Fyodor Dostoyevsky's character Prince Myshkin in The Idiot says' " In that face- there is much suffering... Beauty like that is strength." Physical beauty, like the fleeting blue iridescence on the brown wings of the male apatura ilia butterfly Avinoff studied, is a visible metaphor of time, transformation, joy, sorrow, love, longing, and loss. Avinoff is a man that understood and expressed both the beauty and suffering of the world as an artist, scientist, and human being. The tender grace in Avinoff's Vaslav Nijinsky: Spectre de la Rose, 1947 in some ways is more beautiful and powerful than the 1916 Cubist portrait of the young Nijinsky. Gravity-defying leaps are recalled by the perfect frail gesture of the dancer's hand as he holds a fading rose. There is a look of knowing in the eyes of the elder Nijinsky that reveals memories and wisdom not yet realized or even lived in the pride of the 1916 image.
This is the Army is a drawing that questions assumptions of beauty, gaze, power, and gender. This drawing is exhibited next to cases of butterflies and watercolors where flowers, insects, color, and energy become free, bold, and grow wings to paraphrase Mikhail Kuzmin's 1906 novel Wings. The irony, humor, and unspeakable grace and gentle beauty of This is the Army reminds the viewer that somewhere in the history of western art we have forgotten how to see the human body as a wonder of nature.
Can beauty save the world? Can we even see it? Solzhenitsyn said in his acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize," perhaps that old trinity of Truth and Good and Beauty is not just the formal outworn formula it used to seem to us during our heady, materialistic youth. If the crests of these three trees join together, as the investigators and explorers used to affirm, and if the too obvious, too straight branches of Truth and Good are crushed or amputated and cannot reach the light-yet perhaps the whimsical, unpredictable, unexpected branches of Beauty will make their way through and soar up to that very place and in this way perform the work of all three.... perhaps art, literature, can in fact help the world of today."
So perhaps, if we can see the wonder of beauty and not try to control it, preserve it, or utilize it for power over others, it can indeed help us. Avinoff suggests to understand "the nature and soul," of creatures one must study their creative efforts with a sympathetic, careful observation whether this is the study of butterflies or our fellow human beings.
