Russian art in the basement of the Louvre

[Тютчев]

Russian art in the basement of the Louvre

The world-renowned artist Eric Bulatov told Izvestia on modern painting

Yuri Kovalenko

October 14 at the Louvre presents an exhibition "Counterpoint: Russian contemporary art." The exhibition presents works of more than twenty artists. This is Erik Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov Emilia and Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexei Kallima, Vladimir Dubosarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Andrei Monastery, Vadim Zakharov, Yuri Leiderman, Yuri Albert, Avdyei Ter-Oganyan, the group "Blue Noses" and AES + F, and others. On the eve of opening day with Academician Erik Bulatov in his Paris studio, met "Izvestia" correspondent in France, Yuri Kovalenko.

News: None of the Russian artists during his lifetime was not present at the Louvre. Yes and Western masters, award-an honor, once or twice and obchelsya. In short, go to the Louvre - it's cool!

Erik Bulatov: Indeed, the Louvre seems to us all something unattainable. But our show will be like in the basement - in the medieval Louvre, where the excavated foundation walls and towers of the palace. This place is absolutely unsuitable for display. There isn't what you can do the installation or display video. In the present exhibition, which would have to say about the current state of our art - especially in the Year of Russia in France, should arrange elsewhere. For example, the National Centre for Arts and Culture Georges Pompidou.

and: So, are you offended?

bulat: I'm not mad, but just did not want was euphoria, excessive enthusiasm: "Oh, the Louvre, the Louvre!" But be that as it may be, for us, Russian, the Louvre - a sacred place to which we partake. Suppose somewhere in a corner in the gap.

and: Does the holding of "Counterpoint" recognition of our modern art? Or is it just one of the events in the cross of the Year of Russia and France?

bulat: This question I ask myself. There are signs, and of both. On the one hand, the West has long existed a belief that the Russian art, not counting the avant-garde 1920's, is not there. Everything else - before and after - the provincial and secondary. Of course, three or four of our artists have been recognized, but their success has remained private and not transferred to the Russian art in general. On the other hand, is going - albeit very slowly - the approval process for Russian art as a whole.

and: To what extent is the current exhibition at the Louvre reflects contemporary Russian art?

Читать дальше... 

bulat: It is based largely on conceptualism - towards which the Louvre will be presented convincingly enough. But it's not all our art. The result is not an objective picture, but a fragment. Many artists that I seem very important at this show are missing. I think, for example, Oscar Rabin had necessarily to be invited.

and: The audience is waiting for surprises. On the day of opening day at the Louvre artist Yuri Leiderman organizes his performance: two women in the Russian national costumes in front of spectators otshinkuyut hundred cabbages. For his part, his colleague Yuri Albert will hold viewers Louvre blindfolded ...

bulat: That this is our conceptualism.

and: The poster exhibition is reproduced your picture "Liberte" ("Freedom") - roll with the famous Delacroix painting "Liberty on the barricades."

bulat: The display two of my work. In addition to this, still picture of "Black night - snow white."

and: "Liberte" - painting axiomatic in all senses. Together with another of your work - "The Soviet space" - she even went to the French textbooks.

bulat: I got this order in 1989, when France was preparing a big celebration to mark the 200 th anniversary of the revolution. Going to pick up in the air airship, which on the one hand had to paint the Russian artist, and with another - the American one. And I have an idea associated with our revolutionary situation in 1980. There were a lot of freedom-loving illusions.

and: As the Western viewer perceives the Russian art today?

 bulat: Always with interest. I certainly found this at an exhibition "Russian Landscape" at the National Gallery in London. Museum is free, and the exhibition fee. And the people stood to her fall. The same attention to the Russian Exhibition in Paris. The problem arises from the criticism - it is not interesting.

and: And on which side the truth?

bulat: The truth can not be on the side of those trying to lead art. Wrong and assume that it is on the side of the audience. Mass, for example, go to the Glazunov and Shilov. In any case, we must take with the audience, or at least to those who wants to understand painting. They must bring with them to work. Do not just announce one artist good, and another - bad, but to explain things regarding the fundamental principles of art.

and: There is a French expression "to train the eye."

bulat: Not only the eyes but also his head. Eye, as my teacher Vladimir A. Tabor, you can cheat. Consciousness is more difficult to cheat.

and: Tabor was not only an artist but a philosopher.

bulat: He was a philosopher of art. He has been associated with Florensky, and our other religious philosophy. I'm not a philosopher, but simply an artist. I'm just trying to understand why, and why do so and not otherwise.

and: Is it too much power in the hands of the curators have taken, which is called the commissioners? Artists in their hands, for your words, such as auxiliary materials - paints and brushes?

bulat: I have the impression that the overall situation is now changing. Maybe it's because among curators is a generational change.

and: Is it art is not lost on many of its moral function and not become part of the entertainment industry?

bulat: objectively judge the art of today, we can not, because we judge it by what we show. I do not know whether this is consistent with what is happening in the arts. Moreover, I hope it is not so. And about what kind of art today, we learn, maybe in fifty years.

and: future victories in the West, the mass middle-class culture has predicted Herzen. Now it seems to have finally triumphed in Russia.

bulat: She can not win the final. Of course, we do not live in the Renaissance, but art can not perish. If this happens, human existence becomes meaningless. Art asks a question that no one asks: "Why man?".

and: Do you still walk to the Louvre to study the classics. What can study the long-standing well-known artist?

bulat: Actually I have very little know how. Much I did not get.

and: affliction worse than pride?

bulat: No, it's true. Every artist has a trail on which he walks. And if you stumble a little, once you get into the quagmire in which no orientirueshsya altogether. And every time a new job must start from scratch, re-solve, because in art, all decisions are disposable.

and: Do you still tormented creative torments?

bulat: In addition to VAFavorskiy my teacher was Falk. Student I have come to show him their work. And he asked me: "And what you think about them?" Then I was in despair from his own ineptitude and told him about it. Falk replied: "So you're now in a very good creative state. I'll tell you a thing that can not be your consolation, but which come in handy later. This condition will last your whole life. And if it passes, it means you as the artist ran out. " I have never felt so helpless, as now, in old age, when starting a new still life.

and: Next to the works of some great artists in the Tretyakov Gallery or the Louvre you would like to exhibit their paintings?

bulat: In the Louvre - it is terrible to say - with the "Coronation of the Virgin Fra Angelico and titsianovskim" Country Concert ". In the Tretyakov Gallery - with Alexander Ivanov or Levitan. My favorite levitanovskaya painting - "The Lake", which is located in the Russian Museum. It was to be called "Rus", but Levitan hesitate to give this name, considering the picture fails.

and: Why, your Moscow studio hangs a reproduction of the "Mona Lisa"?

bulat: On the "Gioconda" I wrote the article. For me, it is important how to construct this pattern, as shown in the problem boundaries between art and life. It was on this Leonardo worked better than anyone else.

and: But life is still more important than art?

bulat: I really do not know. On the one hand, it is, on the other hand, life - a material for art.

and: After living for nearly two decades in France, you think you are Russian or European artists?

bulat: I am a Russian artist of the upbringing and education. Therefore, I am an artist European, like all artists living in France, Germany or Italy.

and: among your favorite artists - Levitan, Savrasov. Mind they do not understand?

bulat: artists do not affect the mind and the senses. Their art at you or acts instantaneously, or does not work at all. I am convinced that, if it is good to form an exhibition of Russian landscape painting of the XIX century, it will make a huge impression.

and: Once you told me that Levitan and Malevich - it's not polar opposites.

bulat: Because they are both rooted in Russian culture, they certainly are not opposites. They tried to make the audience was part of what they do. Levitan was very important to the viewer - bypassing the painting - at once fell into its landscape, in a birch grove.

and: Could today be a new landscape-level Levitan?

bulat: There is a landscape painter. It Oleg Vasiliev (friend and collaborator Bulatov, with whom they are together for many years was a book designer. - "The News"). He is seen, but is still undervalued.

and: The Brazilian lived Vicente wrote a dozen paintings, which depicted the imagined assassination of George W. Bush, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, the current Pope Benedict XVI. Are all the artists are allowed? Is it acceptable in the art of some kind of censorship?

bulat: External censorship, of course, for art mortal. Must be internal censorship. What is it? Best of all Kant said: "The starry sky above us and the moral law within us." And this law is all we are obliged to observe.

http://www.izvestia.ru/culture/article3146987/