Artists of the sixties, the writer, the author of the bestseller "The enemy of the people" Valentin Vorobyov is 75. On the anniversary of the artist ARTinvestment.ru publishes an essay provided by the chronicler of "non-art" Vadim Ale

artists of the sixties, the writer, the author of the bestseller "Enemy of the People» Valentin Vorobyov turns 75 . On the anniversary of the artist ARTinvestment.RU publishes an essay provided by the chronicler of "non-art» Vadim Alexeev .

Paris, June, noon, a couple of Russian tourists heed powerful figure in the corner of the Rue de Rennes and Saint-Germain-des-Pres - cap, cowboy shirt, beard:

- When Konstantin Korovin Konstantin was the head of the Russian Department of the World Exhibition in Paris in 1900, with Mamontov and Prince Vladimir Nikolaevich TEnishevo they brought Pavilion "Industry", designed for the huge Russian money never dreamed of French artists ever. Matisse for his invaluable dance has received from the Shchukin ten thousand rubles! One hundred and ten, and Matisse! Pure gold and blotter! As a result ... no Russian artist has worked in the West. Yes, what fool would go to France to trade pictures? Of course, no! All sold Russian rich.

Valentin Vorobyov said - and revives Montparnasse "The Hive" from the "Rotunda" Kicked out from the basement trumpet sounds of Boris Vian, Marc Chagall rushes by in an open car. Sparrows are his own, for forty years with him greet the bishops of the stone fountain of Saint-Sulpice, tramps on the porch and Delacroix's famous frescoes of the cathedral, Sophia Rostopchina de Segur and eternal chess Luxembourg Gardens. Artistic capital of the world for forty years as shifted to New York, but Paris has become a monument to himself, and not just here Vorobiev curator of antiquities - a living artist in the middle of the museum.

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same age as Georg Baselitz, Vorobyov was born July 9, 1938 in Bryansk wilderness, grew up under the German occupation, and received his first drawing lessons at the local Chinese market. The first order was the sign: "Fresh Zhigulevskoye beer." School teacher of drawing at Vorobyov was Nicholas Nikodimovich Voschinsky, who returned to his homeland by Stalin's call emigrant, a graduate of the Paris Academy and teammate Julien and Vakevicha in the theater and cinema. In 1954, my uncle called to Moscow - pose Tabor , Nyssa , Pavlinova ; Bryansk Family Council soon decided to give artists a capable sitter.

choice fell on Elec, where he was evacuated, and so it stuck, until the closing of a 55-year, Orlovsky izotehnikum. As usual, in the remote corners of the country were hiding from persecution former avant-garde, which have become excellent teachers. In Yelets drawing led Arnoldovna Bert Heller, a student Ermilova and Gabo , painting - exiled from Leningrad sezannistov Abba Maksovich Cor. Then it was read , the study of ancient art in the circle of "Icon", the ride on the roof of an express train "Rostov-on- Don - Moscow "at the Picasso exhibition, the dispersal of the school in Yelets and moving to Cheboksary, hospital chess with his son painting academician Mikhail Nesterov , the return to the "Red House" Favorskogo intake with a light hand on the last ornamental VGIK, where roommate was Bob SHukshin.

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Summer practice in Tarus - Vorobiev and remains in the "Russian Barbizon," where, for 101st kilometer, met wonderful company voluntary and exiled intellectuals led by poet and translator Arkady Steinberg. His sons Edward for a long time and Boruch will Vorobevsky friends, year of the famous anthology "Tarusa page" together they organize Tarus in the first Soviet uncensored show. On Zvenigorod giving descendants of Leo Tolstoy's keeper Vorobiev is a loft with a worthless treasure avant-garde - the legacy of abandoned Lyubov Lyubov Popova - and soon arrives George Costakis and buys up all the assembly as a whole. One of the most significant works renovated Vorobyov "Counter-Relief" Popova, now in the Tretyakov Gallery.

present, the informal life of Moscow in the 60's was in the basements and attics of nonconformist artists. Sparrows - active participant in its main events: exhibitions twelve at "Friendship", "Bulldozer" and "Izmailovo" exhibitions. In the absence of communication with the outside world, the artists sought to touch their own language and to each other: Vorobevsky basement became a pilgrimage center of bohemian public - poets, dissidents, black marketeers, diplomats, jazz musicians, models. Permanent residents of the basement Vorobyov Sukharev were Igor Choline and Anatoly Zverev , from the School of the Blind on Sretenke down Vladimir Yakovlev , came from Peter Zharkikh and Aref . Then - meeting with Anna David and moving to Paris in 1975.

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  Portrait Asi Lapidus. 1972

In our time, the artist is much easier to come to the viewer with the book first, and then with picture, the text is preceded by a visual. His life Vorobiev reads like a book, and writes the same book - "New Literary Review" published three volumes of his memoirs ("Enemy of the People", "Graphomaniac", "leftists") - "War and Peace" in Moscow and cellars of the Paris salons. Many artists write, but writing is not as monologic Vorobyov as an autobiography of his contemporaries. Ehrenburg wrote so extensively, so cynically - Berberova so subtly - Cathay. Accuracy of the details came from years of letters and diaries: with the same emphasis the author describes the brand of fashionable coats and untangles a complicated tangle of family ties in Moscow. Thanks Vorobiev, we have a fascinating encyclopedia dimensional picture of the entire Russian artistic life in the second half of the last century.

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Asked by the magazine "Banner" on what was an underground in the Soviet Union, known art theorist Boris Groys put forward a thesis about the professionalism of unofficial art in opposition to socialist realism handicrafts and his army of uniformly trained artists. Russian artists working independently of hudkomissy and showrooms, according to Groys, set themselves the task of importance to them of modern Western art. That is, rethinks the legacy of modernism and specifically - the School of Paris, productive periods of European art, adapted to the realities of domestic pop artistsky interest in the goods of mass consumption, have speculated about the nature of art as a description of reality. Socialist realism is engaged in design activity, were a kind of jewelers - and, just as a beginner will not trust a particularly expensive precious metal, "green" the official artist is not allowed to process the image of the Leader.

As often happens with Groys, this scheme is simple, outlines a wide field for further research and refinement, but suffers from one-sidedness. It would be more accurate to talk about a special kind of professionalism in Russian art in comparison with the West. Art infrastructure in the USSR was cumbersome and slow, attempts to reform it into a political demonstration, as was the case with the legendary "Bulldozer Exhibition" in Belyaevo. The solidity of artistic administrators had been equilibrated in the underground element of luck. In the absence of contemporary art galleries and private investors, the role of which in the West has been very great, artists do not want to engage in propaganda in one form or another, sought other ways. Instead gallery exhibition space was flat or studio, instead of private investors - interested in art, or rather any kind of dissent foreigners. As a result, a loud word "unofficial art" is called an infinite number of very distant and way of thinking and style of artists. On professionalism makes sense to speak in the context of communities, a clear division of the seller, the buyer and the viewer. Soviet underground artists often combines two or even all three functions.

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Early work Vorobyov still bear the traces of the powerful influence of Tabor. The combination of geometrism in the spirit of the Cubists and interest in ancient art Vorobiev received in full. By the mid-sixties Vorobyov is an individual issue. Since then, most of his work is devoted to the archaic subjects. Characters lose their binding to pestuemoy in the "Red House" Tabor national tradition. Studying icon Vorobyov drew attention to the special space, the metaphysical layer of atmosphere that separates the image and the viewer. "For many years cleared of soot icons vibrant glow of soft, greenish sankir lived alone." In the series "Kings" he introduced lasered parts, according to the method of Cézanne, and in the 64th, accidentally knocking over a bottle lessirovochnomu image, discovered a new tone of the painting: the incomprehensible sfumato icons created a three-layer glazing. The elegant, muted colors faded, earthy umber and black, with the letters from cinnabar, Vorobyev worked until '67. The best things of this period were lost in private collections, some can be seen in the Museum Bochum Bar-Gera. His technique of the late 60's virtuosity: he puts small strokes so that the picture appears stained-glass window of an infinite number of pieces of colored glass.

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In the 70 years of being simplified, there is improvisational technique, which is close to the founder of "Cobra" Pierre Aleshin. In French "striped abstractions" Vorobyov combined three or four colors, conducted without amendment wide fleytsem. Oriental calligraphy art led him to a series of black abstractions. Feared before the void on the canvas, he saw that the intense emptiness is not less important in form than the image, and began to paint the void in the green, gold and black. Long before the "new wild" Vorobyov has developed its own barbaric impulsive emotional lyricism with rock art, opposing it to the trendy pop art. Moving from abstraction to figurativu and back, he included in his paintings mysterious signs, and later appeared in "trans avant» 80. For almost forty years Vorobiev has changed except that the degree of spontaneity found once the transfer of plots on canvas.

in following the geniuses of French modernism Vorobyov, of course, is not alone. For those who are in the youth discovered Shchukin's collection, in the postwar years, gradually returning to the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin, who was struck by Picasso exhibition there in 1956, is the art and its creators were kind of Eden. In fact, the history of art, if not, then no generally accepted aesthetic conventions of creativity and artistic behavior started for them it was in France of the 1900s, and not in Russian 20's. Most recent work Vorobyov reminiscent of Picasso 70s - if not the experience, and the grandeur of thought, that by temperament. The last thing Picasso are just beginning to open, on the background of an ever-growing interest in the newest forms of expressionism and "art brut" - from the German "new wild" to the American Jean-Michel Basquiat - they seem to be the forerunners, yet another indication of new ways.

Vorobyov, like Picasso, does not try to capture the dynamics of moving jerkily shapes and sharp angles, and his painting of a game, much more iconic than the plein-air. This art after the great discoveries of art, art for which no new forms, because all the forms available on the mind of the American Indian weaving to dembelsky albums. Simultaneously, barely restrained arrayed art historians and researchers hierarchy presence of divergent cultures trains in Vorobyov look through the cultural layers. Are born composite images that are difficult to attribute to any era: in the works side by side Vorobyov gogenovskie Africans on cakes, passers-by Georg Baselitz victims of car accidents and Andy Warhol. Locally, there are paintings Vorobyov disturbing images, reminiscent of the Armenian-American artist Arshile Gorky origin.

• Valentin Vorobyov with Anatoly Zverev in Tarusse
  1967. Archive V.Vorobeva
• Valentin Vorobyov Lydia Masterkova in Paris
  1978. Archive V.Vorobeva

«Art in its purest form - a gesture, touch the artist on some surfaces . Hand Vorobyov spontaneously wanders through the mysterious maze, where you will see the silhouettes of half-forgotten animals, mythological shadow of the past and the present, a color kaleidoscope of battle, where the brush is dancing in a wild dance, then dissolved in a zone of calm and fatigue. Vigorous and extended gesture twists and twirls the intricate knots, then slowly tears them to flee again and patterned contact socket. Its picturesque course resembles monastic prayer beads. A deeply religious scenic gesture »( Yuri Cooper . Nov. 27, 1985 year. Paris ).

Vorobyov - the artist is not Russian, not French, not American. It differs from the native and foreign contemporaries, who relied on expressionism, that he almost never makes a start in the works of nature. How primitive is applied to the wall signs, of which lined up his view of the world, Vorobyev puts on paper and canvas (its walls lined with a thick layer of cultures) of the deep impressions, reflected in his soul steeped in the art of citizen. It does not follow one of the topics that could be open in the series. And any imitation of his style does not appeal.

«I - the cave decorator - said Vorobyov. - I draw in mood and depend on the material - if there is no paint and brushes, the paint stick on the ground, have more fun. Drawing for me at the same time praying and enjoyment. Because you can not pray from morning to night - once a week, a person goes to the cathedral. I paint for myself - I do not plan enriching humanity art, science or education. Painting for me is not important - I do not want to die with a brush under the picture. I want to break into the ship as Admiral Nakhimov to be useful creature treat for sea monsters! »

Vadim Alexeev, Valentin Dyakonov