"Live
coals" by Oleg Finogenov
the
siberian myth
Actually,
I intended writing about the IVth Krasnoyarsk Museum Biennale, and the material
is almost ready. But all of a sudden I received a letter from a reader of art-themagazine.com,
Carlos Wedde, a New Zealander. The letter touched my own feelings very deeply,
and I couldn't help answering the letter. Also, Carlos courteously did not mind
quoting his letter publicly.
carlos
I live in New Zealand, we have a discussion that follows along the same lines
as your article [on the difference between Russian and
Western art worlds] - as an artculture we're never sure whether to celebrate
our uniqueness and isolation or try and follow what Europeans or Americans do.
A European friend
who I was talking to about art in New Zealand said that the art in Europe is so
much deeper and infused with tradition and history etc. than in New Zealand, I
didn't particularly like her comment but I can see how an envy of an apparently
more "sophisticated" culture can cause two basic responses: 1) a focus on what
is DIFFERENT and UNIQUE about New Zealand 2) a focus on how WE can be like THEM..
i.e. Europe America.
me
Well, Russian culture is at least as deeply rooted as the European one.
Still, there are definite traces of the envy about everything "European" among
us as well. European fine art (of the past), European music, European cinematography...
Masses obviously want to be like THEM. Not the culture professionals. They express
a great opposition to western culture influence focusing on what is UNIQUE about
us. I heard it myself in speeches of leaders of Krasnoyarsk museums. As a Russian
looking at the world from the center of Asia I do not feel that the lack of ancient
history should be a ground for envy.
Another
consideration: surely, Russia is not New Zealand but Siberia itself is something
like a "New Zealand" inside Russia. New Zealand was discovered by Europeans 1642,
Krasnoyarsk city was founded as an exile settlement 1628... The city is separated
from Russian centers by over 4000 km, that's twice as much as from Wellington
to Sydney. I can assure you that the similar complexes and envy that Russians
may have in respect to Europe also take place between the Russian capitals and
Siberia. Siberian artists envy Moscow artists. Why? The old song: because the
prices for paintings are higher there, because it's easier there to go abroad,
to emigrate.
So,
yes, there is a plenty of envy in many respects. But I would like to ask: why
are we, at all, feeling envy to European culture? Tell me, please, is European
(or American) culture the oldest and the richest of the world? And how about Egypt,
India, or China? Do we envy Indian culture? No? Why is that?
carlos
Is not the situation similar within financial circumstances as cultural?
We envy the wealthy nations so try to be like them and by sympathetic likeness
achieve their wealth, or be more like ourselves, which most of the time means
acting in opposition to whatever "they" are doing. The other thing is that we
often only hear about the successful artists and not any of the others, so base
a view of the relative wealth of a nation on that.
me
In my opinion, this
is the point. This is the answer to the questions. Let's put it frankly, masses
do not need very much culture, or need it very little, from time to time, and
this has always been so. People want cheep tasty food, large comfortable apartments,
good cars, travel... (A notion of "euro-renovation" appeared in the Russian language.
To do euro-renovation means to do everything in one's apartment, to fit it well,
using beautiful materials from West Europe). By the way, masses want high salaries
and clean streets...
Those
nations who have all the things, feel also they have the right to teach us culture.
And we, who don't have them, subconsciously agree with it. That is why an average
European from a wealthy country may feel that he can look from above at younger
cultures OR those not showing high living standards. Have you heard of Albania?
It's a European country, though, the poorest one. Will you listen to an Albanian
telling you that Albanian culture is much older (which is true) than that of New
Zealand? I won't. Ask any Russian, and he will say that New Zealanders are more
Europeans than Albanians are. And the interest in New Zealand art will be incomparably
higher. Because New Zealand belongs to the West, to those industrial nations whom
we envy.
Life
experience taught me that desire is primary (in the sence that materialistic philosophy
teaches that matter is primary). A person first wants something and then finds
every argument to justify it, to do or not to do an action. Among artists I know
there are those who would gladly leave Russia in the hope to solve at once all
living problems. "Because the prices for paintings are high there." "Because an
acquainted artist is doing there very well painting portraits for the rich."
There
are also those who don't like the West, so they stress on negative examples. Vasilij
Slonov, a Krasnoyarsk artist, returned recently from Germany where he was invited
to with an exhibition of modern art objects. What was his impression of the German
art scene? That only a tiny percentage of the artists there can earn their living
selling their own paintings. Perhaps, these are those mostly successful artists
whom we hear about. Others have to have a job, maybe quite far from art, and paint
from time to time. By the way, he says, his German colleagues were quite surprised
to know that he, a young artist from "poor and unstable Russia", still can feed
his family working all the time as an artist, i.e., painting.
carlos
Finally, I'd like to find out more about artists in Siberia. In my final
year at art school I made an installation work called "A compound in Siberia"
It was a room filled with salt sculpted into snow drifts with wooden boats and
machines littering the floor. What it was all about I won't go into in great detail,
it was all very layered and so forth, in a way being more about what I associated
with Siberia as an imaginary landscape than what Siberia is. But you are on the
opposite side of the world to New Zealand and I wanted to pretend that I was making
a statement about what was DIFFERENT and UNIQUE about a country and culture which
I'd never been to or encountered before. Perhaps all I wanted to comment on was
how much of our cultural myths are made up because we need them to comfort ourselves
against something we envy, namely other myths.
me
Bob Monserud, an American scientist and friend of mine, who visited
Krasnoyarsk ten years ago, spoke out in that sense that "when we the West people
hear the word "Siberia" we imagine at once the following: icy desert and posts
with barbed wire". In wider Siberia, such places may exist. But I said him: "Bob,
you are educated man, moreover, you are natural scientist. Look at the map of
vegetation and you will right away understand what the land looks like, and the
climate type as well." The reply was something like "yes, yes, but it doesn't
help." What he meant was that the images of Siberia hammered into the heads of
people since their childhood, remain unbeatable.
Well,
I am not so strong to oppose the myths but I will do my best to follow my mission
at art-themagazine.com and will give those interested examples of Siberian culture
as I see it from inside. For the time being, may I offer you one more image of
Siberia. You know, it's still summer in our hemisphere! The name of the flowers
may be interpreted into English as "live coals". In early summer, they bloom abundantly
in Siberian forests.
Vladimir
Gavrikov
gavrikov@online.ru
