Jilted artists seek solace in ugliness
nikst
12 March 1999
Jilted artists seek solace in ugliness
Starved of cash and shunned by the West, many in Russia's creative community
have gone to brutal extremes to portray post-Soviet life. John O'Mahoney
reports from Moscow on a flickering of hope
On the northern outskirts of Moscow, in a decrepit Stalin-era tower block,
lies the apartment-studio of the artist Dmitry Vrubel. A single small room
serves as studio, gallery, workshop, bedroom and nursery for him, his artist
wife, and their new baby.
The only evidence of Vrubel's brief spell in the ranks of Russia's best-known
contemporary artists is a modest reproduction of his most famous painting, his
only famous painting. He painted The Mortal Kiss, the gargantuan portrait of
Leonid Brezhnev and Eric Honnecker lustily exchanging bodily fluids, on a
stretch of the crumbling Berlin Wall almost 10 years ago.
With its intoxicating blend of iconoclasm and defiance, it became an instant
post-Soviet classic, a perfect icon for the revolution sweeping Europe.
'It was like we had reached the end of the hunt, that we had captured the men
who built this monstrous thing, and mounted their heads on the wall, like
trophies," says Vrubel.
"'When a painting like this could appear openly on the eastern side of the
Berlin Wall, it was obvious that communism was finished once and for all. It
was a testimony to what could be achieved through the power of art."
A decade of disillusionment later, it is difficult to appreciate the hope that
blossomed under the cultural reforms of perestroika. Not only could artists,
writers and filmmakers suddenly exhibit, publish and travel freely, but there
seemed to be an insatiable appetite for their work.
The deluge into print in the late 1980s of previously banned authors such as
Akhmatova, Mandelstam, Nabokov, Brodsky and Solzhenitsyn pushed the
circulation of dusty academic journals as high as 3 million.
Foreign galleries clambered to exhibit Eastern-bloc art. "Suddenly we were
having exhibitions in New York, Paris, Berlin," says Andrei Chlobystin, a St
Petersburg artist and critic. "Our openings were attended by John Cage,
Richard Gere, Catherine Deneuve, Laurie Anderson. After having no money for my
entire life, I suddenly had a gold Visa card and $50,000 in a Rockefeller
Foundation account. But I thought it was absolutely normal. I thought that
this was how artists were treated in the West."
The euphoria couldn't last long. Many artists were affected just as much as
the general populace by the viciousness of post-communist life: rising crime
levels, the yawning gap between rich and poor, and the collapse of state
funding.
Freedom created as many problems as it solved, sweeping away the hero status
of the non-conformist, often revealing work whose only prior achievement was
its existence. The West quickly tired of Russian art.
And the kind of certainties needed to complete a work of art - that street
names would not change or governments collapse overnight - were missing in the
mutating landscapes of the former Soviet empire. "You start writing a novel in
one country," says Moscow novelist Viktor Pelevin, "and you finish it in
another."
The conclusion drawn by some has been startling. "If we knew then that this
was the price we would have to pay," Czech poet and neurologist Miroslav Holub
says, "then we would gladly have put up with not having our work printed and
with not selling our paintings."
Over tea in his tiny kitchen, Vrubel, now aged 38, is reluctant to condemn the
"reforms" of the past 10 years: "In Russia, as always throughout its history,
we seem destined to be stuck forever in some kind of intermediate phase," he
says wryly.
Vrubel's fate is typical of post-Soviet artists. Propelled into the spotlight
as much by political events as artistic merit, he could not capitalise on
sudden fame and, despite continually producing interesting work, faded into
obscurity. He initially sold his works for "embarrassingly low" amounts only
to see them change hands for as much as $150,000.
And he has been struggling to exert his copyright over The Mortal Kiss, which
has been splashed across T-shirts, calendars, posters and postcards, and even
used in an advert for Swatch.
"I'm doing all I can to protect my author's rights," he says. "As for the
rest, it's just business. If an art dealer wants to buy low and sell high,
it's his right. We will just have to learn to play by the new rules."
But the collision between Russian culture and market forces - the "new rules"
- has often produced just one stark result: impoverishment, both artistic and
actual. The film industry has been decimated by cuts in funding. Studios such
as St Petersburg's Lenfilm, which produced up to 40 films a year, have just a
handful in production.
World-renowned institutions such as the Bolshoi, the Mariinsky and the
Hermitage have been so starved of cash that they have been forced to threaten
the government with "cultural blackout" to save their crumbling buildings,
repertoires and collections.
"This is the first time in the whole history of Russia that there has been an
actual policy of disregard for the arts," says Mikhail Piotrovsky, director of
the Hermitage museum. "Even when the Soviet government was selling artefacts
from the vaults of the Russian museum with one hand, it was nurturing culture
with the other."
Lingering Soviet-style cronyism has meant that art for the new era can be
strikingly similar to art for the old. The attempts of Moscow's mayor, Yuri
Luzhkov, to rejuvenate the capital has led to the establishment of a "court"
of artists. Chief among them is Zurab Tsereteli, a sculptor whose work is a
grotesque variation on socialist realism. Tsereteli's most heinous crime to
date is a 200ft statue of Peter the Great, which reputedly cost the government
#11 million.
Attempts to create a truly contemporary culture have led down blind alleys or
towards dangerous extremes. The latest generation of Moscow artists, such as
Alexander Brener, best known for daubing a painting by Kazimir Malevich with a
lurid, green dollar sign, and Oleg Kulik, who has photographed himself having
sex with dogs, are on a crusade to outmanoeuvre the ugliness of society by
being even more ugly and brutal.
Popular heavy metal band Metal Corrosion are openly fascist. Timur Novikov's
Neo-Academic movement is engaged in a battle against "Western" modernism. And
the works of state-sponsored artist Ilya Glazunov depict thick-lipped black
youths carrying off naked white women and bearded Hasidic Jews sipping Russian
blood.
"Russia is not in a good state of cultural health right now," says novelist
Viktor Yerofeyev. "Theatre is dead. Music is terrible. Of course Russian
culture is in better health than President Yeltsin, but even so, this is not
its finest moment."
But the disturbing level of cacophony and discord is at least proof of
diversity, and a tiny minority give cause for hope. With his widely translated
novels - Omon Ra, The Life Of Insects and Chapayev And The Void - Viktor
Pelevin has established himself as one of the most gifted writers of his
generation.
The financial constraints that prompted St Petersburg's Maly Theatre to tour
Europe in the late 1980s have created one of the world's best ensemble
companies. In cinema, Kira Muratova overcame funding odds to direct one of the
best Russian films of the decade, Three Stories. And the success of director
Nikita Mikhalkov does prove that Russian culture is capable of achieving mass
appeal.
"This picture should end the constant speculation that everything connected
with Russian culture is in a dire condition," Mikhalkov says of his new #28
million epic, The Barber Of Siberia. "This movie could help Russia, not only
the cinema of Russia but Russia itself. It can help the birth of a national
idea."
Just as people pine for the certainties of communist stagnation, there is a
tendency to underestimate the achievements of the past 10 years. The
fundamental promises of perestroika have been granted: censorship of the arts
is no more, artists no longer fear repression.
If these advances can be safeguarded, a foundation has been created for
development. "All I wanted back then was for the abnormality, the unreality
and the idiotism of the Soviet system just to finish," says Vrubel. "I didn't
think about earning a lot of money and I didn't want to live for 300 years. I
just wanted the stupidity to end.
"And it has more or less ended. Now, we can do what we want, meet whom we
want, sell our work. And Russia itself is the same uncivilised mess of right
and left, of fascists and anti-Semites that it was before the revolution.
Everything is back to normal."
*******
bab...@netscape.net
"nikst" <ni...@glasnet.ru> wrote:
> The Guardian
> 12 March 1999
>
> Jilted artists seek solace in ugliness
>
.....cut.....
> Attempts to create a truly contemporary culture have led down blind alleys or
> towards dangerous extremes. The latest generation of Moscow artists, such as
> Alexander Brener, best known for daubing a painting by Kazimir Malevich with a
> lurid, green dollar sign, and Oleg Kulik, who has photographed himself having
> sex with dogs, are on a crusade to outmanoeuvre the ugliness of society by
> being even more ugly and brutal.
>
> Popular heavy metal band Metal Corrosion are openly fascist. Timur Novikov's
> Neo-Academic movement is engaged in a battle against "Western" modernism. And
> the works of state-sponsored artist Ilya Glazunov
what a swine...after causing his poor suffering wife to throw herself
out of a building...
> depict thick-lipped black
> youths carrying off naked white women and bearded Hasidic Jews sipping Russian
> blood.
at least he's not prostituting her image anymore...
> "Russia is not in a good state of cultural health right now," says novelist
> Viktor Yerofeyev. "Theatre is dead. Music is terrible. Of course Russian
> culture is in better health than President Yeltsin, but even so, this is not
> its finest moment."
>
As R. May pointed out, artists (as well as neurotics) have a predictive
quality...they anticipate their culture's later scientific and
intellectual experience.
Sir Herbert Read noted how "The water reeds and ibis legs painted in
triangular designs on neolithic vases in ancient Egypt were the prediction of
the later development of geometry and mathematics by which the Egyptians read
the stars and measured the Nile."
The sense of proportion of the Greek Parthenon, the powerful dome of
Roman architecture, and the medieval cathedral all had precedents in
their cultures' art. "The arts anticipate the future social and
technological development by a generation when the change is more
superficial, or by centuries when the change, as the discovery of
mathematics, is profound".
The artist, the "antennae of the race" as Ezra Pound described,
anticipates his culture's future development.
As an example, Cezanne's "schizoid" (in the words of Merleau-Ponty)
depiction of stones and trees, before his time in the well-rooted world
of the 19th century, anticipated the impersonal free-floating
twentieth.
So now in Russia we have a society with vulgar racism, sex with animals,
and vandalism in its future...a complete cultural breakdown.
And certain elements in Ukraine wish to join their country with Russia
on this ride into decay.
Which is not to say that Ukraine should blindly fall for the West.
The Poles are being quite reasonable seeking NATO's protection.
But they should not forget Ukraine...
"So still," wrote the Sisters of Mercy,
"so dark all over Europe.
And I ride down the highway 101.
By the side of the ocean heading
for sunset..."
Indeed, because as Spengler predicted Europe is in its dark winter,
comfortable certainly but no longer relevant, and the American sunset
is also at hand (my father, an Oxford-trained executive, believes this
strongly himself - one reason why he has diligently taught his children
the Ukrainian language). The future of Europe and, indeed of "Faustian"
civilization, is with the Slavs - and by this I mean not Russia.
Like the Vandals and Visigoths in another time, Russia stirred some sh*t
up but it is now leaving the stage (its artists point the way toward
their nation's future oblivion!), ushering in the way for Poles,
Ukrainians and others. Just as, long ago, the Franks, Anglo-Saxons,
and Germans took the place of the Visigoths and Vandals.
Anyone who has been to Poland recently has felt the energy and vitality
of a culture enjoying a new spring, in contrast to France, England or
especially old 15th century powers like Portugal.
It is my hope that Poland will not allow itself to be weighed down by the
West, but instead will help bring in young Ukraine and thus (because
without Ukraine's millions the Poles and Czechs may not be so
significant), will bring about the beginning of the "Slavic" stage of
European history, following the "Romance" and "Germanic" phases.
The future of Europe is in the East.
And I'm glad that Kwasniewski sees that, and insists on not allowing
a wall to develop between eastern and western Europe. I wish him
luck.
The future of European civilization depends upon it.
Babai
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