“This is an explosive mixture of Rembrandt’s chiaroscuro, Rubens’ lush flesh, multiplied by Russian madness and the power of the barbarian spirit!” - so about painting Oleg Tselkov once another great artist Mikhail Shemyakin spoke out.
The luminary of non-conformism is eighty-two years old, he has lived in France for a long time and still works hard. For almost sixty years, Tselkov has been writing his reckless character - a flat-faced Muzzle, which some call a mug, others a scoop, someone sees in him a modern icon, someone a demon.
At the beginning of December in the exhibition hall Vladey Space at the Winzavod there was a short week-long exhibition of his new works, which became an occasion to talk with the master. About who Tselkov considers his character, why he went to France and threw away his canvases, the artist told ARTANDHOUSES.
Photo: Nicolas Hidiro
Courtesy VLADEY
Recently on Russian television there was a series based on Vasily Aksenov's play "Mysterious Passion". As far as I know, many of the characters in the play were your friends. Did the bohemia of the times of the thaw really lead such a free way of life?
They were all my friends, but we lived differently. The fact is that there were people who had contact with the authorities, the authorities allowed them to publish and paid good money. And I belonged to those who did not want to have anything in common with the government, and I was not going to receive money from it. I lived as if in a corner and tried to prevent the authorities from noticing me, so that they could not destroy me. Their power did not destroy, but encouraged, loved and sometimes scolded. Although they were critical of many things, and I denied everything. Rather, I belonged to the category of people like Joseph Brodsky who had no contact with the authorities, and for this the authorities sent him into exile. There was no freedom, this is erroneously shown.
Nevertheless, such talented and very famous people in the world as writer Arthur Miller, artists David Siqueiros, Renato Guttuso came to your home in Tushino.
Yes, but they just came with my friends - Yevtushenko, Aksenov. They were interested in showing me, and those were interested in seeing me. If not for my friends, all these world celebrities would hardly have known about me.
Even Anna Akhmatova once stopped by ...
My close friend Anatoly Naiman was her secretary.
"Billiards"
2014
Photo: Nicolas Idiro
Courtesy VLADEY
In an interview, you said that in those years you started drinking at eight in the morning, like Churchill. And who was the perfect drinking companion for you?
I only had drinking companions in the pub. I was a big drinker. There was one drinking buddy, a very famous person - Rolan Bykov. Because he loved and I loved. Now that's interesting.
In 1977, “at the suggestion” of the authorities, you left for France. What did you miss the most in emigration?
I had enough of everything, because I left to see no one, hear no one and have no contact with the authorities. France and the West in general represented the exact opposite of the Soviet Union. In the West they don't say: “Go to work! Where do you work? ”, here they don’t indicate anything to anyone at all. The state does not interfere in your personal life, in your faith, in your views. You can praise anything and write anything. Homosexuals can walk naked down the street. Most do not like this, but they still climb into the bottle, they want to say that they are also people. And by the way, I agree with that.
Photo: Nicolas Hidiro
Courtesy VLADEY
What surprised you the most when you arrived in Paris?
In Moscow there was a constant crush in the subway, everyone is in a hurry, they do not give each other a pass. Here, people stand calmly, if someone forgot to leave, he is carefully let through to the exit. The most important thing is that there is no shouting whether there are enough sausages in the queue, not enough. There are no domestic problems here. When I rented an apartment, I asked the owners if it was possible to put a telephone in every room. They were even surprised by this question. And I also asked, is it possible in the corridor too? Yes, they say you can, at least two in each room. To put the phone in Moscow, I asked Vladimir Vysotsky to sing on our telephone center. And Vysotsky gave me his consent, but washed down. So I left without a phone.
Do you still miss something from Russian life?
No, I don't miss anything at all. I am busy with my painting, my life is very simple and understandable. I understand the talk of nostalgia, but it's usually led by completely useless people.
"Couple with a Needle"
2014
Photo: Nicolas Idiro
Courtesy VLADEY
How important is it to you to work hard? Should an artist be prolific?
You see, what a thing, the artist owes nothing to anyone. And to myself too. Everything is very simple. Should a person with crooked legs run? Or play basketball? Should not. The artist is something incomprehensible. You have to be born with this. It cannot be brought up! No professors will teach. It's innate. From God. There is an expression: "The artist himself does not choose anything if he is an artist." And if he chooses, invents, went there to study, then somewhere else, he is not an artist. The artist does not choose anything! God makes him do his own thing, not the desire to earn. Now, all too often false artists.
Let's talk about your character that you've been portraying for many years. It is called differently, trying to somehow determine: muzzle, mug, scoop. Are you not offended by a somewhat derogatory attitude towards your hero?
I started writing my character in the early 1960s, which means that almost sixty years have passed. Nothing offends me, and for almost sixty years I myself cannot understand what I am doing. No way! I don't understand! He is changing. A new image appears. But I can't understand, I can't explain!
"With Pitchfork and Candle"
2014
Photo: Nicolas Idiro
Courtesy VLADEY
Does he live against your will?
Exactly. I look: "Oh! What a new born! It changes all the time in my head. And when they say something like that, mug or not mug ... Maybe mug, I won’t lie, I don’t know. Maybe not an erysipelas. I cannot answer you.
How does your character change over the years?
It changes, but it is also a mystery to me. He is getting younger, then turning gray. How, I don't understand. I don't think about it because it doesn't bother me at all. This question is not for me. Do you know how babies turn out? The wife says: "I'm pregnant." That's how it is here.
Previously, you ruthlessly destroyed your work, threw away entire rolls of canvases. Are you still merciless with your paintings?
Yes, I threw away quite a lot of work. I had this theory that you shouldn't litter the land with bad art. Maybe something was not bad, but closer to bad, which means it must be destroyed. And then I watch how factories are built, they pollute nature, and I think: I don’t care, I’m trashing or I’m not trashing ... Let them sort it out after me, who is interested and who is not.
Almost half a century ago, Tselkov found a hero for his paintings - the universal scoop, which in all this time has not changed in essence. The Izvestia correspondent was convinced of this when he visited Oleg Tselkov in his Parisian studio.
Russian Week has started in London. The largest auction houses in the world - Sotheby "s, Christie" s, MacDougall "s, Bonhams - put up for auction hundreds of works by our artists. These are classics led by Repin and Aivazovsky, and modern masters. Among them is Oleg Tselkov, who has been lives in Paris. Left without Soviet citizenship, he did not want to have either Russian or French documents and all this time he lives with a Nansen passport, which was issued to refugees. This did not prevent him from receiving various Russian awards and distinctions.
Looking at Cezanne, I thought: "What a mura!"
question: A year ago you prophesied that the market for contemporary Russian art would collapse. This is how it seems to be happening...
Answer: I am not a market specialist. I have a hard time imagining how prices are organized and how outlandish artists are elevated to the top row. I was just surprised by his rise and decided that there was an element of chance in it.
Q: You are one of the few of our painters who has kept the previous level of prices at auctions.
A: As my friend, the artist, said, "I just filled my counter." Everyone in St. Petersburg knew me back in 1957, and when I moved to Moscow in 1960, visitors came to me in Tushino every day by tram. There were all sorts of people among them, but I did not refuse anyone.
Q: One of the world's largest art dealers, David Nahmad, who has as many as five hundred Picassos in his collection, just said: "Modern art is a complete swindle."
A: A long time ago there was an exhibition of Picasso in the Hermitage. Then it seemed to me such squalor, vydryuchivaniye, mediocrity! Moreover, his works were upholstered with some kind of slats, and I was used to seeing paintings in a golden frame! And now I understand that Picasso is a genius at times. Before Picasso, Cezanne was exhibited in the same Hermitage. In Russia, no one saw him, his name was whispered in the corners. Reproductions were sold by the piece, tearing them out of books. Looking at Cezanne, I blinked my eyes and thought: "People have gone crazy, or what? What a mura!"
Q: So, in half a century, what today looks like "bullshit" can become brilliant?
A: Perhaps it will turn out to be a masterpiece, and we will get great aesthetic pleasure from it. And its creator will be declared a new Cezanne or Picasso. There are modern brilliant artists. For example, the deceased American Barnett Newman is already a classic. He took a giant canvas, on the right he drew two black lines on it, and after four meters - one dotted line.
Q: And you think it's brilliant?
Oh yeah. And I'll tell you what genius is. It is not without reason that he takes a 3x7 m canvas. Newman dares to create a space where there is nothing. He creates a new harmony, which we may have met in nature. One tree is standing here, another is standing there. And in the middle is empty - the sky without clouds.
Q: I can show you the same harmony right now.
O: You can't! Here I will put you down and say: "Try it! Only in the way that no one has done it before you." And you won't be able to. Because you need to know everything that has been done before, and come up with something fundamentally new.
A normal person should be gray
Q: Your work has always had a political connotation, fitting in with the "debunking" of the communist system.
O: It's not. I debunk sovietness that exists in all countries and eras. Humanity as a whole is grey. However, a normal person should be gray. Stars from the sky grab units. And they are very unhappy. And dullness allows itself to be fooled by the authorities and respond to the cry "Kill the Jews, save Russia!" When a person is alone, it is difficult for him to manifest himself, and in the herd he feels strong.
Q: So the scoop is a universal and immortal phenomenon?
A: It has always been, is and will be. But there are epochs when sovietness acquires a dominant meaning. Scoop - a lost creature, unhappy and terribly aggressive. It hates the neighbor whose cow is not dead, hates the one who managed to grab money.
Q: Is it true that you refused the title of Russian academician?
O: Refused. I believe that only the military can receive ranks. They maintain discipline, ordered order. I can't imagine "People's Artist of France Pablo Picasso".
Q: Were there any remarkable craftsmen in the Soviet era?
O: Absolutely. For example, Petrov-Vodkin, Konchalovsky, Krymov, as well as very talented ones - Korzhev, Plastov. Of the works of those who were completely Soviet, I will name Laktionov's painting "Letter from the Front". It turned out against the will of the author - such things happen. It has amazing skill and spirit.
Q: Maitre Ilya Kabakov wrote that at one time Tselkov, in the eyes of Moscow artists, was like Mozart in the classical legend: a gambler, a reveler, a "black bohemia", but how much he wrote and how unconsciously brilliant ...
A: I have been a drunkard since I was 20. Now I have switched to drinking every night, and before, it happened, I drank from 8 in the morning. I know what beer stalls are, I know how drunks, swollen and shivering from the morning cold, are waiting for a mug of beer. And at the entrance I drank vermouth from my throat for a ruble twelve, taking a bottle from my coat pocket. But I never got drunk or rolled on the ground. I can drink a lot.
Q: The wine cellars in your Parisian house are not empty?
Oh no. I don't like running after a bottle every day. Therefore, I order in bulk 25 wine vessels with a tap of 10 liters each.
Q: The inadequacy of results to intentions is what is typical for the artists of the 1960s, the same Kabakov argued.
A: There could be no intentions - we lived in a tin can, in a plywood box. They didn't know what was around. What can be the intentions of a person who does not know the letters? But almost everyone had the desire not to be in the system.
Q: Some scoffers say that over the years you become like the heroes of your paintings.
A: I began to shave my head, my eyes turned into slits, like the heroes of my paintings. Most artists paint faces that look like their own. We tend to give our features to the characters - and there is nothing wrong with that.
Q: It seems to me that in your works there is something from Gogol...
O: Probably there is. Gogol is phantasmagorical. There is no truth as such. Maybe I don't have the truth either. What I do is a tale, a parable, a tale.
Q: Have you managed to express yourself in more than half a century of creativity?
A: Earlier, when a sailboat approached the shore, a cabin boy climbed up the mast and shouted: "Land!" So I, in my 74 years old, can shout: "Here it is, the earth!". Admittedly, I don't fully understand what I'm doing. The older I am, the less I understand where I was going.
Q: Did anything interfere with you in Soviet Russia - system, ideology?
A: I made sure that no one interfered with me. I didn’t work anywhere and didn’t even study anywhere, I could only do creative work. Director Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov gave me his poster with the inscription: "To a dear student who studied at all not what I taught him."
Q: When Picasso was asked where his art comes from - from the heart or from the mind, he replied: "From the eggs." What can you say about the origins of your work?
A: Sometimes I look at the work of some artist and think: "Good in every sense, but weak in the balls." I myself, standing at the canvas, feel like such a horse with eggs - strong, strong, real.
I don't like being kissed on the lips
Q: Thirty-odd years ago you moved to Paris. But the motherland does not forget you - it will give you one award like "Triumph", then another. And you distanced yourself from her, the motherland ...
A: I generally distanced myself from everything on earth, including my homeland. I prefer to have friendly relations. I don't like being kissed on the lips.
Q: On the occasion of your 70th birthday in your homeland - in the Tretyakov Gallery and in the Russian Museum, your exhibitions were organized.
A: There was a person who took on all the expenses. But in general I have no love for exhibitions. Now, if in 50 years it comes to someone's mind to make my exposition in a prestigious place, I will say "from there": "Wow, old man! I shake my hand!". If the art is real, then over time it will emerge - even if from underground. Once Mandelstam said to his wife: "If I write brilliant poems, there is no need to write them down. They are just in the wind. They will not die." So are canvases: if they are brilliant, they will not die.
Q: At the Picasso exhibition, which has been working around the clock in Paris for the last few days, there was a queue even at two in the morning. Art has become a mass spectacle, consumer goods. And before it worried, called.
A: Art in general should not excite and call anywhere. Politicians and speakers should excite and call. Art is a letter in a bottle thrown into the sea of life for future generations..
Q: In Paris there is an exhibition of Russian avant-garde from the collection of the Greek Georgy Costakis. Did he buy your work?
A: In 1957 he bought two paintings from me. For one, he paid my father's monthly salary - 150 rubles, and for the other - my mother's - 100 rubles. At the time, that was a lot of money. The painting cost twenty rubles. He kept one painting for himself and presented the second to the Canadian ambassador. More recently, the work that came to the ambassador returned from non-existence. It was sold at auction for $279,000.
Q: Artists are jealous of the success of their colleagues. You are probably not an exception.
A: I do not rejoice and am not interested in their success, because what they call success is no success for me. The future will show everything.
Q: But do you go to exhibitions of your colleagues?
O: I do. Sometimes, the thought will flash: "It's a pity that they didn't put me out." But I try to drive her away. Each person has his own path, destiny, luck. And it is still unknown where is luck and where is failure.
Q: Are you a man without vanity?
A: No, I am a man without stupidity.
The main thing is to stay away from the authorities
Q: Do you consider France your homeland today?
A: My house, my hole - both in a Parisian apartment and in a village in Champagne. In the village, I don’t even go out of the gate; for a walk, the courtyard is enough for me. I'm also annoyed to go outside from the apartment. What didn't I see there? Just wipe the shoes. But every Thursday is my rest day - I go to the galleries.
Q: And what surprised you there lately?
A: Contemporary art is full of surprises. You always stumble upon something extraordinary. They no longer invent a picture, not a sculpture, but something spatial. I don't understand where gallery owners find these artists?! One, for example, created a witch who squats with her legs apart in a very indecent pose. Deer antlers grow from her neck, and linen dries on her horns ...
Q: What is the artist's happiness - to say a new word? Leave your mark?
A: First of all, don't be dependent on anyone. Second, don't be an academic. Third, don't be rich. Because wealth does not make life easier, but very burdensome. But the most important thing is to be away from the authorities, from the state, the army, the courts. And live not on the Champs Elysees, but where normal people live.
Q: You have neither Russian nor French citizenship. Why did you decide to remain stateless and live with a Nansen passport?
A: This is not a posture, but a principle. I refused to take a French passport. France is a beautiful country that has given me shelter. Why would I insult her by pretending to be a Frenchman from Zhytomyr?! The first Russian emigration did not take French citizenship. I continue their tradition. They tell me: "A passport is a formality." I agree, it's a formality. I'm a fool, but I respect myself for such stupidity. I'm not some b ... who gives everyone for three kopecks.
Russian Week has started in London. The largest auction houses in the world - Sotheby "s, Christie" s, MacDougall "s, Bonhams - put up for auction hundreds of works by our artists. These are classics led by Repin and Aivazovsky, and modern masters. Among them is Oleg Tselkov, who has been lives in Paris. Left without Soviet citizenship, he did not want to have either Russian or French documents and all this time he lives with a Nansen passport, which was issued to refugees. This did not prevent him from receiving various Russian awards and distinctions.
Looking at Cezanne, I thought: "What a mura!"
question: A year ago you prophesied that the market for contemporary Russian art would collapse. This is how it seems to be happening...
Answer: I am not a market specialist. I have a hard time imagining how prices are organized and how outlandish artists are elevated to the top row. I was just surprised by his rise and decided that there was an element of chance in it.
Q: You are one of the few of our painters who has kept the previous level of prices at auctions.
A: As my friend, the artist, said, "I just filled my counter." Everyone in St. Petersburg knew me back in 1957, and when I moved to Moscow in 1960, visitors came to me in Tushino every day by tram. There were all sorts of people among them, but I did not refuse anyone.
Q: One of the world's largest art dealers, David Nahmad, who has as many as five hundred Picassos in his collection, just said: "Modern art is a complete swindle."
A: A long time ago there was an exhibition of Picasso in the Hermitage. Then it seemed to me such squalor, vydryuchivaniye, mediocrity! Moreover, his works were upholstered with some kind of slats, and I was used to seeing paintings in a golden frame! And now I understand that Picasso is a genius at times. Before Picasso, Cezanne was exhibited in the same Hermitage. In Russia, no one saw him, his name was whispered in the corners. Reproductions were sold by the piece, tearing them out of books. Looking at Cezanne, I blinked my eyes and thought: "People have gone crazy, or what? What a mura!"
Q: So, in half a century, what today looks like "bullshit" can become brilliant?
A: Perhaps it will turn out to be a masterpiece, and we will get great aesthetic pleasure from it. And its creator will be declared a new Cezanne or Picasso. There are modern brilliant artists. For example, the deceased American Barnett Newman is already a classic. He took a giant canvas, on the right he drew two black lines on it, and after four meters - one dotted line.
Best of the day
Q: And you think it's brilliant?
Oh yeah. And I'll tell you what genius is. It is not without reason that he takes a 3x7 m canvas. Newman dares to create a space where there is nothing. He creates a new harmony, which we may have met in nature. One tree is standing here, another is standing there. And in the middle is empty - the sky without clouds.
Q: I can show you the same harmony right now.
O: You can't! Here I will put you down and say: "Try it! Only in the way that no one has done it before you." And you won't be able to. Because you need to know everything that has been done before, and come up with something fundamentally new.
A normal person should be gray
Q: Your work has always had a political connotation, fitting in with the "debunking" of the communist system.
O: It's not. I debunk sovietness that exists in all countries and eras. Humanity as a whole is grey. However, a normal person should be gray. Stars from the sky grab units. And they are very unhappy. And dullness allows itself to be fooled by the authorities and respond to the cry "Kill the Jews, save Russia!" When a person is alone, it is difficult for him to manifest himself, and in the herd he feels strong.
Q: So the scoop is a universal and immortal phenomenon?
A: It has always been, is and will be. But there are epochs when sovietness acquires a dominant meaning. Scoop - a lost creature, unhappy and terribly aggressive. It hates the neighbor whose cow is not dead, hates the one who managed to grab money.
Q: Is it true that you refused the title of Russian academician?
O: Refused. I believe that only the military can receive ranks. They maintain discipline, ordered order. I can't imagine "People's Artist of France Pablo Picasso".
Q: Were there any remarkable craftsmen in the Soviet era?
O: Absolutely. For example, Petrov-Vodkin, Konchalovsky, Krymov, as well as very talented ones - Korzhev, Plastov. Of the works of those who were completely Soviet, I will name Laktionov's painting "Letter from the Front". It turned out against the will of the author - such things happen. It has amazing skill and spirit.
Q: Maitre Ilya Kabakov wrote that at one time Tselkov, in the eyes of Moscow artists, was like Mozart in the classical legend: a gambler, a reveler, a "black bohemia", but how much he wrote and how unconsciously brilliant ...
A: I have been a drunkard since I was 20. Now I have switched to drinking every night, and before, it happened, I drank from 8 in the morning. I know what beer stalls are, I know how drunks, swollen and shivering from the morning cold, are waiting for a mug of beer. And at the entrance I drank vermouth from my throat for a ruble twelve, taking a bottle from my coat pocket. But I never got drunk or rolled on the ground. I can drink a lot.
Q: The wine cellars in your Parisian house are not empty?
Oh no. I don't like running after a bottle every day. Therefore, I order in bulk 25 wine vessels with a tap of 10 liters each.
Q: The inadequacy of results to intentions is what is typical for the artists of the 1960s, the same Kabakov argued.
A: There could be no intentions - we lived in a tin can, in a plywood box. They didn't know what was around. What can be the intentions of a person who does not know the letters? But almost everyone had the desire not to be in the system.
Q: Some scoffers say that over the years you become like the heroes of your paintings.
A: I began to shave my head, my eyes turned into slits, like the heroes of my paintings. Most artists paint faces that look like their own. We tend to give our features to the characters - and there is nothing wrong with that.
Q: It seems to me that in your works there is something from Gogol...
O: Probably there is. Gogol is phantasmagorical. There is no truth as such. Maybe I don't have the truth either. What I do is a tale, a parable, a tale.
Q: Have you managed to express yourself in more than half a century of creativity?
A: Earlier, when a sailboat approached the shore, a cabin boy climbed up the mast and shouted: "Land!" So I, in my 74 years old, can shout: "Here it is, the earth!". Admittedly, I don't fully understand what I'm doing. The older I am, the less I understand where I was going.
Q: Did anything interfere with you in Soviet Russia - system, ideology?
A: I made sure that no one interfered with me. I didn’t work anywhere and didn’t even study anywhere, I could only do creative work. Director Nikolai Pavlovich Akimov gave me his poster with the inscription: "To a dear student who studied at all not what I taught him."
Q: When Picasso was asked where his art comes from - from the heart or from the mind, he replied: "From the eggs." What can you say about the origins of your work?
A: Sometimes I look at the work of some artist and think: "Good in every sense, but weak in the balls." I myself, standing at the canvas, feel like such a horse with eggs - strong, strong, real.
I don't like being kissed on the lips
Q: Thirty-odd years ago you moved to Paris. But the motherland does not forget you - it will give you one award like "Triumph", then another. And you distanced yourself from her, the motherland ...
A: I generally distanced myself from everything on earth, including my homeland. I prefer to have friendly relations. I don't like being kissed on the lips.
Q: On the occasion of your 70th birthday in your homeland - in the Tretyakov Gallery and in the Russian Museum, your exhibitions were organized.
A: There was a person who took on all the expenses. But in general I have no love for exhibitions. Now, if in 50 years it comes to someone's mind to make my exposition in a prestigious place, I will say "from there": "Wow, old man! I shake my hand!". If the art is real, then over time it will emerge - even if from underground. Once Mandelstam said to his wife: "If I write brilliant poems, there is no need to write them down. They are just in the wind. They will not die." So are canvases: if they are brilliant, they will not die.
Q: At the Picasso exhibition, which has been working around the clock in Paris for the last few days, there was a queue even at two in the morning. Art has become a mass spectacle, consumer goods. And before it worried, called.
A: Art in general should not excite and call anywhere. Politicians and speakers should excite and call. Art is a letter in a bottle thrown into the sea of life for future generations..
Q: In Paris there is an exhibition of Russian avant-garde from the collection of the Greek Georgy Costakis. Did he buy your work?
A: In 1957 he bought two paintings from me. For one, he paid my father's monthly salary - 150 rubles, and for the other - my mother's - 100 rubles. At the time, that was a lot of money. The painting cost twenty rubles. He kept one painting for himself and presented the second to the Canadian ambassador. More recently, the work that came to the ambassador returned from non-existence. It was sold at auction for $279,000.
Q: Artists are jealous of the success of their colleagues. You are probably not an exception.
A: I do not rejoice and am not interested in their success, because what they call success is no success for me. The future will show everything.
Q: But do you go to exhibitions of your colleagues?
O: I do. Sometimes, the thought will flash: "It's a pity that they didn't put me out." But I try to drive her away. Each person has his own path, destiny, luck. And it is still unknown where is luck and where is failure.
Q: Are you a man without vanity?
A: No, I am a man without stupidity.
The main thing is to stay away from the authorities
Q: Do you consider France your homeland today?
A: My house, my hole - both in a Parisian apartment and in a village in Champagne. In the village, I don’t even go out of the gate; for a walk, the courtyard is enough for me. I'm also annoyed to go outside from the apartment. What didn't I see there? Just wipe the shoes. But every Thursday is my rest day - I go to the galleries.
Q: And what surprised you there lately?
A: Contemporary art is full of surprises. You always stumble upon something extraordinary. They no longer invent a picture, not a sculpture, but something spatial. I don't understand where gallery owners find these artists?! One, for example, created a witch who squats with her legs apart in a very indecent pose. Deer antlers grow from her neck, and linen dries on her horns ...
Q: What is the artist's happiness - to say a new word? Leave your mark?
A: First of all, don't be dependent on anyone. Second, don't be an academic. Third, don't be rich. Because wealth does not make life easier, but very burdensome. But the most important thing is to be away from the authorities, from the state, the army, the courts. And live not on the Champs Elysees, but where normal people live.
Q: You have neither Russian nor French citizenship. Why did you decide to remain stateless and live with a Nansen passport?
A: This is not a posture, but a principle. I refused to take a French passport. France is a beautiful country that has given me shelter. Why would I insult her by pretending to be a Frenchman from Zhytomyr?! The first Russian emigration did not take French citizenship. I continue their tradition. They tell me: "A passport is a formality." I agree, it's a formality. I'm a fool, but I respect myself for such stupidity. I'm not some b ... who gives everyone for three kopecks.
Image copyright Oleg Tselkov Image caption Oleg Tselkov. "Face with Hand" 2011
A veteran and classic of Soviet and Russian non-conformism, a wonderful artist Oleg Tselkov turned 80 this year. In Moscow, his anniversary was celebrated back in the summer with a grandiose exhibition "The Ace of Diamonds" - the first major exhibition in the homeland of the artist, who has been living in exile in France since 1977. And now - the London exhibition Alter Ego, which opened in the gallery Alon Zakaim.
The paintings of Oleg Tselkov - more precisely, not the paintings themselves, but their magazine reproductions - I first saw back in the deep stagnant years, somewhere in the very beginning of the 80s. Of course, the magazine was not Soviet - in any, even the most liberal Soviet publication, there could be no question of publishing works with strange surrealistic otherworldly, surprisingly similar to each other in their oval shape and at the same time completely different head-torsoes. The magazine was called "A-Ya", published in Paris, and although it was not political, but artistic, it penetrated the USSR as "tamizdat", that is, smuggled, and was a real window into uncensored, nonconformist art.
More than thirty years have passed since then. Tselkov turned from an underground worker into a living classic, and when I first met him in the bustle of the opening day and even took out a microphone for an interview, I suddenly hesitated. What to talk about? What to ask? And he even shared his doubts with the artist: it’s embarrassing, they say, to ask banal questions. To which the 80-year-old master replied with youthful enthusiasm: "Don't be afraid! All questions are banal!" Having received such support, I started with the most banal:
BBC BBC: How did you come up with these strange oval shapes? Or maybe they came to you?
Oleg Tselkov: You won't believe it! How in the spirit! I've been asking myself this question for over half a century. Yes, half a century! Already all 65 years! At first I asked myself this question rarely, then more often, now quite often. And the answer is: I don't know! I would say yes, I'm afraid to lie.
Image copyright John Varoli PR Image caption Oleg Tselkov's Alter Ego exhibition at London's Alon Zakaim Gallery is timed to coincide with the artist's 80th birthdayBBC BBC: But you had some other artistic life, because you studied, and studied in the harsh Soviet, even Stalin, years ...
O.Ts.: And she has always been like that. From the very first steps in art school, I turned out to be a person who does not know how to study. I was 15 years old.
BBC: And you weren't kicked out?
O.Ts.: Immediately! But I got back. They kicked out every year. In the end, I was expelled as a result of the fact that Chinese students who studied with me at the Academy of Arts in Leningrad saw my paintings. I wrote them in my room in a student dormitory, wrote secretly from the teachers. And somehow I go into the room, and my comrades shouted: here he is, here he is, come! It turns out that these very Chinese people came to our room - very nice guys, by the way - they saw my paintings and decided to wait for me to talk to me. “Why are you painting such strange pictures?” they ask. “Such pictures come to us in China only from bourgeois Japan.” I answer them that I don’t know, I don’t know anything about Japan either. They do not lag behind, they say that I apply paint very thickly, and in China they recommend saving paint, saving. Here I got a little angry: “Well, you know,” I say, “I didn’t take it from you in China and didn’t steal it. I found some money, dad gave it to me, and this has nothing to do with you.”
They politely left in single file, and a couple of days later I received an order to be expelled from the Repin Academy of Arts. I got a D in my specialty. I was later told that the Chinese at a meeting of their compatriots told about me and wrote an official letter to the rector of the Academy, as a result of which I was expelled right from the first year. This is how I started.
Image copyright Oleg Tselkov Image caption Oleg Tselkov. "Job". 2006BBC BBC: After all, then, in your student years, in 1952-53, the Soviet Union was closed to impossibility. What did you know about world art? What did you love? Who were they targeting?
O.Ts .: Already in 1949, in Moscow, I secretly, through an acquaintance, managed to penetrate the storerooms of the Tretyakov Gallery. There, again, in secret, the keepers showed me pictures that I had never seen before. After all, at that time, Vrubel was among others an unexhibited artist. The last artist exhibited was Valentin Serov. There was nothing further: neither Vrubel, nor Roerich, not to mention the "Jack of Diamonds". And suddenly I see all this, in the 49th or 50th year. I must say that all this impressed me incredibly. After all, I was taught a realistic image, that is, as in life, and to me, a boy, completely inexperienced, this art - strange, unusual, with bright colors that catch the eye, seems to be completely unlike life - it seemed in fact much more like life, than what they taught me. And this was a striking paradox of perception. No, it wasn't a photo, but it was MORE THAN A PHOTO.
That is, what I want to say is that people like me arise from nature - not because someone taught them ... Then they asked me at the KGB: do you know any artists from the older generation? But this happens often without any acquaintances. It's just that life requires the truth of existence, and not theories invented and sucked from the finger. Therefore, I appeared, and very soon Oscar Rabin, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Dmitry Plavinsky, Evgeny Mikhnov-Voitenko, Mikhail Kulakov appeared nearby - we were all alone, each appeared as if on his own, but we immediately found each other.
Image copyright Oleg Tselkov Image caption Oleg Tselkov. "Father and son". 2006BBC BBC: You mentioned the KGB. One often hears the interpretation of your works, your images, as a denunciation of the terrible type of Homo Soveticus. To what extent was political opposition to the regime important to you?
O.Ts.: I'll tell you honestly. The fact that I turned out to be persecuted, that they began to call me to the KGB, came as a complete surprise to me. After all, I was an ideologically completely unprepared person. To accuse me of painting such pictures is the same as calling a hungry, naive, three-year-old child who has taken a roll to the KGB and strictly telling him: “Why did you take a roll? Don’t you know what to take rolls it is forbidden?" And he is a child, he really does not know, he just wanted to eat. It was the same with me.
But what happened, the questions that I was asked, prompted me to think very, very seriously. That is, this system - using my example to tell you - created enemies on its own. They did not appear under the influence of some foreign propaganda, she nurtured and educated them herself, so that she would have someone to fight with. This was done quite consciously, it was an attempt by the system to survive. And she could only survive if she had enemies. So for me, she became an enemy. I thought about it and began to deeply hate and despise her.
BBC BBC: And with the collapse of the system did not you have the temptation to return to Russia?
O.Ts.: No, it didn’t. I was very happy about the collapse of the system. But by that time I was already firmly rooted in Paris. I have never been a political thinker, let alone an activist, I just wanted to make life better in my country. Or rather, not so much better as not so stupid. Because in my memory that life, I have no other word for it, was simply STUPID. Unnatural, invented, sucked from the finger.
Image copyright Oleg Tselkov Image caption Oleg Tselkov. "With cards". 1999BBC: Do you follow today's Russia?
O.Ts.: Very few. I don't even consider the current country to be Russia. She has nothing to do with that Russia. Every state is related to its past - to tsarist Russia, the Tatar yoke. These are birthmarks, it will live in it for a long time, but this is a completely different Russia, which, in my opinion, is simply a sin to compare with the former one.
BBC: Do you consider yourself a Russian artist?
O.Ts.: But I am a Russian artist. But this is a completely different matter. There is an environment, language, climate, food - all this creates a nation. I was brought up in Russian speech - speech is of tremendous importance. For every nation it is different and has different beauties, untranslatable. Speech creates mentality. Speech and history that are laid down and that you mechanically carry in yourself. And, since I was formed in Russia, I cannot but be a Russian artist.
BBC BBC: Remaining a Russian artist, you have been living outside of Russia for many decades. Where is your work in greater demand - in Russia or in the West?
O.Ts.: I don't know. And I have never been interested in this issue, because I do not consider it to be related to the work of an artist at all. This is done by gallerists, dealers, collectors. I never cared about it, not one iota.
Image copyright Oleg Tselkov Image caption Oleg Tselkov. "Four with a knife." 2002OLEG TSELKOV. FACTS OF LIFE
1934 - born in Moscow
1949-55 - studied art at the Moscow secondary art school, the Minsk Art Institute, the Academy of Arts. Repin in Leningrad
1956 - the first apartment exhibition in Moscow
1960 - moves to Moscow
1965 - the first official exhibition at the Institute of Atomic Physics. Kurchatov
1970s - exhibited in Europe and the USA
1977 - at the "proposal" of the authorities left the USSR. Lives in Paris. Did not take French citizenship, is stateless
2004 - two solo exhibitions: in the Russian Museum and in the State Tretyakov Gallery
2014 - big anniversary exhibition in Moscow "Ace of Diamonds"
Oleg Tselkov's works are in the Hermitage, the Russian Museum, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Pushkin Museum, the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Olympic Museum (Lausanne), the Catherine Foundation and many others.
In 2001, in Paris, Oleg Tselkov wrote the following about himself and his work:
“...After a decade of hard and fruitless work, in 1960 I painted my first, my first, picture with two faces, “Portrait”. My, as they say, creative path begins with her.
For the first time, and the first, I accidentally "pulled off" the face "in the image and likeness" from my face and saw - a FACE. My shock knew no bounds.
I painted, as it were, a portrait, however, not a portrait of a single subject, but a portrait of the general, all together in that face and - terribly familiar.
I immediately - immediately! I realized that my path was shown to me.
And a set of formal techniques - form - were also immediately identified: a simplified, primitive drawing; spectral "eternal" burning color; smooth, contrasting shading of tone, but most importantly, TEMPLATE as the basis of the basics. Everything free, improvisational, optional was excluded: no "geniuses", "inspirations", "explosions", no spectacular strokes of the brush. Anonymity at its finest. The smoothness of a faceless craftsman….
April 26, in the gallery of Russian painting ABA (http://abagallery.com/) opened a personal exhibition of paintings by Oleg Tselkov, which featured 48 works of the artist. For the first time, the New York public had the opportunity to get acquainted with such a representative exposition of Oleg Tselkov, formed from the collections of the AVA Gallery and other private Western collections.
At the opening of the exhibition, among the guests were: Olga Schmitt, daughter of Oleg Tselkov, Yuz Aleshkovsky, Sati Spivakova. (photo on the left)
The owner of the ABA gallery, Anatoly Bekkerman, says: “My personal acquaintance with Oleg Tselkov happened in Paris in 1988. We were introduced by a well-known collector and my old friend Alexander Glazer. By that time, Tselkov's canvases were already in my collection - I was a longtime admirer of his talent. I remember how I was first struck by his bold, fantastic, aniline-colored canvases, dominated by piercing and incredible faces. Oleg Tselkov, a unique, one-of-a-kind artist, and I am immensely glad that our exhibition will give viewers the opportunity to get in touch with the bewitching magic of his work, with his original and inimitable works filled with deep philosophical meaning.” 
For more than half a century, Oleg Tselkov has been at the forefront of contemporary art. Interest in his work is high and invariably stable. He can be called one of the best-selling contemporary artists from the former USSR. Moreover, not only "sold", but also the most expensive-sold. For example, on June 12, 2007, at the Sotheby's London auction, his painting “Five Masks” was inserted, with an initial price of $ 120-160 thousand, and was successfully sold several times more expensive. At one time, this painting was bought from the artist by the famous collector George Costakis.
Oleg Tselkov recalls: “In 1957 he bought two paintings from me. For one I paid my father's monthly salary - that is, 150 rubles, and for the other - my mother's - 100 rubles. For artists at that time it was a lot of money. The painting cost twenty rubles. Kostaki said he was keeping one for himself and giving the other to the Canadian ambassador. And quite recently, the work that came to the ambassador returned from non-existence. It sold for $279,000 at McDougall's.
self-portrait
The attitude of the artist to his success among collectors has always been quite calm, one might say philosophical. Once and for all, he decided that painting was the main thing for him, regardless of whether it would bring him money or not.
In this context, the story described by Sergei Dovlatov in one of his stories about how Tselkov sold his paintings by centimeters to the famous playwright Arthur Miller is curious.
Here is how the artist himself comments on this story: “Sergey Dovlatov told about this, turning the story into a compressed novel, in which everything is inaccurate, but everything is true. When I started selling paintings, I came up with this scheme. As an accountant, I calculated how many paintings I make during the year, calculated their area, how much material they take. Next, I set myself a monthly salary as a cleaner, which I divided into square centimeters. And my square centimeter cost something - I don’t remember how much. And then I said to the buyer, “Here is my centimeter worth so much. Measure the picture, multiply and find out the price. And if it's dear to you, take a small one, you'll get a different price."
Oleg Tselkov belongs to the generation of artists of the sixties. He is one of the founders of non-conformism, thanks to which a new vital concept of creative individualism was formed, possessing, previously impossible under the conditions of Soviet totalitarianism, a daring and independent worldview and an unbridled thirst for freedom of expression.
Oleg Tselkov was born in Moscow in 1934. He entered the secondary art school quite spontaneously without any preliminary preparation and graduated with honors. Then he studied at the Minsk Art College, at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture. I.E. Repin, but the creative independence and desire to go his own way, manifested in him from a young age, did not allow him to finish any of these educational institutions. He was excluded from everywhere until the director Nikolai Akimov invited Oleg to his theater and production department of the Leningrad Institute of Theater and Cinema. So the artist received a higher education.
Oleg Tselkov and Eageniy Yevtushenko on one of the rivers of Siberia
Despite the complex independent nature, and perhaps because of it, Tselkov's creative path developed quite successfully. He was early noticed in the artistic environment, both at home and abroad. The very personal and original theme he found led him through life and allowed him to develop and express what interested him most, regardless of the country of residence and the favor of circumstances.
Yevgenia Yevtushenko, all his life was a close friend of Tsekkov, loved his work, bought paintings and always tried to help the young artist. He wrote: “There is an eerie strength, vitality in this Russian artist, who went through the school of store lines, communal kitchens, crowded trams, the school of fear of the night ringing at the door, the school of Khrushchev’s screams at artists, the school of destroying an exhibition in a wasteland with bulldozers under Brezhnev, the school non-release abroad, non-exhibition and non-purchase of paintings, a school of innumerable exceptions, prohibitions, threats.
Tselkov's first solo exhibition took place in 1965 at the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Physics. Since 1970, his paintings, taken out of the USSR, began to be exhibited in Europe.
In 1977, Tselkov accepted the offer of the authorities to leave the USSR and since then has been living in Paris with a Nansen passport - in the status of a stateless person. In the West, he immediately became in demand, and soon a well-known and well-selling artist.
In 2004, his anniversary solo exhibitions were held at the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum. In 2005, O. Tselkov became the only artist living in the West who was awarded the prestigious Russian Triumph Prize.
At the current exhibition, in the ABA gallery, canvases written by Tselkov in the period from 1961 to 2008 are presented. The exposition allows you to get acquainted with the works related to all creative periods of Tselkov's life, and thereby trace the development and transformation of the artist's skill and philosophy.
“In the paintings of the Soviet period, my hero, who is held by the throat, is aggressive due to his lack of freedom. He is both suffering and ruthless. In the West, he lost this aggressiveness. His features became blurry. But the core remains the same. In my works created in the West, there is no more humanism, no more kindness or love.” – Oleg Tselkov
Oleg Tselkov stuns the viewer with the monumentality of his canvases, painted with eye-catching colors, shocking and at the same time bewitching images of great inner strength and passion. His paintings are unusually emotional, they hit on the nerves, breaking the peace of mind and immersing the viewer in an unreal, but recognizable world of characters created by the artist's imagination, whose characters are well known and understandable to people all over the world.
Painting by Tselkov from the collection of Irina and Alexander Volger
“I accidentally unmasked humanity. For more than half a century I have been painting the reverse side of the human personality, which has never been shown in fine art. This person has selfishness, anger, longing. I portray him as he is left alone with himself or one on one with the enemy. This is a universal being that will never die. I have discovered in man that which is truly immortal in him. He represents, as it were, a new human race, being both a humanist and an anti-humanist, and these two principles cannot be separated in him. - Oleg Tselkov
Exhibition by Oleg Tselkov, ABA Gallery, New York, 2013
Personal exhibitions of Oleg Tselkov: Eduard Nakhamkin Gallery, 1979, Georgy Oavrov-Tanenbaum Gallery, 1982; Georgy Lavrov Gallery, Paris, France, 1982; Altes Rathaus Gallery, Germany, 1883, Sloane Gallery, Denver, USA, 1989; Connaught Brown Gallery, UK, 1991, 1995; Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, 2004; State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg, 2004; Oleg Tselkov. XXI Century. Painting 2000 - 2010 (art gallery "Lazarev Gallery", St. Petersburg, 2011); Man's Best Friends in the Works of Russian Artists (Slone Gallery, Denver, USA, 2011); Oleg Tselkov. XXI Century. Painting 2000 - 2010 (art gallery "K35", Moscow, 2012); The past is never dead. It's not even the past - W. Faulkner (Slone Gallery. Denver, USA, 2011-2012), Oleg Tselkov, ABA Gallery, New York, USA, April 2013.
"In my opinion, Oleg Tselkov is the most outstanding Russian artist of the post-war period." - Joseph Brodsky.
Text and photos from a opening night of Oleg Tselkov’s exhibition by Tatyana Borodina
Any reprint of the text or use of author's photographs is possible only with the permission of the author of the project.
ABA Gallery, New York, 2013
