indicate the choice he makes, which is to roll
against the wind and venture out into the void, knowing that there may be no point at which he
can return to a reflective being.
In contrast, the fall of the Demon in Demon Downcast exposes the main idea of the Will,
which is of a striving towards an end that does not exist. He has crashed in a strange
mountainous landscape, landing in an unnatural position, yet his upright head and eyes are
possessed of a different emotion from Demon Seated: he has seen how the world really operates
and his sadness is now replaced with hatred. His personal journey has led him to witness and
experience all the world has to offer, yet the highest offering that of love, was cruelly denied.
With the loss of this love, he now must roam the earth lonely and desolate, with nothing to do
but reflect on his failure to transcend his doom.
The Demon in this image is representative of the thing- in- itself and he has recognized
that through his monstrous, blind urging he has actually become the thing- in- itself: Will. He
gained access to Will through his desire for love and his frustrations in not being able to attain
and keep love. He had his own mystical experience through his brief encounter with Tamara as
she perished in his arms and was taken to heaven by the angel. He has allowed this experience to
permeate his being and the new emotion displayed upon his face demonstrates this tragic turn of
events. He has allowed rage to possess him which has only caused him to fall further and further
88
Guerman, 136.
31
from grace. The fall does not bring death, as he wished, but, instead, brings more suffering with
the agonizing realization of his own immortality. 89 Here there is a little of Lermontov’s poem in
which the Demon returns to his former, cold world: “. . . arrogant/Alone in all the
universe/Abandoned without love or hope!”90
The Demon can gain an understanding of this experience, if he chooses, through two
channels: ascetic and moral suffering and self-denial or by aesthetic contemplation which
suppresses individual willing as it reveals nonrepresentational aspects of the world. Suffering is
nonrepresentational because it does not depict the phenomenal world; therefore, one experiences
nonrepresentational reality as intimately as possible. Individual suffering reveals that reality is a
force necessarily at odds with itself. The Will objectifies itself most blatantly as individual
suffering because it is in these experiences that willing encounters the harshness of an
uncontrollable, personally unacceptable reality. Will is an obstacle to the thing- in- itself because
it seeks objects such as alleviation of pain or victory over an adversary as a temporary solution to
frustrated desires. According to Schopenhauer, the best route through suffering is to suppress
Will with self-denial which leads by degrees from lack of the Will's longing to the experience of
a mystical loss of individuality. 91
Aesthetic contemplation is similar to suffering but through means of the contemplation of
nature and art, in which the artist stands enraptured by an encounter with beauty or the sublime, a
mystical union of subject and object occurs. Thus, the desires of individual will are overruled by
the absorption of aesthetic appreciation. Aesthetic contemplation is freedom from the world as
representational subject to the principle of sufficient reason, hence from time, space, fate, and
thereby freedom from the individual subject of willing. It delivers one from suffering and from
89
Ibid., 136.
Lermontov, The Demon.
91
Jacquette, 4-8.
90
32
individuality. 92
Three aspects define this portion of Schopenhauer's philosophy: observation, diagnosis,
and cure. The observation is that animate life is essentially suffering. The diagnosis is that
suffering is caused by the will to life and the cure comes in the cessation of willing life which
eliminates suffering. 93 Suffering is evident in both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast,
although each is a different form of suffering. Demon Seated is the first part of Schopenhauer’s
philosophy, the observation, and reveals itself as personally unacceptable. Through aesthetic
contemplation, the Demon is momentarily freed from the representational world and given the
chance to realize that life is essentially full of suffering. This observation is what sends the
Demon on his quest for a new and different kind of world in which there is alleviation from pain.
The journey he ultimately goes on leads him to the form of suffering seen in Demon Downcast
which is the epitome of the third part of Schopenhauer's philosophy: the cure. The Demon no
longer cares about life, his or any other. Because he no longer desires anything, he is no longer
susceptible to suffering however temporary it might be.
Schopenhauer introduces the ideas of beauty and the sublime. He defines beauty as the
natural form of ideas and appears without effort whereas the sublime is defined by the attitudes
and emotional responses of the Will toward the world as Idea and requires a feeling of
satisfaction that results only through the struggle and victory of the Will. Schopenhauer gives us
two aspects of the sublime: dynamical and mathematical. Dynamical sublime is the imaginative
contact with great and terrifying natural forces whereas mathematical sublime is a product of
awe in contemplation of great distances in space and time, such as an appreciation of the vast
92
93
Ibid., 87.
Ibid., 81.
33
immensity of the night sky. 94 The impression of the sublime should,
Become even stronger, when we have before our eyes the struggle of the agitated
forces of nature on a large scale, when in these surroundings the roaring of a
falling stream deprives us of the possibility of hearing our own voices...Then in
the unmoved beholder of this scene the twofold nature of his consciousness
reaches the highest distinctness. Simultaneously, he feels himself as individual,
as the feeble phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of these forces can
annihilate, helpless against powerful nature, dependent, abandoned to chance, a
vanishing nothing in face of stupendous forces; and he also feels himself as the
eternal, serene subject of knowing, who as the condition of every object is the
supporter of this whole world, the fearful struggle of nature being only his mental
picture of representation; he himself is free from, and foreign to, all willing and
all needs, in the quiet comprehension of the Ideas. This is the full impression of
the sublime. Here it is caused by the sight of a power beyond all comparison
superior to the individual, and threatening him with annihilation. 95
As Schopenhauer states the sublime is partially aroused by experiencing tragedy which portrays
"the nature of the world and of existence."96 The tragic figure, in this case the Demon, can either
turn away from the will to life or reach resignation. Schopenhauer asks the spectator to reach a
"resigned exaltation of the mind," and thus, "take pleasure in the tragedy," which belongs, not to
the beautiful, but to the sublime: "At the sight of the sublime in nature we turn away from the
interest of the Will, in order to behave in a purely intuitive way" while "in the tragic catastrophe
we turn away from the will to life itself."97
Beauty is bound up with suffering. Vrubel’s Demon shows this in Demon Seated. Here
are the natural forms of the world, untouched by the human hand. While displaying beauty, the
image also gives us a representation of mathematical sublime. In true, literal sense, the Demon
sits, as Schopenhauer said "the product of awe in contemplation of great distances in space and
time," in appreciation of the vastness of the world in front of him. 98 Demon Downcast wholly
94
Ibid., 21-22.
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol. I, 204-205.
96
Ibid., 253-254.
97
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol. II, 433.
98
Jacquette, 21-22.
95
34
envisions the dynamical sublime with its great and terrifying confrontation with natural forces.
Although no longer in awe of the mystery of nature, he is crushed before it threatened with a
power that can destroy him at any given moment.
Although both images give a different impression of the sublime, they both ultimately
create the same feeling: the threat of annihilation. Both representations of the Demon are of the
"unmoved beholder" of the scene in which he lies, aware that he is "helpless against powerful
nature" and "abandoned to chance", knowing that the "slightest touch of these forces can
annihilate." 99 They both display a different form of the tragic experience, as well. Demon
Seated is the representation of the tragedy in which, at the sight of the sublime in nature, he
chooses to turn away from the interest of the world and let his intuition take control. The Demon
of Demon Downcast is the catastrophic tragedy in which the Demon no longer strives to live but
instead turns away from the will to life.
Will, due to its negativity, cannot become all that there is, thus a world of equilibrium
and essence is formed in which the temporality of will is replaced by an external present.
Because the Will is dualistic, it is insatiable and requires an alternative, if not for completeness,
then for balance. For Schopenhauer this balance is formed and maintained in the creation of art
which is a sign of the success at equilibrium between Will and Representation. The problem for
artists is that they must face the true nature of will in order to reveal it but the artist cannot
escape will by withdrawing from its imperatives, as Dale Jacquette asserts, “for artistic creativity
is action in the world: ambitions are never fully realized, happiness is a chimera just beyond
reach, progress is a coercive illusion, and there is no God to help one along.”100
Schopenhauer goes on to introduce the concept of the genius, which, for him, requires
99
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, Vol. 1, 204-205.
Jacquette, 64-65.
100
35
imagination in order to turn natural forms into abstract forms and then find ways to represent
them in art. "The man of genius requires imagination, in order to see in things not what nature
has actually formed, but what she endeavored to form, yet did not bring about, because of the
conflict of her forms with one another."101 Having seen the true forms of reality, the genius is
compelled to share nonrepresentational knowledge with those still left in darkness. In accordance
with Schopenhauer, the genius suffers more acutely than ordinary people due to their effort to
grasp these ideas of nature. 102 And because most of humanity disregards the thing- in-itself or the
world outside the mind and think only of the fleeting world of appearance, the mark of genius is
to devalue the world of appearance and embrace the hard truth of inescapable turmoil of the
world as Will. Aesthetic contemplation induces a silencing of individual will. But this silence in
aesthetic contemplation of beauty is unavailable to the common man. The genius puts knowing
above willing yet will is enlisted in the service of knowledge which creates more suffering, thus
the genius is doomed to frustration and disappointment. Those with sensitive natures who must
undergo the most exquisite sufferings of will mercifully are also those who are best equipped to
find momentary salvation in aesthetic transcendence. And for Schoepnhauer, the artist is the
most equipped. 103
The artist should be seen as both an existential hero and victim engaged in the terrible
struggles of passion and will in arriving at privileged knowledge and bringing artistic creations to
the world. They see art as the outcome of deep conflict and frustration of the will in what are
often emotionally painful efforts of self-expression. Art imaginatively expresses the ideas in
nature by which the world as Will is manifested in the world as Idea. Art is an expression of
Will yet it belongs to the world of appearance. Thus, there is a delicate balancing act. Only
101
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol. I, 186.
Jacquette, 9.
103
Ibid., 10-12.
102
36
when individual will is shut off can the artist receive inspiration. Yet, as Schopenhauer sets forth
in Parerga and Paralipomena, first published in 1851, the artist need not always be able to
articulate the ideas he or she is attempting to concretize in art:104
By virtue of his objectivity, the [artist] with reflectiveness perceives all that others
do not see. This gives him as a poet the ability to describe nature so clearly,
palpably, and vividly, or as a painter, to portray it. On the other hand, with the
execution of the work, where the purpose is to communicate and present what is
known, the will can, and indeed must, again be active, just because there exists a
purpose. 105
The artist's product shows us the tranquil alternative to the Will through images of the world of
forms, where there is no inadequacy to instigate action. Yet, the completeness of art's content
must take shape within the world of Will, thus the dilemma to creativity: artists cannot deny
ambition if they wish to create images that provide reasons for the denial of progress. Artists
create within a world of ambition and desire and so must persist in that world if art's images are
to be achieved at all and thus must remain divided, and conflicting demands of content and
creation give rise to personal costs which are familiar signs of the artistic vocation: social
alienation and mental imbalance. 106
Of all the intricate questions concerning the nature and personality of artists, few have
given rise to more consistent inquiry than that of the connection between genius and madness;
the idea that artistic talent and genius are dependent on a precariously balanced type of
personality which implied a mythical picture of the creative man as inspired, rebellious,
dedicated, obsessive, and alienated, as well as neurotic. Prior to Schopenhauer, many
philosophers, such as Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, identified the artist as
a gifted but remote creature who is remarkable through achievements that are independent of
104
Ibid, 13-15.
Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and paralipomena, Book II, 418-419; as cited in Jacquette, 14.
106
Jacquette, 65-66.
105
37
biography; to Kant and Hegel, the artist simply has the capacity to produce great art and their
importance lies solely in the production of masterpieces. Schopenhauer does not believe this to
be the case. His sustained scrutiny of artistic creativity extends his aesthetic analysis from the
symbol to the conditions of its making. He casts the artist as both prophet and victim of society
and lays the groundwork for psychological theories that link creativity with mental illness. He
extends the function of art to the lives and actions of the artists interpreting the link between
artistic genius and madness. 107 As he states in The World as Will and Representation, Volume I,
On madness:
Mad people do not generally err in the knowledge of what is immediately present;
but their mad talk relates always to what is absent and past, and only through
these to its connection with what is present. Therefore, it seems to me that their
malady especially concerns the memory. It is not, indeed a matter of memory
failing them entirely . . . Rather, it is a case of the thread of memory being broken,
its continuous connection being abolished, and of the impossibility of a uniformly
coherent connection with the past. 108
On genius:
The individual object of the genius's contemplation, or the present which he
apprehends with excessive vividness, appears in so strong a light that the
remaining links of the chain, so to speak, to which they belong, withdraw into
obscurity, and this gives us phenomena that have long since been recognized as
akin to madness. That which exists in the actual individual thing, only
imperfectly and weakened by modifications, is enhanced to perfection, to the very
Idea of it, by the method of contemplation used by the genius. Therefore
everywhere he sees extremes, and on this account his own actions tend towards
extremes. 109
Madness and genius are similar due to experience of time, a skewing of the connection between
the past and future into an excessive focus on the present. For the artist, such as Vrubel, it is
seeing reality as the whole experience with the lack of the capacity to place order within the
107
Ibid., 62-66.
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation Vol. I, 192.
109
Ibid., 194.
108
38
transitions in life, which creates a struggle of the Will against the Idea. 110 Schopenhauer locates
madness in the opposition between immediate attention and memory, between the artist and the
work, for the product of creative action exemplifies as well as denies the process that creates it
and the artist's heroism lies in the persistence of such action in the face of such content: "He
himself bears the cost of producing that play; he himself is the will objectifying itself and
remaining in constant suffering." 111 When an artist's mistakes the revelatory actions of artmaking for the practical tasks of coping with the world of ordinary affairs he becomes its victim.
The artist does not inhabit the world of art and action in which the consequence is isolation from
other action. Creative madness is redeemed by its symbolic capacity to render the Will
transparent to the reality that lies beyond it. 112
The delineation that humans impose upon things forces an object or event to turn against
itself, consume itself, and do violence to itself. This violence sends one on a quest to find peace,
and for Vrubel, the only means to do so was through artistic design. Through the act of creating,
Vrubel believed that he would come to understand the abstract forms of feeling from everyday
circumstances, in which he would then be able to perceive life without the burdens that typically
cause suffering. In my opinion, he wanted to believe that he would come out on the other side,
that he would, in Schopenhauer's words, "pass through the fires of hell and experience a dark
night of the soul, as his universal self fought against his individuated and physical self" in order
to enter the "transcendent consciousness of heavenly tranquility."113 This search is seen in
Demon Seated and its outcome is apparent in Demon Downcast.
Demon Seated is that vision of a lost soul, a melancholy figure who has withdrawn into
110
Jacquette, 67.
Schopenhauer, World as Will and Representation, Vol. I, 267.
112
Jacquette, 68.
113
“Arthur Schopenhauer,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy website, 1-20.
111
39
an enclosed world wrapped in shadows and guarded by nature. 114 He sits there, staring into the
distance, in contemplation of the eternal. The figure in Demon Downcast is no longer in
contemplation. He has been cast out, isolated, dematerialized, and emasculated by his guilt over
his part in Tamara's demise. He is a crushed, swooning body with tragic eyes; a pure spirit
which looms out of the mist, dominant at last, but with his empire gone. 115 There is a sense of a
deeper, more painful reality; an immense and all-pervasive atmosphere that is intangible and
mysterious. This Demon embodies Vrubel's concept of the soul's essence as active and
disruptive in the "eternal struggle of the mutinous human spirit" and in creative conflict with the
world. 116
Overall, Schopenhauer’s theory demonstrates how human desires, which motivate human
will, far outnumber their momentary satisfactions; man is condemned to suffer and pleasure is
merely a suspension of pain and respite from the human condition can only come by the
distancing of the self from worldly preoccupations. The images produced by Vrubel, as well as
other artists of the era, reflect the despair as well as the hopes and aspirations of a generation
adrift from a society they despised. There is a mood of disillusionment with politics,
dissatisfaction with materialism, and a search for meaning that forced meaning to begin to turn
away from traditional, academic modes of expression and go in search of a new language of the
spirit in art. 117 This search led many, among them Vrubel, to the ideas of a philosopher more in
tune with their own thinking: Friedrich Nietzsche.
The influence of Nietzsche on modern art mirrors his wide-ranging appeal from the
114
Gray, 62.
Ibid., 32-33.
116
Mikhail A. Vrubel, Anna A., and Aleksandr M., intro. A.P. Ivanov, Pisma k Sestre Vospominaniya o
Khudoshnike Anny Aleksandrovny Vrubel, Otryvki iz Pisem Otsa Khudozhika (Letters to His Sister, Reminiscences
about the Artist by Anna Vrubel, Excerpts from the Letter’s of the Artist’s Father), Leningrad: Gosudarstvennaya
Akademiya Istorii Materialnoy Kultury, 1929; as cited in Isdebsky-Pritchard, 97.
117
Jacquette, 251-254.
115
40
Vienna Secession in the 1890s to German expressionism and Italian futurism in the twentieth
century. 118 Russian artists learned of Nietzsche when their society was in the first stages of the
all-pervasive cultural, political, and social crisis that was to explode in the revolutions of 1905
and 1917. Nietzsche’s ideas, especially the idea that myth is essential to the health of a culture,
spoke directly to those dissatisfied with positivism and seeking a new identity, personal and
national, and a new ruling idea by which to live and base their work. (30.5) The organization of
Mir iskusstva turned out to be a milestone in Russian cultural history and its founders were
Nietzsche enthusiasts. New heroes emerged who were strong-willed autonomous individuals,
such as Vrubel, who neither bowed to fate nor deferred to authority. 119 And Nietzsche
understood art as the basic transformative impulse known to human experience. He proposed
that art itself, as the unacknowledged catalyst of social change, growth, and transfiguration has a
redemptive value and that the genius is a kind of artist. He stated that, with the creation of art,
we are actively contributing to the construction of order and meaning in the world and thereby
liberate ourselves from submission to the authority of the eternal and unchanging values of the
world. By exposing a lack of values, rejecting their bogus authority, and justifying the order and
meaning of objects and events, we see how we transfigure our relations to ourselves and
events. 120
Vrubel’s knowledge of Nietzsche, like mush else in his ideology, is not thoroughly
documented by systematic statements but only through fragmentary evidence derived from
correspondence, rough notes for his own use, memoirs, and the context of his work. Vrubel was
118
Aline Isdebsky-Pritchard, “Art for Philosophy’s Sake: Vrubel Against ‘the Herd’,” in Nietzsche in Russia, edited
by Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal (Princeton, NY: Princeton University Press, 1986), 219.
119
Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World: From Nietzsche to Stalinism (University Park, PA:
Pennyslvania State University Press, 2002), 28.
120
Salim Kemal, Ivan Gaskell, Daniel W. Conway, eds., Nietzsche, Philosophy, and the Arts (New York: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), 3.
41
a voracious reader and is certain to have known other writers and artists, such as Merezhkovsky
and members of Mir iskusstva, who treated Nietzschean themes as early as 1890. As a result of
these contacts it seems likely that Vrubel read the Russian translations of Nietzsche when they
first appeared in 1898. According to Isdebsky-Pritchard in her article “Art for Philosophy’s
Sake: Vrubel Against ‘the Herd’,” his first recorded allusions to Nietzsche did not occur until
1902, near the approach of his first breakdown. 121 Nevertheless, Vrubel admired Nietzsche's cult
of the tragic, irrational, elemental, disharmonious world, and he wanted to be Nietzsche's creator
of the sublime, fantastic, and grandiose, which is only achieved through the act of creation,
which is an expression of the artist's personality and should always be concerned with the
creative process rather than the final product. He was deeply committed to the idea that the
world was not stable and permanent but rather constantly changing, unsteady, and problematic.
The artistic genius must contemplate ideas and create an art that portrays them in a manner more
comprehensible, thereby communicating the vision to those who lack the power to see through
and rise above the society in which they live. That moral consciousness coincides with the
sublime as a feeling of tranquility imbued with an intense fear. 122
Nietzsche's ideas center on the concept of the Apollonian and the Dionysian, which are
two forces that struggle to find a balance, ultimately developing what becomes tragedy. Apollo
embodies the drive toward distinction, discreteness, and individuality. He moves toward the
drawing and respecting of boundaries and limits and teaches an ethic of moderation and selfcontrol. The Apollonian artist glorifies individuality by presenting attractive images of people,
things, and events. Dionysus, by contrast, embodies the drive towards the transgression of
121
122
Glatzer Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia, 224-225.
Pyman, 99.
42
limits, the dissolution of boundaries, the destruction of individuality, and excess. 123
The Apollonian concept is about cognitive activity, dreaming, visual art, and the
awareness of general forms. The Dionysian concept is about movement and sexuality,
intoxication, awareness of particularity, and the absence of clear individuation of the self.
Nietzsche presents both Apollonian and Dionysian as natural drives within human nature.
Apollonian activity is not detached and coolly contemplative, but a response to an urgent human
need, namely, the need to demarcate an intrinsically unordered world, making it intelligible for
ourselves. All cognitive activity, including logical reasoning, abstracting, and generalizing
tendencies, are profoundly practical and are the ways in which we try to master the world and to
make ourselves secure in it. Apollonian activity is thus subtly un-Schopenhauerian, for instead
of simply expressing the idealism in Schopenhauer's account of representation, it now makes the
further point that this activity succeeds only through self-deception: having effected an ordering,
we convince ourselves that it is really the way the world is. Dionysian activity is a drive
demanding satisfaction but is not unintelligent and not devoid of cognitive activity. The
Dionysian experience is one of enchantment, charm, ecstasy, and a heightened awareness of
freedom, harmony, unity, and the experience of being made a work of art by the crafting power
of desire. 124
Although there is every reason to assume Vrubel was not yet acquainted with Nietzsche
at the time he was painting Demon Seated, it curiously anticipates Nietzsche’s The Birth of
Tragedy. One might surmise that the soul’s reconciliation between the Apollonian spirit of
restraint and a Dionysian immersion into nature’s mysterious primordial unity is the subject of
123
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and Other Writings. Raymond Guess, and Ronald Spiers, eds., Ronald
Spiers, trans., (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999), xi.
124
Kemal et al., 52-54.
43
the painting. 125 In basic appearance Demon Seated is the Apollonian image showing a calm,
reflective, and cognitive being. Because of the tension seen in the muscle of his body it is clear
that he is attempting moderation and self-control; he is not yet on his destructive path. He
dreams of what life could be like had he been able to experience and become aware of all the
good that life has to offer. He is completely insecure in his life and mind yet appears to be quite
content, though slightly sad, as he gazes into the distance. Although it is unknown what he is
thinking, one can surmise that he is contemplating his life and trying to figure out where he went
wrong, attempting to find some logical explanation for the things he has done and for his actions
which have caused pain for others as well as himself. This Demon is trying to figure out his
place in the world and is unsure where his future lies. Yet, for the moment, at least, he is
surrounded by some comfort, enveloped in the comforts of nature with the large flowers to the
right of the canvas. The thoughtful Demon has these Apollonian qualities of quiet selfcontainment in spite of his profound sadness. Yet, even with this semblance of safety, his fusin
with the ground, his vegetal hands, and the magnificent flowers that enfold him indicate that he
is a Dionysian Demon, closely bound to elemental earthly powers.
The Dionysian aspect of Demon Seated is concentrated mostly to the left of the canvas as
well as in the Demon's body. The tension in his body, for the moment, is contained by an
Apollonian desire for a belief that there is a reason for the way the world is constructed. Here
the Demon embodies, in mindset, the self-deception that Nietzsche argues is created by the
fiction- making of the Apollonian vision. But the tension in his body displays the frustration with
such a world and his head turned away from the beauty of the flowers, also hints at what is to
come for the Demon. The fury of the sunset behind him foretells the life he will ultimately
125
Glatzer Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia, 233.
44
choose. He is disenchanted with the world of appearance and decides to unveil what we so often
hide from ourselves. His destiny is not one of reason or beauty but one of uncontrolled desire.
Demon Downcast, on the other hand, embodies wholeheartedly the Dionysian drive and
dissolution of boundaries. Evidence of Nietzsche’s influence on this work comes from a letter in
which his wife wrote with disappointment that the painting no longer represented Lermontov’s
Demon but some extraordinary “contemporary Nietzschean being.”126 The entire image informs
the spectator of the final outcome of the journey he began in Demon Seated. Here is a creature
that is no longer a reasoning, sane being; he is now at a level of ecstasy that has erased all that
was once charming about the Apollonian vision. Visually, the image of his body and the
mountainous landscape into which he has been thrown melt into each other and distinctions
between the two become difficult to discern. Psychologically, this Demon has destroyed
himself. He is the epitome of the destruction of individuality and excess. The Dionysian
experience of freedom and enchantment, which enticed him in the beginning, has led to a
haphazard existence where harmony and unity no longer co-exist. He attempted the becoming
and tried to make himself into a work of art, but as with most Dionysian experiences, he let the
Apollonian slip away and was left with nothing but failure, disorientation, and destruction in his
wake. This double essence of the Demon, his simultaneously Apollonian and Dionysian nature,
could be expressed, in Nietzsche's words, as "all that exists is just and unjust and is equally
justified in both respects."
127
That is the world the Demon has created for himself. That he must
always call his world.
In "Towards a Psychology of the Artist" in Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche states that "for
art to exist, for any sort of aesthetic activity or perception to exist, a certain physiological pre126
Pavel Suzdalev, Vrubel and Lermontov (Moscow, 1980), 172; as cited in Glatzer Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia,
233.
127
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 51.
45
condition is indispensable: intoxication." 128 Thus, Nietzsche informs us that, in order to create
and perceive art, we must follow Dionysus. The destructive, primitive forces that are Dionysus,
are also a part of us and the pleasure we take in them is real and not to be denied. These
impulses cannot simply be ignored, eliminated, repressed, or fully controlled; they will have their
due one way or another and failure to recognize them will eventually give them free rein to
express themselves with special force and destructiveness. The primordial unity created is like a
child wantonly and haphazardly creating shapes and forms, and then destroying them, taking
equal pleasure in both parts of the process, both the creation and the destruction. 129
Both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast share Dionysian qualities. We can point out
that Demon Seated is trying to deny the Dionysian part of him. He is doing his best to ignore
and repress those desires, but as can be seen, his tears give him away because he already knows
that he will fail at this endeavor and that Dionysus will take complete control. Because of his
initial failure to recognize these instincts, the Demon of Demon Downcast is that expression of
the Dionysian which has been given free rein and he truly is a special force of destructiveness.
This is the Romantic finale: fractured, collapsed, returned, and prostrated before an old belief,
before the old god. Though the mountainous masses threaten to engulf his slender body, an
innate majesty and the “will to power” maintain his head in an upright position, raised high in
defiance of his enemies. The Demon here shows us a reflection of the eternal, primal pain yet
simultaneously a luminous hovering in purest bliss and wide-eyed contemplation, free of all
pain. With sublime gesture he shows us that the whole world of agony is needed in order to
compel the individual to generate the releasing and redemptive vision. He has become entirely at
one with the primordial unity, with its pain and contradiction, nothing but primal pain and the
128
Pothen, Philip. Nietzsche and the Fate of Art. (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2002), 163.
129
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, xxiv-xxx.
46
primal echo of it. He remains eternally hungry, a critic without desire or energy. 130
By following Dionysus, there is a delight in the play of appearances, the gestures of
theatre; we delight in making it all up, as we do, as we must. As Nietzsche states in The Gay
Science, first published in 1882, "If we had not welcomed the arts and invented this kind of cult
of the untrue, then the realization of general untruth, the realization that delusion and error are
conditions of human knowledge and sensation would be utterly unbearable. Honesty would lead
to nausea and suicide. But now there is a counter-force against our honesty that helps us to avoid
such consequences: art as the good will to appearance."131
In creative activity, we find the source of the wonderful in life and if we can find value
and meaning in it we can love ourselves and love life. As Nietzsche wrote in Will to Power, art
is thus the great anti-pessimistic form of life, the great alternative to denial and resignation as
well as the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of
life: "Art as the redemption of the man of action - of those who not only see the terrifying and
questionable character of existence but live it, want to live it, the tragic war-like man, the
hero...Art as the redemption of the sufferer - as the way to states in which suffering is willed,
transfigured, deified, where suffering is a form of great delight...A highest state of affirmation of
existence is conceived from which the highest degree of pain cannot be excluded: the tragicDionysian state."132 The Dionysian's orgiastic, anti-individuation, and resurrective features were
most strongly adapted because they embody the tension and suffering needed to espouse a lifeaffirming doctrine of self-overcoming. Dionysian is the artistic principle of disruption whose
direct opposite is the Apollonian principle of individuation and is associated with the emergence
130
Ibid., 26-30.
Kemal et al., 58.
132
Friedrich Nietzsche, Will to Power, trans. Walter Kaufmann and R.J. Hollingdale, ed. Walter Kaufmann (New
York: Vintage, 1968), 853; as cited in Kemal et al., 57.
131
47
of tragedy. Dionysus is the agent of madness, chaos, annihilation, and is capable of penetrating
to the depth of being. His presence can bring forth both bliss and horrible intoxication. 133
Both Apollo and Dionysus are present in every human. The tension between both is
particularly creative and the combination of both is part of a defense against pessimism and the
despair of life. Life in the modern world lacks unity, coherence, and meaningfulness; lives and
personalities are fragmented and they lack the ability to identify with their society in a natural
way. As humans, we enjoy tragedy in order to understand the ritual of self-destruction and gain
insight into the human condition. We take pleasure in our demise as well as others, because the
dissolution of identity is both horrible and pleasurable. 134
A genuine Dionysian experience would be the most intense pleasure and the most intense
pain at the same time and in the same person. The tragedy requires cooperation of the Dionysian
with the Apollonian. The ecstasy of the Dionysian state, in which the usual barriers and limits of
existence are destroyed, for as long as it last, contains a lethargic element in which all personal
experiences from the past are submerged and as soon as daily reality re-enters consciousness, it
is experienced with a sense of revulsion. And we survive the drama only because of the illusions
created by the Apollonian. 135
The Dionysian is music, ecstasy, madness creativity. The Apollonian is dream,
appearance, healing, and individuation. Both are principles of artistic productivity, which, when
united, bring about the miracle of tragedy, and yet, as impulses diametrically opposed to one
another, this miracle remains at the same time stubbornly inexplicable. Nietzsche talks at the
outset of their "perpetual strife," the fact that they are in "tremendous opposition," that they
remain "openly at variance," and indeed of the "metaphysical miracle" of their reconciliation,
133
Ibid., 71-73.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, xi-xix.
135
Ibid., 40.
134
48
such that we wonder how the Dionysian can ever be revealed in the Apollonian dream images. 136
The Apollonian man had to recognize that "his entire existence, with all its beauty and
moderation, rested on a hidden ground of suffering and of knowledge . . . and behold! Apollo
could not live without Dionysus." 137
The Apollonian and Dionysian mark their reconciliation in tragedy. Both Apollonian and
Dionysian must share elements, especially if they are ever to become conjoined. Apollo tries to
veil Dionysus with optimism and in the process, creates the tragic. He tries to transform the
repulsive thoughts about the terrible and absurd aspects of existence into representations with
which it is possible to live. These representations are the sublime and the comical, whereby the
terrible is tamed and disgust at absurdity is discharged by artistic means. 138
Tragedy shows the spectator, for he has "gazed with keen eye into the midst of the
fearful, destructive havoc of so-called world history and has seen the cruelty of nature," that all
that "comes into being must be ready for a sorrowful end" and we are forced to look into "the
terrors of individual existence."139 Controlled destruction of the tragic hero confirms that
individuation is the primary cause of all suffering. The spectator finds pleasure in beauty and the
illusion of meaningfulness because they witness the suffering of the tragic figure from outside.
Our inner strength and Dionysian laughter are the means of overcoming the tragic. 140
Demon Seated displays the strong tension between Apollo and Dionysus. This Demon
knows that the world is disjointed, as represented by the fragmented flowers beside him, and that
there is no unity or coherence in modern life. He lacks the ability to identify with his society and
has thus turned away from it, both figuratively and literally. Demon Seated had found within
136
Pothen, 14-15.
138
Ibid., 130.
139
140
Kemal et al., 60.
137
49
himself the defiant belief that he could create human beings and destroy the gods, and that his
higher wisdom enabled him to do so, for which he is now forced to do eternal penance. He sits
in the serenity of creation in defiance of all catastrophes, and is merely a bright image of clouds
and sky reflected in a dark sea of sadness. He is concerned, but not comfortless, as he stands
aside for a little while, as the contemplative spirit permitted to witness the enormous struggles
and transitions of existence. He has discovered the delusion that thought reaches down into the
deepest abysses of understanding existence, but for the Demon to even dream of correcting it, he
himself at this point must transform into art.
Demon Seated is the man of action. He is looking away from the world of safety and
looking toward the world of the terrifying. He is questioning the character of existence and is
slowly coming to terms with the realization that his entire existence rests on a hidden ground of
suffering and of knowledge. He is beginning to come to terms with a decision that he probably
feels he had no say in: the decision to live the Dionysian life and become the embodiment of the
tragic.
Demon Downcast is the sufferer. He is in great pain yet even with all this pain, his head
is upright, defiant and a sinister appearance of delight in his fall can be imagined. The Demon
has reached the "tragic-Dionysian state," taking pleasure in his own demise. His eyes gaze in
sadness, confusion, and defiance after what has disappeared, for what they see is so luxuriantly
alive, so immeasurable and full of longing. Tragedy sits in the midst of this, suffering, and
taking delight, in sublime ecstasy, listening to a distant melancholy singing, whose names are
delusion, will, and woe. This Demon has fought a war that, out of necessity, needs tragedy as a
restorative power. To achieve the magnificent blend which both fires the spirit and induces a
mood of contemplation, he must now remember the enormous power of tragedy in order to
50
stimulate, purify, and discharge his entire life. 141 This Demon is showing the spectator all that is
fearful and destructive in life, for he has seen the cruelty of nature and of mankind. He is now
coming to terms with his sorrowful end as he looks into the terrors of existence.
The artistic process requires a highly complex interweaving of the Apollonian and
Dionysian, both in the drama itself and in the spectator’s reaction to it. When combined, one
sees the Dionysian image of himself and sees his body as sophisticated, orderly, splendid,
partaking itself of the human capabilities for artistry associated with the Apollonian. Eventually
the Dionysian chorus and the spectators themselves create, without ever ceasing to be Dionysian,
the Apollonian vision of the tragic hero. Dionysians are dreamers and at the center of the dream
is the suffering hero:142
Tragedy shows that the world is chancy and arbitrary. But then, by showing how
life beautifully asserts itself in the face of a meaningless universe, by showing the
joy and splendor of human making in a world of becoming - and by being, itself,
an example of the joyful making - it gives its spectator a way of confronting not
only the painful events of the drama, but also the pains and uncertainties of life,
personal and communal - a way that involves human self-respect and selfreliance, rather than guilt or resignation. Instead of giving up his will to live, the
spectator, intoxicated by Dionysus, becomes a work of art, and an artist. 143
Energies of the Dionysian are revealed through a process of identification with the hero because
the hero will clash between human aspiration and their natural limits, thus there is suffering and
suspension of action. The spectator, in this case the Demon, has now gained knowledge and
feels it is humiliating to continue trying to set right a world that is out of joint. The Dionysian
supplies the spectator with assertion in the face of vulnerability to suffering. They are seduced
back into life by the erotic because art is an expert at healing. She alone knows how to turn these
"repulsive thoughts about the terrible and absurd nature of existence into representations with
141
Ibid., 98-99.
143
Ibid., 62.
142
51
which man can live."144 Vrubel's Demon in both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast is the
eternally changing, eternally new vision of the most suffering being of all, the being full of
oppositions and contradictions, able to redeem and release itself if only in semblance.
The Demon is the embodiment of Dionysus and never ceases to be the tragic hero
entangled in the net of the individual will. He sees himself as sophisticated and capable of
Apollonian artistry, briefly raising himself up once more in Demon Seated, like a wounded hero,
and by the time of his final descent in Demon Downcast, all his excess of strength, together with
the wise calm of the dying, burns in his eyes with a last and mighty gleam. Here is the demon,
intoxicated by Dionysus, who has become the work of art. 145
The myth of Dionysus embraces the female in the male, which when neglected, causes
the psychological imbalance that ultimately leads to madness. One embraces life despite
obstacles, misgivings and personal suffering. Dionysus and Ariadne are the ultimate
combination with Dionysus as the unmitigated, unconditional vital force and Ariadne, as the
symbol of suffering in and as the human soul. When wed together, there is unity but without this
union, there is madness. Without Ariadne, Dionysus would be a raw life force, chaos, will to
power which is the Dionysian world of self-creation and self-destruction beyond good and evil,
without a goal. 146
In this story the Demon is Dionysus and Tamara is Ariadne. The Demon is deeply in
love with Tamara, finding in her a reason to embrace life and risk love. He was an outcast with
no place to really call home; no place he felt he truly belonged until he saw Tamara. When he
first saw her dancing “it seemed to him that heaven beckoned/To make his arid soul resound,” as
Lermontov described it, as “once again his thought embraced/The sacrosanct significance/Of
144
Ibid., 51-54.
146
145
52
Goodness, Beauty, and of Love!”147 Suddenly the Demon has a reason to change who he is and
the world became more bearable. But, as the story continues, Tamara finally gives in to her
feelings and they embrace. But upon this embrace she dies, leaving the Demon cursing “his
dreams of better things/Doomed to defeat.”148 With the final outcome, the Demon returns to his
Dionysian world of unconditional force and self-destruction.
Those who thirst for solutions to the riddles, to the mysteries of existence, are Dionysian.
Thus they are concealed, unafraid, and strong. The Dionysian is an expression of nihilism. No
mortal had attained a degree of life-affirmation that was sought and thus Nietzsche provided the
conditions of affirmation in Dionysus. The capacity to affirm existence is the Dionysian
standard. The symbolism of Dionysus is that he is torn to pieces but is eternally reborn. Life
with its eternal fertility and recurrence causes Dionysus’ torture and destruction. Abundance and
strength are symptoms of ascending vitality, so that death, symbolized by the dismembered
Dionysus, is an expression of lust for more of this life, while paucity and weakness are
symptoms of declining life resulting in a death that redeems us of this life with the emergence
from Dionysian intoxication. 149
Vrubel’s Demon can even be seen as an early prototype of the nihilist, wandering around
with no real meaning, purpose, or value in his life. Unconcerned with morality, he rejects God,
and attempts to overcome his depression through self-destruction. 150 The Demon is figuratively
torn to pieces in Demon Downcast but through the defiance seen in his eyes, he is determined to
overcome this challenge. As he lies, prostrated, against a fragmented landscape, the Demon
emerges from his Dionysian intoxication to witness the horror of all he has done. Nietzsche’s
147
Lermontov, The Demon.
Ibid.
149
Ibid., 79-87.
150
148
53
praise of the creater’s tragic sense of life coincided with Vrubel’s vision of the Demon and is
translated visually into the brightly colored spiky crown atop his head. He is Christ the sufferer
yet, at the same time, he is the counterpart to Christ’s crown of thorns, marking the Demon as
Nietzsche’s Antichrist who values joy in struggle, in resistance, and the preservative instincts of
strong life. 151 His stare is fixed into the distance where, momentarily, he might rise out of his
destructive state and witness the sublime and tragic as he once did in Demon Seated. In the
words of Edith Clowe, the Demon “becomes a Christ figure who rebels, affirms his own will,
invokes the god, and finally gives himself up to the Dionysian androgynous chaos.”152 This
resurrection lasts only a short time, however, and the Demon quickly returns to the absurdity of
living a strictly Dionysian existence. This overman, this Antichrist, reflects the darkest aspect of
Nietzsche’s legacy to Vrubel: an obsessively self-absorbed will to power.
According to Nietzsche, the artist has the ability to uncover the primal unity, or will, of
humanity. A healthy society contains both a mystical and rational side. Dionysus is the mystical
and purely emotional side, the primal unity while Apollo is the rational being who must
transfigure and represent this unity. In modern society, the Dionysian aspect has been concealed,
rather than revealed, by the Apollonian. Society has created a scientific, rational world of
symbols which has concealed the purely emotional and mystical side of existence. There is no
longer a balance between the two. According to Salim Kemal, Nietzsche believed the artist was
the savior of humanity because only he is able to perceive and represent the will of mankind
which is too terrifying in its Dionysian state. The artist is given the responsibility of recovering
the Dionysian aspect of society through the Apollonian symbols, which will restore the balance.
The Dionysian truth about the will of mankind, sickness, madness, and death, aid in considering
151
Glatzer Rosenthal, Nietzsche in Russia, 235.
Edith Clowes, , The Revolution of Moral Consciousness: Nietzsche in Russian Literature 1890-1914 (Dekalth,
Ill., Northern Illinois University Press, 1988), 144-150; as cited in Glatzer Rosenthal, New Myth, New World, 39.
152
54
the loss of identity and self-worth, as well as the accompanying confusion. 153 Philip Pothen goes
on to suggest that
Artists and their works thus fail to portray anything other than a reality severely
circumscribed by limitations imposed by the very nature of the production of
works, which, like language and the prejudices upon which language is based,
reveal merely a captured moment rather than the flux of genuine experience. In
addition, the attempt by an artist to portray something as fixed and stable is only
ever an attempt on the part of the artist to present portrayals of themselves as
fixed and stable, and since both are in the course of becoming, works of art both
represent a denial of what is central to that reality and twice removed from the
reality they purport to reflect. 154
Thus the artist relates to the reality of dream: he attends to it closely and with pleasure, using
images to interpret life, and practicing for life with the help of these events. But there are not
just pleasant images but also those that are grave, gloomy, dark, and sad, and the artist lives in
these scenes and shares in the suffering. The artist is either Apollonian dream or Dionysian
intoxication or an artist of both dream and intoxication at once, in which in drunkenness and
mystical self-abandon, his own condition is revealed under the Apollonian to be a symbolic
dream-image. 155 The artist then,
. . . sees the transfigured world of the stage, and yet he negates it. He sees before
him the tragic hero with all the clarity and beauty of the epic, and yet he takes
delight in his destruction. He comprehends events on the stage to their innermost
core, and yet he gladly flees into the incomprehensible. He feels the actions of
the hero to be justified, and yet he feels even more elated when these actions
destroy the man who performs them. He shivers in horror at the sufferings which
will befall the hero, and yet they give him a premonition of a higher, far more
overwhelming delight. He sees more and deeper than ever before and yet he
wishes he were blind. 156
As the artist and creator of the Demon, Vrubel increasingly related to his tragic hero. As
the turmoil of his existence and his descent into madness became more and more unbearable, the
153
Pothen, 54.
155
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 15-19.
156
Ibid., 104.
154
55
Demon became his haven, a symbol of himself as the artist and the man. In some ways, he
became the Demon, living out the self-destruction the same as the Demon. It is here that Vrubel
attempted to use a symbol of madness and death to inform himself and his viewers about the real
world: the Dionysian world that is veiled by the Apollonian. But through all of this, Vrubel
increasingly became agitated, losing himself among the mountainous landscape of his canvases.
He is the artist who is trying to fix and stabilize his own life, thus, the topsy-turvy existence of
the Demon closely resembles his own fragmented state of mind. Vrubel shares in the Demon's
suffering and torment; he understands where the Demon is coming from and why he must go on
the journey that will ultimately destroy him. He witnesses the beauty the world has to offer and
he translates it into Demon Seated. But he also witnesses all the suffering the world contains and
he struggled in finding a way to translate that pain onto his canvas. He famously altered and realtered the appearance of the Demon in Demon Downcast, trying to figure out how to relate such
a horrible outcome to the Demon's journey and make it beautiful yet still convey the tragedy of it
all. Vrubel wanted to be the embodiment of Nietzsche's artistic genius.
To Nietzsche, the "birth of geniuses requires that history be overcome. It must be
immersed and eternalized in beauty." The genius alone possesses that sensibility which gives
order and can live with the threat of disorder, overcoming fear by organizing the material of our
existence so that through its beauty it gains a value and a meaning. Every unity will contain the
seeds of its own destruction through opposition between order and orgiastic content. 157 Art of
the artist is a playing with dream. Apollo is god of dream-representations; beauty is his element
and must not overstep the line into wilder impulses. 158 Apollonian art, as with, Demon Seated,
overcomes the individual’s by his luminous glorification of the eternity of appearance. Here
157
158
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 119-120.
56
beauty gains victory over the suffering inherent in life. Dionysian art expresses life going on
eternally beyond all appearance and despite all destruction. The metaphysical delight in the
tragic translates instinctive, unconscious Dionysian wisdom into the language of images. One
can take pleasure in the negation of the hero, the supreme appearance of the Will, because he is,
after all, mere appearance, and because the eternal life of the Will is not affected by his
annihilation. Dionysian art wants to convince us of the delight of existence yet forces us to
recognize that everything which comes into being must be prepared for painful destruction. Like
the Demon in Demon Downcast, we are forced to gaze into the terrors of individual existence
without freezing in horror. Dionysian art reconciles the human with nature; subjectivity
disappears entirely and man becomes the work of art manifesting itself with the co-existence of
clear-mindedness and intoxication. 159
Unfortunately, Vrubel did not wholly succeed at creating what Nietzsche described, due
in part to not being able to overcome his own personal history. Throughout the 1880's and
1890's, there is no denying Vrubel was an isolated figure. By the end of the century, even after
several high profile commissions, including Kushnerev’s special anniversary edition of
Lermontov's work, ordinary exhibition- goers and even informed art lovers, states Guerman, were
still unaware of his existence. 160 And for the few who did, his work was not well received, often
being called naive, incoherent, and savage. His only consolation is that his work was appreciated
by a small group of enlightened patrons. 161 Alexandre Benois, a fellow Symbolist and Mir
iskusstva member, believed the cause of his lack of success was because he was the definition of
a true decadent. 162 Vrubel saw reality through a "spiritual prism" which channeled his outer
159
Ibid., 80.
Guerman, 76.
161
Pyman, 108.
162
Alexandre Benois, The Russian School of Painting (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1916), 181.
160
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world and his inner world. 163 But, according to Isdebsky-Pritchard, it suddenly appeared as if
Vrubel's theme of failure in relation to the Demon was all too real.
Vrubel perceived the gloomy, topsy-turvy world as a stimulus for the creation of works
that would reveal the way to an understanding of its incongruity and inconsistency. 164 The more
dominant the figure of the Demon became in his life, the more his break with reality became
apparent. Often identifying with the Demon, Vrubel believed that he too was gifted with a
sensitivity that only brought suffering and alienated him from a world he found unacceptable.
His oversensitive nature made the hostile reception of his work harder to bear. This sense of
failure combined with the sudden death of his son in 1903, contributed to his mental
breakdown. 165 Feeling remote and alienated from a world in turmoil, resulting from social and
political unrest, Vrubel, much like his Demon, became more and more uneasy with reality and
chose to withdraw into his own world. His world was a constant struggle with mental and
spiritual unease. And his mood was often at odds with his current situation. He often found very
little work and when he did, the result was often found unappealing. He was poverty-stricken
and, although he disliked teaching, was obliged to give lessons. And yet, Vrubel was happy and
satisfied with the little work he did find, the money he made from teaching, and the love of his
wife. The most productive and satisfying period of his life began when he joined the Mamontov
Circle, where, for the first time, he felt understood and the art world was infused with the same
sense of renewal that he himself possessed. It was also this time when his behavior became more
and more difficult and unpredictable. 166
Vrubel's illness was visible early on in his life. Exhibiting signs of bipolar disorder or
163
Guerman, 60.
165
Reeder, 324-330.
166
M.A. Vrubel. Perepiska. Vospominanyia o khudozhnike (Leningrad, 1976), 295; as cited in Guerman, 46-50.
164
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schizophrenia, his mood could go from courteous and charming one minute to unsociable and
surly the next. These sudden changes in mood increased in frequency and intensity as time went
by, going from a feverish and violent euphoria to a deep depression. In March of 1902, suffering
from tertiary syphilis which caused him to hallucinate, Vrubel was diagnosed as "incurably
ill."167 No proper diagnosis, however, was ever established. The death of his two-year old son
and eventual blindness only deepened his psychological state. From 1905 until his death in
1910, Vrubel was confined to asylums. Sadly, the onset of his illness gave him and his work the
recognition it deserved and was featured in more journal articles and exhibitions, among them
the issue number 10-11, 1903, of The World of Art was almost fully devoted to Vrubel, Nikolai
Gay’s “Vrubel” was the first to consider critically the nature of Vrubel’s artistic originality, and
Benois, in his article “Vrubel” apologized for being critical and failing to see Vrubel’s true
artistry. In the years following his death important articles on Vrubel appeared in such
publications as Vesy, Zolotoe Runo, and Apollon. 168
During this time, Sigmund Freud was developing his theories on how the mind operates.
His basic principle, the separation of mental life into the conscious and the unconscious, is the
central premise on which psychoanalysis is based. The basic idea is that consciousness is
transitory; an idea that is conscious now is no longer so a moment later and unconsciousness is
an idea that is latent yet capable of becoming conscious. 169
In The Ego and the Id, first published in 1923, Freud outlines his basic ideas of the
human psyche, developing a ground-work for explaining psychological conditions. The basic
ideas of Freud's Ego and Id can be seen in both Demon Seated and Demon Downcast. Id, ego,
167
Ibid., 140.
169
Sigmund Freud, The Ego and the Id, Joan Riviere, trans. (London: Hogarth Press; The Institute of Psychoanalysis, 1950), 9-11.
168
59
and super-ego are the three main components of the psyche. In basic terms the id is the set of
uncoordinated intuitive trends, the ego is the ordered, realistic part, and the super-ego plays the
critical and moralizing role. Tensions arise between each of these parts with the ego caught
between the id and the super-ego.
The id is the part of the personality structure which contains the basic drives and is the
chief source of instinctual energy unresponsive to the demands of reality. The id acts according
to the pleasure principle, seeking to escape pain or displeasure stimulated by increases in
intuitive tension.
It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality, what little we know of it we
have learned from our study of the dream-work and of the construction of
neurotic symptoms, and most of that is of a negative character and can be
described only as a contrast to the ego. We approach the id with analogies: we call
it a chaos, a cauldron full of seething excitations... It is filled with energy reaching
it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but
only a striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the
observance of the pleasure principle. 170
In the id, "contrary impulses exist side by side, without cancelling each other out....There is
nothing in the id that could be compared with negation...nothing in the id which corresponds to
the idea of time."171 The id is responsible for our basic drives and places no judgment on value
or morality; there is no good and evil. It is regarded as the instinctive drive to create — the life
instincts that are crucial to pleasurable survival. 172
The ego acts according to reality, seeking to please the id’s drive in truthful ways that
will be an advantage in the long term rather than bringing grief. At the same time, the ego
170
Sigmund Freud, New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, James Strachey, trans. and ed. (New York:
W.W. Norton & Company, 1965), 105-106.
171
Ibid., 106.
172
Developmentally, the id comes before the ego, beginning at birth as an indistinguishable id, part of which goes on
to develop into a structured ego. Thus, the id contains all that we inherit, above all, the instincts. Thus, the mind of a
child is regarded as completely id-ridden, in the sense that it is nothing but a mass of natural drives and impulses,
and demands immediate satisfaction. Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 107.
60
"attempts to mediate between id and reality, it is often obliged to cloak the Unconscious
commands of the id with its own Preconscious rationalizations, to conceal the id's conflicts with
reality, to profess...to be taking notice of reality even when the id has remained rigid and
unyielding." 173
Ego comprises the organized, structured part of the personality which includes
consciousness, defensive, and intellectual functions. Although the ego has conscious awareness,
not all of the operations of the ego are conscious. It separates out what is real and helps us to
organize our thoughts and make sense of them and the world around us. "The ego is that part of
the id which has been modified by the direct influence of the external world ... The ego
represents what we call reason and sanity, in contrast to the id, which contains the passions."174
Ego has the task of bringing the influence of the external world to bear upon the id and its
tendencies, and seeks to substitute the reality-principle for the pleasure-principle which reigns
absolute in the id. Its task is to find a balance between primitive drives and reality while
gratifying the id and super-ego. Ego holds in check the superior strength of the id yet is obliged
to guide the id where it wants to go and carry into action the wishes of the id as if they were its
own. 175 "Thus the ego, driven by the id, confined by the super-ego, repulsed by reality,
struggles...[in] bringing about harmony among the forces and influences working in and upon
it."176 To overcome this, the ego developed defense mechanisms, such as denial, displacement,
repression, and sublimation. These defenses are developed unconsciously and they reduce the
tension by covering up the impulses that we deem a threat.
The super-ego aims for perfection; comprising that part of the personality that includes
173
Ibid., 110.
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 29-30.
175
Ibid., 29-30.
176
Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 110-111.
174
61
the ideals and goals and it stands as the representative of the most important events in the
development both of the individual and of the race; indeed, by giving permanent expression to
the influence of the parents it perpetuates the existence of the factors to which it owes its origin.
Conflicts between ego and ideal will ultimately reflect the contrast between what is real and what
is mental, between the external and internal world, implying that the super-ego is a symbolic
internalization of cultural regulations. 177
Demon Seated represents the ego. Demon Seated visually represents some form of
reality, although it is a fragmented reality. The landscape itself best demonstrates the struggle
the ego has in its attempt to mediate between the id and reality. The right side of the canvas,
though wild with overgrowth, is calm, rational. As the eye moves across the canvas from right to
left, the conflict becomes more and more apparent. The calm of the right side turns into the
chaos of the left side. The Demon is literally surrounded by, and looking at, his own personal
conflicts, trying to rationalize the world around him. He is trying to control his instincts, the id,
and find a means to defend himself against the injustices of the world. He is seen, both
physically and emotionally, struggling with reality, attempting to make order out of the chaos
running through his mind. He is trying to find that balance that Freud states is present within all
creatures, the balance between reality and his primitive nature. This Demon is attempting to
figure out how he can live his life his way without becoming controlled by either the ego or the
id. In Demon Seated, he is metaphorically the ego struggling to "bring about harmony among
the forces and influences working in and upon it."178 Thus the ego finds itself the seat of
177
All concepts in The Ego and the Id are built upon the assumed existence of conscious and unconscious thoughts.
He distinguishes between two types of unconscious thoughts: “preconscious” ideas, which are latent yet fully
capable of becoming conscious; and “unconscious” ideas, which are repressed and cannot become conscious without
the help of psychoanalysis. Freud further argues that a third kind of unconscious thought is necessary, a process
which is a vital part of the ego: the act of repression, which is found in the super-ego.
178
Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 110-111.
62
anxiety, beset by potential dangers from three directions — by the super-ego, the id, and the
external world.
The super-ego is also present in Demon Seated. As much as the ego is struggling within
him, the super-ego is also fighting the same battle. The super-ego in the Demon is attempting to
inform him of his own personal goals. It is also telling him that if he wants to live up to those
ideals and reach those goals he must repress his fantasies and his more dangerous instincts. The
super-ego in the Demon is struggling against the extremes of the ego and the extremes of the id.
The super-ego wants the Demon to be able to live his life with both ego and id working together.
But if he lets one take more control than the other, places and events will become so imbalanced
that the Demon will be left with nothing.
Demon Downcast, in contrast, represents the id. In appearance alone, the viewer can see
the chaos and disorder that the id presents to the world. Time here all but means nothing, just
shadows that move across the landscape. The Demon let instinct, with its ability to produce no
judgments or morals, take control seeking out pleasure in all its forms. The ego is nowhere to be
seen in this image, only the punishment which the super-ego tried to warn him about. There is
no logic or reason within this image, only a creature, battered and bruised. This Demon chose a
dangerous path, yet knew that if he did not let instinct have some say in the direction of his life
that it would ultimately end in destruction. Unfortunately, by letting it take complete and total
control of his being, the Demon was crushed against the mountains, physically destroyed.
Psychologically, the Demon has been crushed as well. He allowed his basic instincts to run wild
and they overpowered him, leaving him nothing but a shell of his former self, staring into his
own soul, as the memories that he repressed are re-released into the void.
Here, in the final outcome, the Demon’s ego finds itself failing to appease and mediate
63
the desires of the id. He has stood between the id and the outside world, trying to make the id
adapt to societal regulations, while, at the same time, trying to make the world conform to the
id's deepest desires; this task falls to the ego because it is the only part of the mind capable of
exercising direct control over the actions of the body. Because of this failure to pacify both
sides, the Demon’s ego finds itself a victim to the stronger super-ego and id, which tend to work
together: “The super-ego is always in close touch with the id and can act as its representative in
relation to the ego."179 Freud cites his experiences, in which people exhibit a sense of guilt that
makes them resistant to conquering their pathology. His explanation is that the super-ego
condemns the ego—“[displaying] particular severity and [raging] against the ego with the utmost
cruelty” and giving it a deep-seated, mysterious feeling of guilt. 180 This is what happens when
the death instinct takes hold of the super-ego and turns on the ego.
Having laid out the general shape and conduits of the mind, with the id, ego, and superego, Freud goes on to reveal the forces that act within that structure: the life and death instincts.
The former is the tendency to create; the latter, the tendency to destroy. The death drive which
Freud articulated relatively late in his career is given the task of leading life back into the
inanimate state. For Freud, "the death instinct would thus seem to express itself — though
probably only in part — as an instinct of destruction directed against the external world and other
organisms" through aggression. Freud considered that "the id, the whole person...originally
includes all the instinctual impulses...the destructive instinct as well" as Eros or the life
instincts. 181
179
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 70.
Ibid., 73-83.
181
Building on his 1914 article "Recollecting, Repeating and Working Through," Freud highlights how the "patient
cannot remember the whole of what is repressed in him, and...is obliged to repeat the repressed material as a
contemporary experience instead of...remembering it as something belonging to the past.181 Yet that raised the
question of "how is the compulsion to repeat - the manifestation of the power of the repressed - related to the
180
64
In Beyond the Pleasure Principle, first published in 1920, Freud goes on to infer the
existence of the death instinct. He asserted that on certain occasions the mind acts as though it
could eliminate tension entirely, or in effect to reduce itself to a state of annihilation; his key
evidence for this was the existence of the compulsion to repeat. With repetition, Freud saw a
psychic trend to work over earlier impressions, to master them and derive pleasure from them. If
repetition is a necessary element in adaptation, when carried to inordinate lengths it becomes a
means of abandoning those adaptations and reinstating earlier or less evolved psychic positions.
By combining this idea with the hypothesis that all repetition is a form of discharge, Freud
reached the conclusion that the compulsion to repeat is an effort to restore a state both
historically primitive and marked by the total draining of energy: death.
Freud places the compulsion to repeat on an equal footing with an urge to restore an
earlier state of things, to return to the original inorganic condition. Declaring that "the aim of life
is death" and "inanimate things existed before living ones," Freud interprets an organism’s drive
to avoid danger only as a way of avoiding a short-circuit to death: the organism seeks to die in its
own way. 182 He thus found his way to his celebrated concept of the death instinct, which,
according to Ernest Jones, ultimately came down to a form of masochism, "hitherto regarded as
secondary to sadism...and suggested that there could be a primary masochism, a self-injuring
tendency which would be an indication of the death instinct."183
Overall, the appearance of life would be regarded as the cause of the continuance of life
pleasure principle?" Freud mused that "the greater part of what is re-experienced under the compulsion to repeat
must cause the ego displeasure, since it brings to light activities of repressed instinctual impulses...displeasure for
one system and simultaneously satisfaction for the other" beyond that "no lesson has been learnt from the old
experience of these activities having led only to displeasure. In spite of that, they are repeated, under pressure of a
compulsion." Noting repetitions in the lives of normal people - who appeared to be "pursued by a malignant fate or
possessed by some "demonic" power," Freud concluded that there may be a compulsion to repeat what is
independent of the pleasure principle. Freud, New Introductory Lectures, 138.
182
Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: Norton, 1975), 32.
183
Ernest Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1961), 509.
65
and the cause of the striving towards death. Life is the conflict and the compromise of both. The
death-instinct is a form of destruction directed against the external world. Diffusion of instincts
and a marked emergence of the death-instinct are among the most noteworthy of severe
obsessional neuroses which Vrubel and his Demon seem to have suffered. The main importance
of this portion of Freud's theory resides in the striking picture of a human being struggling
between two opposing instincts: Eros working for creativity, harmony, and self-preservation, and
Death working for repetition, aggression, compulsion, and self-destruction. 184 With Eros as the
life force finally set out on the other side of the repetition compulsion equation, the way was
clear for the "vision of two elemental pugnacious forces in the mind, Eros and Death, locked in
eternal battle."185
Instances of Freud's theory of the love and death instinct are easily distinguishable with
life and death represented in Demon Seated and Demon Downcast, respectively. Demon Seated
wants desperately to be the spirit of creation whereas the creature in Demon Downcast is wholly
the spirit of destruction. The Demon we see in Demon Seated is struggling within himself to find
expression for his thoughts and his point of view within a society that condemns personal,
individual opinions. He does not wish to live in a world that only appears to be functioning as a
proper, rational society but actually wants to live in a world that is a functioning, rational society.
He wants to love and he wants to be loved, firmly believing that love will make life worth living.
But the world took away the love of his life and he is left deciding what path he wants to go
down, struggling to come to terms with his decision. This Demon is Eros working for creativity
and self-preservation whereas the Demon we see in Demon Downcast is Death working for
aggression and self-destruction.
184
185
Freud, Beyond, 53.
66
Demon Seated is attempting to come to terms with his own actions, in particular, with his
part in Tamara's death. He is questioning why bad things keep happening to him, not
understanding that he is always getting the same outcome because he keeps doing the same
things. He is representing Freud's idea of repetition: something has been repressed in his
memory which has caused him to unknowingly repeat certain tendencies. In Demon Seated he
has not quite figured this out yet but had he chosen a different path, he may have been able to
come to certain conclusions about his own actions. Unfortunately, he chose the path which
would lead him to again repeat some action, which led to his fate, as seen in Demon Downcast.
In this image, the Demon has let the repressed memory and the constant repetition drains him
entirely of energy, leaving him with nothing but a wish for death. He is seeking to die but in his
own way, on his own terms; he is the obsessional neurotic who possesses the "self-injuring
tendency which would be an indication of the death instinct."186
During the process of sublimation, the love-instinct and death-instinct, formerly
combined, become separated, and the latter ends up in the super-ego causing it to go against the
ego. Depending on the ego’s reaction to the super-ego’s punishment, the result can be
obsessional neuroses, hysteria, and even suicide. This comes about on the occasion the ego has
identified with a forbidden love-object so strongly, that it can’t bear the super-ego’s criticism and
gives up. At other times, as in obsessional neuroses, the object is still external to the ego, but its
feelings for it are repressed, resulting in acts of external aggression. And finally, in cases of
hysteria, both the object, the feelings for it, and resulting guilt, caused by the super-ego’s
criticism are repressed causing hysteric reactions. 187
Demon Downcast is the textbook definition of the death-instinct having been given free
186
187
Jones, The Life and Work of Sigmund Freud, 509.
Freud, The Ego and the Id, 77.
67
rein. Here is a creature that has let his instinct for destruction manipulate and destroy him.
Through his anger and aggression, he fought against the external world, demanding answers for
his own actions and for the actions taken against him, namely in the death of Tamara. Tamara is
the Demon's forbidden love-object; he loved her strongly, so desperately, that it killed her. He
became obsessed with her, which resulted in his growing aggression towards society and god.
He tries to repress the memories his has of her but overcome with guilt he becomes so hysterical
that he throws himself against the mountains, crashing against them, in one last, desperate
attempt to end his torment forever. Instead of death, as he wished, he is left with this feeling of
dying mingled with a voluptuous sensual pleasure. He is this twisting, struggling figure which
seems to be midway between the ecstasy of sexual release and guilty restraint, between sensual
immediacy and the moral phantoms of memory. 188
Freud raised the question of the distinction between willingness and unwillingness; the
ability to look within him creating his own self-analysis to find answers to the questions of love
and hate, life and death, and discovery of the world within himself and himself within the world.
The Demon of Demon Seated pondered those questions, trying to find an answer. When he did
not get one he again became the being, cast out into a world where hard and cold things surround
him, expelled from paradise, to which he is bound by memories of lost pleasures and is obsessed
with the need to return, which he finally achieves in death. 189
Freud sees the artist as a near-neurotic whose instincts impel him to seek fame, fortune,
honor, power, but who lacks the ability to do so and thus, turns aside from reality to express his
wishes in creating fantasies. The good artist must maintain contact with reality and synthesize
188
Jack J. Spector, The Aesthetics of Freud: A Study in Psychoanalysis and Art (McGraw-Hill Book Company,
1974), 29.
189
Ibid., 136-137.
68
his experience with his neurotic wishes and fantasies. The artist has unusually powerful
instinctual demands that his introverted disposition prevents him from satisfying, so that he must
live in a fantasy world, on the border of neurosis. The artist, whose ego is overloaded with
energy charges from his strong instincts, can partly discharge them in the fantastic world of his
art. The artist, though involved in illusions and failing to cope with reality has a means to coin
real success out of the vaporous world of his fantasy which represents his most personal wishes
and fantasies. Freud represents the artist as a being who has been “endowed with a powerful
capacity for sublimation and with a certain flexibility of repression” as well as "an introverted
disposition and has not far to go to become a neurotic."190
Identification is a highly important motive in the mechanism of hysterical symptoms
because it is not mere imitation, but assimilation. 191 Demon Downcast was the last work on the
Demon theme before Vrubel was committed to a psychiatric clinic. Demon Downcast embodies
the dualities of the age; he is heaven and earth, east and west, male and female, nobility and
despair, joy and suffering. This Demon is the culmination of a tragic personal journey and the
premonition of the imminent universal catastrophe that was to come. He could also appear to be
poetic, psychological, heroic, and philosophical at any given moment. He is the ultimate
expression of Vrubel's schizophrenic sense of being and becoming, coinciding with the onset of
insanity from which there was no return. 192 With madness increasingly creeping in on him he
was unable to set the work aside, almost as if the creation of the work itself was what kept him
from a complete breakdown. 193 Both Vrubel and his Demon are ambiguous and contradictory,
consumed by pride and self-loathing. He is the creator and the destroyer; the muse and devoted
190
Ibid., 77-106.
Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams (New York: The Modern Library, 1994), 57-58.
192
Jeremy Howard, East European Art 1650-1950 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 211-213.
193
Guerman, 130.
191
69
follower. The Demon personifies the rebellious human spirit in the eternal struggle to reconcile
conflicting passions and the search for knowledge but unable to find any answers on earth or in
heaven. Vrubel interiorized this spirit, absorbing and assimilating him into his own human
fabric. 194 Both experience a moment of revelation with the realization that the world is not onedimensional and poor but transparent and free. With this recognition, according to Pyman,
comes a period of trials which begins when evil forces try to break in and, in the case of Vrubel,
prove fatal. 195 He tried to adhere to the idea that an earthly paradise can be momentarily
revealed and restored through love, yet those stormy passions can never be fully reconciled with
this ideal. 196 Through this recognition and familiarity, he humanizes the Demon. He felt what
the Demon felt. He was alienated from the everyday world around him; a world he felt only
caused suffering. He was left with nothing to do but contemplate the enclosed realm of his own
soul.
Tortured by visions of divine persecution, hallucinating that strange figures were
appearing in his life and work as punishment for past transgressions, he famously changed the
way Demon Downcast looked, even while it was on exhibit. Vrubel's almost automatic,
mechanical process of changing the appearance of Demon Downcast could simply appear to be
the artist's desire to get it perfect or the manifestations of his psychosis. Friends and viewers
described him as feverishly altering and re-altering the Demon's fallen expression, sometimes
several times a day. The pose would become stranger, more tortured, more dislocated while the
color scheme of the mountainous background became more vibrant and more enchanting. He
kept his color palette limited, using shades of blue and purple, adding a decorative quality that
further conveyed the spiritual condition, the suffering, and the alienation that Vrubel, himself,
194
Pyman, 332.
196
Ibid., 231.
195
70
felt. There is a wholly human pain within his gaze and his fall only brings him more suffering
and a complete loss of identity. Blok wrote that “the thread of Vrubel’s life we lost not at all
when he ‘went insane’ but much earilier: when he was creating the dream of his life—the
Demon.”197 The mighty spirit from Demon Seated, who strove to be boundless, is now the
figure of Demon Downcast hovering between the sky and the mountain landscape, revolting
against the injustices of heavenly and earthly life. Vrubel’s artistic force had been expended and
his spirit, as well as the Demon’s, no longer had more veils than his body. 198
The object that had long been his fascination, that he took pity on, came back to betray
him. Lermontov's Demon haunted Vrubel throughout his life and under the personal strain to
depict him perfectly, he went mad, “falling on mountain spurs in a sunset of lilac tinged with
blue.”199 They say the condition of aesthetic creation comes from struggling with fate and
ultimately ends in being defeated. 200 This defeat can either lift you to enlightenment or cast you
into obscurity. After Vrubel's death in 1910, Benois described him as "a demon, a beautiful
fallen angel, for whom the world was an endless joy and an endless torture."201 For many, the
eternal fades and passes away but Vrubel found that amidst the urgent questions of his time and
the bloody answers provided by his reality, the Demon came to both nourish and destroy, as well
as shape his artistic and personal destiny, ultimately giving him his place in art.
197
Aleksandr Blok, Sobranie sočinenij, 423;as cited in Byrns, 46.
Guerman, 124-130.
199
Gorlin and Brodiansky, “Interrelation of Painting and Literature in Russia,” The Slavonic and East European
Review, Vol. 25, No. 64 (November 1946), Accessed January 28, 2011, http://0www.jstor.org.library.scad.edu/stable/pdfplus/4203801.pdf, 146.
200
Elsworth, 327.
201
Reeder, 332.
198
71
Illustrations
Fig. 1: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Seated, 1890, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow,
Russia.
Fig. 2: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon Downcast, 1902, Oil on canvas, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow,
Russia.
72
Fig. 3: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara Dancing, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The
Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Fig. 4: Mikhail Vrubel, Rider, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The Demon by
Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
73
Fig. 5: Mikhail Vrubel, Tamara and Demon, 1891, Black watercolor on cardboard, Illustration for The
Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia.
Fig. 6: Mikhail Vrubel, Demon and Angel with Tamara’s Soul, 1891, Black watercolor, whitewash on
paper, Illustration for The Demon by Mikhail Lermontov, The Museum of Russian Art, Erevan, Armenia.
74
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Dueling Demons Mikhail Vrubel`s Demon Seated and Demon

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