Since February 1974, the authorities began to carry out action after action aimed at suppressing the movement of nonconformist artists, that is, those painters, sculptors and graphic artists who did not accept the dogmas of the stillborn art of socialist realism and defended the right to freedom of creativity.
And before, for almost twenty years, the attempts of these artists to exhibit were in vain. Their expositions were immediately closed, and the press called nonconformists either “leaders of bourgeois ideology”, or “talentless muffins”, or almost traitors to the Motherland. So one can only marvel at the courage and steadfastness of these masters, who, in spite of everything, remained true to themselves and their art.
And in 1974, the KGB forces were thrown against them. Artists were detained on the streets, threatened, taken away respectively to the Lubyanka in Moscow and to the Big House in Leningrad, blackmailed, tried to bribe.
Realizing that if they remained silent, they would be strangled, a group of unofficial painters organized an outdoor exhibition on September 15, 1974 in a wasteland in the Belyaevo-Bogorodskoye area. Bulldozers, watering machines and the police were thrown against this exhibition. Three paintings perished under caterpillars, two were burnt on a fire that was immediately lit, many were crippled. The initiator of this exhibition, the leader of Moscow nonconformist artists, Oscar Rabin, and four other painters were arrested.
This bulldozer pogrom, which went down in the history of Russian art, caused an outburst of indignation in the West. The next day, the artists announced that in two weeks they would come out again with paintings to the same place. And in this situation, those in power retreated. On September 29, the first officially permitted exhibition of unofficial Russian art took place in Izmailovsky Park, in which not twelve, but more than seventy painters took part.
But of course, those who decided to crack down on free Russian art by no means laid down their arms. Immediately after the Izmailovo exposition, slanderous articles about unofficial artists reappeared in magazines and newspapers, and punitive organs fell upon especially active artists and those collectors who took part in organizing two September outdoor exhibitions. And by the way, it was during the period from 1974 to 1980 that most of the masters now living in the West left the country. There were over fifty of them, including Ernst Neizvestny, Oleg Tselkov, Lydia Masterkova, Mikhail Roginsky, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Alexander Leonov, Yuri Zharkikh and many others. Oscar Rabin was stripped of his Soviet citizenship in 1978. (In 1990, by presidential decree, Soviet citizenship was returned to him). Even earlier, in the early seventies, Mikhail Shemyakin and Yuri Kuper settled in Europe.
Of course, a large group of our excellent unofficial painters remained in Russia (Vladimir Nemukhin, Ilya Kabakov, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, Eduard Steinberg, Boris Sveshnikov, Vladimir Yankilevsky, Vyacheslav Kalinin, Dmitry Plavinsky, Alexander Kharitonov and others), but there are practically more truly free exhibitions. was not carried out, and persistent rumors spread about those who left (even letters were sent from the West), they say that no one in Europe and the USA needs them, no one is interested in their work, they almost die of hunger. The remaining art officials warned: “If you start to rebel, we will expel you, you will live in misery there.”
Meanwhile, in fact, in the West, just at that time (the second half - the end of the 70s), interest in unofficial Russian art was especially great. Huge exhibitions of Russian artists were held one after another in museums and exhibition halls in Paris, London, West Berlin, Tokyo, Washington, New York. In 1978, the Biennale of Russian Unofficial Art in Venice was held with great success. For a month, this exhibition was visited by 160,000 people. “We haven't had so many viewers for a long time,” said Biennale President Carlo Rippe di Meanno.
True, skeptics argued that this interest was purely political in nature: they say, you need to see what kind of paintings they are that are banned in the USSR. But when they were reminded of Western collectors, who more and more willingly began to acquire paintings and graphics by Russian artists, the skeptics fell silent. They understood that no collector would spend money on paintings because of some political considerations. And even more so because of such considerations, Western galleries will not cooperate with artists. And of course, because of politics, serious art critics will not write monographs and articles about any artists. And there are many such articles. Monographs about the work of Ernst Neizvestny, Oleg Tselkov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Mikhail Shemyakin were published in different countries. Dozens of solid catalogs of personal and group expositions have been published.
Somewhere in the late 70s, an article “The Russian Front is advancing” appeared in one of the French art magazines. Its publication was due to the fact that at that time three exhibitions of contemporary Russian art were held in Paris at the same time. Does this sound like a lack of interest?
In Paris, they say, about a hundred thousand artists live and work. There are even more in New York. Everyone wants to collaborate with galleries. The competition is tough. And at the same time, many Russian emigre artists either have permanent contracts with Paris and New York galleries, or regularly exhibit in various galleries in Europe and the USA.
For many years, Yuri Kuper, Boris Zaborov, Yuri Zharkikh, Mikhail Shemyakin (before moving to the USA) have worked and are working with well-known Parisian galleries. In New York, contracts with galleries Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Ernst Neizvestny, the same Shemyakin. For many years, the Parisian Oleg Tselkov has been working with the New York gallery of Eduard Nakhamkin. Another Russian "Frenchman" Oscar Rabin signed a contract with one of the Parisian galleries.
Constantly, and often successfully, exhibited in European galleries Vladimir Titov, Mikhail Roginsky, Alexander Rabin. In the USA Lev Mezhberg, Leonid Sokov and other painters and graphic artists successfully work with galleries.
In many French and American private collections, I have repeatedly come across works by all of the above masters, as well as Vladimir Grigorovich, Valentina Kropivnitskaya, Vitaly Dluga, Valentina Shapiro ... Moreover, it is interesting that in the West, especially in Paris, already in the mid-70s collectors of free Russian art appear.
“How do these artists live and where do they work?” the reader may ask.
I will answer that in terms of housing and workplace, everything is arranged decently. In the worst case, one of the rooms of the apartment serves as a workshop for the artist. Many have separate studios - say, Komar, Melamid, Shemyakin, Zaborov, Sokov. And someone even prefers to have an apartment and a workshop in one place, so to speak, without wasting time on the road (Unknown, Cooper, O. Rabin, Mezhberg).
“Really,” some incredulous reader will ask, “everything is so good with emigrant artists, continuous successes and achievements?”
Of course not. Some even of our talented masters could not find themselves in the West, could not stand the competition, broke down. Here I do not want to name names - it is already psychologically difficult for people.
There are, of course, artists who are not able to live by selling their work. They are forced to earn a living by some other kind of work. But there are a great many of these among Western painters and graphic artists. One can only be surprised at how many, in comparison with Western painters (in percentage terms), Russian masters have been living in the West for a long time only due to their creativity.
But it is interesting that even those of our artists who ended up in the West are not in the best financial situation and are forced to earn a living either by industrial design, or by the design of newspapers or books, or in some other way, it’s all the same about their fate do not regret. Why?
When I wrote a book about our artists living in the West, published in 1986 abroad, I happened to take quite a few interviews. One of the painters, whose fate by that time (mid-80s) was not very prosperous, told me: “No, I don’t regret anything. Difficult? Of course it's difficult. It’s unpleasant that I have to break away from the easel in order to earn a living, sometimes it’s a shame that collectors haven’t reached me yet. But did we leave here for the sake of money? We left in order to freely, without fear of anyone or anything, write what and how you want and freely, where you want, to exhibit. However, I wrote freely in Russia as well. But to take part in exhibitions, one might say, did not happen. And here in four years I have already exhibited eleven times. And even sold something at these exhibitions. This is not the main thing, but from the point of view of maintaining the spirit, it is still important. ”
With different variations, however, I heard about the same thing from other emigrant artists who did not achieve such success in the West as, say, Komar and Melamid or Yuri Kuper.
And I don't think that any of them do, as they say, a good face on a bad game. After all, the opportunity to exhibit widely for most artists is a necessity. And for Russian painters, deprived of this in their homeland, this factor is especially significant. From 1979 to 1986 I kept a statistical record of Russian exhibitions in the West. Each time there were more than seventy of them a year. This is a lot. And the geography of these expositions was wide. Shemyakin's personal exhibitions, for example, were held in Paris, New York, Tokyo, and London; O. Rabin - in New York, Oslo and Paris; Cooper - in France, USA and Switzerland; Zaborova - in West Germany, the USA and Paris; Komara and Melamida - in Europe and the USA...
And how many group exhibitions of contemporary Russian art took place during these years, in which these and other Russian émigré artists took part. And their geography is also wide: France, Italy, England, Colombia, USA, Belgium, Japan, Switzerland, Canada...
And as I have already said, Western art critics and journalists have written quite a lot about these exhibitions (both personal and group). Almost every major exhibition was accompanied by the release of catalogs. Here they are on my bookshelf: Ernst Neizvestny, Yuri Kuper, Oscar Rabin, Mikhail Shemyakin, Boris Zaborov, Leonid Sokov, Vladimir Grigorovich, Harry Fife, Vitaly Komar, Alexander Melamid, Valentina Kropivnitskaya... And here are the group exhibition catalogs ; "Contemporary Russian Art" (Paris), "New Russian Art" (Washington), "Unofficial Russian Art" (Tokyo), "Biennale of Russian Art" (Turin) ... And here is the book "Unofficial Russian Art from the USSR", published in London in 1977 and reissued in New York the following year.
So, as you can see, for Russian émigré artists, if not for all, but for the majority, life in the West, in general, was successful. None of them are hungry. They have a place to live. Many have workshops. Everyone has the opportunity to purchase canvases and paints. Some of them work with prestigious galleries. All are exposed.
And how nice it is to know that collectors acquire your paintings, especially museums or the Ministry of Culture, say, of France. And it is no less pleasant to see how Western art lovers stand by your canvases. By the way, in contrast to art historians, a significant part of whom did not immediately perceive the Russian artists who suddenly fell on them, Western viewers were able to appreciate free Russian art very quickly. I heard from them more than once in Paris, and in Braunschweig, and in New York that they find in this Russian art what they cannot find in their contemporary art. What exactly? Living human feelings (pain, anguish, love, suffering...), and not cold form-creation, which, unfortunately, is so common at many exhibitions in galleries in Europe and the USA.
In other words, in free Russian art they find a spiritual element that has always been characteristic of genuine Russian art, even the most avant-garde art. No wonder the book of the great Wassily Kandinsky is called “On the Spiritual in Art”.
In the articles brought to your attention 13 artists are presented. Essays dedicated to them are not listed alphabetically. They are divided into three groups, corresponding to three generations of masters of unofficial (as it was called in pre-perestroika times) Russian art.
I hope that thanks to the initiative of the Znanie publishing house, lovers of contemporary art will learn about the fate of those of our painters who at one time were forced to leave their homeland for the sake of freedom of creativity.
Spiritual situation at the end of the 20th century. poses an obvious problem of understanding the Soviet cultural heritage in all the diversity of its historical and artistic features. This problem is especially relevant in connection with those changes in the cultural life of modern civilization, which are so characteristic of the end of the 20th century.
The domestic culture of the Soviet period undoubtedly belongs to the category of the most peculiar phenomena in world history. This applies not only to the past century, but also to a broader perspective. An analysis of the development of Soviet culture is a fertile ground for understanding contemporary general cultural processes.
The most common "meaning" of the cultural space of the late XX century. (both domestic and Western European) are associated with the concept of "postmodernism", which is a kind of emblem of modern culture. Post-non-classical trends in modern natural science, "post-modernization" of the technical and economic sphere, outrageous political technologies, "rhizomes" of the cultural space are only a few outlines of this big problem.
The well-known non-dialectic and eclecticism of postmodernity grows out of the desire to overcome the stereotypes of classical rationalism, which is the main object of criticism from the adherents of the latter.
At the same time, it should be recognized that one of the features of Soviet culture is an amazing combination of eclecticism, modernism, revolutionary spirit and strict rationalism. The Russian revolutions of 1917 only continue the trend of general radicalization and modernization of public and cultural life. As M. Epstein writes, “historically, social realism, like the entire communist era in Russia, is located between the periods of modernism (the beginning of the 20th century) and postmodernism (the end of the 20th century). This intermediateness of socialist realism - a period that has no visible analogue in the West - raises the question of its relationship with modernism and postmodernism and where, in specifically Russian conditions, the border between them lies. It is Russia that is the birthplace of the leading trends in modernist art of the 20th century. And it is here that the latest trends in social life and revolutionary practice are being radically tested and adapted for the first time. The "collective unconscious" of those interpreters of the Soviet period of Russian history who consciously exclude from analysis the initial phase - the phase of fratricidal wars and mutual political terror - ultimately reveals only positive qualities in Soviet history. In this form of analysis, the boundaries of the end of the Soviet period are naturally erased. Soviet history, as it were, did not end at all (and will never end). She always is and will be "more alive than all living things." Nostalgia for lost Motherland replaces the objective realities of the ongoing (and naturally completed) process of the evolution of society, and the very concept of "Motherland" is identified exclusively with the Soviet period of the great history of Russia.
An amazing property of Soviet culture is that in it the official totalitarian space coexists with the highest manifestations of the human spirit, clearly handicraft and ideologically biased elements of culture coexist with brilliant insights and the highest creative achievements. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is precisely the Soviet art of the pre-war period (and not just the Russian art of the beginning of the century) that in its most interesting variants expresses the dynamics of the formation of the world avant-garde and post-avant-garde. One can hypothesize that Soviet culture in its developed forms is a qualitative synthesis of directly opposite and, at first glance, incompatible elements. In other words, rationality, brought to its "incommensurable" (Feyerabend) limits, characterizes this peculiarity.
In this regard, it is natural to ask how countercultural (nonconformist) processes functioned in Soviet culture, what driving motives of these processes are priority, and how, while externally maintaining rationalistic orientation, Soviet culture prepared the phenomena that occurred in it in the 90s. years of the XX century.
The comprehension of the postmodern situation in Western philosophical thought has led to many intriguing conclusions. Western ideology constantly shows a desire for ahead of cultural time and space The result of this is the birth of various models of the end of history (from Spengler and Toynbee to Baudrillard and Kozhev). At the same time, this situation clarifies the mythology of conquest space and time as "young masters of the Earth", so characteristic of the post-Soviet consciousness. Modernity on domestic soil appears as a truly unique phenomenon. It brings together political reconstructions, ideological myths, artistic practices and philosophical discourses into a single continuum. Therefore, one of the marks of modern intellectual life in Russia is no less than in the West, a mixture of genres and styles of intellectual activity.
The above situation is a consequence of the important features of national self-consciousness. Soviet culture felt its full value and completeness in a situation of constantly ongoing struggle of opposing tendencies. So, the movement of the sixties in the XX century. was both a cultural and a countercultural process. It was on this antithetical cross-section that such unique and seemingly internally incompatible cultural phenomena became possible, such as the cinema art of the 50-70s (Kalatozov, Tarkovsky, Ioseliani, Parajanov, Chukhrai, Danelia), theater directing (Efros, Tovstonogov, Lyubimov), music (Shostakovich , Sviridov, Schnittke, Babadzhanyan, Khachaturian, Gavrilin, Solovyov-Sedoy), a whole galaxy of amazing actors (Urbansky, Demidova, Smoktunovsky, Bondarchuk, Dal), literature and dramaturgy (Nekrasov, Vladimov, Vampilov, Volodin, Solzhenitsyn), author's song ( Okudzhava, Vizbor, Vysotsky, Dolsky), philosophical creativity (Ilyenkov, Batishchev, Mamardashvili, Lotman) and many others.
In retrospect at the end of the 20th century the initial internal incommensurability turns into a regularity. The famous lines of B. Okudzhava about “commissars in dusty helmets” or the non-classical “walks with Pushkin” by A. Sinyavsky, which have repeatedly been the subject of ideological speculation, just express this unique compatibility in the domestic cultural space of contradictory trends, which, in fact, constitute its unique originality.
In the literature on Russian postmodernism today, criticism of the sixties is very strong as people who have not fulfilled their duty to the end to transform the totalitarian ideology of the Soviet type. At the same time, the sixties are also criticized from other positions, namely, for the collapse of the Soviet ideology. However, both critical trends do not take into account the obvious fact that the domestic counterculture (including the phenomenon of the sixties) had other tasks. These tasks stemmed from the originality, sometimes quite tragic, of the evolution of both Russian culture in general and its Soviet stage in particular. It was about constructing a special model of post-totalitarian space, for which the path of revolutionary renovationism was unacceptable. In this regard, domestic non-conformism also rethought the goals of Western counterculture, in which the non-conformism and revolutionary spirit of the 1960s were almost imperceptibly replaced by reconciliation and the “new bourgeoisie”. One of the aphoristic expressions of this, perhaps utopian, model of the Soviet counterculture are the poetic lines of Y. Shevchuk: “ Revolution, you taught us / To believe in the injustice of good ...».
Recent trends in Russian culture (music, theater, cinema, humanities) allow us to say that the legacy of the great Russian culture of the XIX-XX centuries. not lost. As well as the main antithetical features of its originality are not lost. Soviet culture in this perspective occupies a quite worthy place and paradoxically and harmoniously fits into the situation of postmodernity.
The totality of postmodernism has set the teeth on edge. Today it is much easier to be ironic about him than to puzzle oneself with scientific criticism: the sore points of an almost defeated enemy are too obvious. This kind of pathos ignores (consciously or not) the potential non-aggressiveness of postmodernity as a possible ideology. Aggression and “secret intent” are included in it by critics who are used to existing in the paradigm of violence (including intellectual violence). The easiest way is to systematically and logically-synergetically criticize what does not fit into the Procrustean bed of once and for all hardened academicism. And it does not matter that cultural gestures reminiscent of postmodernity, most often in history, filled and deepened the rhythm of the movement of civilization. It doesn't matter that the "imaginary worlds" of postmodernism are fragile and incapable of retaliatory violence. The critic himself chooses his complexes and hits them. A well-known way: "whoever hurts, he talks about it."
But the main problem is not this. The global attack on the positions of modern culture by post-communism against the background of the general defeat of postmodernism seems not so dangerous, quite trivial. What is it, post-communism, to criticize for this. Somehow get along with such criticism. Or another option: communism will disappear by itself - why pay attention to the ideological spectacle it is playing out.
Let's not get along. And it won't disappear. Synthesis and assimilation, of course, can reconcile a lot for a while, but the situation of “challenge and response” will ultimately put before each of us the question of global responsibility to postmodernity, in line with which the communist idea is advancing today, often insinuatingly and imperceptibly. . At the same time, it is very important to understand that the end of communism in Russia will also mean the end of the era of postmodernism. What will replace the one and the other, why these two processes can be completed almost simultaneously - this is another topic.
Nonconformism. Under this name, it is customary to unite representatives of various artistic movements in the visual arts of the Soviet Union of the 1950-1980s, which did not fit into the framework of socialist realism - the only officially permitted direction in art.
Nonconformist artists were actually ousted from the country's public artistic life: the state pretended that they simply did not exist. The Union of Artists did not recognize their art, they were deprived of the opportunity to show their works in exhibition halls, critics did not write about them, museum workers did not visit their workshops.
1. Dmitry Plavinsky "Shell", 1978
"The creation of human thoughts and hands is sooner or later absorbed by the eternal elements of nature: Atlantis - by the ocean, the temples of Egypt - by the sand of the desert, the Palace of Knossos and the labyrinth - by volcanic lava, the pyramids of the Aztecs - by the lianas of the jungle. For me, the greatest interest is not the flowering of a particular civilization, and her death and the moment of the birth of the next ... "
Dmitry Plavinsky, artist
2. Oscar Rabin "Still life with fish and the newspaper" Pravda "", 1968
“The further, the more acutely I felt that I could not do without painting, for me there was nothing more beautiful than the fate of the artist. However, looking at the paintings of official Soviet artists, I completely unconsciously felt that I could never write like that. And not at all because that I did not like them - I admired the skill, sometimes frankly envied - but on the whole they did not touch, left me indifferent. Something important for me was missing in them. "
“I didn’t experience influences on myself, I didn’t change my style, my creative credo also remained unchanged. I could convey the diversity of Russian life through a symbol - a herring on the Pravda newspaper, a bottle of vodka, a passport - everyone understands this. Or I wrote the Lianozovsky cemetery and called painting "Leonardo da Vinci Cemetery". In my art, in my opinion, nothing new has appeared, newfangled, superficial. What I was - I remained the same, as the song sings. I do not have my own gallery that feeds and guides me my creativity. I wouldn't want to be a house rabbit. I like to be a free rabbit. I run where I want!"
Oscar Rabin, artist
3. Lev Kropivnitsky "Woman and beetles" 1966
"Abstract painting makes it possible to get as close as possible to reality, to penetrate into the essence of things, to comprehend everything important that is not perceived by our five senses. I felt modernity as a set of dramatic accomplishments, psychological tensions, intellectual oversaturations. I tried and try, based on the experience and re-felt, to create a pictorial form that corresponds to the spirit of the time and the psychology of the century.
Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.
4. Dmitry Krasnopevtsev "Pipes", 1963
“A picture is also an autograph, only more complex, spatial, multi-layered. And if the character, condition and almost illness of the writer are determined (and not unsuccessfully) by the autograph, by handwriting, if even criminologists do not neglect this decoding, then the picture gives incomparably more material for conjectures and conclusions about the personality of the author.It has long been noticed that a portrait painted by an artist is at the same time his self-portrait - this extends further - to any compositions, landscapes, still lifes, to any genres, as well as to non-objective abstract art - to whatever the artist depicts, and whatever his objectivity, dispassion, if he wants to get away from himself, become impersonal, he will not be able to hide, his creation, his handwriting will betray his soul, his mind, heart, his face.
Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, artist.
5. Vladimir Nemukhin "Unfinished Solitaire", 1966
"The inventory of elements of the pictorial language consists primarily of objects. They were before - trees, banks, boxes, newspapers, that is, as if simple, recognizable objects. At the end of the 50s, all this turned into abstraction, and soon this abstract form itself began to tire me. This is the state that renews interest in the subject, and he, in turn, reciprocates. I believe that the subject is very important for vision, because vision itself is seen through it.
"In 1958, I began to make my first abstract works. What is abstract art? It made it possible to immediately break with all this Soviet reality. You became a different person. Abstraction is, on the one hand, like the art of the subconscious, and on the other - a new vision. Art must be a vision, not a reasoning."
Vladimir Nemukhin, artist.
6. Nikolay Vechtomov "Road", 1983
"My life is the creation of my own artistic space, which I always tried to enrich and tried a lot for this. I realized that each of us is always alone with the cataclysms of the twentieth century."
“We live in darkness and have already become accustomed to it, we completely distinguish objects. And yet we draw light from there, from the radiance of the sunset Cosmos, it is it that gives us the energy of vision. Therefore, it is not objects that are important for me, but their reflections, because in they harbor the breath of an alien element."
Nikolay Vechtomov, artist.
7. Anatoly Zverev Female portrait. 1966
"Anatoly Zverev is one of the most outstanding Russian portrait painters born on this earth, who managed to express the trembling dynamism of the moment and the mystical inner energy of the people whose portraits he painted. Zverev is one of the most expressive and spontaneous artists of our time. His manner is so individual, that in each of his paintings you can immediately recognize the handwriting of the author.With a few strokes, he achieves a huge dramatic effect, spontaneity and instantaneousness.The artist manages to convey a sense of direct connection between him and his model ."
Vladimir Dlugy, artist.
"Zverev is the first Russian expressionist of the 20th century and an intermediary between the early and late avant-garde in Russian art. I consider this wonderful artist one of the most talented in Soviet Russia."
Grigory Kostaki, collector.
8. Vladimir Yankilevsky "The Prophet", 1970s
"Nonconformism" is a constitutive feature of true art, as it opposes the banality and the stamp of conformism, giving new information and creating a new vision of the world. The fate of a true artist is often tragic, no matter what society he lives in. This is normal, since the fate of an artist is the fate of his insight, his statements about the world, which breaks the established stereotypes of perception and thinking created by "mass culture" and intellectual snobbery. To be a creator and to be "in due time" a canonized "hero" of society, a superstar, is an almost insurmountable paradox. Attempts to overcome it are the path to a conformist career."
Vladimir Yankilevsky, artist.
9. Lydia Masterkova "Composition", 1967
"All the time, with undiminished strength in her abstract compositions, magical colors either burn, or sparkle, or flicker with a fading fire. It seems that she comes all the time from different sides to the magical surface of the canvas. Sometimes the cheerful brightness of flaming sounds, strange shapes wriggling and rushing upwards makes remember Bach's organ chords, and sometimes greenish-gray, woven planes associated with biological forms, are associated with Milhaud's Creation of the World. Masterkov's drawing says a lot. It organizes spots on the plane and the character of colorful accents. It is original and expresses the author very much."
Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.
10. Vladimir Yakovlev "Cat with a bird", 1981
"Art is a means of overcoming death."
Vladimir Yakovlev, artist.
"The paintings of Vladimir Yakovlev are like a night sky full of stars. There is no light at night, light is a star. This is especially evident when Yakovlev depicts flowers. His flower is always a star. Hence some special sadness of joy when we contemplate it paintings".
Ilya Kabakov, artist.
11. Ernst Neizvestny "Heart of Christ", 1973-1975
"I divide artistic activity (both writing, and musical, and visual) into two types: the desire for a masterpiece and the desire for flow. The desire for a masterpiece is when an artist faces a certain concept of beauty that he wants to embody, create a complete, capacious a masterpiece. The desire for flow is an existential need for creativity, when it becomes analogous to breathing, the beating of the heart, the work of the whole person. For artists of the flow, art is a reified existence, moving, arising and dying every second. And when I want to build my "Tree life", I am fully aware of the almost clinical, pathological impossibility of this idea. But I need it in order to work. to combine the eternal foundations of art and its temporal content. The base, pitiful, insignificant unites constantly and eternally in faith to become noble, majestic, meaningful. "
Ernst Neizvestny, artist.
12. Eduard Steinberg "Composition with fish", 1967
“I can’t say that I’m on some right path. But what is truth? This is a word, an image. Camus has a wonderful “Myth of Sisyphus”, when the artist drags a stone up the mountain, and then he falls down, he again picks it up, drags it again - this is approximately the pendulum of my life.
"I discovered practically nothing new, I just gave the Russian avant-garde a different perspective. What? Rather religious. I base my spatial geometric structures on the old catacomb wall painting and, of course, on icon painting."
Eduard Steinberg, artist.
13. Mikhail Roginsky "Red Door". 1965
"I forced myself to recreate reality, based on my idea of it. This is what I still do."
Mikhail Roginsky, artist.
The Red Door is an outstanding work that played a pivotal role in the history of Russian art of the 20th century. Together with the subsequent cycle of interior fragments and details (walls with sockets, switches, photographs, chests of drawers, tiled floors), this work marked the beginning of a new subject realism. "Documentalism" (that's how Roginsky preferred to call his direction) predetermined the emergence of not only pop art, but also a new avant-garde in general in Soviet "underground" art, oriented towards the world artistic process. The "Red Door" sobered up and brought back to earth many of the Soviet artists who were carried away by utopian and metaphysical quests surrounded by communal life. This work prompted artists to carefully analyze and describe the aesthetic aspects of everyday Soviet life. This is the limit of pictorial illusion, the bridge from the picture to the object.
Andrey Erofeev, curator, art historian
14. Oleg Tselkov "Calvary" 1977
"I absolutely do not need to exhibit now. In half a century it will be extremely interesting for me to show my works. Today I am surrounded by fools like myself. They understand no more than me. People write to comprehend something. The artist's hand is not driven by desire to exhibit, but the desire to tell about the experience. Once the picture is painted, I no longer have power over it. It can remain alive or die. My paintings are my letter in a bottle thrown into the sea. Maybe no one will ever catch this bottle, and she will break on the rock."
Oleg Tselkov, artist.
15. Hulot Sooster "Red Egg", 1964
"In his view of nature there is neither spontaneity, nor surprise, nor admiration. It is rather the view of a scientist who seeks to penetrate the secret of things. The artist, as it were, is looking for some ideal formula of nature, its centricity, a formula as complete and as complex as the form eggs".
On September 1, 2012, an outstanding nonconformist artist, one of the most famous representatives of Soviet unofficial art, Dmitry Plavinsky, passed away at the age of 75. In memory of him, "Voice of Russia" presents a new chapter "History of Russian Art in 15 Pictures"
Nonconformism. Under this name, it is customary to unite representatives of various artistic movements in the visual arts of the Soviet Union of the 1950-1980s, which did not fit into the framework of socialist realism - the only officially permitted direction in art.
Nonconformist artists were actually ousted from the country's public artistic life: the state pretended that they simply did not exist. The Union of Artists did not recognize their art, they were deprived of the opportunity to show their works in exhibition halls, critics did not write about them, museum workers did not visit their workshops.
"The creation of human thoughts and hands is sooner or later absorbed by the eternal elements of nature: Atlantis - by the ocean, the temples of Egypt - by the sand of the desert, the Palace of Knossos and the labyrinth - by volcanic lava, the pyramids of the Aztecs - by the creepers of the jungle. For me, the greatest interest is not the flowering of a particular civilization, and her death and the moment of the birth of the next ... "
Dmitry Plavinsky, artist
“The further, the more acutely I felt that I could not do without painting, for me there was nothing more beautiful than the fate of the artist. However, looking at the paintings of official Soviet artists, I completely unconsciously felt that I could never write like that. And not at all because that I did not like them - I admired the skill, sometimes I was frankly jealous - but on the whole they did not touch, left me indifferent. Something important for me was missing in them. "
“I didn’t experience influences on myself, I didn’t change my style, my creative credo also remained unchanged. I could convey the diversity of Russian life through a symbol - a herring on the Pravda newspaper, a bottle of vodka, a passport - everyone understands this. Or I wrote the Lianozovsky cemetery and called painting "Leonardo da Vinci Cemetery". In my art, in my opinion, nothing new has appeared, newfangled, superficial. What I was - I remained the same, as the song sings. I do not have my own gallery that feeds and guides me my creativity. I wouldn't want to be a house rabbit. I like to be a free rabbit. I run where I want!"
Oscar Rabin, artist
"Abstract painting makes it possible to get as close as possible to reality, to penetrate into the essence of things, to comprehend everything important that is not perceived by our five senses. I felt modernity as a set of dramatic accomplishments, psychological tensions, intellectual oversaturations. I tried and try, based on the experience and re-felt, to create a pictorial form that corresponds to the spirit of the time and the psychology of the century.
Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.
“A picture is also an autograph, only more complex, spatial, multi-layered. And if the character, condition and almost illness of the writer are determined (and not unsuccessfully) by the autograph, by handwriting, if even criminologists do not neglect this decoding, then the picture gives incomparably more material for conjectures and conclusions about the personality of the author.It has long been noticed that a portrait painted by an artist is at the same time his self-portrait - this extends further - to any compositions, landscapes, still lifes, to any genres, as well as to non-objective abstract art - to whatever the artist depicts, and whatever his objectivity, dispassion, if he wants to get away from himself, become impersonal, he will not be able to hide, his creation, his handwriting will betray his soul, his mind, heart, his face.
Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, artist.
"The inventory of visual language elements consists primarily of objects. They were there before - trees, banks, boxes, pvc windows, newspapers, i.e., as it were, simple, recognizable objects. At the end of the 50s, all this turned into abstraction ", and soon this abstract form itself began to tire me. This is the state that renews interest in the subject, and he, in turn, reciprocates. I believe that the subject is very important for vision, because through it the vision itself is seen. "
"In 1958, I began to make my first abstract works. What is abstract art? It made it possible to immediately break with all this Soviet reality. You became a different person. Abstraction is, on the one hand, like the art of the subconscious, and on the other - a new vision. Art must be a vision, not a reasoning."
Vladimir Nemukhin, artist.
"My life is the creation of my own artistic space, which I always tried to enrich and tried a lot for this. I realized that each of us is always alone with the cataclysms of the twentieth century."
“We live in darkness and have already become accustomed to it, we completely distinguish objects. And yet we draw light from there, from the radiance of the sunset Cosmos, it is it that gives us the energy of vision. Therefore, it is not objects that are important for me, but their reflections, because in they harbor the breath of an alien element."
Nikolay Vechtomov, artist.
"Anatoly Zverev is one of the most outstanding Russian portrait painters born on this earth, who managed to express the trembling dynamism of the moment and the mystical inner energy of the people whose portraits he painted. Zverev is one of the most expressive and spontaneous artists of our time. His manner is so individual, that in each of his paintings one can immediately recognize the handwriting of the author. With a few strokes, he achieves a huge dramatic effect, spontaneity and instantaneity. The artist manages to convey a sense of direct connection between him and his model. "
Vladimir Dlugy, artist.
"Zverev is the first Russian expressionist of the 20th century and an intermediary between the early and late avant-garde in Russian art. I consider this wonderful artist one of the most talented in Soviet Russia."
Grigory Kostaki, collector.
"Nonconformism" is a constitutive feature of true art, as it opposes the banality and the stamp of conformism, giving new information and creating a new vision of the world. The fate of a true artist is often tragic, no matter what society he lives in. This is normal, since the fate of the artist is the fate of his insight, his statements about the world, which breaks the established stereotypes of perception and thinking created by "mass culture" and intellectual snobbery. To be a creator and to be "in due time" a canonized "hero" of society, a superstar, is an almost insurmountable paradox. Attempts to overcome it are the path to a conformist career."
Vladimir Yankilevsky, artist.
"All the time, with undiminished strength in her abstract compositions, magical colors either burn, or sparkle, or flicker with a fading fire. It seems that she comes all the time from different sides to the magical surface of the canvas. Sometimes the cheerful brightness of flaming sounds, strange shapes wriggling and rushing upwards makes remember Bach's organ chords, and sometimes greenish-gray, woven planes associated with biological forms, are associated with Milhaud's Creation of the World. Masterkov's drawing says a lot. It organizes spots on the plane and the character of colorful accents. It is original and expresses the author very much."
Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.
"Art is a means of overcoming death."
Vladimir Yakovlev, artist.
"The paintings of Vladimir Yakovlev are like a night sky full of stars. There is no light at night, light is a star. This is especially evident when Yakovlev depicts flowers. His flower is always a star. Hence some special sadness of joy when we contemplate it paintings".
Ilya Kabakov, artist.
"I divide artistic activity (both writing, and musical, and visual) into two types: striving for a masterpiece and striving for a stream. Striving for a masterpiece is when an artist faces a certain concept of beauty that he wants to embody, create a complete, capacious a masterpiece. The desire for flow is an existential need for creativity, when it becomes analogous to breathing, the beating of the heart, the work of the whole person. For artists of the flow, art is a reified existence, moving, arising and dying every second. And when I want to build my "Tree life", I am fully aware of the almost clinical, pathological impossibility of this idea. But I need it in order to work. to combine the eternal foundations of art and its temporal content. The base, pitiful, insignificant unites constantly and eternally in faith to become noble, majestic, meaningful. "
Ernst Neizvestny, artist.
“I can’t say that I’m on some right path. But what is truth? This is a word, an image. Camus has a wonderful “Myth of Sisyphus”, when the artist drags a stone up the mountain, and then he falls down, he again picks it up, drags it again - this is approximately the pendulum of my life.
"I discovered practically nothing new, I just gave the Russian avant-garde a different perspective. What? Rather religious. I base my spatial geometric structures on the old catacomb wall painting and, of course, on icon painting."
Eduard Steinberg, artist.
"I forced myself to recreate reality, based on my idea of it. This is what I still do."
Mikhail Roginsky, artist.
The Red Door is an outstanding work that played a pivotal role in the history of Russian art of the 20th century. Together with the subsequent cycle of interior fragments and details (walls with sockets, switches, photographs, chests of drawers, tiled floors), this work marked the beginning of a new subject realism. "Documentalism" (that's how Roginsky preferred to call his direction) predetermined the emergence of not only pop art, but also a new avant-garde in general in Soviet "underground" art, oriented towards the world artistic process. The "Red Door" sobered up and brought back to earth many of the Soviet artists who were carried away by utopian and metaphysical quests surrounded by communal life. This work prompted artists to carefully analyze and describe the aesthetic aspects of everyday Soviet life. This is the limit of pictorial illusion, the bridge from the picture to the object.
Andrey Erofeev, curator, art historian
"I absolutely do not need to exhibit now. In half a century it will be extremely interesting for me to show my works. Today I am surrounded by fools like myself. They understand no more than me. People write to comprehend something. The artist's hand is not driven by desire to exhibit, but the desire to tell about the experience. Once the picture is painted, I no longer have power over it. It can remain alive or die. My paintings are my letter in a bottle thrown into the sea. Maybe no one will ever catch this bottle, and she will break on the rock."
Oleg Tselkov, artist.
"In his view of nature there is neither spontaneity, nor surprise, nor admiration. It is rather the view of a scientist who seeks to penetrate the secret of things. The artist, as it were, is looking for some ideal formula of nature, its centricity, a formula as complete and as complex as the form eggs".
On December 20, the Yeltsin Center hosted a meeting-lecture with the famous Russian conceptual artist Georgy Kizevalter, author of art objects and installations, writer, one of the founders of the Collective Actions creative group, a member of the Apt-art movement. The lecture was organized as part of an educational program dedicated to the exhibition presented by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, which brought together the works of artists belonging to the unofficial wave.
Kizewalter gave a detailed account of how unofficial art has developed since the 1950s. A noteworthy nuance: from 1996 to 2006, Kizewalter lived in Canada, but returned. According to him, he lived several lives: in Soviet Russia, full of artistic trends, but limited by the Iron Curtain, then in prosperous, but boring Canada, and his third life began in a new Russia. So it is doubly valuable and interesting to assess the development of Russian conceptualism through the eyes of an artist with such a difficult and multifaceted fate. Kizevalter summarized his impressions of the “first life” in books, among which are “These Strange Seventies, or the Loss of Innocence” and “The Turning Point of the Eighties in the Unofficial Art of the USSR”.
Photo by Lyubov Kabalinova
01 /07
Lecture by Georgy Kizevalter
- One of the "pioneers" of the unofficial movement in art was the Lianozovo group (late 1950s - mid-1970s), - says Kizevalter. – The name is due to the fact that many of the artists-members of the group lived in Lianozovo. The core of the group was the poet and artist Lev Kropivnitsky. It included Genrikh Sapgir, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Igor Kholin, Yan Satunovsky, Oscar Rabin, Lydia Masterkova and others. In parallel, there was a large group of single artists who were friends with Lianozovo. There was also a group of unofficial outcasts, original artists who did not fit into any group, were unofficial, but did not belong to Lianozovo. It was also possible to single out groups of Left official and Book artists. They eventually formed the movement of the 1970s and 1980s.
The works of artists in the 1960s were distinguished by the quality of the painted, but at the same time it was a kind of timeless art, emerging away from the processes that took place in the West.
In the 1970s, conceptualism and social art appeared. Once the artist Ivan Chuikov came to the exhibition of Ilya Kabakov. Didn't understand and left. However, the fact that he did not understand anything, he remembered, and this "hooked" him. By the way, when the archiving campaign began, Kabakov wanted to transfer his works abroad for free, but ... no one took them.
Even the 1970s were distinguished by the theme of emigration. If the artist did not emigrate, then he constantly thought about it. There were also internal emigrants and "here-sidents" who never left. In the first half of this decade, nothing remarkable happened: artists painted, those who had connections sold their paintings. In 1975, the City Committee appeared - an independent trade union of artists, graphic artists and photographers. It consisted of artists for whom it was important to be listed somewhere so that they would not be accused of parasitism.
In 1974, the famous "Bulldozer Exhibition" took place: avant-garde artists exhibited their work in the open air, but the paintings were crushed by supposedly angry workers with the help of bulldozers. This caused a wide resonance, so that soon the artists were allowed to hold an exhibition in Izmailovo, where many people came. Then a large-scale exhibition took place in the "Beekeeping" pavilion.
At the same time there was a group of Book Artists, they are characterized by the fact that they actively discussed the language of art, which was not the case before. Together with Alexander Monastyrsky and Lev Rubinshtein, we arranged mini-happenings, were fond of Zen Buddhism. Surrealism was also popular in the artistic environment. Kitchen gatherings were popular, and the dream of syncretic art was finally realized. Popular were not only artists, but also writers - Lev Sorokin, Dmitry Prigov, Lev Rubinstein, who were friends with artists (January 7, the Yeltsin Center will host a creative evening of poets Lev Rubinstein, Mikhail Aizenberg, Sergei Gandlevsky, Yuli Gugolev, Viktor Koval - Ed.)
In the autumn of 1975, an exhibition of works by 150 artists was held at VDNKh, where queues lined up. Groups of new artists appeared, such as "The Nest". Actionism emerged. For example, there was a "Selling the Soul" campaign, during which they contacted New York, and some people had to "buy" the souls of others. Also, for example, there was an action during which its participants burned the flags of enemies, and the flags of the winners were placed in a snowdrift.
I was a member of the "Collective Actions" group, which often held actions in nature. These were attempts to break out of the monotonous existence and aestheticize reality. Thus, a simple insignificant event became a work of art. For example, we carried out the action "Ball": we filled a ball of calico, placed a bell in it and let it go down the river. Or another action - “Slogan”: in the forest we stretched a banner between the trees with the slogan “I DO NOT COMPLAINT ABOUT ANYTHING, AND I LIKE EVERYTHING, DESPITE THE THAT I HAVE NEVER BEEN HERE AND I DO NOT KNOW ANYTHING ABOUT THESE PLACES.” I remember that the slogan was hung with a rag, and I tore out the fishing lines that fastened the cloth.
Then there was a transition from the serene 1960s and 1970s to postmodernism. One of the highlights of the action - in the "Nest" group was presented with a gilded bust of Socrates.
In the 1970s, the Mukhomor group burst into art. The members of the group rather quickly moved on to "acute" topics, opposed the neutron bomb. As a result, Mukhomor was banned from concert activities, which, however, the group did not engage in. "Nest" and "Amanita" became the basis of the gallery "Apt-art". At the same time, artists from Odessa, Kharkov and other cities came to Moscow.
Installations became an important phenomenon in the 1980s. The rooms in the apartments were covered with paper, it was painted in a special way, for example, from black to white. I photographed the authors with umbrellas, one of them was Vladimir Sorokin.
There is a trend towards archiving everything. We began to collect encyclopedias of new art. And then the artists began to settle in houses and institutions, organize exhibitions there, for example, the Kindergarten association arose.
In the 1980s, a number of exhibitions were held, in December 1986, the 17th youth exhibition was held on Kuznetsky Most, where artists of the left liberal persuasion were invited, and musical evenings were held. In general, everything happened a lot, and it's impossible to list everything.
Lecture by the artist Georgy Kizevalter. "Informal artistic life of Moscow in the 70-80s"
Video: Alexander Polyakov
After the lecture Georgy Kizevalter answered a number of questions.
- How did members of creative associations find a friend? Was your relationship positive, or were there quarrels?
– Artists most often united by age principle. If you are 20 years old, then you naturally strive to be friends with those who are also 20-30. Exhibitions of people of the older generation caused, of course, reverence, but the feeling that this is in a sense yesterday. But in the 1980s, I became friends with artists of the older generation. And sometimes there was a feeling that you were “under the hood”. Everyone was afraid of something, but together, in the group, it was not scary.
– How did you find “your own”, congenial artists?
- In those days, for some reason, everyone met in Estonia. I remember the 1970s, Lev Rubinstein was standing in a group of young people, I walked past him, and I didn’t care, but then we met and began to communicate. And he, in turn, said that he was walking down the street and accidentally met the Gerlovins. Then they said that if two teapots were released at the fair from two sides, they would definitely meet and find each other. Back in those years, the samizdat system was actively working, books were passed on to friends to read, most often at night. So we read both The Glass Bead Game and 100 Years of Solitude.
- And why today, in the era of freedom, when books of any kind are published, including those that were once banned, when you can watch any movie and visit any exhibition, works of art have devalued? And surely no one will take a book at night to read?
– The special value of art arises where it exists “in spite of”. And when permissiveness arises, the criteria for evaluating art are erased. There was a period when the line was completely erased. Foreigners simply said: “A painting from Russia? Yes? Ok, I'll take it." The quality has not been evaluated. In general, a kind of unity of artists lasted until 1988, then money began to be paid for art, and friends became rivals. The collapse was predicted in 1974 by one of Ernest Hemingway's wives. This is described by Shklovskaya: in the kitchen of Nadezhda Mandelstam, they discussed the purchase of galoshes and meat. And the lady who was present at the conversation said: "Now you have love and warmth, but it will end when you have everything."
- So the artist must be hungry?
He shouldn't be hungry, but he shouldn't be full either. The artist in the 1970s and 1980s painted what was radically new. When they began to demand from him abroad 2-3 works per month, and he found himself in conditions where everything was put on stream, it turned out that our artists were simply not ready for the market and broke away from the soil. So, one of the founders of Lianozovo, Oscar Rabin, used to draw the barracks of Lianozovo. And so he receives permission to work in Europe, but continues to paint ... all the same gloomy houses - only in Paris.
