Apollon

Apollon 

an illustrated Russian journal of fine arts, music, theater, and literature, published in St. Petersburg between 1909 and 1917. It came out once a month in 1909–10 and ten times a year after 1911. In 1909–10 the journal published the supplement Literaturnyi Al’manakh; in 1911–12 it published the semimonthly supplement Russkaia khudozhestvennaia letopis’, which became part of the journal’s current events department in 1913. S. K. Makovskii was the journal’s editor and publisher.

Apollon published material on the history of classical and contemporary Russian and foreign art and surveys of exhibitions, theater, and music in Russia and other countries; it dealt with the study and preservation of monuments of Russian art. The journal’s policies were determined by the idealistic views and refined tastes of the literary and artistic elite—who saw the revolution as a threat to culture—and by the illusion of transforming the world through art, with its spiritual values and perfection of form. Apollon was hostile to the peredvizhniki (members of the Society of Wandering Exhibitions) and to official government orientation.

Works by representatives of different currents in Russian art of the early 20th century appeared in the journal; it published works by I. F. Annenskii, V. Ia. Briusov, M. A. Kuzmin, and N. S. Gumilev and art critiques by V. A. Dmitriev, A. A. Rostislavov, N. N. Punin, and Ia. A. Tugendkhol’d. Apollon was closed in 1918 for having published a series of anti-Soviet articles.