On the issue of official and unofficial art
ARTinvestment.RU   17 июня 2010

Artist Vladimir Yankilevsky discusses the origins and nature nonconformism

During the celebration of the new millennium in the year 2000 in London was an exhibition, which is as close as repeated exhibition of 1900 in the Arts Pavilion at the World Fair in Paris. One hundred years ago at an exhibition in Paris, presented the most famous and celebrated artists of that time. In London the same to the copy of this pavilion was added a second pavilion, which showed artists who lived at the same time, but were not famous. So the names of almost all the artists who exhibited in Paris, the first pavilion, no one now not known, and the second were Van Gogh, Cezanne, etc.

story is instructive, but of course , can not teach anything, because living critics and audiences are always close and familiar form and clear content. This happens with the assessment of contemporary art now. Many curators and museum directors are guided in forming the collection at the main stream, that is, on what has already been adapted for professional snobbery, public taste and the market as it was 100 years ago. These standards, often under the guise of the "vanguard", but rather typical salon, that is the art of the secondary.

division of art at the formal and informal - is just the tip at the outlet of deep and eternal problems human existence, relationships, or even conflict, creativity, foresight, altering the image of the world, and routine consciousness, inhibitory and resists any change in lifestyles. This conflict is one in itself, it has its origins in the conflict an "internal", the lonely, "naked" person and "external", "dressed," Social rights, skill and desire not to lie to himself and to adapt to lies, to conform, often underlying emotional drama.

«Nonconformism" - this is a constitutive feature of art, as opposed to the banality and cliche conformism, giving new information and creating a new vùdenie world. The fate of a true artist is often tragic, regardless of social life in which he lives. That's OK, because the fate of the artist - this is the fate of his insight, his statements about the world, which breaks the established stereotypes of perception and thought, caused "mass culture" and intellectual snobbery. Being the creator and to be "in due time" canonized "hero" of society, the superstar - it's almost insurmountable paradox. Attempts to overcome it - the path to a career conformist.

Remember, what kind of reaction in terms of public attitudes was to the Impressionists in France. Did you know that the first work of Picasso fell for a French museum only in 1936, and Kandinsky - in 1937, when both had been around the world-known artists, but for French scholars and bureaucrats from the art they were strangers. The exhibition Paul Klee in his native Switzerland after he was expelled by the Nazis at the Düsseldorf Academy, was named in the Swiss press "schizophrenic". Vanguard Art in the Third Reich has been called "degenerative," etc., etc.

to imagine the moral resistance within the Russian society had to overcome an outstanding collectors Shchukin and Morozov, enough to read the responses of the Russian artistic elite of the time in their collections of French modern art, which they brought to Russia.

Mikhail Nesterov visit galleries S. Morozova in 1911: "Look at a loss not daring to say that "the emperor has no clothes," that everything is either a charlatan or bankruptcy, cleverly disguised theoretical buzzing; Berdyaev in 1914: "When you walk into the room Picasso gallery of SI Shchukin, the feeling of terrible fear", Sergei Bulgakov called his article "Russian Thought" in 1915 about the paintings of Picasso "Corpse beauty. Elsewhere he wrote that on the Russian soil still lifes of Picasso turned into "black icon", it forms not found "relevant experience outside of hell" in his Cubist canvases clearly sensed "fingerprint demonic anointing».

It is interesting that Russian philosophers considered Picasso or a sociological or from a religious point of view, trying to give him the moral evaluation that gave an impetus to the "class evaluation" of modern art in Soviet art criticism, and quite surprisingly resuscitated as a socio-political examinations sontemporary ART now. Strange that it is a philosophy that level had no idea that art does not destroy, and build up (even in those periods when it is undergoing radical reassessment "to sleep" art ") and forms an image of harmony at a new level, compared to which" previous "Art is a special case.

What can we say about the estimates of known artists, academics, as they say," brothers in the shop ", which were often simply taste: Ilya Repin:" In Matisse - nothing, absolutely nothing but impertinence "; Valentin Serov:" disgusting "Cezanne. But in France, while Picasso's path to recognition was not easy. His Avignon girls "have not been able to digest, and co-author of Cubism Georges Marriage Picasso said:" Your painting is as if you'd like us to get a tow, or drink kerosene ...»

Informal artists in the Soviet Union were completely cut off from the official artistic life: they do not take the Artists' Union, they could not show their works in the exhibition halls under the supervision of the Academy, they had been denied access to publications that are controlled by the Union of Artists, none critic did not write anything about them, no employee museums did not attend their workshops, and they are often harassed by police as a parasite, if only deal with their art. Only some of them earned good money in publishing, processing books for children, and were even in that capacity and not as artists, members of the Artists Union, while others, most, were very poor. They do not even have the right to purchase professional materials in kiosks Artists Union. Worked or in communal apartments in the same room where their family lived, or in damp basements without windows.

Not only totalitarian state machine, but even the "colleagues" in the shop, the official artists who enjoyed unprecedented benefits for our Western colleagues from the state, even the part of those artists, which in Soviet cultural scale was considered "left", tried to dissociate themselves from the informal artists like lepers. Here's a statement of one of these "left" official painters, Paul Nikonov, trying to isolate themselves from informal meeting of artists in the Ideological Commission of the Central Committee of the CPSU, held after the defeat at the Manege Exhibition in 1962. I quote from the transcript: "This is a false sensational art, it's not going the right way, and looking for loopholes and trying to direct my work is not for the professional audience, where they were required to have a decent reception and condemnation, and is addressed to those aspects of life that no relation to serious matters of painting do not have ».

Nikonov knew that all the way to the" professional public "through the exhibition halls were cut off for us, but nevertheless, this is the" professional audience "not knowing our products, was ready for" a decent meeting "and" condemnation. " The trend, despite the ignorance of style and complete mess in my head is clear: we - the good, true Soviet artists, as they are - bad, false and anti-Soviet, and please, dear Ideological Commission, do not confuse us with them. Beating the need "them" and not "us" (and it's already the 60th, not the forties).

me this statement struck as transforming relations between artists and evaluate their creativity in the sphere of ideological struggle, using its unfair advantage in our unequal social status.

us, unofficial artists in the sixties there were only 20-30 people. Why so little? Just because the artistry, not falling into the category of the officially permitted, at the time was simply dangerous. It did not give any practical benefits, rather the opposite, but it was personal, spiritual, organic need these artists.

In the fifties - sixties created an entirely peculiar atmosphere of coexistence of two cultures. One - the official, enjoying all the benefits offered by the government: the creative cottages and houses art, cheap materials, public workshops for the symbolic price, procurement of useless products, and etc. That is, such a system is the privileged position of the official artists who never dreamed of artist in the West (unless, of course, he was not a "superstar"). The second culture, "unofficial", there were only a few dozen artists, poets, musicians. Demonstrations of the art (as he later called "other") were private (in the basement, in a communal apartment) or a day in the semi-official setting some "closed" Research Institute, where the public "from the street" is not tolerated. These artists, poets and musicians known intellectuals (often hearsay) and, of course, the KGB. The general public, of course, knew nothing.

Affiliation "underground culture" automatically displays all of its participants in the "nonconformist", but - in relation to the official Soviet culture and ideology. Compared with the same contemporary world art and a few were nonconformists, but someone could be normal imitator, that is relevant standards that have existed for many years on the western art scene in the market or in mass culture.

Similar nuances of divisions in the conformist and nonconformist existed among the official painters. In the fifties - sixties, under the influence of the changed moral climate, the most gifted members of the Union of artists began to seek ways to portray the "truth of life", which became known as "severe style". This is manifested in greater thematic freedom, but with deadlock problems in the field of visual language. They good feeling abroad, which should not be trespassed. Grown in nurseries conservative academic institutions, in the tradition of the realist school dogmatize end of the nineteenth century, totally unrealistic contemporary artistic life of the West, they are aesthetically and intellectually unable to tear myself away from this school and made timid attempts to embellish the "dead", such as cripple, and aestheticize dead language samples poorly metabolized by the post-Cézanne, which seemed then to their environment, non-conformist gesture of freedom and has caused apprehension and panic Stalinist academics who have organized and scandal in the Manege, to maintain their position and get rid of the competition.

The division into formal and informal in the Soviet Union took place on the grounds of compliance or non formally established artificial stamps and it was small-town phenomenon, inside the fence, this division is clearly determined for the bosses markings of "a" - "alien" and gave the bureaucrats of the art and party ideologues monitoring tools.

Belonging to a formal or informal is not done automatically talented artist or untalented. Thus, the official art was a lot been decorated and the Leninist-Stalinist laureates whose work we have already forgotten, and which have left no trace in the art. But there were such outstanding painters as Deineka, whose work is clearly beyond the scope of the formal division of artists on the secondary social and ideological grounds. This also applies to informal artists, among them world-class artists with a distinct personality and artists of the second and third row.

Now, the division into formal and informal thing of the past, but remain eternally the problem of conflict, drama, which is rooted in the fact that a great artist and a premonition makes visible what still closed to others, giving it shape. And it often leads to rejection and even aggression of mass consciousness. In every society, it has its own peculiarities and depends on the experts who are also people, who dominate in the formation of artistic life and manage the artistic process. This affects both the exhibition activities, and the formation of museum collections. And the only prominent collectors such as Sergei Ivanovich Shchukin, and Georgiy Dionisovich Kostaki could go against the official routine, drove this vicious circle and collected, and often saved the works of artists, outcasts, who actually were prophets, and far ahead of time.

In Soviet totalitarianism management skill was of prescriptive, resulting in a formal art of socialist realism and, as his opposition, in the Fifties - Sixties - an informal art. Here's a classic Soviet reaction to this situation report from the Chairman of the CC Ideological Commission of the Communist Party Il'icheva at a meeting of the Ideological Commission after the defeat of the exhibition at the Manege in 1962: "When the comments were published by Khrushchev to the abstract, the Soviet public took them as an important step in struggle for the culture of communism, as a new stage in the improvement of the Party leadership development of artistic creativity. They say that some party comrades summarized criticism of certain analogy with the words: "There is such a party!". He added: "We have a separate art, ready to assert that the main problem of our art - the lack of dissemination of abstraction that is able, in their opinion, to breathe some new life into the socialist art. In the meantime, and then the whole absurdity of the situation, even in the West refuse abstract has passed, the exhibition of abstract art fail, their pictures ridiculed. And rightly so, people begin to gradually see through ... Lacking any sense abstraktsionistskaya scribble on the canvas represents nothing more than a pathological antics, pathetic imitation of the corrupt formalistic art of the bourgeois West. " Now it looks ridiculous and like a quotation from Gogol and Kharms, but then it was standard Soviet official demagoguery.

I think that the sense of artistic activity is not in service standards prevailing taste of society, and as Apollinaire said, in giving the world of image, which he then gets in the eyes of people. This vùdenie, as shown by the history of art, often in contradiction with the generally accepted norms and ideas (both aesthetic and ideological). In extreme situations Artist - Prophet, and normally, that the Prophet stoned. So it was and always will. The prophet and champion - that concept fundamentally opposed. The first exists in the space of the temple, the second - the stadium. The problem of distinguishing two spaces and put wonderful analyzes Russian philosopher Eugene Schiffers. Here is the watershed between the two types of artist. First - The Prophet - creates a new vùdenie, a new image of peace and life and is perceived by society as a heretic, and the second - Champion - exploits the stereotypes of mass consciousness, making a career "Superstar" and become heroes. The first is a long way to public recognition (often posthumously), the second - is the hero of the day and usually with him and disappeared. In this sense, Van Gogh, precisely because it was a brilliant artist, was a "nonconformist", a heretic, without knowing it, as an artist, who has positioned himself as a nonconformist and avant-garde, but uses a strange language, a set of well-known cliches and creates a unique artistic form, is actually a trivial conformist, a hero. Do not forget that Van Gogh did not live in the Soviet Union and was not the KGB, but it was a society that knew better how to paint a picture.

artist - this is your audience. He and most stringent Judge above him, unless, of course, does not suffer from delusions of grandeur and narcissism. Trying to "adjust" under the "other" viewers to work for him or for him - this is a catastrophe for the artist, as the audience is different and trying to satisfy a particular audience, the artist becomes a slave conditions, social or snobbish.

Here, as an example, two diametrically opposed opinions of two spectators at my exhibition in 1978 in Moscow:

«After the exhibition wants, forgive me, vomit and spew all over the world, but where is perfect, or at least desire for it.

Woman »

« Great Exhibition of Vladimir Yankylevsky ! Очень точно, убедительно. Бузупречное качество картин, действительно классическое. Так неожиданно-прекрасно открыть для себя нового художника. Выставка очень настоящая.

С уважением Резванова. Архангельск»

В структуре произведения легко считывается поверхностный, «внешний», уровень, сюжетно и стилистически доступный и понятный современникам, которые «как бы в курсе дела». Именно этот уровень чаще всего провоцирует вульгарную социально-политическую или вкусовую оценку произведения. Но именно этот слой произведения может стать исчезающе-неинтересным для взгляда из будущего, когда уже не будет тех, кто «как бы в курсе дела». Догматизированные принципы соцреализма долгое время обетонивались в стилистические признаки советского официального искусства, создавая комфортабельное ложе для конформизма. Это единообразие породило стада безликих авторов, произведения которых заполняли километры выставочных площадок Союза художников и Академии и выглядели как бесконечное повторение однотипных сюжетов и художественных приемов.

И сейчас проблема не в том, что коммунизм «отменили» и исчезло деление на официальное и неофициальное, а в том, что остается вечная драма конфликта художника, открывателя нового, и косного общества.

Настоящий художник своей интуицией и волей, как сверхчувствительное существо, делает невидимое видимым, создавая произведение как концентрированную и оформленную энергию жизни, мощно и персонально выраженную, давая людям некую модель ориентации в жизни. Это и есть единственная оправданная форма диктатуры, «диктатуры художественного вкуса», как говорил Пикассо, художественного открытия, которое не несет в себе ни догматизма, ни тоталитаризма, а является выражением подлинной свободы духа, которая будет видна и через сто лет.

Владимир Янкилевский
Париж, май 2010