The Aesthetics of "The World of Art"

The essay focuses on the aesthetic ideas of the informal association of the Russian artists known as the World of Art (1898-1924). The members of this association shared those clearly pronounced trends of aestheticism that had manifested in contemporaneous Europe as Art Nouveau, Secession, and Jugendstil. The main representatives and ideologists of the association, such artists as A. Benois, K. Somov, and M. Dobuzhinsky, sought to show, through both their art and their theoretical ideas, that most important in art is not any social, domestic, political and other utilitarian perspective, but rather the artistic, aesthetic quality and beauty.