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Russian Ballet
Accession # 1992.11.29
Artist Max Weber
Title Russian Ballet
Date 1916
Medium Oil on canvas
Dimensions 30 x 36in. (76.2 x 91.4cm) frame: 39 1/4 h x 45 1/2 x 3 3/8 in. (99.7 x 115.6 x 8.6 cm)
Signed Signed lower right: "Max Weber 1916"
Credit Line Bequest of Edith and Milton Lowenthal
Location Visible Storage: Case 15, Screen B (Paintings)

Curatorial Remarks:

In 1912 Max Weber wrote of his creative process: "We shall not be bound by visible objects—only the essence we as humans get out of them. . . . Memories are visible things." Weber saw a performance of the famous Russian Ballet in New York in 1914 and shortly afterward executed a watercolor recording his impressions of the dancers. Two years later he painted this oil, which shows the crystallization of this memory in even greater abstraction.