Black Period

In Kreuzlingen Switzerland, peasants have grown accustomed to a tall hollow-eyed man who takes long walks in the country with a watchful companion, never smiles, never speaks. A quietly dressed Hungarian woman arrived in New York last week with a trunk full of paintings and sketches to remind the world that the silent man in Switzerland was once regarded by many as the greatest dancer in the world. His name is Vaslav Nijinsky.

Nineteen years ago Dancer Nijinsky, a sloe-eyed young man with supple joints and tremendous thighs, headed the Serge Diaghilev Russian Ballet in its triumphal tour of Paris, London, Berlin, New York. It was the first time that theatregoers had seen a stage decorated by artists of the first rank: Derain. Picasso, Leon Bakst. Ladies in panniered hobble-skirts went into ecstasies over Nijinsky's performance of the Firebird, the Blue Bird, the Slave in Scheherazade, L'Apres-Midi d'un Faune. It was Vaslav Nijinsky who staged and introduced to the world Stravinsky's great Sacre du Printemps with its white bearded barbarians and sonorous gongs.

The outbreak of the War found Nijinsky and his troupe in Budapest where he had just married the daughter of Emilia Markus, famed Hungarian actress. He was promptly interned, later allowed to leave the country for a dance tour of South America. On his return he went to live in St. Moritz, and there, because he could not dance, he began to draw: dance movements, sketches of his daughter, his servants.* It was one of the servants who had been with Nietzsche when that philosopher went mad, who first realized that Vaslav Nijinsky was losing his mind. Nijinsky never became violent, though U. S. newspapers several years ago carried a story that he had been seen trotting round and round a tree under the im pression that he was a horse. He has always had painting materials in his room in the Bellevue Sanitarium at Kreuzlin gen, where he draws strange bugs, flower arrangements, distorted masks and faces with staring eyes. Not long ago Mme Nijinsky showed a collection of these fancies to Drs. Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. Both psychoanalysts suggested that she exhibit them abroad not only as works of art but as studies in abnormal mentality. As though in reaction to the bril liant gay colors of the ballet, Painter Nijinsky uses a somber palette. Recently he has entered what Mme Nijinsky calls his Black Period. In New York to exhibit her husband's work, she explained: "He just paints dark spaces."

*Vaslav Nijinsky was by no means unique in turning from dancing to painting. Dancers in the U. S. who have been converted to camas include Paul Swan and Hubert Stowitts. Slim, classic-featured Mr. Swan used to perform rhythmic rites in dark theatres on Sunday nights. Now he covers large canvases with intricate designs, all highly symbolical. Before he turned to painting racial types of India Mr. Stowitts attracted considerable attention in the Parisian press by posturing at private parties completely nude and painted blue. Historian Hendrik Willem van Loon's son Willem Gerard van Loon reversed the process by starting as a painter, ending as a dancer (TIME, July 20).

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