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.
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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 story, 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.
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 story, 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.
“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.
Tselkov gave his life on the altar of art: for almost 60 years he has been writing without days off (are there still such people?). Creativity does not prevent him from living with a beautiful wife in France and drinking a glass of wine every evening. Behind this business I find him in a Parisian studio apartment. The presence of the artist is given out only by his paint-stained clothes and an easel with an unfinished painting.
— Oleg Nikolayevich, why are you working without an apron? Feel sorry for the cashmere cardigan? All in paint!
“Clothes are of no value to me. Whatever came to hand, he put on. I wipe my hands on this as I work. The paint is not dirty, it is washed off ...
- Now your works of different years are shown at exhibitions in a Parisian gallery and Moscow's New Manege. Since the 1990s, faces have noticeably mutated, acquired additional eyes ... Is this a disease or an epiphany?
I started making faces in 1960. Accidentally. In search of his artistic path, he painted a strange face. Not abstract, like the Cubists, broken by cubes. Human, but no one's. Suddenly I realized that I saw in him an attractive riddle. This is a human portrait, but with distortions. To this day I have no answer what kind of people they are, what happens to them and what quality they are. I have been writing them all my life. Daily.
- Impulse?
“Something like sexual attraction. When you are in love with someone, but not because he is the most beautiful, but you are drawn to this particular person. Like Vysotsky: “She wheezes, / She’s dirty, / And her eye is black, / And her legs are different, / Always dressed like a cleaning lady ... / - I don’t care about it - / I really want to!
With wife Tonya in the 1970s. From a personal archive.
- However, your favorite woman is an actress. And what an Antonina Bobrova!
- At the first meeting, he called her to marry. I was as drunk as a Russian can be, and wearily looked at the television. Suddenly, a woman of such unearthly beauty appears on the screen that I gave myself: “This is mine! My wife". Tonya was already a well-known actress, she played at that moment in Goncharov's play "Cliff". That same evening, my friends and I went to visit Bella Akhmadulina - and Tonya ended up there. I went up to her, took her by the hand and called others to witness: “You all know my wife, don't you? ..” The actress did not show surprise. She followed me. Since that day, we have not parted.
- Did you have a desire to portray your beloved woman?
- If it would arise, then this has nothing to do with my work. I can simultaneously show tricks on the street, but this does not mean that I am also a magician. My creativity is only what attracts me.
- There are gallery owners who deal with your work and allow you to say that you paint faces, because nothing else works ...
- What the gallery owners say - it does not matter to me. These are not professionals, but random people. They did not have another profession, and they began to open galleries, thinking that they would find a sweet life and money here. To talk about the work of the artist, you need to know him. And not just to communicate and see two pictures, but to know in detail: from beginning to end. Then you can draw conclusions. That's when I looked at the book with all the paintings of Arkhip Kuindzhi, I can say that this is a failed artist, but with the makings of a genius.
With grandson Maxim in his Paris apartment. From a personal archive.
- Having studied painting from a book, can you draw such conclusions?
— Yes, although I am not an art critic, not a critic and not a visitor to exhibitions, so I should not have thoughts about the work of other artists.
— In what museums can you be found?
“I feel like a damned artist. This term was born from the French poets of the 19th century, since they were everywhere out of place. With me - the same. Exposing me is unpleasant, I interfere, many do not like me. Like an artist. I'm only talking about pictures. They are not taken anywhere. They don't hang around all the time.
- You are often exhibited in Moscow. There are fakes too...
- I've been faked for about 20 years. Several fakes were brought to me by friends. I think these things are not commercially successful because they are bad. I didn't meet a serious counterfeiter on my way. These are kids who apparently think that they will do a few jobs and earn a lot of money by chance. After all, they see how much my paintings go at auctions, for example in London (“Boy with Balloons” went to MacDougall’s for £ 238.4 thousand - “MK”).
- Nevertheless, there was a case when even the experts could not determine whether the fake was in front of them or your original.
- There are few people who understand and know. This happened to me too at the age of 20, when I lived in St. Petersburg and came to the Cezanne exhibition. Not at the opening, when nothing is visible, but when there is not a soul in the hall. I was very offended by what I saw. From my point of view, Cezanne was then the highest rubbish. I was a fool, what to take from me. He did not know anything about the artist, did not understand how to look ... He who has eyes is in most cases blind. He who has ears is deaf. He who has a voice is not a singer.
"Portrait with forks" 2002. From a personal archive.
- It is known from the Bible.
This is known even without the Bible. What you see should be superimposed on experience, understanding, feeling ... When I moved to France, I began to travel to hundreds of cities around the world. I don’t remember a single square, a single house, but I looked with my eyes. So are the pictures: you looked and forgot. To say that you saw something, you need to delve into it and try to figure it out. To watch Cezanne later, I had to make a lot of effort. To begin with, to calm the indignation. After all, I decided that they take me for an idiot, they show disgusting things ...
- What do you think about Cezanne now?
- I don’t think about him, because I’m not an art critic. But I understand and feel it. It is impossible to tell a picture, like music. Anna Karenina too. On such a plot, 100 writers can write a novel, but Tolstoy will be alone. You can't outdo Lev Nikolaevich, like Pushkin, in literature. It's such a height! They were born with it. “The Academies were not finished,” as Chapaev said. Mayakovsky came to Moscow after descending from the Caucasus Mountains. He lived there all his childhood, heard Caucasian speech, and arrived as a Russian poet. It is not necessary to learn the language. You can study it and still not be able to write. It's innate. Mayakovsky was already a genius in his first works, although this was not immediately clear. When he died, Demyan Bedny wrote about him: "He lived like a hooligan and died like a hooligan."
- You are also considered a bully ...
- I have elements of hooliganism in me.
Do you think artists are born?
- I was born. If you are a real artist, your style wakes up in you. This is not to be taught. I didn’t have teachers, I didn’t live near the Tretyakov Gallery so that I could go to it as a child. I first got there at the age of 15, when I entered art school. A year rolled around there and began to create. They tell me to paint plaster, but I can't. Not interested. The famous teacher Pavel Chistyakov, who taught Surikov and Repin, said: “As long as he is on the bench in length, you can flog; when it is already across - it is necessary to finish this business. Usually at the age of 15 it is already too late to teach. This, of course, is conditional. Vaughn Nureyev came from Kazan and took up ballet at the age of 10. Unthinkable!
- Erik Bulatov lived near the Tretyakov Gallery - and ...
— This is a different type of artist. He came to my village with an album and three colored pencils. He sat in the garden and said: "I painted your rose." He is prone to learning, theorizing, to understanding what he is doing. I would also like to understand what I'm doing, but it doesn't work.
With Erik Bulatov and Oscar Rabin. From a personal archive.
- Are you, like Erik Vladimirovich, constantly drawn to museums?
— I'm never drawn to a museum. Although there were artists in front of whom I spent many, many years. He studied at an art school - by the way, together with Bulatov - and there was free admission to the Tretyakov Gallery. It was right in front of the school. Almost every day I watched only “Boyar Morozov” by Surikov, “The Hermit” and “Vision to the youth Bartholomew” by Nesterov. To this day, I consider these paintings to be great pictorial masterpieces of the world scale.
- And they copied Malevich ...
“I never loved him. I cannot introduce Malevich into the category of artists within myself. For me, he is an artist who, due to a number of circumstances that he did not invent, got to the very point of world art of the 20th century. At this point there could be a lot of artists, even more important than Malevich. He was generally not considered a great artist during his lifetime.
Why was it copied?
- How a student of an art school agreed with the curator of the Russian Museum to look at his work in the vaults. I was about 19. At the same time, I looked at everyone there. Kandinsky did not make any impression, not the slightest, Chagall, so comical, and Malevich, who did not like me at all, attracted my greatest attention. I have no explanation. No, I remember ... Then I seemed to have heard from him or even said to myself in his voice: “Oleg, don’t learn from anyone, don’t imitate anyone, do only your own.” And I came out elated. And quite elated continued his life. Then I made a copy in oil to feel Malevich closer.
Where is this copy?
- Recently I was shown it in the Russian Museum. They said it was not attributed. I say, "Maybe it's mine. I secretly made it and left it unfinished. I can sign." He recognized his nails, hefty. There were no thin ones in the store, and large ones were hard to get. The canvas is also mine: a rough one, a linen border - such tailors used. Canvases were then only for artists from the Union. We, the students and everyone from the street, the entrance there was closed.
Did they try to give you a title?
- I don't have any titles. But there are rules: do not work anywhere, do not have titles, orders. What kind of words are these - people's artist of Ukraine? Picasso would have laughed if he had been called "People's Artist of France" or "Academician Picasso." Artists are all equal. They should not have stars and titles. They may or may not only have success with the public. This does not depend on the artist. The public chooses. For example, I do not consider Aivazovsky the greatest artist, but judging by the public, he certainly is. These fake seas are considered charming to this day. How old are they already, but they still will not grow old in any way, because they suit almost everyone. With me it's different. Once a director bought my picture and hung it over his son's bed. The boy soon complained: "Dad, I can't sleep next to her." I said to this director: “What right did you have over your son to hang this serious thing? What is this, a tree for you?! You are a fool, not a father!”
Arthur Miller in the 1980s. From a personal archive.
- Do you easily part with work?
— Absolutely. My first buyer in the West was Arthur Miller (playwright, husband of Marilyn Monroe. - "MK"). He was brought by Yevgeny Yevtushenko to my Moscow workshop. She was so tiny that she had to use upside-down binoculars to look at her paintings at least from a short distance ... Miller looked after the work and asked for a price. At that time, even if nothing was for sale, I basically took it dearly and asked for five hundred. Miller asked in surprise: "Rubles?" I cheekily replied: “Well, not a penny!” The collector meant dollars...
Did you write to order?
- Never. This is the most important thing that I learned from Malevich: never make money by painting, that is, do not write to order.
Do you work here more often or in the countryside?
I live here for half a year, and there for half a year. In the apartment, things are small so that you can take them out. The main thing is to turn around on the stairs. Once he did it himself, now they are loaders. In the village house, the largest paintings are 3 by 4 meters.
— Do you grow anything in the village?
- No, otherwise the surrounding peasants will bring their children not to look at the pictures, but to make them laugh with my potatoes ...
— Do they visit you as an artist?
- All. I'm famous there. The mayor asks for an exhibition. This is the village of Champagne-Ardenne in eastern France, where the Battle of the Ardennes took place in the First World War. The shells flew and crushed people. "Knights" fought on horseback, shouted "Hurrah!" and left behind a meat grinder... There is also a factory where all the metal gratings for Paris were made. Now there is no civilization there, a land forgotten by God.
Are you lonely there?
- No, I'm not alone: wife, children, grandchildren. Comrades come, peasants come to visit. I have a large barrel of wine, glasses. Whoever comes in, I treat everyone. Wine is like medicine. Although I don’t drink much now, the old one is already ...
- Arrange an exhibition in the village?
- Don't want. These things are incomprehensible to cultured people. What do you want from the French peasants?!
Say something so we can understand them better.
Everything I say is a lie. Not because I'm a liar, but because I have no answer and interpretation. This is what art critics should be doing. I don't have grandparents. Although before my eyes were massive artists. I relied on the power of Rubens, on the precepts of Malevich ...
- When I came in, Channel One was broadcasting. So follow what is happening in Russia?
- I follow, because I can’t do anything from morning to evening, just paint pictures like crazy.
You have a wonderful library!
- I'm just flipping through books. I think that reading them is more difficult than looking at pictures. I read very few books, but 34 times. Zoshchenko I know everything by heart - a phenomenal prose writer! He, like me, did not collect the archive. Each time he forwarded the stories and did not record these changes, he counted on memory. His lyrics are slightly different. Ten years ago I decided to reread Crime and Punishment. And what? On the first page, I began to reread the first paragraph several times. I thought about it - including the words themselves, how they fit together, where the punctuation marks are ... And I realized that for a real reading of this novel, I need to give my whole life. I can't do this, and I don't need to.
- I read my friend Yuz Aleshkovsky, who speaks one at a time in books, and only obscenities on the phone. Joseph Brodsky, with whom he was friendly. Yevgeny Yevtushenko has wonderful poems. Sergei Dovlatov, who has about five funny things about me. I ran into him in Vienna when he was also going abroad. Didn't know he was a writer. At that moment I heard that he was a big drunkard and a terrible lover of fighting. He was an awfully big guy. But even more of a fighter was his brother. He was taller and lighter in weight, but stronger than Sergei. To cheer him up, I told him stories, including how Yevtushenko attracted a collector to me. All this over a glass of vodka. I drank, but he didn’t, he couldn’t drink then. He then left the cafe to write everything down in a notebook, and then made a humorous, slender novel.
— What inspires you?
- Definitely not life. I have never been interested in them, as well as in the life of other people, Moscow or Paris ... I am not at all interested in what is happening around. Even if I didn’t have time to run to a big interesting exhibition, I didn’t worry too much. As an artist, this does nothing for me. In general, I am a person who, from the age of 15, lives only with his paintings. Surrounded by family and friends. With the same success as in Paris, he could live in any other country. Fate has brought me here.
You have been here for over 40 years. Thought to return?
- No. I felt bad in the USSR. As soon as he crossed the border, he finally sighed. He flew out with a badge of honor. Lived here for 40 years without a passport. Traveled all over the world. That's how you live! Charm! I rented an apartment without documents, I bought a house - everything is official. Nobody bothers. There are no policemen who play the fool and ask to follow the neighbors. Here the police stand outside the threshold if something happens, because they are forbidden to enter ...
With wife Tonya, artist Andrei Bartenev and daughter Olga.
- Are you happy?
- Very! I am a lucky man marked by God. Judge for yourself. From the age of 15 he got on his own road. I grew up in the simplest family. Never been an intellectual. I immediately said to myself: do not make pictures for money. Although I didn’t know then what paintings were. I am now suffering, trying to understand where this adherence to principles comes from. But even then I realized that I would not function in society in any way: neither in the Unions of Artists, nor at meetings. So Pushkin’s poems apply to me: “You are a king: live alone. / By the free road / Go where your free mind leads you, / Improving the fruits of your favorite thoughts, / Without demanding rewards for a noble feat. / They are in you yourself. You are your own highest court; / You know how to evaluate your work more strictly. / Are you satisfied with it, demanding artist?
Help "MK"
Born in 1934 in a family of economists who worked at an aircraft factory. From 1949 to 1953 studied at the Moscow Art School. He studied for a year at the Minsk Art Institute, for another year at the Academy of Arts. Repin in Leningrad, was expelled. Since 1977 lives in Paris. The works are in the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum, the Hermitage, the Stedelijk Museum (Amsterdam), the Zimmerli Museum of Rutgers University (New Jersey), etc., are included in the collections of Mikhail Baryshnikov, Arthur Miller, Igor Tsukanov. The largest private collection of Tselkov's works in Russia belonged to Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
Oleg Nikolaevich Tselkov (born 1934) is a Russian Soviet artist. The first apartment exhibition of Oleg Tselkov in Moscow took place in 1956 through the efforts of Vladimir Slepyan. In 1961 he moved to Moscow. The first official personal exhibition was held in 1965 at the Institute of Atomic Physics. Kurchatov in Moscow. Since the 1970s he has exhibited in Europe and the USA. The text of his memoirs is given according to the publication: Felix Medvedev. About Stalin without hysterics. - "BHV-Petersburg", 2013.Felix Medvedev: Joseph Brodsky called Oleg Tselkov "the most outstanding Russian artist of the entire post-war period." Since 1977 the artist has been living in France. I met Oleg Nikolaevich in his Parisian apartment on St. Maurus Street and in Moscow when he came to his homeland during the opening days of his exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery. An interview with the artist, excerpts from which are given below, was included in my book "After Russia", published in 1992 and dedicated to the fate of the Russian emigration. I am proud that fragments of his famous masks, which have become the face of unofficial Russian painting, are used in the design of this book.
The first years of my studies at the Moscow secondary art school at the Academy of Arts of the USSR coincided with the last years of Stalin's life. This monster finally completed the destruction of all life that had begun before the war, turning the Soviet people into obedient "cogs". Zoshchenko and Akhmatova, Prokofiev and Shostakovich, the actor Mikhoels and the doctors - "killers in white coats" were the tip of a huge mortal iceberg. I, a naive self-taught person who did not understand what was happening around, immediately began to “correct” and “educate”. Surprised, I began to analyze what was happening. My eyes began to open, especially since I got acquainted with the paintings of Russian artists of the 1910-1930s - the Russian avant-garde, which was not accepted by official state art. I began to clumsily and timidly imitate what I saw, for which in the fall of 1953, after graduating from art school, I was not accepted into the Surikov Institute. I had to immediately go to Minsk to pass the exams there. Passed. At the end of the academic year, some local party "auditor" looked at student work, and they puzzled him. I was driven out.
- And what is Stalinism for you?
This is what for me was inseparable from communism as such: Stalin and Stalinism, Lenin and Leninism, Mao Zedong and Maodzetungism, Pol Pot and Pol Potism, Kim Il Sung and Kimirsenism, Ceausescu and Ceausescuism… If you want, you can continue. This disease has inevitable symptoms: on the third day a rash appears, on the fourth day it hurts in the throat, on the fifth day the eyes pop out of their sockets. A small difference can not be taken seriously: for example, did Tito plant a different communism? Nothing like that, absolutely the same as Stalin's. And Enver Hoxha? And Fidel Castro, who was applauded by the whole West. When I arrived in Paris, his portraits hung everywhere. So do not blame me, communism for me is a nightmarish disease, like a medieval plague. This is an ulcer of the human psyche. …I looked back at my life. In the end, I proved to myself and others that even under conditions of total communist oppression, one can not lose courage, remain an individual, do business according to one's own choice and taste. And although such a system was created in which people like me might not have appeared, I not only appeared, but also survived. And I was not alone!
- And if you still had not left Russia on October 4, 1977, what would have become of you?
Now I clearly understand: if I had stayed there, I would have died. Yes, yes, most likely so ... They say that once Louis Aragon, after looking at my paintings, threw: “Tell this guy: he needs to go to Paris” (this was when I was still living in the USSR). At that time, this phrase meant something like this: a dystrophic person in Buchenwald is told: “You know, you need to eat more, in vain, my friend, you neglect butter.” Aragon said this without irony, but to me his advice sounded like a monstrous mockery.
What are your paintings about or against?
against dictatorship. Against everything that humiliates a person. I understood that I live in a very terrible system. I know this fact from history. During the time of Hitler, fascist doctors tried to find a way to sterilize women, they understood that, having seized foreign territories, they would also have to control the birth rate. To do this, the so-called "doctors" in the concentration camps selected a certain number of young healthy women, into whose genitals something like quicklime was injected. In this case, no painkillers were used. The test subjects died in agony, but not all. Survivors, of course, mutilated, became the material for scientific dissertations. This picture, this example can serve as an illustration of my understanding of communism. All the actions that communism did in the world took place according to this scenario. This terrible example of communist ideology here, outside of Russia, I understand especially clearly. By the way, I have never been a fighter, a demonstrator, a signatory. To be a fighter means to fight. And struggle presupposes dialogue. Like in a prison, where there is a prisoner and a guard, and there is a dialogue between them. I could not imagine my dialogue with the authorities. I had nothing to talk about with the communists. So I tried to live as quietly as possible.
- Did the situation seem hopeless to you?
Yes. That situation was completely and completely hopeless. It seemed that she would always be like this, forever. And the fact that I'm here is my salvation. When a policeman came to our house and asked my communist father, who would give his life for his party card, about me, I understood this “game”, this absurdity. "Does your son work anywhere?" he asked his father. His father naively asked him his question: “What, my son robbed a stall?” The policeman answered: “No, I didn’t rob, but everyone should work for us!” Father: "My son works from morning to evening." Representative of the authorities: "But he must have something to eat." Father: "I feed him, he is my son." I felt like an absolute stranger in that system of anti-human coordinates that originated under Stalin, for whom all people were “cogs” in the state system. They could either be lined up in a line, or in case of the slightest disobedience, they could simply be buried ...
