Dinos Chapman: "We helped recession»
Shortly before the award ceremony Kandinsky-2008 Valentin Dyakonov talk with Dinos Chapman of shock, sexuality, art and economic crisis.
Valentin Dyakonov
Senior Chapman unlike his brother Jake's growth, sad eyes and bald head. However, Jake does not stop when he says something - he generously insults, praise, and pouring it terms from the lexicon of fashion in the 1990 French philosophers (see the interview with him in "ArtChronika», № 12, 2007). And Dinos stressed polite and very concise. One feels that the joy of communicating with the press, he leaves a brother. And maybe it's wisdom: Chapman did not have anything to prove. Recently, Jonathan Jones, a powerful critic of the left British newspaper The Guardian, likened the installation Chapman "Hell" a masterpiece of Pietro di Cosimo and called them artists, worthy to stand in one row with the masters of the Renaissance.
Q: Have you been to Moscow once. How do you like it?
A: Yes, we came to the exhibition in the gallery "Triumph". I remember it was a lot of vodka. I immediately became ill and therefore had no contact with the press.
Q: Chapman brothers' reputation as an artist that shocking the audience. But I just think that you probably moralists at heart. Take your sculpture "Death II»: two rubber dolls from a sex shop in the position of "69". It's just a puritanical denial of sex - you show the futility of life and pleasures.
A: It's simple. All artists are based on the images that exist in the art for a long time. Impossible to invent something brand new. Therefore, we rely on something created long before us, simply build their relationship with the audience in new ways. With regard to the shock, I am always amazed by these conversations.
Q: You wrote an article about that artists - normal people, not sexual giants. Why so spoil the reputation?
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A: Some sociologists have come up with an idiotic idea: measure the sexual activity of people from different walks of life and find out who cohabit more than anyone. Their results even no sense to discuss - show me a man who does not lie in the question as to whom and when. Even anonymously. But sociologists, received from the artists, people with great imagination, information about their busy lives, have decided that after they passed the gene of schizophrenia, for which the creators were more likely. Brad! We Jake always emphasized our absolute normal. We are not much different from other people, no matter how someone would think otherwise. Our sculptures are exhibited in the large white spaces, separated from the street and thick walls. I've been watching news, reading newspapers and magazines. Every day the world is absolutely terrible things, but the media somehow beneficial to seek shock and awe, where they can not be. Namely, in the art. Art-world, I tell you, this is very, very safe place. It is dry and warm. It is securely locked from the outside world.
Q: And so it is possible, for example, such work, as your series of "improvements" Hitler watercolors.
A: We were wondering how different emerging balance between production of the artist and his personality. In a sense, Hitler - it is such an anti-Chapman. In life he was absolutely monstrous tyrant and the embodiment of evil. His watercolors have you seen? Sun, urban scenes, as if written by a diligent idiot. We decided to further enhance the contrast and make Hitler committed hippies. Sarcastic title of the project - "If Hitler was a hippie, as if we were happy" - only underscores the difference between the artistic product and its author. Do not confuse them - this is probably the main idea of the project.
Q: It's always interesting that the artists figurative plan, think about abstractions. Do you like paintings of merit, the same Kandinsky, a prize which you come?
A: Kandinsky greatly influenced me when I was young. Thanks to him and other artists of the avant-garde, I began to realize that such an art as a separate thing, independent of applications. But in principle motivation abstract I do not share. For almost all of them thought that the work itself must be hiding something else, some special metaphysical world, almost no relation with what is depicted. Art, which is built on the belief in otherworldly forces, I am not now close.
Q: What do you think about the prizes in contemporary art? They - an indicator?
A: We were with Jake nominated for the Turner Prize in 2004. I am against premiums have nothing. But every year to find worthy candidates impossible. In recent years, with the art such as the Hilo case. I do not see that, after the Young British Artists formed a new generation of English art.
Q: Why does not the new generation? Present Turner Prize winner Mark Leckie himself against you and Deymianu Hirst.
A: You know, and we are with Jake and Damien, and all the others were formed in a special socio-political situation. The art did not have any money. But the construction in London flourished. Many of the buildings stood vacant for many months. You could call a friend realtors and ask him to put the exhibition in any office complex. Build something they built, but there was no one to pass. Business is not something that stopped altogether, simply supply exceeds demand. And at first we have to do everything themselves. Today, everybody knows Jay Jopling, owner of the gallery White Cube, but he also started from the bottom. Gallery White Cube - is also a product of those times. We went all the way from top to bottom. Place helped us to recession. Due to this we have grown in such a, you know, strong oak forest in the shadow of new life which has no place.
Q: What about the support of Charles Saatchi?
A: Well this is in fact double-edged sword. Saatchi saw in us, and a layer of outrageous impudence, which was very close to him as advertisers. But his mood changed. And then, this fire, which burned my installation is "Hell" ...
Q: You saw in this coincidence a sign from above?
A: How did. It just became one more reason not to take things too seriously.
Q: You did not try to pass their experience to other generations?
A: We are with Jake trying to teach. I remember what it ended up: Students are only asked us to carry any picture slides of work, with whom to hang out. But this is wrong. Now young artists go to art with a clear understanding of what it can do "career". Perhaps their moods change, and very quickly: things are going to ensure that no "career" in art over the next ten years will not be. Blame them mercantilism I personally can not. Just when there is constantly writing about rising prices and dealers, who buy the work of undergraduate courses art schools, it is difficult not to fall for this bait. I am convinced that art is born in a combination of certain economic and political conditions. It does not appear due to the pure genius, from the air. I think in a crisis is possible repetition of the situation in which we were when they began. But here we must be very careful. Such situations are always unique to predict anything is impossible.