Page 51 - Studio International - February 1973

formlessness to gain its own experience. himself constructed in the loft ofan old building. added in each corner. 'Anna Sergeyevna
Yankilevsky's art seems to be at this stage. Bulatov has always seemed to me a kind of Tropina: This is a lake'. `Nikolai Adamovich
Yankilevsky is thirty-four and his work as a recluse, stubbornly sticking to his own path. He Borev: This is the sea'. `Sergei Mikhailovich
modern artist began around the year 196o. was born in 1933, and from the very beginning Levshuk: This is pure air'. `Lidia Borisovna
Pivovarov, only a year older, studied with him at his work has been distinguished by a Sekh: This is the sky'. Another painting is
the Polygraphic School, but his distinctive strongly marked feeling of space, and often by divided into two equal parts. On the right, on a
artistic development dates from the mid-sixties. the use of shining colours. By 1965 he had white surface, there is a painted rod, a hanging
For a long time he was influenced by the Prague evolved a strict geometric abstraction, but even coat-hanger, a hammered-in nail and a glued-on
`Shmidras', with their surrealist fantasy, dadaist then figurative elements appeared in his toy train. On the left there are separate
humour and sharply critical view of the paintings, and now he too is coming up with sentences. `Nikolai Pavlovich Malyshev : I'll
contemporary world. This is my first visit to his some surprises. His latest paintings have been hang up a new coat here'. 'Nikolai Arkadevich
studio, and it comes just at a time when his art is created — like the American photorealists' — from Kirov: I bought this engine for Volodia, my
undergoing an important transformation. In colour photographs, yet at the same time they son'. `Alexandr Alexandrovich Koss: This nail
fact it is the same story as with Yankilevsky: skilfully maintain their strict abstract was hammered in by my wife, Bryukhasova
Pivovarov is also beginning to take the framework. Bulatov's surprise was as great as Anna Alexeyevna'. 'Anna Borisovna
contemporary city and its people as his theme. mine. Among the reproductions which I showed Gorodovina: I don't understand anything'. And
So far there are only a very few paintings, but last night there was one of McIntyre's painting soon. And finally a large painting reading at the
they are undoubtedly original and very much of a family group at the beach, and through it top 'Answers', and otherwise merely divided into
part of the present. This can be seen in their Bulatov first became aware of the existence of horizontal strips containing texts written with
appearance, which could be roughly termed this movement. His latest, still unfinished, the painstaking and impersonal care of a
narrative figuration, and which could be painting is taken from a coloured picture- sign-painter. Individuals are addressed formally,
compared with, for example, Saul. postcard of a group of holiday-makers with their patronymics included between the
Pivovarov has perhaps been influenced somewhere on the Black Sea coast. first name and surname, and often they sound
intellectually by Kabakov, his contemporary and The new Soviet art lives through the present. rather odd. The sentences are again concerned
a close neighbour. Kabakov was the first artist in Despite their relationship to the tradition of with a kind of absent individual. They are quite
Moscow who had the courage to break away modern Russian art — or rather, because of it — specific, like 'He fetched the wood', or 'Not at
from all artistic conventions — including those of the young Moscow artists are not restrained by home', and yet the more we learn about the
modern art — and ground his art squarely in the any feelings of wanting to return to the past. absent individual in this way, the more his real
contemporary world. Modern artists in Moscow Nowhere did I meet with anything that could existence eludes us. In the end, it is not even
do not exhibit, and one might expect them to be called Neo-Futurism, Neo-Suprematism or clear if it concerns a person at all. Kabakov is
withdraw into a narcissistic cultivation of their Neo-Constructivism. They are concerned with quite aware of what he is doing. The individual
own particular art. But it is a heartening surprise something more than art, and so they can strips with the inscriptions are in various
to discover that the development here is in proceed straight ahead to where art throughout colours, and Kabakov remarks that the reality of
exactly the opposite direction : these painters are the world is leading. this unknown figure is present in the painting
placing their art in a difficult and risky Kabakov's is hardly more than across the only as an optical rustle or a chorus of colours.
confrontation with the world around them, and street. Like Bulatov and Pivovarov he too But the colours are calm, impersonal,
from the new significance which their art gains illustrates children's books, and his deft, flatly unemphatic, and the meaning of the picture slips
from this they create new forms. This radical stylized illustrations are particular favourites : he further and further away from it. It is in the
confrontation with contemporary life is perhaps is the only modern artist I know in Moscow who vanishing point which the painting organizes,
the crucial factor in the development of modern has his own car. And of course a new studio, the but in itself cannot be expressed
art in the Soviet Union. most spacious and best lit of them all. He has a or depicted.
In the evening I get together with a number of lot of new paintings, and once again I am I have always valued Kabakov's works very
old painter friends. I know that concrete surprised. Ilya Kabakov has always impressed highly, and today they strike me as some of the
information about contemporary art is always me as one of the most interesting Moscow most original and truly contemporary examples
hard to come by in Moscow, so I have brought painters, and also as one of the most Russian. He of current world art. And once again it is that
some reproductions with me and try to give a found his inspiration in labels, posters, visual non-aestheticizing and radical relationship to
general idea of what is happening, from teaching aids, drawings by amateurs for the the contemporary world which is their main
abstraction and pop art to photorealism and propaganda displays found everywhere on characteristic. Kabakov, Yankilevsky, Bulatov,
conceptual art. I mention, too, that art today is notice boards and in the streets. Thus a kind of Pivovarov: I feel that they should be grouped
moving beyond art, into a realm which it is Russian equivalent of American pop art together under some common name, perhaps
difficult to define : it has already ceased to originated in his studio. But all along there has the Sretensky Boulevard School'.
belong to what we were accustomed to call art been one difference. The American Close by, Alexei Smirnov has his studio.
and is approaching the boundaries of the sacred. interpretation of modern civilization has been When I visited him five years ago, his art
Everyone here listens attentively. In fact the marked by its cruelty, whereas Kabakov's work presented a very complicated picture. First
devotion which this handful of artists pours into has always revealed a streak of hidden humour. there were oil paintings which revealed an
their work can only be explained by assuming When I was last at his place, he said that a affinity to ikons and at the same time moved
that they are into something which is no longer painting should be like a piece of furniture, just somewhere between Expressionism and
mere art, something far more precious than art — as anonymous, just as far from being unique. Surrealism. They had such titles as Funeral of a
and even more important than life itself. One of his latest works then was titled Couch — a Monk, Funeral of a Peasant Woman, A Queue for
3.20 x 1.10 metre painting or object, Heads; objects in them sprawled out in organic
Saturday, June 20th completely upholstered in white oil-cloth and shapes and human forms changed into beasts.
And then there were abstract calligraphic
stuffed like an old-fashioned ottoman, with one
figurative element, a small inserted target with drawings combined with poetry. At the time
I am a bit late, and so I catch Erik Bulatov just the naively painted head of some anonymous Smirnov was only thirty, and it would be very
in time : he is leaving for his cottage. He too lives man. And now he shows me paintings which intriguing to find out what direction this
close to Sretensky Boulevard, and also has a consist chiefly or solely of words. One painting, cultivated and sensitive artist is moving in. But
large, new, high-ceilinged studio which he done completely in a smooth blue, has a text his studio was locked and the painter himself