The triumph of subjectivity

It is very funny to read in curatorial statements and art magazines that painting is returning to the world art scene that painting is relevant. It's funny because she did not go anywhere: the largest number of spectators attracted picturesque exhibitions. It’s just that the artists scattered where the installations and performances are where the fields of installations and performances. And completely lost all the will to a personal statement. In the 90s, the creators were galleryists and curators. Just as the owner of the TV channel affects the program of programs, owners of the art circulation channels - Biennale, Gallery, Museums - formed a circle with which artists were invited to perform. The frequently emphasized commercial aspect is not even so important here. It is important that in the 80s and 90s the phenomenon of liberal academism was formed. A certain topic is set - gender, left movement, sociality, tested for relevance by authoritative thinkers. The artist in his work should "reflect" the alleged "reality": a consumer attitude towards a woman, ethnic conflicts, marginals on the sidelines of society. These "big topics" could come from curators, but could be transmitted through other channels - magazines, for example. The new version of academicism has been distinguished by the system of relations among artists and apparatchiks of socialist realism, the lack of repression against dissenters (at least strict repression) and the stylistic heterogeneity, however, on the variegated colors of Lactionov and Plastov.

It so happened that now the picture has become a type of work in which maximum freedom is possible from the pointing check of the curator. The pattern is simple: for the construction of the installation, the artist has to depend on the workers and the galleryist who provides a place. Yes, and the curator, of course, which will give the work of the honorary status of installation, that is, the sculpture, the architectonics of which is held on the honest word of the curator. Videoart, like his dad Kinematographer, is an engaged art. Painting is a much more intimate and inexpensive business in production.

With the works that acted as part of the "big topic", it was impossible to remain "one on one." It’s like at a disco: not so much music makes us dance, but also a pulsating light, an artificial smoke curtain, and people around. The smoke -curtain on curatorial projects was the theories and ideas, for the most part humanistic and progressive. But the music, that is, the work, without smoke, in itself, often did not sound, as it happens at discos. The artists were terribly lazy: why look for the path to the viewer, when from the very beginning your work gets into the museum, where it is classified, compared with predecessors, catalogs?

It is unlikely that the situation has changed a lot after the painting was rehabilitated. Perhaps curators and museum workers are just tired of fighting their heads against the wall of the audience indifference. One way or another, an artist-writer is not the one who is with paints on the canvas, but the one who is as responsible for his work and for the fact that she will be seen and perceived, he was again in the exhibition halls. There are also artists who are able to do without curatorial crutches. Preferring. And there are examples of very recent, which will be discussed.

The Gelman Gallery, for example, shows the St. Petersburg artist Vitaly Pushnitsky , who has been doing interesting things for a good seven years. And at the Institute for Actualization of Art, which is Gelman Gallery, is exhibited for the first time. The press release draws an analogy with the propagandists of elegant arts from the new Academy Timur Novikov. The analogy is inappropriate - the "new academicians" are neither bad nor good painters, but they pull on themselves the masks of conservatives and wink at the viewer. New Academy is a curatorial project. Pushnitsky painting is completely different.

Pushnitsky attachs to black and white canvases as a structural element of a daylight lamp. The exhibition takes place without additional lighting. This, by the way, emphasizes, among other things, the artist’s complete independence from the one who exhibits his paintings. The lamps are hung at a certain angle to the paintings. Sometimes the lamp becomes a structural element of the picture. In the image of a dead man lying on the street, the lamp pierces his side. In other works, the lamp depict light source. In the paintings, the light falling from the lamps is drawn. That is, the lamp simultaneously illuminates the picture, and is a source of light for the image. This original formal technique was found not just for the sake of the third measurement. With the exception of the above example, the characters of Pushnitsky’s works are children. The most successful canvases combine the naturalness of the plot and warm retrospectivity of black and white gamut. In one of the paintings, a girl with children's maximalism sticks a loaf of bread in her mouth - a very life scene. The conventionality of the daylight lamp, perhaps some bulky solution, works to create a minimum distance between the image and the viewer. Scenes from family life, as it were, illuminates the viewer.

Another artist, capable of creating a conceptual frame for himself and therefore independent, is Victor Pivovarov. Several events are connected with his name in Moscow at once. Two exhibitions - "Steps of Mechanics" in the Tretyakov Gallery on the Crimean Val and "In the Dark Room" in the XL gallery . And a new book, already the third in a row, - "On the love of a word and image" ( UFO ). About a hundred works were brought by an artist from Prague, where he moved in 1981.

Viktor Pivovarov is one of the masters of conceptualism, together with Ilya Kabakov, developing the genre of "albums". In Russia, he is best known for illustrations for children's books. Among other artists of the underground who earned book graphics, brewers are standing out a very attractive and recognizable manner. Everyone who held in his hands the book of Henry Sapgira Red Ball, “my imagination” of the junction or fairy tale of Andersen in the design of Pivovarov will understand me. The rest can be recommended by the book of Irina Pivovarova published in the UFO publishing house. Pivovarov was seriously engaged in design work, because for a long time he believed that his work was completely exhausted by the illustration. But in the early 70s, brewers are addressed to the picture.

For most conceptualists, the picture, according to the constructions of theorists of abstract painting, is a plane. The space depicted on it is artificially. This is a dummy that can only be revived by extraneous elements - texts, gratings, ruptures. This space has no depth, which is why in the picture of Eric Bulatov, the village landscape frames "dangerous" frames. In relation to the landscape, the inscription plays the role of a warning: this is not a real lawn, taking it for a clean coin is dangerous. The space of Pivovarov’s paintings is theatrical. This is a scene that has its own prospect, a scene on which a variety of characters act. In the autobiographical book "Love Agent" (UFO, 2001), Pivovarov tells, in particular, about the heroes of his works - objects: a boot, a cup of tea, a loaf of bread.

Conceptual artists worked with different types of sources. Posters, ads, lists, accounting books ... They enjoyed using the texture of everyday life. Pivovarov is no exception. His wonderful series of works dedicated to communal childhood, stylistics resembles fire safety guides. But the marginal, rough style of first aid provides comes to life thanks to personal, memoir content. Even the texts on a faded lilac background are not so much a choir of annoying and disorienting communal voices, like Kabakov’s, but random phrases heard by a child, remembered for unknown reasons and pop -ups in memory as part of a unique personal experience.

Pivovarov revives not only a lapidar Soviet poster. The Suprematic peasants of Malevich are acquired in his paintings from the Eidos series from the Eidos series. Last year, three years ago, the exhibition "In the circle of Malevich" was represented by the panorama of the students of the great Casimir, who perceived the development of the master as academic models. The place of the educational antics was taken by the Suprematic constructions. Pivovarov brings this installation to a logical end: in his paintings in the style of Malevich, animals are depicted, and a surematic person appears in the surroundings of the classical picture of Van Eyke and Pietro della Francesca. Even Malevich himself, who was trying to sound his voice from nowhere, from the heavenly world of pure entities, turns from Pivovarov into a character. At the exact reproduction of the late self -portrait of Malevich, the left -wing eye of the avant -garde, the fox - a symbol of seduction, a werewolf from Japanese myths. That is, nothing human Suprematic man and its creator is alien.

It is characteristic that both Pushnitsky and Pivovarov turn to the world of childhood. In different ways, of course: Pushnitsky - an observer, brewers - partly a memoirist, partly playing, like a child, in various heroes. The world of childhood is the world of triumph of subjectivity. At the opening of the exhibition in the Tretyakov Gallery, Viktor Pivovarov said a wonderful thing: "The exhibition is designed for a thoughtful viewer, but I have enough superficial viewer." Indeed, the viewer can hook the manner of Pivovarov, and the approach, and, say, an interesting game with tradition. In addition, the pleasure of the exhibition is completely childish. Pictures attract me, fascinate. They make me be a maximalist: I assure you, you must go to these exhibitions. Blood from the nose.