Marking for God, or art and His cilia

For many years, at the command of the surname, he "burning" life with a design.

Yuri is laconic and extremely rarely gives an interview. For him, it is more comfortable and harmonious to be in the creative process alone with yourself. He creates sites, draws up books, draws caricatures, writes paintings, shoots photo reports, participates in exhibitions. Member of the two creative unions of Russia, uniting photo artists and journalists. But the paradox is that Yuri does not consider himself any of them.

With a tin, maybe innate modesty, or maybe a philosophical mindset. One thing is undoubted: my interlocutor is a creative and multifaceted personality. Our conversation today about the fine art, which is going through difficult times.

Verdict "religious meter"

- How many years did you realize yourself as a cartoonist?

As a child, classmates asked for my drawings. But awareness has not yet come. I am not a cartoonist in any way! I'm someone else.

- Out in vain. Your work in this genre is in books and on the Internet, in particular, on the author’s website . However ... let's see wider. What is the purpose of the artist, in your opinion? What is the purpose of creativity?

I like the definition: "A person with the purpose of the artist has an innate ability to harmonize his surrounding space, bringing him into line with the images of the spiritual world." But sometimes the words of Melamide come to mind: "All art, ranging from Jeff Kuns and ending with Kinkeid, is one of the religious systems, and the unfortunate who have lost faith in God begin to worship this nonsense, art." If you combine these thoughts, it turns out that the artist has one goal: create praying.

- And in life, what philosophy are you guided?

The other day passed the Test "Religeter" and was surprised to find that I am 73 percent Buddhist. Now I understand the craving for the Japanese language and the eastern martial arts. In a word, my life philosophy is meditation.

- What is contraindicated in the artist?

Drink alcohol, swear obscenities, kill your neighbor ...

- Brodsky claimed that they resorted to irony from cowardice. Being a caricaturist, do you agree with this statement?

The well -known poem of Brodsky's “See” is through and through by irony:

This is a cat, this is a mouse.
This is a camp, this is a tower.

But Brodsky was not a coward. He meant that irony here is not enough. Osip Mandelstam paid his life for his "cockroaches". If a social caricaturist is afraid of power, then he does not draw. So it is not at all.

- Do you like your own drawings created many years ago?

One of a hundred. Maybe one more ... and perhaps all.

- What is more correct: to love yourself in creativity or critical of everything that you are doing?

Criticism is the best friend. But, by and large, both of them will not hurt if you are a good artist.

Self -sufficiency in pockets

- Do you think: the caricature defines time or there are other criteria?

Recall the story. The caricature for the first time was used as a means of combating the enemy. Martin Luther created a series of "Papacy". At the time of the thirty -year religious war between Catholics and Protestants, the caricature was especially hardened. During the French Revolution, too. After Napoleon came to power, she again fell under the ban. In Russia, it all started with Lubka. Then Peter I ordered to establish control over pictures that ridiculed the faces of the reigning house. And brutal censorship under Nicholas I finally killed satirical severity. The heyday of the Russian caricature falls on the era of Alexander reforms. Under Stalin, she again lost her position. The first years of perestroika resurrected her. In general, time determines what kind of caricature and whether to be at all. Today, try to draw something "transverse" ...

- Try you.

Easily! I can now. Then we laugh together. Only ... on different sides of the fence.

- Does the concept of "provincial art" have a place today?

For me, the provincial of art begins when the Chinese teach the Chinese at the Russian Academy of Art of Painting, and the Korean teaches them.

- There is an opinion in Artsred that a true artist is not looking for interaction with people, he is self -sufficient ...

And how will people guess that he is an artist? The artist is not a fool, he needs fame and money. He needs to glow wherever possible. His self -sufficiency should fall out of his pockets! He has nothing more to earn.

- An amazing answer, especially when you consider that I have persuaded you for more than two years for this interview ... And how to determine whether the artist evolves or vice versa?

If the image arises after the form, then the artist is evolving. He must have an internal cultural reserve, read books, preferably classics. Otherwise, how can he evolve? But, on the other hand, read one hundred best books - and your consciousness will change. Surely you can change the profession.

- Before you take up a pencil, wait for inspiration or the rhythm of life does not allow you to do this?

Inspiration is always with me. Inspiration is a desire to create. And I don't feel the rhythm of life. Everything on my monitor is quiet, calm, pastoral. Polyanka, sun ...

I was bitten too ...

- What happens today with fine art? Diagnose.

It is difficult to evaluate the whole picture of what is happening, so much. But the main thoughts are: blur, mass, market, smallness and destructiveness. Everyone draws pictures, write texts, but no one makes art, does not create literature. The first thing that catches your eye is a break with classics, with academicism. Now it’s hard to find a person who knows how to write academic portraits. Among thousands of members of the Union of Artists, a dozen of these is hardly gaining. Basic skill is lost. The second is a muddy message "to the viewer", as I call it. That is, the thought in the work of the author is so complicated that no one, even the author himself, is able to decipher it. The concreteness of thinking is lost. I agree with the Merab Mamardashvili, who said: "The devil plays us when we do not think for sure."

And with Kant - "a person has the most extensive sphere of vague performances."

The third is the lightweight of art, its frivolity, banality, ciliatoria. An indicative example is photo -creating. Now in the world, billions of homegrown photo artists shoot trillions of the same photos. Actually, photographicism of this mass of itself killed itself. The same thing in literature. Millions of bloggers decided that they were writers. We are surrounded by zombies from art, which pull their hands to us, trying to infect. There are fewer healthy ones. Take a look at: there, again, someone demolished his head ...

- Can you make a diagnosis for yourself?

I am healthy ... I was until recently. But also already bitten. I am half -zobi - I do not understand anything in contemporary art.

- What do you advise mediocrity?

No one is mediocre. They become mediocrity over the years when the text of the last book read is forgotten. If fantasies cease to be born in my head, then it has become empty there. So the gift is lost.

- Will we wait for the new Renaissance? Does humanity need it?

Renaissance will come when people begin to think globally. Now they think in small categories. Renaissance, of course, is needed. Only he makes it possible to feel that it is really beautiful and what is ugly. Renaissance is marks in cultural history affected by mankind for God. Here, they say, look, it’s not in vain that you created us.

Tatyana Stroganova .
Drawings by Yuri Gengings .