Journey to the Abyss: The Diaries of Count Harry Kessler, 1880-1918, a collection of fascinating, never-before-published early diaries of Count Harry Kessler—patron, museum director, publisher, cultural critic, soldier, secret agent, and diplomat—present a sweeping panorama of the arts and politics of Belle Époque Europe, a glittering world poised to be changed irrevocably by the Great War. Kessler’s immersion in the new art and literature of Paris, London, and Berlin unfolds in the first part of the diaries. This refined world gives way to vivid descriptions of the horrific fighting on the Eastern and Western fronts of World War I, the intriguing private discussions among the German political and military elite about the progress of the war, as well as Kessler’s account of his role as a diplomat with a secret mission in Switzerland. The diaries present brilliant, sharply etched, and often richly comical descriptions of his encounters, conversations, and creative collaborations with some of the most celebrated people of his time: Otto von Bismarck, Paul von Hindenburg, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, Richard Strauss, Igor Stravinsky, Sergei Diaghilev, Vaslav Nijinsky, Isadora Duncan, Ruth St. Denis, Sarah Bernhardt, Friedrich Nietzsche, Rainer Marie Rilke, Paul Verlaine, Gordon Craig, George Bernard Shaw, Harley Granville-Barker, Max Klinger, Arnold Böcklin, Max Beckmann, Aristide Maillol, Auguste Rodin, Edgar Degas, Éduard Vuillard, Claude Monet, Edvard Munch, Ida Rubinstein, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Pierre Bonnard, and Walther Rathenau, among others. Remarkably insightful, poignant, and cinematic in their scope, Kessler’s diaries are an invaluable record of one of the most volatile and seminal moments in modern Western history. You can purchase the book here.
Our Future is in the Air
Adolph de Meyer 'Dance Study' 1912 - Alfred Steiglitz Collection
Adolph de Meyer - who would become Vogue magazine's first official fashion photographer, 1913 - photographed the dancer Ninjinsky and other members of Sergei Diaghilev's troupe when l'Apres Midi d'Un Faune was presented in Paris in 1912. It has been suggested that the above photograph, the only nude by de Meyer, has some connection to the Russian ballet, but if so, remains mysterious.
It has been commonly remarked that the 20th century didn't really begin until 1910. The above photograph and a selection of other incredible photographs from the 1910s are on display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York for the exhibit "Our Future Is In The Air": Photographs from the 1910s. On view till April 10, 2011.