Brief history of Africa

The story, as we see, ended sadly: Africa became a big statesman. Allegedly tried to draw the poor Mamyshev-monro into one dirty adventure. And recently it turned out that a group of St. Petersburg artists sued him for not wanting to give their paintings.

But it all started very fun. In 1980, a fourteen-year-old genius from Novorossiysk arrived in the city of Leningrad in order to conquer it. And then the amazing property of Sergei Bugaev appeared - he immediately pierced the very center of the smallest party. He began to play in the project of Sergei Kurekhin, who was not even called “pop mechanic”. And the nickname "Africa" ​​appropriated this blonde directly Boris Grebenshchikov. The young man immediately caught the style of this wonderful party and drove some blizzard about the African roots of Russian culture. Actually, this version of the origin of the pseudonym was told by Sergey Bugaev in a recent interview , but the custom of driving something unthinkable was very characteristic of this circle.

Soon Africa found his true mentor- Timur Novikov , from rock musicians flowing into artists. True, the time was such that the party was alone, everything spun around two beautiful charismatics - Sergei Kurekhin and Timur Novikov. The artist and actor Yuri Karasev (“Circul”) told Ekaterina Andreeva: “Both Timur and Sergey were very powerful organisms, both. Similar to their balance. <...> He (Kurekhin.- Ed. ) Went to the “Pop Mechanic” precisely due to the artistic space that Timur had already organized by that time. Sergey began to regularly appear in the workshop of Timur on [st.] Voinov ... ” “Whose then was it a circle? - asks Andreev. "Kurekhin or Timur?" Karasev replies that the circle was “purely Kurekhinsky”: “It was already different spaces - how Timur organized people around him, as well as Kurekhin.”

He began to play in the project of Sergei Kurekhin, who was not even called “pop mechanic”. And the nickname "Africa" ​​appropriated this blonde directly Boris Grebenshchikov.

And there was no special boundary between types of classes . “New Artists” since the beginning of the eighties have been performing with the orchestra of the “pop-mee” Sergey Kurekhin-the paintings have been used as a backdrop at concerts . In 1985, “New” became artists of the Leningrad rock club. Victor Tsoi, for example, began as an artist, became a rock star. By the way, such a fusion at that moment happened around the world. Rock-n Roll was played by Jean-Michel Baskia, literally on the street, selected by the great collection artist Andy Warhol. Around 1981, an amazing phenomenon was observed: the latest currents began to arise at different points synchronously, without any special connection among themselves. For the most part, the Italian transcavangardists ( Transavanguardia ), the German “new Wild ” and the French, united under the slogans of the Figuration Libre , did not know much about each other. And for our art came the moment of complete synchronization with the world process. Moreover, Timur Novikov, who considered the founder of pop art to his heavenly patron, met a young genius in 1981, and Warhol found the black graffitist a year later.

But the Leningrad "new artists" also had a significant difference from their Western peers, prone to picturesque depression. In St. Petersburg, everyone frankly had fun and pulled. It is enough to look at the picture of Africa "Russian folk cosmonauts of protein and arrow." Glory to such dogs "make sex." Note that no jokes and jokes in the spirit of Moscow social artists are visible. But some kind of monster with a raised penis threatens with a knife to a lady standing on all fours. At the same time, the painting "So I loved." All this looks, of course, brutal, but for some reason very optimistic.

However, it was precisely the same that the “new artists” gathered around Timur Novikov. And it is to this fun time that the last scandal rises. Probably, many know that a restructuring once happened in the Soviet Union, and in the West, a fashion for “independent art from the USSR” began. And then Africa showed his amazing abilities. His company indulged in an endless relaxed part, an integral part of which was the production of paintings and other works of art. According to rock concerts, alternative fashion shows and other amusements, he hung out no less than the others. But at the same time, as they say, he practically monopolized communication (and trade!) With the West. My colleagues-artists who attended Leningrad in those years, first of all, recall the charming Sergei Bugaev. And two European collectors told me that it was Africa who drove them out of the workshops, leading the fog, pretending to be hiding from the surveillance of the KGB. Despite the fact that the “organs” since the mid -eighties were not at all interested in these freaks and marginals.

In May of this year, the Museum of the Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg opened an excellent exhibition “Assa: the last generation of the Leningrad avant-garde” . At this exhibition, paintings were discovered, which were long been looking for former members of the New Artists group, and in the exposition of work were marked as Sergey Bugaev’s collection. After unsuccessful attempts to get things back, artists sued Africa to court. How did they get to Africa? The artist Oleg Maslov told Rain on the air of the Rain radio station: “In the late 80s, there were exhibitions, which the New Artists group made abroad, as well as the concerts of“ pop-mechanics ”. Due to the difficulties of exporting paintings abroad to the Soviet and post-Soviet time, paintings were sometimes taken out as the scenery of the “Pop Mechanics” concert, but in fact they were exhibited in the exhibition halls and were a great success. From there, when Africa was a representative of “new artists”, they were very rarely returned. ”

It seems that his comrades themselves knew that their work somewhere there in Africa dangling. However, they did not really steam on this topic: the paintings were easily made, so they simply parted with them - in firm confidence that they would like as much as you want. But the times of the endless drive have once been a thing of the past - and these fundamentally careless handwriting and karakuli turned out to be unique and valuable objects, things that museums and collectors hunt for.

After exhibitions in the Russian Museum and MMSI , it seems that the boom began precisely for this period of their work, on the era of “new artists”. But Mr. Bugaev is known for his Plyushkinism , his house to the ceiling is scored by the most strange rarities from garbage, attic and flea markets. And he will not give anything to anyone .

And Africa will definitely not give one thing to anyone. The door that was located under the skirt of the Mukhinsky “collective farmer” and which they, together with Sergey Anufriev and photographer Sergei Borisov, broke and dragged . Viktor Tupitsyn appreciated this act as follows: “A reader familiar with the considerations of the French philosopher J. Derrida about Hymen (virgin) could regard the jokes of Africa and Anufriev as“ phallogocentrism ”. It was with this particularly valuable subject that Africa began his triumphal procession in Western countries, however, Sergei Anufriev somehow quietly disappeared from the project.

Be that as it may, Sergey Bugaev was among those few artists from Russia, whose surnames are remembered by Western critics and curators. The point here, obviously, is in an amazing property - the proteism of Africa, the ability to fit perfectly into absolutely any situation. For example, in a rather closed party of St. Petersburg ravers. He did not seem to graduate the culinary college in his native Novorossiysk, but he ended up among the co -founders and authors of one of the most heavy intellectual projects - the journal "Cabinet" . And therefore, it is not at all surprising that in the nineties he became almost the only domestic artist who absolutely accurately calculated and issued all the requests of the Western art world. Therefore, his exhibitions opened in the most key museums and galleries, they wrote about them in important publications, including New York Times ( 1 , 2 ).

And if the glory of Komar and Melamida or Ilya Kabakov was mediated by the realities of the Cold War, then the international career of Sergey belongs to the nineties, the period when the Russian Bubble began to be blown away, caused by the West's attention to the events of the Gorbachev perestroika. Africa’s career has just been for this decade, when Russian art has lost its bonuses in an international context, that is, at the very peak of loss of interest in the “Russian” on the Western art scene. His personal exhibition “Crimeania” opened in 1995 in a very serious place - in the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts (MAC). The plot is also serious - Sergey lay down in a real psychiatric hospital in Crimea for two weeks in order to approach the border of madness. The solution is undoubtedly brave. But he filled the exhibition with his personal, very extensive collection of Soviet kich, consisting of all sorts of rugs with Stalin, Lenin busts, medals, etc. Africa, in fact, is the completely indefatigable fan of all this ideological garbage, which he stubbornly digs in the attics and flea markets (by the way, it was there that the sacred door was used from the “collective farmer”). And this, it would seem, was not enough for no interesting junk for a very extensive installation. Of course, the director of MAC Peter Nover, who came from the African project to extraordinary agitation, was very mistaken, insisting that the artist expressed an injury from the experienced totalitarianism. However, Africa himself also did not object to such an interpretation . Here is just the most important thing that he found the strength to “show himself” - with all the madness and painful addiction to collecting all kinds of garbage. And he did it in the right place and at the right time. It was in this form that the ideal proteism and the ability to adapt to any situation, which allow Sergey Bugaev - Africa to the largest Russian artists, expressed.

But all the same “adaptability” led to the sad results that we observe today. Mutations of this world fatally lead to mutations of the personality of Sergei Bugaev. In the nineties, he was listed as an assistant to the deputy and democrat Yuri Shchekochikhin, carefully dodging at the same time from obscurantism and hyperfundamalism, into which his mentors gradually flowed - Timur Novikov and Sergey Kurekhin. And now he insists that the artist should become a statesman. When reminding about the last game with Gay discourse, he is harshly outraged , persistently reminds of his two children and a beautiful wife. He somehow made his way to the proxies of President Putin . And he allegedly persuaded the naive fellow of his, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monro, to arrange some kind of pornopormans , where he will portray the leaders of the opposition (though the story sounds somehow too implausible ). So you can responsibly and clearly say - what is the era, such is Sergey Bugaev. And all the hope that Africa will ever return to us.