Then he played professional basketball for the Dynamo. Was the bronze medalist of the USSR, 5-time Champion of the USSR among the youths. Even against Sabonis played, then the main enemies were the Lithuanians. Then I have had a spinal injury, and in 1978 career ended.

Q: But you did for some reason, the Institute of Civil Aviation. Do dreamed of becoming a pilot?

A: No, the Institute just next to the house was. From there they came to the youth team of the USSR in basketball, in which I played, and took me without any exams. But generally, I Papa polar aviation pilot, he flew to Antarctica and the Arctic. I have a child with him flying the plane, even rulil. Was this story: Pope was to fly over my children's garden, of course, at first no one believed it, but when still flying a red plane - and then the polar aircraft were painted in red - I was in the kindergarten for the next two months was hero. Houses stood a stuffed penguin lay a polar bear skin. My father told me how he fell, about the disaster are different. His letters to me are still kept. Stayed with the times and the numismatic collection about the North Pole, and postage stamps from Antarctica.

Q: Well - basketball, Aviation Institute, and when you still feel the artist?

A: Yes, I still do not feel the artist. Although I have always painted since he can remember. I am here, believe me, I feel an imposter somehow. And especially disturbs me when some journals appear the word "maestro" associated with my name. I am learning so far, thirty years of study, I draw every day. ( "Coquetry, of course, - to think. In 2003 Batynkov awarded the prize of the professional community" Master ". - EF).

Q: How did you manage to join the Union of Artists without higher art education in 1983, it was hard for?

A: In the Union entered my friend and I went with him in company with a folder of their work, showed them, and they took me ... as particularly talented. For me this was important because my friends Kohl Polissky and Sasha Florensky studied at the institute, and I came with no education. I was 24 years, I began to teach at the art studio for children, appeared workshop crust assisted living.

Q: How do you become Mitki?

A: We were all close friends. And then Mitkovskaya mythology has grown around this friendship and shared pastime. Kolya Polissky we had known since 1974 as he entered the Fly (Mukhina Art College in Leningrad - St. Petersburg. - EF) and studied in one group with Sasha Florensky. I was working on "Mosfilm" and during the formation of Mitki three years also lived in Leningrad. Were the organizers - Volodya Shinkarev, Mitya Shagin. I can say, was in the crowd. King in fact makes the suite.


Konstantin Batynkov. Untitled.
From the project Another life. 2004.
Acrylic on canvas. 145х195. Courtesy Krokin Gallery, Moscow


Q: Do you feel a crowd?

A: Yes, I felt a crowd, it was frustratingly difficult. Then he ceased to be.

Q: I've read that the phrase "Moscow Mitki" was supposed to be an oxymoron, why?

A: Well, yes, there were defective. Everyone drank, and drew pictures, then began a kind of exhibition activity. And then came the money, and about that I do not want to talk. An internal structuring - Volodya Shinkarev, Sasha Florensky and Dmitry Shagin become such a "politburo". All this is sad.

Q: Why is a split among Mitki?

A: The usual history of rock bands. When people in trains, hotels, airplanes, together 10 years - it is very difficult. Exhibitions were thousands. Everyone wanted Mitkov, all they were understandable. Only in the Soviet Union had 300 events. Now all solo discs, like rock musicians. All have grown and exist separately.

Q: It seems to me, Mitka - such Russian hippies.

A: Maybe. That's only about sex at Mitkov was not like a hippie. There is a word "uncomfortable". Mitek - it is as close to a woman gets drunk and sleeps like a log. Awkward ... met at a dance with a girl lead home nazhretsya, and in the morning apologizing. They'll sisters ...

Q: But after Mitka stopped drinking, I think, they lost their face, courage vanished.

A: When death scare, throw. In the epistolary genre is all ridiculous, but in life is sad when a person drinks, pisses, pukes, that is horror-horror. And when the horror that almost arrived, they went to America for treatment. But not all abandoned. I may have a year or stretch.

Q: How do you feel about the fact that Mitki now are friends with Valentina Matvienko, to their political activity?

A: This is not Mitka, this Mitya Shagin. Yes, normally I am for this. It so happened that Mitkovskiy Center VHUTEMAS Mitka gave Sobchak, they were friends with Sobchak, and we - Moscow Mitki - with Muzykantsky, did Mitkovskaya Christmas tree at the Manege Square. If the government offers you something interesting and it must not run around with a bare ass on the Manege Square, and vest - it can be. A bare ass - never!

Q: One could say that you - Mitek so far?

A: I do not know, I never thought about it. Only recently was an exhibition of wine labels on Winzavod, and Mitya asked to draw a label, I am pleased painted. When can I get somewhere to take part, I am pleased to participate. But when I came to this exhibition and saw a crowd of five hundred in a striped vest, some of whom came to the "Bentley" .... That is, they used to be in a striped vest, and now they have a "Bentley". And like I Mitek - I'm with these people themselves do not associate. Twenty years ago, artists and the people were united. This was delicious.

In: The contemporary art built-in glamor, it becomes a segment of luxury.

A: Well this is, perhaps, glamorous? (He points to the wall of his works.) Obviously, if the picture framed and hung insert in Barvikha, it will be glamorous. But I have no motivation to draw in order to sell. Money, of course, want to, but not to such an extent as to draw naked girls with shiny ass.

Q: I think your art much sadder than even what it was five years earlier. For example, a series of "Abstraktsisty and pidarasy" or about the Masons were grotesque and very funny. And lately you often draw the disaster - the machine to explode, construction cranes falling, the ice-breaker cuts in the city.

A: I still arrives from the underground to the house, I saw three accidents a day. Catastrophe - it may be total, plus a crisis now. But life goes on inside all this horror, the plane flies.

Q: Do you like what is happening in contemporary art?

A: I may not like everything, but I'm always on the side of the artist. Pepperstein I like. That's the kind of people say that I had all the rubbings.

Q: You both have something psychedelic.

A: Pasha draws such children's infantile image. All this from my childhood, I also there. Then, we work in the visual arts. If you have something cleverly portrayed, it is textually it is not necessary to describe. Aesthetics - the thing has a price.

Q: Are you for art that speaks for itself?

A: To draw an analogy with film, that is, intelligent movie, I did look for the educational interests, and there are film Averbakh "other people's letters, it is not quite intelligent, but the spine of the skin are. I am interested in the territory of sensory rather than intellectual. I like the director Danelia along with Tarkovsky.

Q: I think your work remind staff of the science fiction movie.

A: I'm at Mosfilm vetroduyschikom worked for ten years. The USSR had somewhere to work. He graduated from the Mosfilm courses decorative artist and remained at the studio, but to less to do something. If you see somewhere in the rain or snow in the film - it's me.

Konstantin Batynkov. Dinosaur.
From a series Allegory /Knight romance. 2006.
Vinyl wallpaper, acrylic. 105,7 h197. Courtesy gallery pop /off /art, Moscow

Q: Why do almost all the time drawing the winter?

A: There's a banal explanation: I have ten years had a studio in the basement with no windows. There color is very difficult to draw. And in general we have eight months of the year the snow. In fact, I do not know why I have something to draw. I was rushing and rushing. I can not largely explain why I painted these pictures. Now here I have no shop and just terrible suffering. Popil day or two, and you need more paint, and draw anywhere else.

Q: You work very hard, almost like a Renaissance man. (Y Constantine passes several exhibitions a year.)

A: I did not do a lot of work, it is no other dick do (boiled). It is an indisputable fact!

Q: There is no about this problem with the owners of galleries - you also work with several galleries?

A: No one shares. All is quiet. Everything is shared. My gallery owners - Michael Krokin, Vera Pogodin, Sergei Popov, and yet I have a Viennese gallery "Karenina". I am not a scandalous person, as I will - I always say "thank you". I do not sell pictures of the last ten years, I really do not like the point of sale (here on my voice recorder translates the contents Kostina glasses - perhaps the spirit of the GDP interfere in our interviews. He grumbled: "Mitya, Mitya, and so they Mitki something." Recorder after a baptism is working better than before, and we continue to talk. The atmosphere becomes more warm and relaxed.)

Q: Well, Mitka - Well this is freedom.

About: Freedom ... I was in the USSR is much more a free man, than in this capitalist society. There was no freedom to say something extra, to move, but there were internal freedom. Day three of you work through the guard - you are free, Draw what you want. And now the money, selling ...

Q: Now on the other hand you can travel.


A: I've traveled, traveled, and 5 years old do not go anywhere. Bury me feel. People have the same problem. I did not draw anything anywhere, either in Africa or in America or in Argentina or France.

Q: Do not inspired?

A: Well, you're sitting on the beach, drinking Calvados with artist Ponomarev ... Nature has a price so that the motivation to work for me personally, there are no. Or sit at the Baikal omul, barbecues. What fool would try to portray it? Or in Paris at the Trocadero: your cheese rests on a bench smelly, moldy, expensive by Moscow standards, and there are three penny worth. Not in a snobbish Moscow supermarket bought, and in the cheese shop. I lived a year in Paris, three years in Toulouse. All I had was good. But then ran into an impasse of some kind. The French do not like foreigners. I already spoke French, but as Ravshan and Dzhamshut, very briefly, but ...

B: Yes, sadly ...

A: What's sad? "The horror, the horror" - it's not mine. Although more and more I do not understand. I fear a painful death. I want freedom, equality, fraternity. I want to die quietly, unexpectedly. Most do not want anything - neither fame nor money.

Q: We all drank.

A: Come on "you". Here's what you want in life?

Then the conversation began to flow in a more relaxed atmosphere Mitkovskiy. And you, dear reader, we bid farewell to this place.