PAINTING IS PHILOSOPHY

(A Glimpse Into What I Am Doing)

I was born into a family of wonderful artists. My mother and father were more than just parents for me. They were my friends and colleagues. Art was spoken in our family as the first language. “Broad realism,” or “figurativism” as they call it nowadays, underlies the artistic quest of the whole family.

My first exhibition took place in my native Odessa when I was nearly a child. There followed exhibitions in Moscow and more in Odessa and Kiev. I worked in traditional genres: easel painting, landscape, portrait. I was fascinated with theatre, cinema and poetry. That is why I entered the Cinematography Institute (VGIK), with the intention to make movies. I double-majored in directing and artistic directing. My view of film has been that it is a visual medium with a more active impact on a viewer than painting. In a certain sense it preceded video art. I find modern video art somewhat distasteful, however, because of its weak dramatic foundation together with its naivete and the obscurity of its symbols.

I made two movies at Mosfilm with my wife. One was short, some 20 minutes, and the other was full length. The latter has later been heralded by critics as a “Russian movie classic,” having “augured the clip style.” The censors managed to cut it quite badly at the time whereupon, by 1980, I quit the cinema.

I have never taken a break from painting. There were no censors. I was not satisfied with the position of the “official” or “unofficial” (or dissident) artists because art and politics, whether right or left, should be kept separate. Politics is too shallow for art, which rests on more fundamental foundations of the human phenomenon. Painting is a philosophy.

At different times, different artists would influence me, from the ancient Greeks to Malevich, Chagall and Tyshler. The first and foremost influence comes from Russian icon painting. However, I have never attempted to mimic it, nor have I resorted to its techniques. From my point of view, Russian icon painters made great discoveries by creating a proper replica of the Cosmos.

Contrary to the way many artists develop, there are no frontiers, periods or sharp divisions to what I have been doing over the last 40 years. Themes, topics, and genres flow and transform one into the other.

Before perestroika I would joke that my whole life had been a preparation for one great posthumous exhibition. In the 1970s I dabbled in making graphical illustrations for books and magazines, in particular for “Yunost'” (Youth), a literary monthly popular at the time. Between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s I did some monumental pieces, such as various mosaics in Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk, a facade curtain for the International youth centre “Noorus” in Estonia, etc. From 1988 until 1994 I worked as the Chief Artist of the Moscow Experimental Musical Theatre.

By the mid-1980s, my wish to speak out in a quiet, clear and somewhat self-absorbed way had been replaced by an aspiration for a free poetic language. The colouristic sound had been calling for maximum saturation.

In 1987 I started working on the series “Man-Orchestra” which turned out to be completely open-ended. Today, there are some 310 canvasses varying in size from very small to up to four metres. This serendipitous theme has enabled me to realise my love for music, diverse in its scope: classical, jazz, avantgarde. It has also resulted in complete freedom of form and colour. Music knows no finite volume or boundary. It beautifies the world, allowing for improvisation on canvas, prompting infinite myriads of provocative scripts and poetic analogies. I am endeavouring to paint music.

As a ramification and further development of the Man-Orchestra theme, by the mid-1990s I had developed two parallel series, “Man-Theatre” and “Man-Zoo.” A little later came the series “Knobs and Armrests.”

Further pursuits and searches for new forms of expression have resulted in polyptychs, massive and complex multiplex compositions.

The underlying substance of my first polyptych, “Parables,” is myths in their interplay as well as the evolution of modern myths. For instance, on the first canvas “Paris,” one sees the three Graces positioned on top of the protagonist's head, rather than in front of him, thus crowning him with a magnificent vermilion flower of erotic desire. The central canvas in the polyptych called “Self-portrait with Judith” is dedicated to the allegorical relationship of an artist not with the biblical persona, but rather with a dual character, a woman representing the outer world, the Universe, with its eternity, beauty and indifference.

Another polyptych of seven canvases embodies the laws of the poetic “wreath of sonnets.” It is characterised by interlacing symbols, details and transfigurations. Childhood toys, whistles, and pyramids adorning the wreath serve as frames of reference for reading the subtext. A longing for creative work, love, eros and childhood constitute the foundation for my polyptych, “Garland of Sonnets.”

Soon thereafter came the triptych, “Time,” whose canvasses “Noon” and “Full Moon” (both 200x400cm) on the left and right and “Night and Day” (200x200cm) in the centre are dedicated to the bottomless whirlpool of time with its infinite longing for love.

My fascination with the polyptychs is partly due to the form's complexity and structure whereby a certain theme often takes on an existence of its own, as if seeking its proper form of expression and forcing me to submit. I do not paint within the traditional academic-scholarly or iconographic canons. Working on a polyptych, I never start out sketching the details of the future composition in order to bring them into correspondence with each other. Instead, everything happens spontaneously.

The polyptych, “Crackpots,” is the last completed one. This is a programme composition of five pieces. As with any other polyptych, it is preferable that it be treated as a single symbolic text. Crazy head is a literal translation of “Meschiggene Kopf” – an idiomatic Yiddish expression whose mosaic of meanings includes, among other things, an image of genius and artistic freedom. European languages contain many linguistic analogues of this expression. A silly or crazy (loony, nutty, barmy, etc.) head epitomises a good-natured layman's attitude to an artist, poet or philosopher. It combines condescension with respect for someone who may not be quite of this world and perhaps is over-absorbed into some strange personal reality, but may be of some higher realm, a “genius”. Each of the five canvases of the polyptych is an attempt to recreate a symbolic pattern from the mental microcosm of such an odd individual. This is the world where sweet images of childhood and sounds of music share time/space with the contemporary big-city reality within which the individual exists. This existence is marked by love, a desire to soar, inspiration and endless meditation on the end, which in itself may not be the end, but only the beginning of some true being. Crackpots are the only ones who live forever. This is the principal underlying motif of the fifth and last piece “Crackpot #5” (180x180cm, oil on canvas). Positioned in the centre of a red disc (a nimbus, a planet, or a dish) is a reclining head like that of John the Baptist (a natural, but not a compulsory association). The head perceives via a green slit of an eye with a static gaze, contemplating the reality and eternity of this world. All the “crackpots” of the series are autonomous planets, or microcosms. One of the protagonists of the composition is the figure of a drummer. He is a guide to heaven and hell. His toolkit contains comical head-masks, which may make one think of voodoo charms or a scalp collection hoarded by a Sioux warrior. He is a modern Charon. His melodic theme is supported by two allegorical figures wielding a double-handed saw, by now nearly a routine gadget for an avant-guard orchestra. One of the allegorical carpenters is holding a mask, representing a pendulum bearing the artist's self portrait. Such an autograph is not out of context. The polyptych as a whole is an exploration of the phenomenon of creative work, as an endlessly playful pathway for the mind.

Self-portraiture is a common element of my polyptychs. The self-portrait can function as a narrator, actor or eyewitness. I have not been immune to the major XX century trend toward reflection and the individualisation of creative work. A self-portrait appears as a sign of an artist, who has an exclusive right to behold and laugh (e.g. the pieces “His Own Majesty” and “Creation” in “Garland of Sonnets,” the canvasses “Rostral Pyramid” and “Author” in “Parables,” “Scalist” as well as the man-ship in the “City Romances”, etc.) Nevertheless, I think that the use of a self-portrait has to be strictly justified by the task at hand. The tunes played by my little orchestras are the transcripts and interpretations of my own or somebody else's music. The whole “Man-Orchestra” series is in essence one multifaceted portrait where the symbolic heads, tooting the horns and strumming on the strings, are all self-portraits. On the other hand, I have never painted a traditional self-portrait.