Contemporary Russian artists: Semyon Faibisovich. Contemporary Russian artists: Semyon Faibisovich You often say that you are going your own way
Semyon Faibisovich (born in 1949) is one of the most significant contemporary Russian hyperrealist artists. He himself, however, does not like when he is referred to this direction. Indeed, if hyperrealists or photorealists, as they are also called, strive for the most accurate, real transfer, elaboration of the details of the depicted object.
Photorealist Sergey Ossovsky. House with pink columns. From the collection of the gallery Aidan Salakhova.
For Semyon Faibisovich, who has appeared on the Moscow art scene since the early 80s, the main thing is the social context. It is no coincidence that Faibisovich is not only an artist, but also a writer. Therefore, his works are much more, if you will, "literary", full of inner drama. Without words, he tells us a story about the private, personal life of his characters, revealing their inner world, paying attention to themselves and their problems.
His works from the period of the 80s constitute a real chronicle of this time. They convey general morale - tension, fatigue, uncertainty ordinary people that time, ordinary citizens of the USSR during perestroika.
Semyon Faibisovich. Electric train series. 1985 year
Portrait of Lev Rubenstein.
Regular Bus Series
In the 90s, the social context does not disappear from Faibisovich's works, but somewhat different accents appear in it. Life is becoming more and more hectic, everyone is looking for their place in this new Russia... Someone remains at the side of the road, unnoticed by the rest of the people. New standards appear in life, a new understanding of success, beauty, happiness.
Detailed biography
Personal exhibitions:
- Moscow is mine. Moscow City Museum. Moscow, Russia
- Residual vision. VLADEY Space. Moscow, Russia
- My yard. Regina Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Three in one. 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art. Special project. Red October. Moscow, Russia
- Obvious. Moscow Museum contemporary art... Moscow, Russia
- Take a walk. Gallery Ikon. Birmingham, England
- Comeback. REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Returned values 2. Painting. REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Early painting and graphics within the gallery project Archiving of the Present. Krokin Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Returned values. Painting. REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Everything has its time, everything has its place ... Installation based on photos. Museum and Community Center Andrey Sakharov. Moscow, Russia
- Knot under the pines. Double session. Video installation. "TV-gallery". Moscow, Russia
- Every hunter wants to know ... Photo installation. "XL-gallery". Moscow, Russia
- The Living and the Dead (summer memory). Video photo installation. Marat Guelman Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Our fluff. The photo. Zverev Center for Contemporary Art. Moscow, Russia
- The chill runs out of the gate. Painting, installation. "L-gallery". Moscow, Russia
- Farewell anniversary (together with B. Orlov). REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Chronicle of current events. Picturesque installation. Yakut Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Obvious. REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- The last demo. Picturesque installation. REGINA Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Galerie Inge Baecker. Cologne, Germany
- "First Gallery". Moscow, Russia
- Phyllis Kind Gallery. Chicago, USA
- Phyllis Kind Gallery. New York, USA
Group exhibitions (selected):
- Borscht and champagne. Selected works from the collection of Vladimir Ovcharenko. Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Moscow, Russia
- Through the Looking Glass: Hyperrealism in the Soviet Union. Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. New Brunswick, USA
- Reconstruction II. Ekaterina Foundation. Moscow, Russia
- The team I can't live without. REGINA Gallery, Moscow
- Metropolis: ReflectionsontheModernCity. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Birmingham, UK
- Moscow & Muscovites. Almine Rech Gallery. Paris, France
- Russian contemporary art today - the choice of the Kandinsky Prize (curated by Andrey Erofeev). Arts Santa Monica. Barcelona, Spain
- Russian Turbulence (curated by Etienne Macret). Charles Riva Collection. Brussels, Belgium
- Hostages of the void. State Tretyakov Gallery... Moscow, Russia
- Ultimate / Specific. KGAU "Museum of Contemporary Art" PERMM. Perm, Russia
- Negotiation- Today's Documents 2010. Today Art Museum. Beijing, China
- Next of Russia. Seoul, South Korea
- Traffic. Evolution. Art. Cultural Foundation "Ekaterina". Moscow, Russia
- Artists Against the State / Returning to Perestroika. Ron Feldman Gallery. New York, USA
- The Russian vision of Europe. Europalia. Brussels, Belgium
- Moscow-Berlin / Berlin-Moskau. 1950-2000. Art. A modern look. State historical Museum... Moscow, Russia
- Nostalgic Conceptualization: Russian Version. Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University. New York, USA
- Semyon Fajbisowitsch, Allen Jones, Timur Novikov, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol. Bleibtreu-Galerie. Berlin, Germany
- Berlin-Moskau 1950-2000. Martin-Gropius-Bau. September 2003 - January 2004. Berlin, Germany
- New countdown: Digital Russia together with Sony. Moscow House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- Actual Russian painting. "New Manezh". Moscow, Russia
- Pro Sight. II International festival Photo. Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
- Russian artists to Andy Warhol (as part of the "Warhol Week in Moscow" festival). Exhibition of the Marat Guelman Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- 20th century art. New permanent exhibition of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- Serials. NCCA, Manege. Moscow, Russia
- Modern Art Museum. Russian art of the late 50s - early 80s. A. Erofeev's project. Central House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- Act 99. Austria - Moscow. Museum of Wels - Manege. Moscow, Russia
- Post-war Russian avant-garde. Collection of Yuri Traisman. State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg,
- Russia - State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow, Russia - University of Miami Museum. Miami, USA
- History in faces. Traveling exhibition in the cities of the Russian province. Open Society Institute, Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve. Moscow, Russia
- Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. Zimmerli Art Museum. Rutgers University. New Jersey, USA
- Before Neo and after Post - The New Russian Version. Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York, USA
- Old Symbols, New Icons in Russian Contemporary Art. Stewart Levi Gallery. New York, USA
- Monuments: Transformation for the Future. ICI. ISI. Central House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- A Mosca ... A Mosca. Villa Campoletto. Ercolano. Galleria Comunale. Bologna, Italy
- Glasnost Under Glass. Ohio University. Columbus, USA
- Adaptation and Negation of Socialist Realism. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Ridgefield, USA
- Painting in Moscow and Leningrad. 1965-1990. Columbus Museum of Art. Columbus, USA
- Bulatov, Faibisovich, Gorokhovski, Kopystianskiye, Vassilyev. Phyllis Kind Gallery. Chicago, USA
- Photo in painting. "First Gallery". Moscow, Russia
- Behind the Ironic Curtain. Phyllis Kind Gallery. New York, USA
- Moscow-3. Eva Pol Gallery. West Berlin, Germany
- Von der Revolution zur Perestroika. Sowietische Kunst aus der Sammlung Ludwig. Musee d'Art Modern. Saint-Etienne, Switzerland
- Ich lebe - Ich sehe. Kunstmuseum. Bern, Switzerland
- Glastnost. Kunsthalle in Emden. FRG
- Beyond the Ironical Curtain. Galerie Inge Baecker. Cologne, Germany
- Labyrinth. Youth Palace. Moscow, Russia
- Direct from Moscow. Phyllis Kind Gallery. New York, USA
- Retrospection: 1957-1987. THEN. "Hermitage Museum". Moscow, Russia
- Exhibitions of the City Committee of Graphic Artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya. Moscow, Russia
Museum collections:
- Time Magazine, New York, USA
- Ludwig Collection, Aachen, Germany
- Museum of Contemporary Art of Eastern Europe (Ludwig Collection), Budapest, Hungary
- The Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA
- Kunsthalle in Emden, Emden, Germany
- Museum of Contemporary Art, Lodz, Poland
- Museum of Contemporary Art ART4.ru, Moscow, Russia
- Moscow Museum of Modern Art, Moscow, Russia
- State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, Russia
- State Literary Museum, Moscow, Russia
- Moscow House of Photography, Moscow, Russia
- Museum of Moscow, Moscow, Russia
# OWN WAY
/ SEMEN FAYBISOVICH IS AN ARTIST FOR WHOM IT IS IMPORTANT TO FEEL AND FIX THE NERVE OF TIME. HE IS ALWAYS IN A SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH THE PLACE AND THE ERA, THEREFORE HIS CREATIVITY IS RELEVANT AND DOES NOT LEAVE ANYONE /
Text MARINA FEDOROVSKAYA
photo VLADIMIR DOLGOV
When we first approached Semyon Natanovich Faibisovich with a proposal to make a cover for the autumn issue, he had just returned to Tel Aviv, where he now lives, from Moscow, where his exhibition was still going on at the Museum of Moscow. Faibisovich was fascinated by textures and at first had no idea how the proposed topic would fit into this. But a few hours later, the artist announced that there was an idea: his son and his daughter Kira were going to visit him, so the topic of the family promised to be revealed in real.
Semyon Natanovich Faibisovich is very fond of the public - collectors and just spectators, so the exhibition "Moscow My", which presented the last two cycles: "My yard" and "Kazansky V", was a great success. Two cycles about diametrically opposite components of the life of almost every Muscovite - his own, almost private, static space of the courtyard and public space - with its dynamics and the flickering of unfamiliar faces. Faibisovich's photorealism - with a psychological face. Since the late 70s, he has been observing society through a personal view of the world with his brush and camera.
- You work with realistic art throughout your life. How did this reality change in different periods?
- The fact is that in Soviet times I had a need to paint a portrait of the surrounding reality. Actually, what I was doing then was creating a portrait of the Soviet era. I had the feeling of a rabbit looking a boa constrictor in the eye. I understood that, most likely, it would not end well, but I could not take my eyes off - so all this fascinated me. A horror in which another reality shines through - not created by the Bolsheviks, but as a result of seven days of creation. And then somehow it suddenly turned out that it was not a rabbit that had died, but a boa constrictor. I reviewed it. And then the next period began: the tension that hypnotized that air of totalitarianism disappeared, the habit of intense gazing remained, and there seemed to be nothing to look at. And my next period (the "Evidence" project) was about how we look, not what. About those filters through which we look at the world without noticing them. I just tried to convey on canvas what I saw with closed eyes... I recorded residual vision, blind spots in the eye. During this period, my paintings often looked completely abstract, the traces of the real world on the screens of closed eyelids change, transform and finally disappear. It looks like an abstraction, but in fact it is realism - what you see is real. Then, in 1995, I quit visual studies altogether and gave up painting. And he returned 12 years later.
- And why?
- It was personal circumstances, and critics destroyed me and thought it was forever. At some point, I just slammed the door, although I did not have any crisis. I wrote my best works and gave it all up. And in the early 2000s, he returned with an author's photography, with some installations, and only after the fifth year he was again drawn to painting. A new era began, and I wanted to create her portrait again - this time with her new face and means adequate to the new time - this is how the idea of mixed technique arose. First, I took a picture taken on a mobile phone with a very low resolution, and then in Photoshop and with a brush, I turned a bad photo into a good painting. This is a three-part technology: photography - photoshop - printing on canvas, and on top - a real painting that allows you to express exactly what I want to say. It seemed to me that I groped for a language adequate to the time. And quite recently, when I settled in Israel, I had a project that became a natural continuation of all these previous ones. In principle, I am not a strategist - I do what I am interested in. I just started taking pictures and felt that behind some pictures, behind every stone there is something rushing from the inside, some kind of energy, some genius of the place, that there is something very ancient in those textures. And I wanted to work with it. I bought a suitable camera and in this project I completely abandoned paints and brushes, this is a purely digital painting. However, the final product - the painting - is printed entirely on canvas and looks like a real painting.
- By profession you are an architect, what did you build?
- I worked in one Central Research Institute, where there was nothing to build, and when the Olympics-80 was outlined, I literally from the street, with a folder of my architectural student projects, came to the 4th Mosproyekt. The building that I built is the press center for the Olympics, now it is the Press House on Novinsky Boulevard, where RIA Novosti was for a long time. Of course, I am not the only one in the team of authors, but I took an active part in its design. And already in the process I decided that I no longer want to do this. The more you can, the more everyone around you is offended, and in general, "sit quietly, do not stick your head out" as a principle of life did not suit me. I found a job as an architect in the Art Fund of the Union of Artists, where there was a free schedule, and I began to study easel painting systematically - I wrote for myself for half a day, and then went to the office, where I also had to make paintings. So he stuffed his hand. I'm in oil painting self-taught, began to study at the age of 30.
- You changed everything several times, dropped it and started again, how did the interest in creativity revive?
- Creativity never ended. It just took different forms. When I gave up painting, I switched to literary pursuits, and expressed myself in this space, especially in the 90s it was more in demand. And when I cooled down to visuals, I took up literary forms, and then I took up photography. Yes, 12 years later I took up painting again - this rarely happens in the history of art, and even less often successfully. It looks like it worked in my case.
- Regarding your success: in the 70s and 80s, you exhibited in the legendary exhibition hall on Malaya Gruzinskaya, where American curators drew attention to you - that's what Wikipedia says. How was it really?
- Yes, it was terribly interesting to me. I was not a member of any group and was always on my own. I didn’t fit in anywhere, I didn’t appear in the spotlights. Art was secondary: I earned money as an architect, and in free time was fond of painting. I didn’t even think that it would be on sale somewhere. Twice a year I exhibited at reporting exhibitions at Malaya Gruzinskaya, in the exhibition hall of the Trade Union of Graphic Artists. It was impossible to consider something in this carpet hanging on the entire wall. But the Americans nevertheless noticed me. It was 1985 when Reagan and Gorbachev met in Reykjavik and agreed on nothing but cultural exchange. And as part of this cultural exchange, a team of New York gallerists, dealers and collectors landed here. They went to the workshops of underground artists, but I was not on this list. They saw my works at an exhibition in Malaya Gruzinskaya, pointed a finger and asked me to bring them to my workshop. I started showing them something, and they literally started screaming. They wanted to take out my work, but they did it only after a couple of years, when perestroika was in full swing. I was dragged to the western market, exhibitions and sales went. I was one of the heroes of the Russian boom. I didn't want to please anyone, but I got into the stream. And since here I was not in any group and kept on my own, they began to push me rather actively. In the opinion of the critics who took power, I did not do what was necessary at that moment: they welcomed Sotsart, conceptualism, and I had a need to speak with my time, with people, with God in my own language. So I ended up in disgrace and left. Since the 2000s, they began to persuade me: come back, they say. I fought back for a long time, but my personal interest arose from the inside, and my return to art coincided with my appearance in the top sellers. In 2007-2008, the second Russian boom began. A Phillips de Pury auction was held in London, where for the first time in many years a lot of Russian contemporary art was presented. This is the first major application for a new wave. And I woke up famous again. At that auction, a collection of John Stewart from New York appeared - he had several of my works, Bulatov, Kabakov. And gallerist Vladimir Ovcharenko (Regina gallery) called me directly from the auction room, and I heard applause with my own ears after the work “Soldiers” from the series “At the Station”, exhibited for 50 thousand pounds, went for 500 thousand.
- Today you have two places of residence - Moscow and Tel Aviv. How does your feeling of home flow from one place to another?
- Unfortunately, it is more likely to dissolve, and in this sense, the state is not very comfortable. On the one hand, I am at home here and there, but by and large, not at home - not here or there. Moscow somehow ousted me, I have it with her in connection with all the transformations recent years relations deteriorated. They were always difficult, tense, but they were, and recently the conversation that I have been leading all my life is over. Moscow has been my muse at all times and in all genres, and in Israel I found something of my own, and I really like Tel Aviv, especially the area where I live ... But all the time I have an annoying dream that I I am looking for an apartment and move from one apartment to another, and everywhere something is wrong, but where I actually live, I cannot remember.
- The theme of our cover, family, is not always associated with the artist. And she is directly connected with you. Tell us a little about your family.
- I had two wives, from the first - one son, from the second - two. And two more girls between them are illegitimate. I only keep in touch with my first wife. This is how life turned out. But at the same time, I have an excellent relationship with all the children. I have five of them, and already six grandchildren. I introduced them all to each other, now they all communicate with each other, and I with them. These are exactly what I feel as my family. They live in different countries. I fly to Brno to my son and granddaughter Kira, and they came to me in Tel Aviv in the spring. Another son of mine lives nearby. And I am most interested in them. Friendly communication became fragmentary, I was never interested in social life. And I am always happy to communicate with my children. Such is my family - somewhat sprawling topographically, but at the same time the warmest and most loving.
# The artist's creative kitchen - between stretchers and paints, imagination and images seen on the streets
# In the apartment on Novoryazanskaya Street, Semyon Faibisovich is always waiting for his canvases, brushes and palettes so that he can take up painting at any time
Semyon Faibisovich considered a classic of photorealism. Meanwhile, he went to this milestone in a very difficult way, having gone through a protracted creative crisis. Today his works are worth huge sums at world auctions, and the best museums are happy to show his exhibitions. Large exposition of the artist "My Moscow" organized by the gallery "Regina", recently opened in Museum of Moscow... And it seems that this is a pattern, because there are not so many artists whose art is so strongly associated with Moscow. Faibisovich, of course, is a painter of everyday life in Moscow. His heroes - ordinary passers-by, yard grandmothers, salesmen, fashionable girls, guest workers, homeless people and policemen - are the same urban types that make up the real urban flavor. However, some time ago Faibisovich was forced to leave the city, which he always called his muse. Semyon Faibisovich told ARTANDHOUSES about why he left Moscow, about his characters, and why he posts cats on Facebook.
In your interviews, you have often called Moscow your muse. You recently moved to Tel Aviv. Has he become your muse?
It's too early to talk about Tel Aviv as a muse, because I moved not so long ago. However, a new project was immediately born there. Already from that air I was born, from those emotions. And Moscow is the muse of all life. Almost everything I have done in painting, photography, prose is talking about her, with her.
Why did you decide to move?
It became hard for me to walk on hometown... I always had a difficult, contradictory relationship with him, but interesting, intriguing - so I figured it out. And now it just became disgusting, there is nothing more to find out. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the hardest thing was to imagine that it would return in some form. And now he's around again. I stopped feeling Moscow as mine, and this is a serious injury. My Moscow - this is dirty courtyards and backyards, vacant lots, kiosks, cracks in the asphalt, stray dogs, homeless people. And Sobyanin cleans everything out, exterminates life from the city. What I love, what I ate as an artist, disappears before our eyes. Not to mention that the "Soviet" expression returned to the faces of passers-by on the streets and fellow travelers in public transport.
How interested are you in the artistic life in Tel Aviv?
I am practically not connected with it, did not enter it. And as I understood, it is rather difficult to enter it. There is protection from external influences, from new proposals. On the one hand, everything rests on patronage and recommendations, on the other, you get the hell with them. So far, there is no opportunity to present your new project there, but it should be presented there.
Can you tell us what the project is?
The project in the Museum of Moscow is based on "bad" quality - on the low resolution of the original images, and then a game goes with it, which ends with "real" painting. And in the new project, the game is based on the high quality of the image, and the output is purely digital painting. At the same time, the essence of the game is the desire to pull out in different ways from the real surrounding textures the “aura of the place”, its historical charm, which is hidden behind the external simplicity.
Do you have no fear of new technologies?
There is, but this fear is overcome by the desire to get what you want. That's how I mastered Photoshop. It all started with the Mobilography project in 2005. The guys who came up with this project invited several artists, handed us Nokia phones with a 0.6 mega camera, said: “Shoot whatever you want, and then we will stretch it into a large size and make an exhibition”. The camera of that phone could not take a normal photo, so it was doomed to create its own reality, and I really liked her work, and I began to help her. But when the images were mechanically enlarged to 80 × 120 and displayed in MDF, I was upset: it was not at all what I saw on a tiny screen and longed to see in print. The potency that excited me evaporated, but I didn't want to give up and asked my friend to give me some Photoshop tutorials. Gradually I mastered it and learned, enlarging, to pull out of the pictures what I wanted. But something was still missing - and then an inner voice began to whisper: take your hands in your hands. This is how the project was born in 2007, the last two cycles of which I show at the Museum of Moscow.
Didn't you have a self-taught painter complex? After all, you are an architect by education?
Maybe it was once, but I have already forgotten about it. Because I realized long ago that I am a professional amateur. In the architectural institute he began to write prose as well - it was there that he understood and felt what creation is as a process and as a result; that it really doesn't matter what you do: you write a novel or a picture or a house you build. The main thing is to have something to say and know the language for this statement.
Do you feel more like an artist or a writer?
It is hard to say. It is impossible to engage in large pictorial and literary projects at the same time. So, while painting, I feel like an artist - I'm even uncomfortable when they call me a writer. And vice versa.
You are a rather scandalous writer; there have been numerous indignant reviews of your novels. And as an artist, you are much less outraged by the public and professionals.
Why? This is now I was enrolled in the classics. At one time, he was even known as a very brawler in the space of contemporary art, because he always did not what the critics and curators said, but what I myself wanted to do - chronically did not coincide with the "general line", was neither a conceptualist, nor sots-artist. Critics first explained that I was a hopeless outsider, then they began to explain that I was a dead artist. Every exhibition went wild, so at some point I could not resist and began to publicly explain what I myself think about them. And so he turned out to be a brawler: wow, we bury him, and he rock the boat - what bad manners!
Are you looking for complete reliability, full nudity of the human person? After all, you are painting far from ceremonial portraits.
Why? There are also ceremonial ones. For example, a portrait of my feeble-minded friend Volodya: he was specially dignified. Or ceremonial portrait old ladies. Here they are sitting on a bench in the courtyard, as if on a heap, familiar old women, discussing everyone who walks by. I ask if I can take a picture of them? They allow and also dignify themselves - and this is how a group ceremonial portrait is obtained. But in general, I prefer not to glow - I just catch fragments of everyday life.
Are you more of an observer than a critic?
Both seem to be. Only not an observer, but a witness. I want to adequately convey those complex, ambiguous impressions of reality that it awakens in me. To convey everything together: fun and sadness, disgust and delight, beauty and horror - as it is in life, as I feel it.
It seems to me that your works are closer to the Itinerants.
Agree. I consider myself a continuer of the tradition of Russian critical realism. And when the exhibition was planned, the local staff treated my things like that, as far as I know. Museum workers have special optics, retrospective, so they felt the continuity - the continuation of that conversation in this reality.
How do you choose your heroes? Are you more interested in marginal, dysfunctional characters?
I am more interested in uninteresting people - in whom there is no individuality, who are unclouded embodiment and expression of the "collective unconscious". They talk not so much about themselves as about the place and time. For example, before that I had a cycle "Razgulyay", where the main characters inadvertently became homeless. When I conceived the loop and started looking around through the viewfinder, there were many more of them than it seemed. They are all around, but we simply do not notice them. So they became the main characters - I wanted to make amends to them for our common guilt of inattention to them. They are also present in the new cycles, but nevertheless in the courtyard the main characters are neighbors, and at the station there are passengers.
How hard is it to shoot a person at close range? How do people react?
Very differently. With a mobile phone, the problem is easier to solve - it is easier to remain invisible. And when in Soviet times he took pictures with a camera, he went out to this lesson, like a trainer enters a cage with a lion. A lot of stories. Once ran into a KGB officer. In the subway, I photograph a perspective of a carriage for a portrait of Leva Rubinstein, and in the foreground a fawn hat looms, obscuring the general view. I asked its owner to move a little, and he answered: "Why are you filming in the subway?" I say: "Because I need it." He says: "Your documents." I say: "No, yours first," is the answer worked out in similar situations. Usually - in the case of well-wishers - this is where it all ends, and he takes out a red book, opens it, and it says: "KGB". Now, he says, I will hand you over to the police station. I say, "You're drunk." It was March 8th and he was really drunk. And this, he says, is none of your business. I didn’t argue further: the film was almost shot in the camera, now it will light up, and everything is down the drain. In Belyaevo, he handed me over to a guard, who took me to the department. I was lucky that then the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the KGB were at knives. As the KGB officer left, they talked to me a little and let me go.
You often say that you are going your own way. Why did you not belong to the circle of conceptualists, but preferred to exhibit at Malaya Gruzinskaya, this was also some kind of your own way?
I didn't prefer it. I showed my works only to my friends, and they were poets. There was no artistic circle of communication, and I did not even try to participate in exhibitions. And then, after the "bulldozer" exhibition, the KGB made such a hole in the hat for the release of non-conformist steam in the form of a basement on Malaya Gruzinskaya. One of my friends advised me to take the graphics, which I was doing then, to the art council there, and I took it. Since I was not a member of the Union of Artists, in principle there were no other opportunities to exhibit - even though I felt uncomfortable there both because of the KGB's supervision and because of the bohemian atmosphere in the basement. He honestly went into collective drinking bouts, as befits a bohemian, but quickly realized that this was not mine. Everyone is sitting in a state of deep intoxication, hitting themselves in the chest and repeating in unison that they are geniuses. Once I could not resist and said: "Friends, according to statistics, it does not work, everyone cannot be geniuses." Everyone stared at me - some offended, some indignantly, and one asks menacingly: "Don't you consider yourself a genius?" I say: "No, I don't." And he: "What do you want most of all?" In general, I toiled there. Although the Americans noticed me in 1985 exactly on Malaya Gruzinskaya - and there was nowhere else to catch their eye. As soon as the opportunity arose to exhibit in other places (and countries), I fled from there.
In the 1980s, the doors to the West opened for you, but you still did not go there. In the USSR, our artists idealized the West, and as far as I know, you had unpleasant stories with Western gallery owners. Are you disappointed with the Western system?
There were some unpleasant stories when paintings were stolen, for example, but conceptually, this was not what disappointed me. I am very grateful to those people who noticed me and dragged me to their cultural scene, to the world art market. But when the tension that made us peer into it painfully began to leave the air of Soviet life, I had the idea of a new project - a conversation not about what we see, but about how we look. And then my gallery owner Phyllis Kind, who opened me, started a conversation about my creative plans. I told her why the “social” project had ceased to excite me and that a new one had excited me, I told which one. She listened carefully, said that it was very interesting, and then began to explain - and explained for a long time - why I should continue to do what I do. That she brought me to the market with this product, and everyone expects this from me, and I must meet expectations, and she must make people take money out of their pockets, and for this she herself must be confident in the product she offers - in this kind. I listened to her and thought: “I sat in the empire of evil and did exactly what I want, not listening to anyone and not hoping for anything. And precisely due to its independence, it attracted your attention. And now, then, in your empire of goodness and freedom, I have to dance to your tune? Figurines! I'd rather return to Moscow and continue to do what I want. " And so he did.
When you returned, you began to write a lot and frankly about what was happening in the Moscow art environment. And many this then outraged.
I didn’t start right away, but when the reviewers walking around the buffet got really tired of it. Yes, I made my enemies to the maximum. For many, I am still persona non grata. They just buried me then - forever, as they were sure, and take the auctions and resurrect me. They will not bury me anymore - especially since in the meantime I have become classics. In general, my project to listen only to myself and go my own way was a success. And now the spiteful critics amuse me, and do not enrage me, as before. Yes, and they have calmed down.
But this position led you to a certain crisis when you stopped painting in the 1990s.
Yes, then my persecutors succeeded: not only no one bought, but also did not exhibit. Well I say: buried. There was literally nothing to support my family, but to paint big pictures, you need decent money - so I decided to save money. And then the "personal circumstances" began to greatly depress - in general, everything came together. On the other hand, in the late 1980s I started writing prose, and in the early 1990s - essay journalism. It was more fun in this space: there was demand, and they even paid for something - so I jumped into it.
Was this moment hard for you?
Yes. Alternative activities partly helped out, but prolonged depression with suicidal urges could not be avoided. However, he gradually got better. When in 2007 my paintings from one American collection fell out for auction and went for big money, and then again and again, and again, in one interview they noticed that this was a mess: an artist of my, unfashionable today type, who stubbornly goes on your own, you are supposed to die in the attic, surrounded by your useless work, in poverty, forgotten by everyone. I replied that this is exactly what happened to me in the mid-1990s. And now it's a different life - heavenly.
Could you imagine that there will be big sales at world auctions, that your works will be sold for a lot of money, have you been waiting for this?
No. I thought the critics had coped with me. Well, maybe after death, something will change ... No, it was not in my thoughts, even in my dreams. Just as in Soviet times he worked "on the table" and had no thoughts to sell works. For me, painting was a way of life, a way of human survival, and not a professional occupation - I just sorted out my relationship with the surrounding life. Therefore, when the first buyers appeared, he did not want to part with the work, he persuaded himself for a long time that it was necessary.
You are quite active on social media. What does Facebook mean to you?
It all started in 2012, when the protests of the "creative class" started and my social temperament rekindled again: I wanted to speak out, to articulate something. And just then the liberal publications for which I wrote in the 1990s remembered about me, they sent offers to write for them. Then they offered to blog on "Echo of Moscow", then on "Snob". But both there and there censorship gradually began to gain momentum. Moreover, at Snob there was such a contingent of project participants - great patriots who had driven away - that they began to "black out" me, draw up petitions to expel me from the project. Well, I sent them. And then the son suggested that there is such a thing - Facebook. And I liked it: write what you want, show what you want. Who is interested, he reads and looks, who is rude and demands something from you, you ban. In general, you need not fit into any niche, but you can create your own.
Sometimes you post cats!
Yes, this is a conceptual project. When I got there, everyone worthy people bonfire "mimimi": indecent, bad taste, philistine. And I'm used to breaking the rules: I see there are very cute and funny cats (dogs, raccoons) - you look, and the mood rises, the soul rejoices. And in other materials there is such darkness - so I decided to please my friends and subscribers with what is possible. Well, I kind of broke the stereotype of our younger brothers - I no longer hear about the fact that it is indecent.
Journalist
Art critic. She worked as an editor for the magazine "Artchronika". Published in The Art Newspaper Russia, Artguide, Kommersant, RBC Daily, Expert, Harpers Bazaar Art.
- 2019 - GUM-RED-LINE. exhibition of contemporary art in GUM on Red Square. Moscow, Russia
- 2016 - Borsch and Champagne. Selected works from the collection of Vladimir Ovcharenko. Moscow Museum of Modern Art. Moscow, Russia
- 2015 - Through the Looking Glass: Hyperrealism in the Soviet Union. Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. New Brunswick, USA
- 2014 - Reconstruction II. Ekaterina Foundation. Moscow, Russia
- 2013 - The team I can't live without. REGINA Gallery, Moscow
- 2013 - Metropolis: ReflectionsontheModernCity. Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery. Birmingham, UK
- 2013 - Moscow & Muscovites. Almine Rech Gallery. Paris, France
- 2012 - Russian Contemporary Art Today - Choice of the Kandinsky Prize (Curator - Andrey Erofeev). Arts Santa Monica. Barcelona, Spain
- 2011 - Russian Turbulence (curated by Etienne Macret). Charles Riva Collection. Brussels, Belgium
- 2011 - Hostages of the void. State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- 2010 - Ultimate / Specific. KGAU "Museum of Contemporary Art" PERMM. Perm, Russia
- 2010 - Negotiation-Today's Documents 2010. Today Art Museum. Beijing, China
- 2008 - Next of Russia. Seoul, South Korea
- 2007 - Movement. Evolution. Art. Cultural Foundation "Ekaterina". Moscow, Russia
- 2006 - Artists against the State / Returning to Perestroika. Ron Feldman Gallery. New York, USA
- 2005 - The Russian vision of Europe. Europalia. Brussels, Belgium
- 2004 - Moscow-Berlin / Berlin-Moskau. 1950-2000. Art. A modern look. State Historical Museum. Moscow, Russia
- 2004 - Nostalgic Conceptualization: Russian Version. Schimmel Center for the Arts, Pace University. New York, USA
- 2003 - Semyon Fajbisowitsch, Allen Jones, Timur Novikov, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol. Bleibtreu-Galerie. Berlin, Germany
- 2003 - Berlin-Moskau 1950-2000. Martin-Gropius-Bau. September 2003 - January 2004. Berlin, Germany
- 2003 - New Countdown: Digital Russia together with Sony. Moscow House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- 2002 - Actual Russian Painting. "New Manezh". Moscow, Russia
- 2002 - Pro Sight. II International Festival of Photography. Nizhny Novgorod, Russia
- 2001 - Russian Artists - to Andy Warhol (within the framework of the "Warhol Week in Moscow" festival). Exhibition of the Marat Guelman Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- 2000 - Art of the XX century. New permanent exhibition of the State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow, Russia
- 2000 - Series. NCCA, Manege. Moscow, Russia
- 1999 - Museum of Contemporary Art. Russian art of the late 50s - early 80s. A. Erofeev's project. Central House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- 1999 - Act 99. Austria - Moscow. Museum of Wels - Manege. Moscow, Russia
- 1999 - Post-war Russian avant-garde. Collection of Yuri Traisman. State Russian Museum. St. Petersburg,
- 1999 - Russia - State Tretyakov Gallery. Moscow, Russia - University of Miami Museum. Miami, USA
- 1997 - History in faces. Traveling exhibition in the cities of the Russian province. Open Society Institute, Tsaritsyno State Museum-Reserve. Moscow, Russia
- 1995 - Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union. Zimmerli Art Museum. Rutgers University. New Jersey, USA
- 1994 - Before Neo and after Post - The New Russian Version. Lehman College Art Gallery, Bronx, New York, USA
- 1993–1994 - Old Symbols, New Icons in Russian Contemporary Art. Stewart Levi Gallery. New York, USA
- 1993 - Monuments: Transformation for the Future. ICI. ISI. Central House of Artists. Moscow, Russia
- 1992 - A Mosca ... A Mosca. Villa Campoletto. Ercolano. Galleria Comunale. Bologna, Italy
- 1992 - Glasnost Under Glass. Ohio University. Columbus, USA
- 1990 - Adaptation and Negation of Socialist Realism. The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art. Ridgefield, USA
- 1990 - Painting in Moscow and Leningrad. 1965-1990. Columbus Museum of Art. Columbus, USA
- 1990 - Bulatov, Faibisovich, Gorokhovski, Kopystianskiye, Vassilyev. Phyllis Kind Gallery. Chicago, USA
- 1989 - Photo in painting. "First Gallery". Moscow, Russia
- 1989 - Behind the Ironic Curtain. Phyllis Kind Gallery. New York, USA
- 1989 - Moscow-3. Eva Pol Gallery. West Berlin, Germany
- 1989 - Von der Revolution zur Perestroika. Sowietische Kunst aus der Sammlung Ludwig. Musee d'Art Modern. Saint-Etienne, Switzerland
- 1988 - Ich lebe - Ich sehe. Kunstmuseum. Bern, Switzerland
- 1988 - Glastnost. Kunsthalle in Emden. FRG
- 1988 - Beyond the Ironical Curtain. Galerie Inge Baecker. Cologne, Germany
- 1988 - Labyrinth. Youth Palace. Moscow, Russia
- 1987 - Direct from Moscow. Phyllis Kind Gallery. New York, USA
- 1987 - Retrospection: 1957-1987. THEN. "Hermitage Museum". Moscow, Russia
- 1976-1988 - Exhibitions of the City Committee of Graphic Artists on Malaya Gruzinskaya. Moscow, Russia