Kandinsky and the Russian Soul
A look at contemporary Russian art
by Joseph Kiblitsky
It is hard to remain neutral when discussing Russian contemporary art against the background of the trends and styles of current Western art. Without trying to undertake an exhaustive artistic analysis, in this essay I will be highlighting certain important and distinctive connotations as seen by someone who has followed the developments at the end of the twentieth and beginning of the twenty-first centuries in the Soviet Union and, after its disintegration, in Russia. Despite this disintegration Russia is still enormous and it has welcomed, precipitately but democratically, Western art which previously had been forbidden. After Perestroika the process of integration into the international art world took place almost painlessly and with great enthusiasm on both sides. After a while there was a foreseeable period of delusion which put things into perspective. Modern Russian figurative art, which at the moment can count on a dialogue and collaboration with the West, is attempting (as far as I can see with a certain success) to maintain its particularities, that peculiar identity determined by a typically Russian sensibility and spirituality. It seems to me that in Russia such qualities are associated by painters, critics and others in the art world, with the realist thought typical of the pupils of the academy of fine arts and other Russian and Soviet schools.
Unfortunately many, either consciously or unconsciously, wear blinkers to ward off reality and thus give in to a highly personal idea of national self-awareness. Russian figurative art is still fairly young and this quite brief historical period allows us greater possibilities to investigate its cycles and developments.
History decreed that in Russia until the XVIII century there prevailed a canonical way of painting derived from Byzantine iconography and gradually adapted and assimilated according to Russian conscience and taste. After the foundation, halfway through the XVIII century, of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts, besides the parsuny (elementary and stylised realistic paintings of people in a particular environment) there appeared a great many copies and outright imitations of European masters and academy professors. At the time Russia was still timidly 'discovering' Europe, re-interpreting, re-elaborating, and metabolising Europe's centuries-old culture.
In order to collaborate and fulfil commissions, Italian, French, English, Swiss, and German architects, sculptors and painters were invited over… This concentration of experience and talent in a very short time produced surprisingly positive results. Since in the XIX century the Russian capital, Saint Petersburg, itself became part of Western civilisation, Russian artists for the most part were orientated towards the way of painting developed in western Europe. Journeys to Europe and study bursaries helped their development and made it possible for their entry into the family of European peoples.
In that period Christian and Enlightenment Europe had a great influence on Russia which, even today, is still almost impossible to evaluate. All this was fundamental and almost necessary for Russian cultural life despite the radical opposition of important groups which refused any kind of Western influence on national culture. It was in the XIX century that literature and art flowered, together with the confirmation and reinforcement of the important role of Russian culture in the world, that culture whose realistic basis was soon to be organically part of the experience of the realistic school and its vision of the world.
In the nineteenth century, realism, not simply as a trend but also as a concept of the world, rooted itself in Russia with such ease that any kind of experimentation in the field of art was considered as something extraneous and ephemeral. In the nineteenth century French ballet gave rise to so-called "classical Russian ballet", but even this was no more than the continuation of the realistic school and of tradition.
In the Russian schools of fine art the drawing school had particular importance because it developed the talent, the taste, and the vision of its sculptors and painters. Later on this severe method of education was accused of being conservative, arid, and partial. However, despite official statements about the foundation of realism, at the beginning of the XX century the Russian painters themselves were the ones to demonstrate that abstraction was the way out of a, by now moribund, realistic domain. For almost two centuries Russian had shown the world the possibility of coexistence between culture, creative approaches, and visions of the world. With the arrival of Soviet power any kind of experimentation in art was forcibly interrupted and liquidated. The Soviet authorities understood and approved a single method, "socialist realism", which clearly expressed the physicality and materialism of the regime. This definition imposed realism as the only expressive socialist style and form. All the institutes that formed the artists of the new generations were transformed into rigidly classical schools of drawing modelled on those of the 19th century. Libraries were purged of all the books in which the authorities found signs of degeneration, decadence, or admiration for the West. For Soviet Russia, the West became the personification of an evil that was not only political, but also spiritual. Students were taught a single and unique kind of figurative art. The didactic and propagandistic literature that supplied the models and examples considered the ideals for art to imitate, is in the mind of many still alive today. We can perhaps date a change of view for Russian artists from 1957 when there opened in Moscow the Universal Festival of Youth. The relatively few visitors saw on show for the first time the variegated styles of foreign art, including abstraction which was then still banned. From then on, also thanks to the gradual loosening of ideological restrictions, the interest in what was happening outside the country was reinforced. The artists made the most of any occasion for receiving, thumbing through, and reading up-to-date publications from the West about the exhibitions of their colleagues. Later on a chain of events made it possible, during the period of Perestroika, to organise shows of Western artists, first in a circumspect way in Moscow, and then slowly in other cities. Finally the artists had the possibility of leaving the country to see galleries and museums, first in Europe, and then in Asia and America.
It is necessary to underline that for a long time in Russia a professional artist could only be someone who had been taught in the specialised school. At the end of a course of art studies, you could also then work in a different sector from that for which you had been prepared, but in fact belonging to the circle of professional artists was something established in advance. If somebody who was predisposed towards art was, for any reason, unable to complete a course of art studies, he would remain forever an amateur artist (in official terminology, an 'independent artist').
This is basic for any understanding of the later evolution of art in Russia. The terrible drawing schools, the study from life, obligatory and detailed, and the study programmes which still today remain unchanged, ask a different mentality of the students, one linked to oppression, repression, and an unjustified conservatism.
During Perestroika, the artists had for the first time the possibility of organising group shows, seminars, and public art actions, both in Russia and abroad. The dealers, collectors and curators of Western museums were enormously interested in the Russian artists who were arriving in Europe and at once made the most of visiting their studios in the now disintegrating Soviet Union. At times there were acquired and brought into Europe hurriedly put together collections of those Russian artists who were busy organising shows for themselves...
Contemporary Russian art was now becoming wholly commercialised. At the time the artists received the price of their work in cash on which they paid no taxes. One group of artists, overcome by their euphoria, formed an unrealistic idea of what was happening. The demand for works was greater than the offer, but the old axiom does not guarantee a minimum level of quality.
The artists passed on to other painterly techniques, using such new and previously inaccessible materials as quick drying resin, acrylics, and photographic emulsions. In one way or another the rapidity of covering a surface allowed them to choose their techniques freely.
Having adopted as their own the concepts developed by international art criticism, some gave their new movements pleasant but not always accurate names: conceptual, metaphysical, post-surrealist and so on. Their works, not wanted by the internal market even though often created purposely for it, were sent to Europe by interested dealers and merchants. Mostly these were honest, well-painted works: various genre scenes inspired by daily life, endless landscapes in all seasons, heterogeneous still-lifes with flowers and various useless objects. Among the works exported to Europe, particular attention was paid to sketches, studies on cardboard, and even large canvases painted in socialist-realist style by official Soviet artists between 1940 and 1960. Foundry workers, peasants, and happy children 'overflowed' the galleries and flea-markets of London, Paris, and Berlin.
This commercialisation began to get into its stride. Artists finally became interested in themselves and their own activity. Some emigrated from Russia and settled in various other countries. Western dealers and art workers, while sympathising with Russian artists, patiently waited their active integration in the international art scene and the overcoming of socio-political and ethnographic elements. The artists of greatest interest among those who had moved to the West, in fact, openly used Russian themes and symbols: the Kommunàlki, depictions of the old leaders of Communist Russia, of the Red Army, and the Pionèrija. The Russian artists who had settled in Europe mostly remained faithful to their realist-figurative attitude and continued to defend creatively their 'pre-established' artistic principles.
In the nineties the energy given by Russian artists to establishing themselves proved greater than their curiosity and awareness of what was happening on the European and American scenes. The Russian artists who lives in the West were exhibiting, but these sporadic appearances do not give an overall view of their integration into western culture. A comparison between the 'flux' of European artists invited to Russia in the XVIII-XIX centuries and the spontaneous emigration of Russian artists to the West in the 20th century gives an incomplete idea of the cultural 'messengers' in question for either group.
In the enormous Russian cultural space, in recent years we have seen a notable improvement of creative possibilities: freedom of expression is no longer limited and various technical resources (western materials, computers etc.) are by now accessible. That delicate boundary between professional and amateur has faded. However, there are still difficulties that influence the evolution of art.
Galleries, mainly situated in the principle Russian cities, work and manage to make a living, each having established its specialisation in view of its potential clients. The middle classes are no longer ready to buy works that cost more than the possibilities offered by a monthly salary. Even though it might not seem an important reason, the traditional lack of living space in Russia also limits the development of the art market. In a tiny apartment you cannot hang either a large or a medium-sized work.
The need for contemporary Russian artists to have European and international openings is settling down, despite a general tendency deriving from the society's politicised conditions and a certain apathy.
The stereotype of Russian artists' expression - their spiritual particularity, uniqueness, individualism, and sensibility - is becoming understandable now that international culture is readily available through detailed studies and a much hoped-for dialogue. The Russian artist, as for most creative individuals, still has to show what his exact collocation might be in the contemporary world and in art. But, to repeat the saying according to which a death-mask made in life is not authentic, there is the hope that contemporary Russian art can one day occupy a place adequate to its dignity, the place it is entitled to in the complex evolution of international art.