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Alexander Genis: On the eve of the opening of the Venice Biennale, a major, perhaps the show of contemporary art, we met in our New York studio with a party Biennale Vitaly Komar to talk in detail about the fate of art in different mills from different periods. Vitali, with which you are traveling to Venice?
Vitaly Komar: I am participating in the exhibition, which is prepared by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art exhibition is called "Lost in Translation". Will be shown one of my early work, which is associated with the images of mass agitation, visual propaganda, with slogans, with texts and their possible transfer.
Alexander Genis: Translation from what to what?
Vitaly Komar: This refers to the universal understanding of the word "language". Because, as you know, the language may be a visual language, for example. Dance. Painting. Many species of visual language. For example, the dance can be combined with the audio language, music as a form of speech, the speech as a kind of music. It is understood translation in a very broad sense.
Alexander Genis: How do we know all too well, having lived in the third century America, the difficulties of translation - it all our lives. When you come to America and brought here the images of Soviet and Soviet posters, Soviet symbols, how difficult it was to move to the U.S. this language?
Vitaly Komar: The visual language is more universal than the national language, the national language of the country. The fact is that, for example, the language of Soviet propaganda was working with the ideas of communism, socialism, Marxism, and so on, but the idea of promoting the idea of advertising, the Western idea of advertising is structurally very similar. I can not, for example, of Soviet Socialist ideology advertising slogans, advertising Soviet ideology and can not be called Western slogans, western consumerism advertising propaganda.
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Alexander Genis: Of course. I agree with you, because it all goes to the same source - the mass culture. Goebbels here, too, can remember. But more interesting to me, tell me, for example, Mickey Mouse - a powerful image that conquered the world, he is as popular in China or Mongolia, as well as in Russia and America. But all efforts to promote the image of Lenin did not lead to such consequences. Why one campaign is successful and the other not? How do you as an expert on the subject to solve such a dilemma?
Vitaly Komar: The fact that Mickey Mouse has never declared an American. Mickey Mouse was universal, like any animal.
Alexander Genis: But He never claimed to be a Russian. When asked who his nationality, Lenin said, I am by birth - a revolutionary. That is a universal figure of Lenin, too?
Vitaly Komar: That's right, he has many names, including the revolutionary, he was a man with a mass of aliases. Still, he remained exclusively in the context of the Russian Revolution.
Alexander Genis: Vitali, as one of the fathers of Sots Art, razrabatyvovashy this style on both sides of the Soviet border, what a stylistic difference between sots in the Soviet Union and sotsart abroad?
Vitaly Komar: sotsart abroad has become much more elitist, I'd say. If we compare the early sotsart we Alik Melamid started doing in the early 70's, but then we came up with the word sotsart as a symbol of our project, and then it became a household name. So, this sotsart dealt with exclusively outdoor mass propaganda and agitation, with visual or agitprop, was said to have visual agitation. And the Sots Art, which gradually transformed and emerged in the West, was more elitist. It is operated with an art museum. Here you need to make a little history of art, which is not yet digested. Visual propaganda, street slogans were a branch of Russian avant-garde, which survived the conservative Stalinist period. The museums of the avant-garde has been destroyed, it was demolished in the basement, his place was taken by realistic, socialist realist paintings. But outside these slogans, state conceptualism, which began in the early years of the revolution, he stayed.
Alexander Genis: That is a mausoleum - a state conceptualism?
Vitaly Komar: Part of the mausoleum - it's eclectic, it's - a mixture of Soviet socialist-realist kitsch and Russian avant-garde. The fact that the two branches have sotsart. One branch - is eclectic, where Socialist Realism and Soviet culture was considered along with other world trends and 20th century, and the early stages of art, another branch - this appeal to advertising slogans. We had some projects where used in the form of conceptualism Western advertising, Western directories up to the sale and purchase shower and so on. But the product was as ephemeral as an ideology.
Alexander Genis: Tell me, you can apply to the U.S. sotsart topic? For example, I remember your work, where Reagan was depicted as a centaur, was a very popular work.
Vitaly Komar: Absolutely, and not only this work was a series. It was called the "American Dream." Opera we have done together with composer David Solgerom, it has withstood a lot of plays, and was a big press, where Lenin and Washington discussed and debated, whose revolution is better. They were joined by Marcel Duchamp, who was also in 1917, made his major revolutionary thing, put urinals, calling it a fountain, and placed in the space of the exhibition room.
Alexander Genis: Many people believe that sotsart died with the Soviet authorities, unless, of course, to assume that she's dead. What do you think?
Vitaly Komar. "Cross and Crescent" Vitaly Komar. "Cross and Crescent"
Vitaly Komar: I think it was just the opposite. After the disintegration of the Soviet Union, any reference to the Soviet culture was sotsart. If this is a literal quote, serious citation of Soviet culture, the temporal distance creates quotes.
Alexander Genis: That is ironic that the gap that allows you to look at the object ironically.
Vitaly Komar: The quotes are ironic twist. But if it is by definition an ironic attitude, it is - sotsart early. If it's the opposite eulogy, there appear the same quotes. Now you can not talk about any phenomenon of Soviet culture, not once sotsartistom.
Alexander Genis: So you do not give out the art: it can be either conscious sotsart or unconscious sotsart.
Vitaly Komar: Yes, conscious or unconscious sotsart. But the Soviet culture has in the past, and that's why this time distance acquires a tone that never occurred in the original text and images.
Alexander Genis: I understand your words, comparing them with the German experience "Ostalgie": nostalgia for the East.
Vitaly Komar: We made a series of nostalgic socialist realism, if you remember, it was 81.
Alexander Genis: Yes, I am often reminded of the statement of Maria Romanova: "Emigration - a drop of blood taken for analysis." We have, in Russian America, because it happened before. I remember that I brought to the restructuring of one of the Soviet writer on Brighton beach, he looked at the luxury shops with sausage and says, "We at this vulgarity is not valid." Admitted.
Tell me, how sotsart - an international phenomenon? You, for example, worked with Chinese artists. It looks?
Vitaly Komar: Chinese artists, of course, were heavily influenced by Sotsart. The Book of Komar and Melamid without copyright without the permission has been translated into Chinese, sold so far in many Chinese museums and bookstores. Young Chinese artists recognize that familiarity with the works of Russian Sots Art has made a big impression on them. But, I think the Chinese counterparts have surpassed us in size and investment. The fact that Chinese artists, Chinese culture has never been the avant-garde as some kind of protest against the old European culture. They came to modernism when modernism was quite respectable, generating large revenues occupation. Therefore, they have never been the avant-garde, underground, causing the non-conformist, and hence the self-destructive instinct was not shown.
Alexander Genis: So was part of the Western avant-garde art was perceived without protest, without war, without scandals?
Vitaly Komar: In years when China was allowed modernism - after the death of Mao Zedong in the late Gorbachev period - modernism was not avant-garde, it was not a revolution, it was expensive, is listed among the bourgeoisie, among respectable museums, respectable circles in the direction of art.
Alexander Genis: And what do you think, for example, the artist Veyveya?
Vitaly Komar: He's a great artist. When he was in prison, I have presented their work at the auction - the money went to the campaign to be released.
Alexander Genis: You recently performed in New York with a lecture about your work, which can be regarded as summing up the subtotals. Your as joint and Melamid and individual creativity is extremely proteichno, you are constantly changing. What remained the same over the years?
Vitaly Komar: I think sotsart certainly changed. But the two main directions of the changes were very clearly delineated - it sotsart understood as conceptualism, or rather the concept of pop art, because we have put forward a rather unexpected understanding of visual propaganda as a state social-conceptualism.
Alexander Genis: So. Bank of soup as Andy Warhol portrait of Lenin can serve the same object painting?
Vitaly Komar: Probably not the bank itself, and advertisement of the banks, advertising of this soup. Because we are always dealing with a double reflection, with reflection reflection. Still, the conceptual pop art - it's not the product itself, as it is an advertisement of the product.
Alexander Genis: Let us remember that Andy Warhol's soup is also not shown, as the bank with the soup.
Vitaly Komar: Sure, but the bank may be sold as the amount that can be opened and eat. And another thing, the flat image on cans of soup commercials.
Alexander Genis: So it's pop art in the square.
Vitaly Komar: This image is an image.
Alexander Genis: So this is what is called a simulacrum: a copy without an original?
Vitaly Komar: In a sense, you can call it that, that's exactly right.
Alexander Genis: And the second line?
Vitaly Komar: The second direction - this awareness Sotsart as one of the styles of the history of world art. It was a very important transition to eclecticism, which really allowed to change. If you simply stated - is a different understanding of individual style. The fact is that we confuse the notion of individual style and the concept of collective historical style. Both one and the other in the history of art is called style.
Alexander Genis: In one case - a style, in the other case - it is rather a school.
Vitaly Komar: The manner school. Nevertheless, the word "style" is quite correct. What is the point of this discrepancy, or the use of synonyms, but with a different meaning, which is very often in the language points to an important point. Individual style can be attributed to the style of the collective, such as impressionism or cubism. We see the cubism of Picasso, Braque's cubism, but nevertheless, in the framework of a collective historical style called cubism, we see Picasso's personality.
Alexander Genis: Although in this particular example, it is difficult to distinguish from each other.
Vitaly Komar: No, I distinguish. It depends on how long you've studied the language. Like any other language, the visual language requires full immersion in it. I always distinguish between a man who a few superficially familiar with the history of styles, and the person to whom it is just fun to do on a regular basis, and so on, not just as a gesture of general education, namely, a person is immersed in it.
Alexander Genis: I'm just that amateur, all that interesting ...
Vitaly Komar: There are talented amateurs who are just very easy to learn the language of the sound, without delving into its meaning. Then a huge variety of approaches. Take a variety of Impressionist, many of my colleagues do not even always be much different from their hitherto unseen landscape impressionist landscapes from some Sisley, suppose Pissarro, but nevertheless, if you are a long time it looked like and you tell the difference intonations.
What I actually am - to the fact that for the first time since the Impressionists, appeared in the same city, such as Paris or New York, at one time, for example, in the late 19th century or today, the simultaneous existence of different styles. It never happened. For example, in the age of Caravaggio all artists more or less Mannerists and all were under the influence of karavadzhistskih lighting effects. What's happening today - it's quite a unique pattern. You go on area galleries in London, in France, in Paris or New York, and you see that in this gallery are selling abstract art in the gallery of the geometric abstract, in this expressive abstract and photorealism in this, but here the Greek icon sold, and contemporary artists of Greece, there is a wonderful school. Here is sold styling conceptualism or even video art. And every person who loves this or that, go to the gallery, which he likes. You do not buy a chicken in a furniture store.
Today, it had this unique opportunity, as the style was to play the role of the genre. Now you can one and the same author's express individuality in different styles.
This explains our proteichnost, you spoke about. You do not just tell a Picasso cubist like, but Picasso symbolist in his blue and pink period from other Symbolists. That's the beauty. There is an opportunity to express their individuality, their individual intonation as well, as we use the words from the dictionary, do not we come up with them. Suppose we Alik coined the word "Sots Art", but in fact most of the words we take from the dictionary. However, our voice, the pronunciation of the words individually.
Vitaly Komar. "Landscape with the mausoleum" Vitaly Komar. "Landscape with the mausoleum"
Alexander Genis: That's very interesting - "style as a genre." Tell me, do you think the artist is a productive situation or not? Here Spengler believed that this is the end of all art, because as soon as there are many styles to disappear every style.
Vitaly Komar: You can say anything, sometimes words are powerless to describe a complex situation. I think, in the history of art we find artists such as Courbet, who could do and great songs, portraits, still lifes, and landscapes. Same with artists mnogostilevymi, the possibility of which is only now appears. Because Picasso changed at different periods of time. Now there is the possibility of the existence of artists who at the same time, in fact, within one year, then back to one, then to a different style depending on your mood. I think, in this higher freedom even in the Buddhist sense.
Alexander Genis: Are you always interesting to talk about history. You once said that artists are well aware of the history, because every artist the heir to the tradition of the whole at once. And your Buddhist ideas about the artist proteichnom fit well with the eastern tradition. That's how the Japanese changed every 7 years, the names and the manner in order to become a different person. This update is certainly unusual for us in the West.
Vitaly Komar: It's closer Picasso, he had periods. But I am saying that for literally years a person can work in a variety of styles - genres. My favorite example of Courbet and with major artists who worked in the genre of still life, rubbed, large compositions, landscapes. I think so. that there are more and more names who have realized this freedom to work with different styles, like a dictionary realized the art of intonation, as a kind of encyclopedia. After all, every dictionary, like any encyclopedia - the apogee of eclecticism. Today, we're losing the line between eclecticism and synthesis, we just combine the things we put Darwin and religion, and do not think about the contradictions. Even uttering these words are located in different time. You can not simultaneously say two words, one person can not do it, but a row you can do it.
Alexander Genis: Do you think that today's art is able to understand this state of affairs?
Vitaly Komar: I think this is a very important process, because eclecticism sooner or later must eradicate the Aristotelian tradition of dualism: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis of a compound of any two contradictory elements, roughly speaking, compromise, especially at the level of politics and diplomacy. In the East, in particular, within the tradition of Zen is possible existence of a third, say, the element that is equally opposed to the first statement and the opposite, and second opposite. In the European tradition is very difficult to imagine the third statement, which is the opposite of the two contradictory statements.
Alexander Genis: In the East, it is also difficult. Over koans suffer for years.
Vitaly Komar: Of course, this is a special tradition. But I think it was in the language of art is now maturing this eclecticism. And in politics, too. We are seeing a strange mixture of elements of socialism, understood as a large corporation, and capitalism, conceived as sometimes criminal anarchy and confusion in America is happening in Russia, but, of course, the proportions are different.
Alexander Genis: It's like a recipe for foie grouse - one horse, one grouse.
Vitaly Komar: It happens.
Alexander Genis: Vitali, let's go from theory to practice. After all, this is not your first appearance at the Biennale, which was the most memorable?
Vitaly Komar: The most memorable was the participation at the Biennale, which I was not. The fact is that I, like many of the artists whose works were destroyed during the "Bulldozer Exhibition". And the "Bulldozer Exhibition" is included in all the lists and books devoted to the most interesting exhibitions of the 20th century. I left Russia at the end of the 77th, just in the winter. My co-author Alex Melamid was allowed before, and he was able to get on the "dissident" Biennale 1977. I, unfortunately, could not get into. It was very interesting part is very ephemeral. Then the second part in the Biennale in the international pavilion at Arsenal - it was, if I'm not mistaken, in 1995. And 99 we Alik Melamid represented Russia at the first floor of the pavilion on the second floor was a St. Petersburg artist Africa (Bug). Russian pavilion this year is artist Zakharov, absolutely wonderful conceptualist, which is always very interesting, it seems to me. has a very good historical approach. Now the national pavilions accompanied by a number of pavilions with group exhibitions and, in particular, an exhibition organized by the Moscow Museum of Modern Art "Lost in Translation" - this is the show where I'm involved, and I'm going to take another look not so much, frankly between us, the paintings as the very atmosphere, where works of art are mixed with people from the city itself, with pitiem coffee and contemplation of the flow of people as well as hermits once viewed the flow of water. That's an amazing feeling great international exhibitions: you're in a crowd, and at the same time each alone. This, by the way, brings us back to the idea of individualization in a collective style.
Alexander Genis: Vitali, is it true that you were going to bring the elephant in the Biennale?
Vitaly Komar: Of course, it was planned, of course. The exhibition was dedicated to the co-authorship with the animals. You know that artists have always worked in collaboration with the animals, take an example, even as the manufacture of brushes: no fur, taken from an animal, sometimes on time, sometimes forever, nothing can not be drawn.
Alexander Genis: It is true that the animals did not ask.
Vitaly Komar: The animals did not ask, of course. But you know, I'll tell you about the exhibition, it was my old job, and I did not ask to take or not take, just take a collector, and I was told in hindsight, do not just take, but also made her a symbol. It was welcome news in any case.
Alexander Genis: But as with the elephant cost?
Vitaly Komar: Russian pavilion was turned into a pavilion of the animal kingdom. In addition to Mickey chimpanzees, which we first learned to work with the Polaroid camera, and when he realized the process of the image appears on a flat photograph, then, and with old-fashioned camera, but there elephants involved.
The fact is that from time immemorial elephants experienced and still experience a strange need, hold the tip of the trunk in any piece of stone or piece of wood, draw the strange lines on the dusty ground, on a dusty or damp surface. This love of the lines. This love is inexplicable to the lines, and the fact that apparently waiting to be explored. Maybe the creative instinct is much older than we think.
Alexander Genis: Levi-Strauss said that if singing makes us human, I agree to assume people even birds.
Vitaly Komar: I totally agree with this, it is very correct. In the project of co-authorship with the animals were, for example, dam projects along with beavers, home of termites, which, of course, long before Gaudí found this architectural style. In particular, what we did with Alec: we replaced a piece of stone or piece of wood, which the bishop can find in the woods or in the field, tactless, water-based paint, and given the brush. Elephants began to do some very interesting pictures that can be called abstract paintings.
Alexander Genis: I remember you showed me this job, and said that the elephant is an unpredictable line that is highly appreciated in abstract art. But to send elephant failed to Venice?
Vitaly Komar: Just like not allowed to bring a star of the Moscow Circus Mickey. Society for the Protection of animals and animal rights very successful, especially in Italy in recent years. In zoos, there are only those individuals who were born at the zoo. It is forbidden to bring animals into captivity from other countries pull out of the primitive context.
Alexander Genis: The traditional question: what are your plans - near and far?
Vitaly Komar: I now keep a project where sotsart merges, grows, develops symbolic art. At the time, not only I, but many have noted that the pioneers of modernism and the avant-garde in the early works were heavily influenced by symbolism. Picasso's early works, the early work of Malevich, Kandinsky, and so on. The symbolism was common place in painting at the time. And the idea of modernism, avant-garde, the idea of the destruction of the old traditions arose simultaneously with Marxist ideas with socialist ideas, but they had to deal with the visual traditions of art, not a problem of the society. The influence of symbolism, particularly Baudelaire we can find in Bakunin's translation of the first lines of "The Internationale": the specter haunting Europe.
Alexander Genis: Ghost - is Baudelaire's flâneur?
Vitaly Komar: Of course, we are underestimating the extent and Marx, and the early avant-garde artists were children here this symbolism, symbolist children understand the beauty and peace. So I'm trying to return a little sotsart roots of symbolism to instill in him a light mysticism.
Alexander Genis: My last question has to do with the date. We have just celebrated the 75th anniversary of the birth of your companion Vagrich Bakhchanian, which, alas, is no longer with us. How do you see the musical legacy Bakhchanian today that it now seems valuable and relevant?
Vitaly Komar: I have always had a great weakness for works of art and Vagrich to him as a person. It was a surprisingly charming, witty man. With him it was very nice to talk to. I hardly even separating the context of his personal life, personal stories of what he was doing. In general, the artist, I think it is difficult to separate the album art history from the family album, we're all on the same tree are in the genealogical history of art. In this sense, we are not just Vagrich spikes from a single trunk, but I think the spikes on one branch. It is no coincidence, and it, and Komar and Melamid, and Prigova, many other artists, such as Sasha Kosolapova such criticism as Groys and other prominent critics living in Russia, ranked as sotsart. This is doubly made us relatives.
What he says about the modern understanding and use of styles of painting, I said in the preface to the catalog of his exhibition in the Central House of Artists, 2011.
And not only said, but printed in 1000 copies.
The ideas are in the air and come to a head at the same time a lot of people, some a little earlier, someone a little later.
What he says about the modern understanding and use of styles of painting, I said in the preface to the catalog of his exhibition in the Central House of Artists , 2011. And not only said , but printed in 1000 copies . The ideas are in the air and come to a head at the same time a lot of people , some a little earlier, someone a little later .
This all is about 30 years , and unlike your understanding of the understanding in the presence of Komar ( Mosquito ) or absence ( your case ) postmodern games.
artcol, he is not talking about post-modernism, and the style of a genre, te as an artist before choosing what to write?
(Still Life) now chooses to write in what style?
In the introduction I wrote about styles like colors on a palette, te style - it's just a means of expression, such as red or green paint.
artcol, he is not talking about post-modernism , and the style of a genre , te as an artist before choosing what to write ? ( Still Life) now chooses to write in what style ?
In the introduction I wrote about styles like colors on a palette , te style - it's just a means of expression , such as red or green paint .
Postmodern (or rather, postmodern culture ) has given such an opportunity - it's a fact . You just use it in different ways , that's what I wanted to say. A different approach .
There, by the way , about the Spengler still , pay attention .
This is around 30 years , and unlike your understanding of the understanding in the presence of Komar ( Mosquito ) or absence (your case) post-modern game.
__________________
I liked that he was singled out as some news indeed taking place on the phenomenon of " mixing styles " , or rather , the coexistence is not always peaceful, different traditions of painting. Modern art is omnivorous request ...
Perhaps because formotvorchestvo exhausted , the novelty of the forms can not be ...
Then, finally, you can retry the attempt to construct a sense of the same means.
" Form " conceptualist , too, was exhausted ...
Variance of is possibly due to the fact that many artists do not agree that new ideas can be searched and express only completely abandoning figurative images. The so -called " realism " , or rather his interpretations , more features than is commonly believed.
__________________ "Будьте внимательны, сильные личности. Мне кажется, что в настоящее время нет ничего дороже и реже встречающегося, чем честность" (Ф.Ницше "Так говорил Заратустра".)
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"Form" conceptualist, too, was exhausted ...
..... The so-called "realism", or rather his interpretations, more features than is commonly believed.
Naturally! Realism richer things as how metaphysics richer physics.
Here and artists after poets, switched formats on the "meta".
Only snakes shed their skin,
That the soul grew old and grew
We, alas, are not similar to snakes
We are changing the soul, not the body.
N.Gumilev. "Memory"
F O R M A T F O R M s
Dimly lit office cubicle.
Required chairs yes tables.
Along the wall with papers Mahina.
Hundred feet scuffed floors.
You get up to meet a friendly,
Hiding the soul in a business suit jacket.
On your smile I reply
But first, "climbed to the attic."
From the height of the top of the universe
One can see the shape and size of the body of the soul,
We hear all the motives of creation.
From the height of all people are good:
Malyavka rode in the train -
I tried to evaluate the appearance,
And the generosity of nurses
Saved someone's life thread;
Bedovala Russian side,
But deciding the fate of the great rite -
Overawed petty little soul,
And lost all creative initiative.
Apparently only the body shape.
It is sometimes caught sight.
But what we were up to the body case
When the soul is important only format.
___
You get up friendly towards.
Two seconds allotted to me to understand
As the soul changed since the last meeting,
Cringed il has grown again?
We changed the formation of society - it was informational.
A year ago, saw a friend's work program (title Painter type or something like that). Load a photo , choose a style (you can choose as an author and generalized) , detail, color , etc.
And at the outlet have depending on the settings finished work w k can then be printed on a printer 3 .
Style as a genre .
Ponatno that Komar and Melamid act differently . They are made from old styles new style mix or, optionally , a mix different narratives .
Same style as a genre .
But the difference is still noticeable .
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28.05.2013, 11:01
Vitaly Komar on the eve of the Biennale
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