| An exhibition of artist Vladimir Yakovlev is open at the NCCA It is intolerably vulgar to justify the artist’s work by his physical illness. If the master is epileptic, then so be it, we will forgive him for the inaccurate color and uncertain composition. After all, we are all people, we are all human! What if the artist is blind? Then the vocabulary of the compassionate critic drips with flattering lisp: about foresight, intuition, chosenness... And this verbiage does not save the artist: the chance of finding out who he really is turns out to be negligible. The main victims of this humiliating pity are precisely those masters offended by nature, to whom praise can be addressed without condescension. Alas, once they have been burned by a lie, smart people no longer turn around to the next call of a critic singing hosannas to the new Teresia or Homer with an easel and a brush.
Vladimir Yakovlev is one of those whom pity and condescension doubly humiliate. This is confirmed by the exhibition of his works from the collection of the NCCA and private collections that opened at the State Center for Contemporary Art at the Zoological. Having visited the exhibition, a self-respecting critic will not dare to shyly look away and take advantage of language benefits for disabled artists in his review. Yes, Vladimir Yakovlev saw the world “with eyes turned inward” (a metaphor from the text of the exhibition curator Vitaly Patsyukov). He was almost blind. And at the same time, he turned out to be absolutely sensitive to all the stylistic phenomena of the 20th century, from pointillism, suprematism to neo-expressionism! You walk through a small hall with three dozen paintings and drawings by Yakovlev, and you are filled with impressions as if you were walking through the enfilade of the Dusseldorf Kunsthalle with a gigantic exhibition of a world guru on the scale of Baselitz. How does this fact relate to Yakovlev’s biography? Here's how... Born on March 15, 1934 in the city of Balakhna, Nizhny Novgorod region, the artist, although he was the grandson of the impressionist Mikhail Yakovlev, did not receive a systematic education anywhere; worked as a photographer-retoucher at the publishing house "Art", from the age of ten he was observed in psychiatric hospitals, as a result of an illness from the late 50s he almost completely lost his sight, and died on October 10, 1998 in psychoneurological boarding school No. 30.
The crippled, blind artist spoke to the world in the most refined pictorial language, attracted the main styles of the 20th century as allies and mastered their syntax more masterfully than other learned masters. This is probably a miracle, probably chosenness... But such spells beloved by critics in Yakovlev’s work do not clarify anything at all. The best recognition of the master’s great talent, in my opinion, could be a conscientious monograph about him. And a complete catalog of his works scattered around the world.
Vitaly Patsyukov: A smaller part of Yakovlev’s legacy remains in Russia
The curator of the exhibition, a famous researcher of Russian unofficial art, Vitaly PATSYUKOV, told newspaper columnist Sergei KHACHATUROV about the preparation of the exhibition of Vladimir Yakovlev at the NCCA.
-- Were there any problems in organizing the exhibition?
— The main one can be called a consequence of the tragedy of the fate of nonconformist art: in large Russian museums (the State Tretyakov Gallery, the Russian Museum) there are only a few works by masters of that generation, the bulk of which have long been sold abroad. We received works for the opening exhibition from Vladimir Yakovlev’s sister Olga Yakovleva, from friends Igor Markin, Tamara and Irakli Mosesvili, from collectors Boris Friedman, the American Harry Tatintyan, who is now creating a new gallery of contemporary art together with Marina Loshak. Works from the last years of Yakovlev's life were received from Erik Bagdasaryan.
— Where are most of Vladimir Yakovlev’s works located?
-- In the collections of two artists living abroad, whom Vladimir Yakovlev met back in the 50s, Mikhail Grobman and Vitaly Stesin. Both have several hundred works by the master.
— Are there any plans for any scientific work with Yakovlev’s legacy? Will there be an expanded monographic exhibition and catalog raisonné?
— This is now being done by the recently created Vladimir Yakovlev Foundation, whose trustee is philologist Nikolai Kotrelev. The New Hermitage Gallery will soon present an expanded exhibition of Yakovlev’s work.
— At the opening day, you announced the upcoming publication of poems about Yakovlev, written by Gennady Aigi. What united these people?
— Aigi and Yakovlev have been friends since the 50s. The poet dedicated his poems to the artist. Now they will be published with reproductions of Yakovlev’s paintings. The publication will be rare. Circulation - 50 copies. By the way, Aigi made the first publication about Yakovlev’s work in the Prague independent magazine on the art of Eastern Europe in the late 60s and in 1976 contributed to the organization of a personal exhibition of Vladimir Yakovlev at the Museum of Modern Art in Silkeborg, Denmark.
-- In 1993-1994, Vladimir Yakovlev’s works participated in the high-profile exhibition “From Malevich to Kabakov” at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. They were donated there by Mikhail Grobman. How was Yakovlev’s work perceived in the vicinity of the creations of the gurus of domestic modernism?
- With his works, Yakovlev fully participated in the created dialogue between the masters. Having learned about European modernism in 1957 (after visiting exhibitions for the VI World Festival of Youth and Students), he turned to abstraction and, without knowing it, soon found himself in the mainstream of advanced artistic processes. Indeed, at the same time, the second birth of abstraction occurred in the work of the masters of the CoBrA group (Copenhagen, Brussels, Amsterdam). And in the late 60s and early 70s, his work incomprehensibly came closer to the archaic neo-expressionism of the German “new wild” (Baselitz) and the Italian trans-avant-garde (Clemente)... In fact, Vladimir Yakovlev opened new intellectual spaces of modernism in Russia .
Photo caption: The works of the almost blind artist Vladimir Yakovlev are not a topic for cheap sensations. Today they can and should be studied scrupulously and closely, just as academics study the classics Sergei KHACHATUROV |
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