SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLING FROM MINSK TO PARIS

SENTIMENTAL TRAVELLING FROM MINSK TO PARIS

Paris - this concept is international and universal. It is a symbol and a reality, unique and specific, strongly differing from everything that I saw up to now… It’s easier to get to Paris by plane, but it’s more memorial and romantic - by bus, packed with people, the majority of which have never been there. Here we are leaving behind Minsk, Belarus, then Poland, Germany… Aura becomes thicker, it’s getting hard to breathe, the passengers piled off the bus at the stops to smoke and to get their feet to solid ground. The stops helped to give reality to our journey… and here is France… it’s getting dark… We came to Paris at night; it is completely different from what we see on picture postcards and in movies. Enormous, mysteriously illuminated blocks, unfamiliar streets, aqueducts, tunnels… flashing of lights and shadows…

In the afternoon Paris looks different… Time and space are pressed in pictures, stone and faces of people. Delicate, illusive Parisian charm. Greatness and grace, feeling of tact and measure. 20th century, with its aggression, fanaticism and immoderation, with its preoccupation with technical aspects and extreme formalism, revolt and denying of all previous world culture – it is organically and harmoniously fused into architecture and in itself became history of that culture which it denied… Even such radical forms as Eiffel Tower, Pompidou's center and a glass pyramid by the Louvre, became the same organic and habitual part of Paris, as the Elysee fields and Notre-Dame.

Our first visit is to Pompidou's Center, or National Museum of the Modern art. The building is stylized as a factory or an oil refinery – as if rationalism and functionalism turns out to be a baroque heap of structures and pipes.

The big exhibition is called «Big Bang » (the big explosion). The topic is: «Destruction and creation in the art of 20th century». For the first time the material is disposed not chronologically, but grouped according to themes. The style gave the exposition a relative integrity and dramatic character (as opposed to a similar collection in Stedlik museum in Amsterdam, which seemed more amorphous to me.)

When you think about the 20th century coming to a close, such question as «And what it was? » arises more persistently. Certainly, here, in the museum, not all art of the last century is presented, but here, in opinion of organizers, we find the sharpest and the most characteristic samples of art. It was really the big explosion, and the big destruction… destruction of the reality, that preceded the 20th century. But even explosion does not only destroy, but also creates. What has been created? A new reality! The Reality, in which we live, and also the new people who live nearby… We have found ourselves in the new, unfamiliar, not investigated world. And if the 20th century was at war with reality and the main thing was concept of efficiency, then the 21st century will have to accept this reality and concepts of truth and fidelity will become the leading ones…

Art of the 20th century closed its eyes and lived in the crazy, fantastic and fabricated world; to shock, to draw attention at any cost: by non-traditional behavior, or representing a deformed reality, grotesquely distorted and mocked at… Cyclic transitions from aggressive fury of destruction to a deep depressive melancholy.

But let me get back to my trip to Paris…It sounds strange enough, but I was strongly impressed by Montmartre. It was a bright, clear December day. We were ascending the real mountain. Fantastic sight of the city… Mentally I went back hundred years ago… This place was a suburb. Small side streets, cozy cheap cafes… Bohemia from all over the world… Sensation of constant bliss… Wonderful, cheap French wine and cheese. Beauty and greatness of the nature… The world is still whole with an air of concord, amicable and magnanimous … But in every soul there is a desire to pinch off, bite off, tear off from this whole a part, to divide and to take into possession this unique and indivisible world, not suspecting, that by these actions they destroy it… And, nevertheless, this city, which belongs to time, to the French and to all mankind, is still safe and sound, and from here, from Montmartre, it is amazingly beautiful…

Time unites and puts in harmony styles and eras; therefore for me the experiment of cleaning and modernizing of Notre Dame seemed not to be successful. But the resonant space inside the cathedral atones for everything; on each wall inside there are enormous, dusty, first class masterpieces of the painting which are no less outstanding than pictures of the Louvre …

And then there is the beauty of Louvre! It is within the enormous, majestic palace of French kings that infinite treasures that portray the spirit of man are preserved! It is impossible to examine everything in one visit; the only thing that helped me was that I had seen a lot of these works in numerous editions… I am running fast through the stored history of human culture, staying for a short while in some places of different times and different geographical spaces… Special interest to antiquity – integrity of the world, that for the first time appeared to human mind…

An amazing, unique variety of human experience… Egypt, Babylon, Sumerians, Chaldeans, Greeks, ancient Rome… Europe of the Middle Ages and renaissance, Europe up to the 20th century…The French painting of the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries attracts my attention – David, Jerico, Delacroix, Engr… I usually spend a long time in front of Rembrandt's pictures, but this time I accepted them more calmly… To my surprise my attention was absorbed for a long while by marvelous collection of Leonardo da Vinci. The feeling of mystery and depth… Copies do not reproduce the full scale of his works.

I leave the Louvre, taking with me so many images of infinite treasure of world culture. A lot of people must feel as I did, feeling immeasurably enriched and certainly the Louvre doesn’t become poorer for the effort...

… And this is d’Orse museum – a huge collection of impressionists – they seem a little bit dull and blackened… but late Claude Monet is magnificent and bright; and Van Gogh's postimpressionism is absolutely shining!

I am glad that I didn’t save my Euros and bought a collection of Russian painting at this place. I am able to view it through the eyes of the French – what we don’t understand at home, don’t appreciate… here looks effectively, unique, special…

The long queue at Klimt’s exhibition made it impossible to enter without giving up half a day to stand in line. But I was not discouraged. There are many private galleries in Paris (more than two thousand) scattered throughout the city. Besides there are fascinating small shops and little cafes, so much to see! Today's art is represented here – a general impression: predominance of decorative and aesthetic approaches, relishing of texture and virtuosities of touch; sometimes thin harmonies, sometimes vulgar, loud color… sometimes shocking.

Each gallery is oriented to its own spectator and buyer. The majority of them are directed toward an average one. Some of them – toward rich ones. Toward a rich vulgar buyer and a rich one with the claim for taste… As always it is difficult to find serious, deep art, there is not enough of it; it is difficult to break through.

Several days are not enough to get to study even a part of the galleries. And the galleries are only able to scratch the surface of the Parisian and the world art… … The art of the rest of the world is also represented here, sometimes including the works of Belarusian artists.

And now, not in a little place, but in Pierre Karden's Center, in the heart of Paris, the exhibition of painting of our Belarusian artists was given. The master of the Belarus painting Boris Zaborov honored the exhibition with his presence, to great delight of artists. The exposition can be praised and criticized for the same features. For example, to praise for the breadth of scope, for lots of styles and artists presented. And it could be criticized for the fact that the atmosphere of the exhibit did not display congeniality among the artists.

There is a dream that we could have more exhibitions with wide and narrower coverage, with the state investments and with possibly sponsor s' support. In fact culture, even more than sport, makes nations closer to each other, ennobles them… If such actions are not formal, if there is soul invested in them, the money spent can be repaid with the time due to the increasing value of pictures. Trust, understanding and friendship which come along can scarcely be overestimated…

Certainly, this time in Paris we saw much more, than we showed, and more gained, than gave… But let’s not show false modesty and pretend to be poorer than we are – in Minsk we have a wonderful collection of painting in the National Art Museum. We have multiple and quite strong school of modern painting, which is still not very well studied and known. The Belarusian painting had powerful, revolutionizing influence on the world. Let’s recollect the universally recognized geniuses of the 20th century – Shagal and Malevich. And Sutin? And our remarkable contemporaries – Tselkov and Zaborov, working abroad, but being our national pride and conscience?

Glory of the Belarusian art is also money, and money should bring interest … We do not use it. It is not rational …
Do we need cultural self-isolation?..
How shall we evaluate our cultural originality not having compared ourselves with the world?

The exhibition took place with visa support of the French embassy and the help of the Union of Artists of Belarus, and the main thing - due to the efforts and initiative of the ambassador of Belarus in France Shikh Victor Adamovich and his charming spouse Liliya Vasil’yevna.

Gregory Nesterov

January 20, 2006