Set Design for Scheherazade 1910

Léon Bakst made this set design for Scheherazade, and it's a jewel-toned explosion of pattern and color. Can you just imagine the act of painting this! Trial and error, intuition, like watching a new world emerge onto the canvas... I really sympathize with Bakst. The way he layers the textures, building up the visual information, trying to create a sense of depth and atmosphere with all those pink dots on green…! Those gestures must have been so deliberate, like he was actually feeling his way into the scene. I mean, you can see echoes of the Impressionists here, but also something wilder, more theatrical, more dreamlike. Painting is a conversation, right? Artists talk to each other across time, stealing and borrowing and riffing off each other's ideas. It's all just part of the game. And that’s why no one can really tell you what to think!