Andrey Kovalev. Konstantin Latyshev and issues of capitalist construction

Konstantin Latyshev and issues of capitalist construction
Andrey Kovalev

Publication date: March 1, 2004

The title of the exhibition “Conceptualism with a Human Face” by Konstantin Latyshev in the “Aidan Gallery” contains some subtle hint of heavy circumstances. To date, the term “conceptualism” is used by Father Alexander Shargunov and his altar servers . Latyshev was, in fact, initiated into conceptualism even in infancy, as part of the World Champions group. That is, at a time when the general public had not yet learned that they were the real servants of Darkness. Moreover, the counterculture pathos that motivated the recent schoolchildren who formed the World Champions group was in direct contradiction with the tenets of Moscow conceptualism. The prophets of this sect, Andrei Monastyrsky and Ilya Kabakov, taught their adherents absolute escapism. The collective escape from social reality into the space of existence and surreality was the main point of the secret pact concluded by the nonconformists with their Evil Empire. But the greatness of master Kabakov lay in the fact that he drew into his sect all the germs of social-performative art. So the conceptualists turned out to be already in the early seventies the clowns - Komar & Melamid, then their students from the group "Nest". And then - the violent "Mushrooms", which by the early eighties had escaped from the suffocating ghetto of aesthetic dissidence, ushering in the era of counterculture. It was not at all accidental that “Mukhomor” went towards the real rock and roll underground and the subsequent repression - everyone was quickly taken to the SA. (Of course, shaving the foreheads of troublemakers is a measure in the spirit of Nicholas I (Palkin), but the point is that fly agarics turned out to be almost the only artists who really suffered from this very Evil Empire.)

Returning from the army, Konstantin Zvezdochetov began educating the younger generation. Zvezdochetov has always been an avid soil scientist and an unbending patriot, therefore, the ideal of a cultural hero was considered to be a person who “is characterized by a kind of situationism with a rejection of everything that is established - as a sign of death. Such a person hates not only formation, that is, strictly regulated external conditions, but also the “concept” or an internal attitude capable of regulating a personality and manipulating it" (French Macaque. K. Zvezdochetov. "Champions of the World, or the Death of the Last Barricade of Counterculture", "Art", 10/1989).

The champions, that is, Gia Abramishvili, Boris Matrosov, Konstantin Latyshev and Andrei Yakhnin and Igor Zaidel, proclaimed the idea of ​​the “Great Victory”, as opposed to the conceptualist strategy of the “Great Defeat” put forward by Pavel Pepperstein. One of the purest actions is the creation of the Gray Sea. As part of the Aqua-Avangrad program, they created the Gray Sea by mixing the waters of the White and Black Seas in a hole dug in the ground. This is what they sent notices to MorPhysGeoPribor, the Geofaculty of Moscow State University, Rosmelioration, etc.

However, all this fun did not last long: very fun times came. Perestroika, the era of copper pipes. Conscious misfits and renegades were assigned to the complex role of diplomats of the ephemeral - they represented not territory, but “transformations.” The Art Hygiene Project was completed by painting the Berlin Wall white to remove graffiti written by enthusiastic Westerners. It was at this moment that the main contradiction emerged between Noma, which, according to the same Zvezdochetov, “declared a certain hypothetical West to be the center of culture,” and the “Champions,” who tore the seal of sacredness from the West. Of course, no one needs someone else’s counterculture. And the sacralizers of the West in the person of Ilya Kabakov and the majority of “nom” artists were received with a bang. In the real West, there is a strong shortage of “Westerners.”

The “champions”, after a short period of fever of fictitious victories and illusory financial successes, returned to their usual status of marginals. They, by and large, gained fame and prosperity illegally. A normal artist in a stable system struggles for a long time and painfully, walks through galleries, puts in his portfolio every joke casually said by some third-rate critic. The times, I will say from my own experience of communicating with my comrades, were very unpleasant. The personalities of quite nice guys were destroyed: it was impossible to communicate with people who had earned a couple of thousand dollars and therefore stood in the proud pose of “people who were recognized in the West.” Almost no one from this company survived. Sven Gundlach, who was once the leader of the “Fly Agarics”, declaratively stopped doing art altogether. Everyone retreated into the shadow of the streams - that is, into the area of ​​decorative design of the new world.

And life was good for everyone. A well-known researcher of this subculture, V. Pelevin, points out that only extreme cynics and romantics of virtual beauty achieve success in this field. It’s an exciting thing - in normal places, designers only design the world around them in accordance with the tastes of the customer, but here a unique opportunity has emerged to create both the tastes of the customer and the world around them. A task that Russian production workers were not up to at one time. Heavenly Varhola was an advertiser, then became an artist. We have a completely opposite process - the guys were once artists, but became “creatives”. Senior conceptualists, led by Ilya Kabakov, received legal income (and very good ones) by illustrating children's books. But we had a complete shift in emphasis - for the new constructivists, the main work turned out to be a much more exciting adventure than the so-called personal creativity and self-expression that the older comrades so passionately indulged in.

Therefore, it is not at all surprising that a more than funny thing happened: the cheerful slob, after all the traumas he had experienced, turned into a rather sad reasoner, appealing to the texture of the new reality. The paintings, executed in the spirit of new Russian pop art, turned into some kind of moralizing instructions, like “My inner freedom” or “Wild songs of our Motherland. Chorus - $50” (the latter painting, by the way, refers to a chic object from the time of perestroika - a bus ticket office , painted red, with the inscription of the same name “Wild songs of our Motherland”). And Latyshev’s new paintings easily fit into any format of the era - they can be published both as illustrations in the newspaper “Zavtra”, and as visual accompaniment to an article about the difficult New Russian lot in some glamorous magazine.

It is remarkable that the press release for the exhibition “Conceptualism with a Human Face” also states that “This is not a criticism of the surrounding reality.” Of course not a criticism! The thesis that art should criticize idiolects is the prejudice of Baudrillard and the people's moonshine. The times of true realism, saga and epic have come, when the story of a great era can only be told in the first person. The heroes of that bygone era - Abramovich and Khodorkovsky or the good guys from the "Brigade" - are exactly the same hooligan boys from good families, who became either a bandit or an oligarch. And some are even artists.