Soviet nonconformist artists become classics. Nonconformism in Soviet culture: origins and originality Nonconformism in art artists

NEMUKHIN VLADIMIR NIKOLAEVICH

Born in Moscow on February 12, 1925 in the family of a native of the countryside who became a worker. He spent his childhood in the village of Priluki (Kaluga region), on the banks of the Oka. In 1943-1946 he studied at the Moscow art studio of the All-Union Central Council of Trade Unions. He followed the advice of the artist P.E. Sokolov, thanks to whom he discovered the art of post-impressionism and cubism. For some time (1952-1959) he earned a living as a designer and poster artist. He took an active part in private-apartment and public exhibitions of avant-garde art, including the scandalous "bulldozer exhibition" at the Moscow vacant lot in Belyaevo. Since the late 1960s, his painting has found more and more recognition in the West. Lived in Moscow.

After the early Prioksky landscapes in a traditional manner, as well as experiments in the spirit of cubism and pictorial abstraction, he found his style in the random motif of maps on the beach sand.

By the mid-1960s, this spontaneous motif took shape in semi-abstract "still lifes with maps", which became an extremely distinctive manifestation of "informal" - a special abstractionist movement based on combinations of pure pictorial expression with a dramatic and symbolic element. Then Nemukhin varied his find for many years, sometimes transforming the surface of the canvas into an object "counter-relief" plane, reminiscent of an old wall or the surface of a gambling table, wasted by time. He often wrote - in a mixed, as it were, pictorial and graphic technique - and on paper (Jack of Diamonds series, late 1960s - early 1970s).
The assimilation of the painting to the subject brought his works of the 1980s closer to pop art. During this period, he repeatedly turned to sculptural-three-dimensional abstractions, biomorphic or geometric, then more and more often, exhibiting his works, he accompanied paintings and graphic sheets with large installations.
"Dedication to Bach"

At the turn of the 20th century. lived mostly in Germany (Dusseldorf), constantly visiting Russia, where in 2000 his works took a prominent place in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. In 1999 the book Nemukhinsky monologues was published.
https://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/krugosvet/article/3/37/1008877.htm

Fri, 20/11/2009 - 16:58
Zebra

participant

SITNIKOV, VASILY YAKOVLEVICH

Born in the village of Novo-Rakitino (Lebedyansky district of the Tambov province) on August 19 (September 1) 1915 in a peasant family that moved to Moscow in 1921. In 1933 he studied at the Moscow ship-mechanical technical school, becoming addicted to the manufacture of models of sailing ships. An attempt to enter Vkhutemas (1935) was unsuccessful. He worked on the construction of the metro, as an animator and model for the director A.L. Ptushko, showed slides at lectures by professors of the V.I.Surikov Art Institute (hence the nickname "Vasya the Lamplighter"). Having become a victim of libel, in 1941 he was arrested, declared insane and sent for compulsory treatment in Kazan. Returning to the capital (1944), he was interrupted by odd jobs. During the "thaw" he joined the "unofficial" art movement.
The formal source of his work was the traditional system of academic teaching, based on nude work and meticulous graphic shading.

In Sitnikov's work, however, the academic nature turned into surreal eroticism, and the shading turned into a shaky air element, enveloping forms in the form of snowy haze, swamp fog or light haze.

To this were added the characteristic features of the "Russian style" in the spirit of Symbolism and Art Nouveau. This is how his pictorial and graphic series of the 1960s-1970s were born - nude, sexy grotesque, genres with a "monastery with snowflakes"
,
steppe landscapes (often also with the central motif of the monastery).
His very way of life was a kind of work-happening, continuous artistic foolishness, beginning with the famous inscription "I'll come right now" on the door of the apartment, where a valuable collection of church antiquities and oriental carpets was kept.
Since 1951, the artist has been actively teaching, fulfilling his dream of a "home academy".

His pedagogical system included many shocking paradoxes (advice on how to learn to tone, "shading" newspaper photos, or how to paint a landscape with a floor brush from a trough with a colorful solution). A number of prominent masters (V.G. Weisberg, Yu.A. Vedernikov, M.D. Sterligova, A.V. Kharitonov, etc.) were associated with the "school of Sitnikov" - both by direct apprenticeship and by creative contacts. However, in general, with some exceptions (such as those listed above), this school over the years has degenerated into the production of "underground souvenir" picturesque kitsch.

In 1975, the master emigrated through Austria to the United States. He donated the most valuable part of his collection of icons to the Andrei Rublev Museum of Old Russian Art. His own things "scattered" almost without a trace - not counting reproductions and individual works in museums. He had no success abroad.
Sitnikov died in New York on November 28, 1987.
From early works in the spirit of academism, he moved in the 1950s (first of all, in the cycle of the "wounded", expressing the painful memory of the war) to a distinctive style that combines the features of symbolism and cubism with violent expression.

His works are usually cast in bronze, in the largest compositions the sculptor prefers concrete.
The works of the Unknown, embodying the process of eternal becoming, a kind of "flow form", are composed in large cycles, both sculptural and graphic (and later pictorial): Gigantomachia (since 1958), Dostoevsky's Images (since 1963; in 1970 in the series "Literary Monuments" published the novel Crime and Punishment with his illustrations).

Since 1956, the artist has been working on his main, most ambitious idea - the Tree of Life
,
the project of a giant sculpture-environment, where the motives of a tree crown, a human heart and a "Mobius leaf" are bizarrely combined, symbolizing the creative union of art and science.

An unknown person received large official orders (a monument in honor of the friendship of peoples, the so-called Lotus Flower at the Aswan Dam in Egypt, 1971; decorative reliefs for the Institute of Electronics in Zelenograd, 1974, and the former building of the Central Committee of the CPSU in Ashgabat (now the House of the Government of Turkmenistan, 1975 ); and etc.). Having got acquainted with N.S. Khrushchev, it is true, during a scandal at an exhibition in the Moscow Manege, he subsequently performed his tombstone (1974), emphasizing the contradictory nature of Khrushchev's rule with symbolic contrasts of forms. In 1976 he emigrated, and from 1977 he settled in the United States, in the vicinity of New York.
TEFI

Since 1989, the master often came to Russia; here, according to his designs, a memorial to the victims of the Gulag in Magadan (1996) - with a giant concrete Face of Sorrow, - as well as the Renaissance in Moscow composition (2000) were erected. In 1996 he received the State Prize.

Beginning in 1962 (article Discovering New in the magazine "Art"), and especially in the decades of emigration, he presented theoretical articles and lectures on the symbiosis of Faith and Knowledge in art, designed to combine the artistic experience of the archaic and the avant-garde. Published white poems figuratively commenting on his art. In Uttersberg (Sweden) there is a Museum "The Tree of Life" dedicated to the work of the Unknown.

https://slovari.yandex.ru/dict/krugosvet/article/0/0c/1007903.htm
Wow, what a talented one, and I only heard nasty things about him before !!!

Recently, an exhibition dedicated to the 40th anniversary of the INAKI group of artists, which includes Viktor Bogorad, Sergei Kovalsky and Boris Mitavsky, opened at the Pushkinskaya-10 art center. Presented are their work over the years. What can you see here? The good old works have probably already been sold out, so for ten new ones (created after 1991) there is only one old one (before 1991). Hence the problem.

There is a 1973 manifesto in which artists insisted that their work should not be classified as abstraction or surrealism. Unfortunately, one cannot do without this, at least in relation to new works. To be precise, we are dealing with salon surrealism, easily understandable.

In cinematography, there is the term "exploitative cinema", when a certain banal theme is exploited in the film in order to maximize earnings with minimal investment. We can see something similar in the example of actual nonconformism, which is often engaged in the exploitation of itself, the images that were invented back in the Soviet Union. Of course, it happens that some topics do not lose their relevance for a long time. But in fact there are not so many of them as the artists imagine.

One of the problems of that generation of artists was the oppression of official art by the competent authorities in the USSR. For this reason, being at the peak of their creative activity, they could not find suitable conditions for development. As a result, art was created for internal consumption, it was fed only by its environment, and this lasted quite a long time. It was difficult not to get used to it. To this day, the game of nonconformism continues, which ends with the production of similar Soszart stories. There is one more problem that I don’t want to talk about, but you cannot pass it by. Alcohol. He killed many artists ...

Artist Sergei "Africa" ​​Bugaev singles out another problem, a more global one. The isolation of the Russian, and above all the St. Petersburg, artistic community, fixation on oneself. It is no wonder that artists find themselves cut off from everything that happens in world art.

“There is no circulation within artistic activity. There is a moment of stagnation, - says Bugaev. "At the same time, we still have a division into official and unofficial art." In this sense, the boundaries can now be erased altogether, because that former nonconformism could have long been the official glamor.

Africa also suggests that there is currently a lack of a good exhibition and museum infrastructure that allows artists to exhibit their work in other cities. Objects of art stagnate. Indeed, the lifetime of the exhibition is less than a month. And then what? Then the paintings will return back to the workshops ...

As for the issue of internal consumption of art, this is, in fact, a manifestation of snobbery in relation to those who “do not understand”. It turns out that owning objects of art is the prerogative of “those who understand” (just not everyone has money for this “understanding”).

In modern society, folk art is often treated as something shameful, unreal. Despite the fact that the Russian Museum is filled with just the works of folk art.

But in Germany, for example, buying a picture of a young, interesting, relevant artist, who in his works demonstrates opposition to the system, is considered normal.

Rector of the Academy of Arts. I.E. Repin, Semyon Mikhailovsky urges not to reflect on "Pushkinskaya-10", since for a long time neither it as such, nor everything connected with it has existed. Of course, the artists of the old generation should be remembered, but it's time to stop perceiving their work as actual art. The concepts of nonconformist art are outdated, and if we somehow position ourselves in the context of a museum, then accordingly. It makes no sense to artificially marginalize ourselves, otherwise it will turn out to be just an attempt to create a contrived conflict. Such exhibitions are for the most part really done for themselves, and the art market is not interested in the authors themselves. For those people for whom "Pushkinskaya-10" is an outside phenomenon, such topics are simply not interesting.

Do you want to commit an act of a true nonconformist these days, to do something contrary to the official ideology and unofficial art? Hang a classic socialist realism painting of students lifting the virgin soil at home. Nice and against the system.

Non-conformism. Under this name, it is customary to unite representatives of various artistic trends in the visual arts of the Soviet Union of the 1950s-1980s, who did not fit into the framework of socialist realism - the only officially permitted direction in art.

Nonconformist artists were actually ousted from the public artistic life of the country: the state pretended that they simply did not exist. The Union of Artists did not recognize their art, they were deprived of the opportunity to show their works in exhibition halls, critics did not write about them, museum workers did not visit their workshops.

1. Dmitry Plavinsky "Shell", 1978

"The creation of human thought and hands is sooner or later absorbed by the eternal element of nature: Atlantis - by the ocean, the temples of Egypt - by the desert sand, the Palace of Knossos and the labyrinth - by volcanic lava, the Aztec pyramids - by jungle vines. and her death and the moment of birth of the next ... "

Dmitry Plavinsky, artist

2. Oscar Rabin "Still life with fish and the Pravda newspaper", 1968

“The further, the more acutely I felt that I could not do without painting, for me there was nothing more beautiful than the fate of an artist. However, looking at the paintings of official Soviet artists, I completely unconsciously felt that I could never paint like that. And not at all because, that I didn’t like them - I admired the craftsmanship, sometimes openly envied them - but in general they didn’t touch them, left them indifferent. Something important for me was lacking in them. "

“I didn’t feel any influences on myself, I didn’t change my style, my creative credo also remained unchanged. I could convey the diversity of Russian life through the symbol - a herring on the Pravda newspaper, a bottle of vodka, a passport - everyone understands this. Or I wrote the Lianozovo cemetery and called painting "Cemetery named after Leonardo da Vinci." In my art, in my opinion, nothing new, newfangled, superficial. What I was - remained the same, as the song is sung. I do not have my own gallery, which feeds and directs me my creativity. I would not want to be a pet rabbit. I like to be a free hare. I run wherever I want! "

Oscar Rabin, artist

3. Lev Kropyvnitsky "Woman and Beetles" 1966

"Abstract painting makes it possible to get as close as possible to reality, to penetrate the essence of things, to comprehend all that is important that is not perceived by our five senses. I felt modernity as a combination of dramatic accomplishments, psychological tensions, intellectual oversaturation. I tried and I try, based on the experience and felt, to create a pictorial form corresponding to the spirit of the times and the psychology of the century. "

Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.

4. Dmitry Krasnopevtsev "Pipes", 1963

"The picture is also an autograph, only more complex, spatial, multi-layered. And if by the autograph, by the handwriting they determine (and not unsuccessfully) the character, condition and almost illness of the writer, if this decryption is not neglected even by criminologists, then the picture gives incomparably more material for guesses and conclusions about the identity of the author.It has long been noted that a portrait painted by an artist is at the same time his self-portrait - this extends further - to any compositions, landscapes, still lifes, to any genres, as well as to non-objective abstract art - to whatever the artist depicts. And with any of his objectivity, dispassion, if you want to get away from yourself, become impersonal - he will not be able to hide, his creation, his handwriting will betray his soul, his mind, heart, his face. "

Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, artist.

5. Vladimir Nemukhin "Unfinished Solitaire", 1966

"The inventory of the elements of the pictorial language consists primarily of objects. They were before - trees, banks, boxes, newspapers, that is, seemingly simple, recognizable objects. At the end of the 50s, all this turned into abstraction, and soon this abstract form itself began to tire me. This is the state that renews interest in the subject, and he, in turn, reciprocates. I believe that the subject is very important for the vision, because the vision itself is visible through it. "

"In the 58th year I began to make my first abstract works. What is abstract art? It made it possible to break immediately with all this Soviet reality. You became a different person. - a new vision. Art must be vision, not reasoning. "

Vladimir Nemukhin, artist.

6. Nikolay Vechtomov "The Road", 1983

"My life is the creation of my own artistic space, which I always tried to enrich and for this I tried a lot. I realized that each of us is always alone with the cataclysms of the twentieth century."

"We live in darkness and have already become accustomed to it, we completely distinguish objects. And yet we draw light from there, from the glow of the sunset Cosmos, it is it that gives us the energy of vision. Therefore, it is not objects that are important to me, but their reflections, for in they are lurking the breath of an alien element. "

Nikolay Vechtomov, artist.

7. Anatoly Zverev Portrait of a woman. 1966

"Anatoly Zverev is one of the most outstanding Russian portrait painters born on this earth, who managed to express the tremulous dynamism of the moment and the mystical inner energy of the people whose portraits he painted. Zverev is one of the most expressive and spontaneous artists of our time. His manner is so individual, that in each of his paintings one can immediately recognize the author's handwriting. With a few strokes he achieves enormous dramatic effect, spontaneity and instantaneousness. The artist manages to convey a sense of direct connection between him and his model ."

Vladimir Dlugi, artist.

"Zverev is the first Russian expressionist of the 20th century and a mediator between the early and late avant-garde in Russian art. I consider this remarkable artist one of the most talented in Soviet Russia."

Grigory Kostaki, collector.

8. Vladimir Yankilevsky "The Prophet", 1970s

"Nonconformism" is a constitutive feature of real art, as it opposes the banality and the stamp of conformism, giving new information and creating a new vision of the world. The fate of a true artist is often tragic, regardless of the society in which he lives. This is normal, since the fate of an artist is the fate of his insight, his statements about the world, which breaks the established stereotypes of perception and thinking created by "mass culture" and intellectual snobbery. To be a creator and to be "in due time" a canonized "hero" of society, a superstar is an almost insurmountable paradox. Attempts to overcome it are the path to a career of a conformist. "

Vladimir Yankilevsky, artist.

9. Lydia Masterkova "Composition", 1967

"All the time, with unabated strength in her abstract compositions, magical colors burn, then sparkle, then flicker with a dying fire. It seems that she is coming all the time from different sides to the magical surface of the canvas. recall Bach's organ chords, and sometimes greenish-gray, intertwined planes associated with biological forms, are associated with "The Creation of the World" by Millau. Masterkov's drawing says a lot. He organizes spots on the plane and the character of colorful accents. He is original and very expressive of the author. "

Lev Kropivnitsky, artist.

10. Vladimir Yakovlev "Cat with a Bird", 1981

"Art is a means of overcoming death."

Vladimir Yakovlev, artist.

"Vladimir Yakovlev's paintings look like a night sky full of stars. There is no light in the night, light is a star. This is especially evident when Yakovlev depicts flowers. His flower is always a star. Hence, there is some special sadness of joy when we contemplate it. paintings".

Ilya Kabakov, artist.

11. Ernst Unknown "Heart of Christ", 1973-1975

"I divide artistic activity (writing, musical, and visual) into two types: striving for a masterpiece and striving for flow. Striving for a masterpiece is when an artist faces a certain concept of beauty that he wants to embody, create a complete, capacious masterpiece. The desire to flow is an existential need for creativity, when it becomes analogous to breathing, the beating of the heart, the work of the whole personality. For artists of the flow, art is a materialized existence, moving at every second, arising and dying. And when I want to build my "Tree life ", I am fully aware of the almost clinical, pathological impossibility of this plan. But I need it in order to work. And plurality does not scare me, because it is sealed by mathematical unity, it is self-contained. All this is an attempt to combine several principles, an attempt to combine the eternal foundations of art and its temporary content. Xia constantly and eternally in faith in order to become noble, majestic, meaningful. "

Ernst Unknown, artist.

12. Eduard Steinberg "Composition with fish", 1967

"I can't say that I'm on some right path. But what is truth? This is a word, an image. Here Camus has a wonderful" The Myth of Sisyphus ", when an artist drags a stone up a mountain, and then he falls down, he again lifts it, drags it again - this is approximately the pendulum of my life. "

"I practically did not discover anything new, I just gave the Russian avant-garde a different perspective. Which one? Rather religious. I base my spatial geometric structures on the old catacomb murals and, of course, on icon painting."

Eduard Steinberg, artist.

13. Mikhail Roginsky "Red door". 1965

"I forced myself to recreate reality, based on my idea of ​​it. This is what I still do."

Mikhail Roginsky, artist.

The Red Door is an outstanding work that played a pivotal role in the history of Russian art of the 20th century. Together with the subsequent cycle of fragments and interior details (walls with sockets, switches, photographs, chests of drawers, tiled floors), this work laid the foundation for a new subject realism. "Documentaryism" (as Roginsky preferred to call his direction) predetermined the emergence of not only pop art, but a new avant-garde in general in the Soviet "underground" art, focused on the world artistic process. The "Red Door" sobered and brought back to earth many of the Soviet artists, carried away by utopian and metaphysical searches, surrounded by communal life. This work prompted artists to carefully analyze and describe the aesthetic aspects of everyday Soviet life. This is the limit of the painterly illusion, the bridge from the picture to the object.

Andrey Erofeev, curator, art critic

14. Oleg Tselkov "Golgotha" 1977

"I absolutely do not need to exhibit now. In half a century it will be extremely interesting for me to show my works. Today I am surrounded by the same fools as myself. They understand no more than me. People write in order to comprehend something. The artist's hand is not driven by striving. exhibit, and the desire to tell about what I have experienced. When the picture is painted, I no longer have power over it. It can remain alive or perish. My paintings are my letter in a bottle thrown into the sea. Maybe no one will ever catch this bottle, and it will crash on a rock. "

Oleg Tselkov, artist.

15. Hulot Sooster "The Red Egg", 1964

"In his view of nature there is neither spontaneity, nor surprise, nor admiration. It is rather the view of a scientist striving to penetrate the secret of things. The artist seems to be looking for some ideal formula of nature, its centricity, a formula as complete and as complex as form eggs".

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Every Wednesday admission to the permanent exhibition "Art of the XX century" and temporary exhibitions in (Krymsky Val, 10) is free for visitors without a guided tour (except for the exhibition "Ilya Repin" and the project "Vanguard in three dimensions: Goncharova and Malevich").

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