Squares (rectangles, etc) or "artifacts by Nesterov"

Catalogue for exhibition "Nesterov's rectangles" (National Museum of Art in Minsk, 2010)

The squares
(rectangles, etc) or artifacts’ by Nesterov.

The 19-th century was a century of feeling,
It gave way to the 2o-th - a century of mind,
century of transformations, century of abstractions, form separate from a content.
A century of freedom from everything that binds together (roots, traditions, feelings, culture, mastery, God etc),
And this can be understood- fatigue from the usual rhythm, from the usual way of solving a problems, further movement in this directions lead to a deadlock and was senseless.

Revolution was needed and it happened.

The artist liberated himself from god (as the idea of the whole), from a culture and a moral -
“the all is allowed”, from a mastery - new revelations are not in this way,
the liberation, abstraction from matter, the bare form is now the idol,
The liberation from traditions - to clear the way to modernity, from love and feelings -
these are the bonds, from history.
The artist is now free from all this,
he could add moustache to Joconda portrait,
to declare a lavatory pan, as a work of art,
Tie a brush to a donkey's tail, declare any spittle of the artist's as a work of art,
a junk, a tins with a excrements, a fragments of a text,
and at the end a bare canvas as a work of art.

logical, it would be appropriate to place a full stop here but an artist can’t stop the inertia…
Infinity became rotten, assumes a meaningless character,

We have come to where we started from: into a deadlock.

As far back as early 80-s of the past century,
an impertinent, revolutionary idea, encouraged by Malevitch but contrary to him,
came into my mind - to declare a work of art as a work of art
and name it as “rectangles” or “artifacts’ by Nesterov”,
And thus get back the artist rejected by Malevitch,
get back a mastery, craft, culture, tradition, history, feeling, love, beauty, nobleness and God.
It needs to restore the lost unity of spirit and matter.
Today, on a new turn, bear in view of the formal achievement of the 20-th century,
new rich vistas and opportunity the new art open up.
Don't look for the sun where it has set.

A long road is ahead...


Gregory Nesterow 2004

                                                   
www.art-fakt.comgnesterof@yandex.ru
gnesterov.blog.tut.by