Mikhail Bode. Contemporary painter

A modern painter is like a fish on the shore
Mihail Bode

Publication date: July 14, 2000

To Ladimir Brainin in the New Manege. A simple viewer, but experienced in contemporary art openings, will read the title of the exhibition “Paintings” and think that we are talking about another conceptualist dislocation - a title that is painfully suspiciously frank for our times. Well, there must be some kind of catch behind this. And he will be wrong. Vladimir Brainin honestly shows his paintings at the New Manege.

For twenty years now, Brainin has been writing the same thing - Moscow. He writes the same. It may seem that all this time the artist is still 29 years old and that in the capital there are still no new buildings not only from Luzhkov, but even from Olympic, New Arbat, Cheryomushki... Old Moscow with mansions, apartment buildings of the Art Nouveau era, public gardens and alleys - tenderness for a passeist, as Brainin may seem. However, in his landscapes there is neither the documentary meticulousness of a local historian, nor the syrup of old-time Moscow artists. In the quiet Moscow backwaters of the painter, it seems that some kind of devilry has started: either the caryatids on the facades begin to wobble, then the mascarons above the windows look at each other, then suddenly on the peeling plaster, Achilles and Hectors appear from God knows where and begin to “trip” each other all over Sukharevka or Pokrovka. And, it would seem, completely complete “Dalishness” - fish in a deserted city. They cover the pavements, sway in a la baroque cartouches-aquariums above the portals and lie on chairs for some reason forgotten in the courtyards. After all, this is not Venice after the flood, and Moscow is not the city of Kitezh.

It’s clear that fish have no place in the city - they die, decompose, and become rotten. However, the fish in the Brainin vedas do not cause either nausea or surprise: if the stucco tribe on the facades is already frolicking and writhing, then why not there should be fish too. One of Brainin’s things comes to life, the other dies. Both are observed by the artist with some kind of bizarre aesthetic gourmand. After all, some people love fragrant fish, cheeses slightly touched by mold or containing worms.

Vladimir Brainin loves painting. And this is in our time, when critics unanimously put an end to it. He loves the real thing, like the one that the last famous Venetians Guardi and Canaletto did. Anything below this level does not count for him. It is impossible to write in the old way, to engage in stylization is sickening, but denying yourself the pleasure of feeling the world with a brush and paints is like a fish throwing itself on the shore.

Brainin is painting on the ruins of Painting. There, in the solitude, you can’t imagine anything. The ghost of a once great person will flash, a beam will momentarily revive someone’s memorable figure, a familiar shadow will beckon. But wandering among the ruins for a long time is dangerous - screes and landslides occur.