MANIFESTO
STYLE`S HISTORY
Conceptualism as a trend in contemporary art was a reaction to the omnipotence of propaganda, which in the twentieth century denoted itself everywhere, but reached a tragic climax in Hitler's Germany and in the USSR. A set of propaganda clich;s, when words do not make sense, but their emotional energy being transmitted, suppressing consciousness and paralyzing the will of man, created the need for an active opposition in the artist. The first conceptualists, in particular, Joseph Kossuth, interpreting the thesis "art as an idea," created compositions that included pieces of the finished text or fragments of newspaper pages.
The text, which requires careful reading and reflection, lost its apparent omnipotence and its meaninglessness became evident – what artists wanted to emphasize. At the same time, the main task of conceptualism was opposite completely: it was necessary to return the meaning to the word and give the person a conscious support against verbal violence, direct or indirect, violence, which being modeled by the information universe. The pictorial series, in which printed or handwritten text prevailed over a pictorial or photographic image, was too staggering at first. The living water of the content was pouring into a new form - not familiar to the viewer's perception so much that the text seemed a dead appendage of the visual series.
However, gradually the viewer came to the understanding that any art object requires the most careful reading in a direct and figurative sense, no matter what era it was created. Thus, conceptualism, which at first seemed to be the death of art, opened up new possibilities for visual perception. Imaginative perception was combined with logical and raised the viewer to the level of spiritualization, which he had not yet experienced.
IDEA AS THE INTEROSCULATION OF PERMANENT ANALYSIS
The direction, which the authors have designated as Simultaneous Analytical Conceptualism (SimAnK), is the statement of a unique creative alliance between the artist and the poet. His rationale was preceded by the autonomous creative existence of both. Viktor Zakharov, the artist and sculptor, combined a pictorial symbol with a fragment of his own poetic text in the form of a high relief casted in metal. Natalia Troyantseva, the poet, was creating multifaceted analytical compositions, bravely experimenting with different forms of versification and seeking a correspondence between the depth of comprehension and the harmonic perfection inherent in the subject of exquisite literature.
Mutual creative and human interest, the existential limit of perception of God on the verge of life and death accessible to the understanding of both co-authors, in an ontologically sensitive multidimensionality of human existence both inside and outside the social context, initiated the essence of the creative interaction, simultaneous in form and substance. An analytical study of what is born autonomously in the process of inspiration, supplement by world outlook or intuition of the creative partner, and then acquires a new scale, and brings to life a concept whose unconditionality is certified by the painter’s colour decision and philosophical thesis of the poet.
METAPHORS OF TRANSSUBSTANTIATION
The most difficult thing is to get to the core of your own "I", any daredevil will testify. It turns out, there is another level of complexity, a new hypostasis of penetrating into the immanent - through the gaze of a loving and loved by you creator. When the total complexity, spiritual height and the existential depth of one finds an immediate response in to the scale essence of the other, a dialogue of intuitions arises. One is a poet. Another is an artist. One creates a verbal mystery; the other, fully correlating with himself, creates his own mystery, a symbiosis of imagery and imagination.
The interpenetration of essences increases, acquiring the character of expansion. The artist graphically recreates the poetic context; the poet gives a new perspective to the scale image of the visual series, opening to a new insight through the whole summa of the co-creation experience. Never runs out of the source of inspirational co-living inside and outside of instant, inside and outside eternity. The artist and the poet looking for congenial adherents and are infinitely happy to find them.
SIMULTANEOUS ANALYTICAL CONCEPTUALISM AS ART STRATEGY AND POETIC IMPROVISATION
Metaphor of the preamble
So, simultaneous analytical conceptualism. Let us start with the interpretation of the noun. Why «conceptualism»? The entire history of the development of this type of artistic strategy demonstrates a pronounced emphasis not on the visual series as such, but on its contextual interpretation. We can trace the history of phenomenon, starting from the avant-garde artists of the early 1920s, Dadaism in France, futurists, "nichevocs" and OBERIUTs in Russia, and ending with of Ilya Kabakov`s paper installations and Eric Bulatov`s the graphic designs, or the phenomenon of Moscow conceptualism in the format of spontaneous actionism in the "Collective Actions" of Andrei Monastyrsky. Dialogue, which is initiated the artist, looking for and finding the appropriate response from the viewer, because is expressed both directly through the text, and through something that illustrate it. This, always – concrete, dialogue has as its dominant the metaphysical component, which translate the momentary to the level of the eternal. This metaphysical dominant is not is colored mystically and is not is conditioned magically - if it happened, one could insist on the terminology of symbolism. Surrealism is also excluded as a probable designation of our direction: the existential search for the lost "I" in our case is not simply fixed, but - reproduced as something already found. Conceptualism in general is not a question, but an answer, a certain fixed harmony, even if it is a harmony of permanent reflection. At the same time, exactly Surrealism is an essential part of our direction; we have built our own creative reality on the foundation of everyday surreal world perception.
An important feature of our art strategy is the complicated pictorial series and the corresponding or initiating it poetic language in which the poetic scale is competing for priority with philosophical conclusions. To induce the viewer to dialogue and to focus him attention on the image and the text the authors make a deliberate emphasis on expression, on emotional explosion. The definition of "analytical" includes the process of continuous differentiation of an idea, an event, a fact, or a reference of history with the aim of deeply understanding as possible or a new level of comprehension. The definition of "simultaneous" is interpretation of the constant interpenetration "I" both of the authors` , their synchronously occurring creative transformation with the goal - to cover the maximum number of subconscious strata and stimulate intellectual reflection, including considerable experience of creatively receptive memory. The process is never is interrupted and the number of participants in it can be quite large - each of the authors reproduces a conditional conversation with the depicted or imagined heroes of a particular epoch, and Time in the creative alliance of the two is the main and obligatory partner. Therefore, from the viewer is also needs a high level of understanding, including self-understanding. The authors do not want to simplify the task or to cater to the viewer, realizing that this is pointless. The level of perception is set and the desire to view and read, straining imagination and thought - depends on the potential viewer.
http://www.stihi.ru/2016/01/26/4714
http://www.stihi.ru/2016/10/31/9581
http://www.stihi.ru/2016/04/21/11260
Context identification
To analyze their own creative steps, having integrated them into the context of contemporary art and - at the same time - having weighed them on the scales of history, it became possible only in the twentieth century. The end of the nineteenth century paved the way for such actions: Baudelaire, Rimbaud and Isidore Ducasus in poetry, Van Gogh and Gauguin in painting identified and proclaimed themselves as the founders of certain trends in contemporary literature and art. The genius Dali, the pillar and personification of surrealism, created a cult of his own creativity - our compatriot Elena Dyakonova, Gala, greatly contributed to this, moreover, being a muse and like-minded person, was also his actual co-author. Another our famous compatriot, Kazimir Malevich not only gave the name to style in painting, but also substantiated and analyzed phenomenon with the speaking title "Suprematism", implying supremacy over everything and all a priori as a literal declaration of the strength and of the weakness of the Russian mentality. Well-composed image planes initiate an energetic call to dialogue - to dialogue as such, which can only happen with those who are capable of perception and empathy, with those who are so is filled from the inside that could imparted the mass of meanings to any line, to any contour, to any geometric symbol. The fact that exactly the image plane, conditional cliche, even if brightly colored, but - the non-viable and reproducing destruction, suggests the theme and format of the conversation, became clear to the descendants: the time has proved Malevich's genius. Of course, he did not mean it; like the great Europeans, older contemporaries, Malevich believed that he was returning to the basics, not realizing that it was impossible: the genesis of cultural development of several millennia in length would transform any simplicity into truism a priori. Personality, the individual can achieve genius simplicity, but it is a consequence of both the mighty work of the spirit, and the transformation of the accumulated experience of comprehension. All the rest are quite satisfied with the superficially or lightweight knowledge. Malevich managed to establish this conflict between the spiritual demand of the painter and the indifferent aggression of the human mass - to establish, but not to resolve.
However, it becomes obvious only now. The huge layer of Russian pre - and post-revolutionary art for many years was lurked in the shadow of totalitarian ideology. The names of the outstanding creators were preserved, but they sounded discordantly, accidentally falling into the field of view of some art historian in certain circumstances of his research intention. At the same time, the names of Chagall, Kandinsky, Malevich, Boris Grigoriev, Pavel Filonov, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov, Sergei Sharshun and many others organically built into the world art process. Now we have the opportunity to identify the names of contemporaries on the same scales of world culture as the accomplishments of their outstanding predecessors: time has set the right accents and only own prejudices now will be a hindrance to the correct evaluation of that artistic phenomenon.
But if we consider reality as such, reality, as an object of art, then the picture is drawn very disappointing. The circumstances in which the modern Russian artist lives are still invariably recreated by a standard mentality of the internally irresponsible majority. Why do you never have the most necessary?" – was indignant Woland in the famous Bulgakov novel. And in fact there really is nothing in this permanent savagery, where again and again the timidly sprouting grains of European civilization are ferociously trampled by primitive consciousness, spontaneous and mercilessly nosy to everything new and newest. The savagery that civilization strives to limit and adapt as far as possible - and, in fact, to enclose in a cage. This cage is constantly being recreated by these barely combed savages, because development is a long process, and him primitive scheme - here it is, take and use. Calling each other's fear, stirring up this fear and provoking, savages are cruelly straightened out with each other for the sake of the falsely perceived dogma of civilizational development. And, recreating the phantom of European institutions and European rules of life, in the soul remain savages. Leaving for the artist the widest field of activity – possessing the worldview of the philosopher, comprehending the existential depths of being, the artist mobilizes his own gift of a pragmatic visionary and paints his being in yet undetected, but already sensed hypostases of life creation. European surrealism, an artistic phenomenon of the first half of the twentieth century, regulated self-individual search for the newest moral principles. Science in its intensive development deformation all the two-millennium-year bases of the hostel without exception, and presented the new demands to the antithesis of "life-death". Widely spread social vice - the general hobby for drugs - was due to the desire understand quickly the new reality, to feel it and, by revealing the possibilities of the subconscious, to apply this acquired knowledge in the practice of art. There was an ontological trap - it seemed that something that can`t be understand, could force be dreamed.
Russia has not escaped the all-European fate and has made its own powerful contribution to the process of social transformation. The extravagant entertainments of the Dadaists, the forerunners of modern actionism off which Breton - who considered himself the founder of surrealism – was persistently renounced, were responded in mystical experiments of Russian writers, poets and artists; Narcotic, Rudolf Steiner and Elena Blavatsky were fancifully intertwined with the schematic of interpreted Freud in the Russian heavyweight mind. As a result, the changed consciousness became the basis of a totalitarian ideology, and the people were the victim of mystically propaganda as the only effective form of government. Instead of moral bases - the simplest scheme of communist slogans, the "inverted church", according to Mandelshtam, coupled with an uncompromising destruction of the traditional church institution. The consequence of this was the following: violent self-deception as a personal, intimate decision of a European intellectual, in the wild Soviet, post-GULAG, Russia received an unexpected resolution: psychiatric terror, chemical influence to suppress consciousness was used as a form of Intimidation, either - a form of physical destruction.
Identifying the creative ego
Artist Viktor Zakharov, too, was subjected to the same impact of: after being in a state of provoked coma for almost three weeks, manage to survive - with a scar on his heart *. It turned out that the natural talent could neither be killed nor suppressed. The wild nature has protected itself, having received a lifelong inoculation from social illusions. Surrealistic background of the worldview emerged because of a specific external aggression, the terror of psychiatrists, and acquired a completely different meaning, the meaning of practical protection of consciousness from external influences on the subconscious. A person is forced to go insane and all the forces of his nature are aimed at one thing - not to let this happen.
Existential loneliness fell on an untrained soul with a heavy stone. The essence of the Victor Zakharov`s experience many years later was recorded in his poem "Scourge-town" - a large-scale metaphor of search a way out, spiritual reflections and unconscious hope for the best: the hope was destined to come true. In the meantime, the total absence of what is called the "environment" precluded the possibility of professional self-identification as an artist. But the social reality turned out to be more trusting than close people, or, surprisingly, more perceptive. Victor Zakharov return to the enterprise (from which he, a high-level locksmith, was sent to the army, where psychiatrists terrorized him) already as an artist-designer. Status identified the essence, simplifying it to the necessary and understandable social scheme. But human nature wanted a real support, genuine. After the war mother built a house, stepfather planted a garden. Apple tree, bird-cherry head, linden tree ... The tree, as something originally native and close - became that material, the essence of which responded in the soul and expressed the idea of the image better and more accurately.
The artist is violently wrested by the circumstances of the place and time from the historical and cultural space is looking for a point of creative support, a way of creative rooting. And finds him in sincere worship of Beauty and Woman, incarnated this beauty.
For my part, I as a poet, entered this surrealism as in something predetermined, I entered as a person deprived of any sense of her own physicality - only the pain had been reminding that there are some separate organs: a bruise on the knee or on an elbow; a runny nose, a stomatitis, later - a headache. Were fixed the parts of the parts - the elbow instead the hand, the knee instead the leg; bruised of the finger on the leg or cut on the hand. Exceptionally negative sensations instantly obeyed with strong emotions - the emotional reaction was the first, and - the main and, in fact, the only one. The power of emotion was akin to a state of ecstasy - it could not be controlled; emotion ruled and dominated completely. Consciousness was simply blocked at this moment and a bizarre symbiosis of the subconscious and unconscious subjugated the man absolutely. Irrational everyday life or, as I wrote in the essay "The Philosophy of Life of Viktor Zakharov ...", surrealism as a household detail. Apparently, this is inherent in undeveloped consciousness, that's how it reacts to the unknown, splashing out aggression of self-defense. It is difficult to understand this about myself, about a man of the 20th century who reads and reads with pleasure and seems to be informed about many things. The habit of thinking should brought up - and each of us was deprived of any example in this sense.
http://www.stihi.ru/2016/06/18/10012
Stages of immanent travel
The output of the people of the Russian Empire on a civilized historical arena, repressed for centuries - as the quintessence of the irrational - suppressed or destroyed those seeds of rational reflection that were sown by the outstanding people of the country. And each of us, trying to find like-minded people, at first looked for "like-senses", because himself was guided by an irrational impulse rather than a search for a convincing reason. Tracing the path of personal formation, I recall the startling "Noise and Fury" of American writer Faulkner, most clear interpretive of the course of my own intellectual impulses. And later, before "swallowing" the whole of Leo Shestov, I fell asleep over reading one and a half page - a softly and accurately formulated think have been suppressing the emotion completely, and there was no other support inside. New in general - had been suppressing, forced in the first nervous impulse throw off the phenomena already stuck in consciousness and caressed by the subconscious. So it was with the poems of Mandelshtam, I well remember this way from "I do not understand anything!" to the undivided admiration. But Konstantin Vaginov after Mandelstam immediately occupied thought and soul. But Brodsky showed up instantly as something long-awaited and clung to the soul long before comprehension - I still "open" his exquisite paradoxes or refined aphorisms in poems memorized by heart for a long time. Tsvetaeva, as a name, was annoyed me when I was a teenager, but when I began to read it, I was shocked by the sudden roll call.
http://www.stihi.ru/2016/12/16/10467
***
As I wrote in the essay "The Philosophy of Life ..." what was an artistic practice for Europeans and Americans, for Soviet people was everyday life. The movement in the rearguard, at the tail of civilization, recreated the over-reality every day, every minute. The reality of the civilizational context was layered on the mystically oriented barbaric consciousness, and the person had a feeling that he was controlled by an unknown force that is leading him somewhere, for some reason – quite arbitrarily. The magical term "communism" existed as the only possible justification for this arbitrary movement. Living people were sacrificed to the abstract idea, the absolute line of the theoretical movement to nowhere. The artistic practice of militant realism during this period is quite understandable: the desire to stay afloat at least some reality, at least some tradition, and not to fall into the abyss of approaching insanity - was justified; but the life made adjustments.
The fundamental difference between the subconscious religious and the subconscious of the mystical, in my opinion, reduce to two postulates.
1. Destruction of the integrity of the worldview in the first case leads to an active movement of thought, in the second - to an active suppression of thought. This is due to the fact that religious thought in Europe actively developed both in the theological and philosophical vein, but quite a timid and often borrowed religious thought in Russia focused on Revelation, inspiring not so much a feeling, as much a sensitivity, and, most importantly, excluding sensuality as the natural joy of life creation; simultaneously – simplifying and flattening any thought and in every way contributing to its degradation. As a result, the chaos of sensations was multiplied and mysticism ultimately set the tone for politics, economics, and culture.
2. In the first case, the consequence of the search for lost integrity – this process is fixed in the masterpieces of European and American literature – is IT content. In our case – the collapse of all notions of what is proper and necessary. And, at the same time, intensive search for support – but it did not have to look for it. The already existing colossal support - in the form of world literature classics translated into Russian, world cinematography, world art - should has been understood, and accepted as a most valuable gift. The speed of the movement of thought is in inverse proportion to the lost time of the mystical nonsense; as a result, the path becomes a negative value: the movement is reversed.
In the book "The Island of the Garbage Christ», we were able to illustrate, describe and substantiate the way of thinking through the thorns of the mystical nonsense. Surrealism in my texts fulfills an official function - there is no other way to express one's own feelings and to put them together, to give them a form, other than how to give chaos a name and certify chaos precisely in this capacity. And after - it is long and difficult to rationalize what was said, to isolate the mystical and, releasing it from the viscous emotional nonsense, to translate mysticism into intuition.
Each of the authors makes a significant contribution to the process of creating a book. The artist attests to the meaning of the creative discoveries of the poet. In this case, the illustration is empathy, not co-thinking. But it is in empathy that the poet, creating surreal texts, desperately needs. Before the poet will translate his images into a form of rationality and explains it to himself - it will take a long time. And at the stage of creating a book, there is no need for this. The more complex and contradictory, at first sight, poetic images, the more energetic the artist's imagination, the wider the possibilities for artistic discoveries.
http://readrate.com/rus/books/ostrov-musornogo-khrista
***
Victor and I were incredibly lucky - neither he nor I did not even try to fit into the corpus of representations about "due" - neither theoretically nor practically. The category of "due" was included the unconditional requirement of form priority. It was necessary to find a "teacher", at the same time – "disciple" someone has recognized artists or poets. And – strictly to follow in him fairway, neatly adding in painting or poetry insignificant strokes-clich;, and following the so-called "tradition". Or - do the same, but choosing a "teacher" someone from secondary European or American artists and poets and also accurately reproduce his manner, no differ from him in essence, except for - small strokes in composition, image or stylistic decision. So, in most cases, the so-called nonconformists worked. The idea of a teacher and pupil is European-revival seeing, in which the disciple is obliged to find his own manner and does not to be like a teacher in any way. This concept was always turned inside out in Russia; with an unconscious purpose, so that the place of content is firmly occupied by the form. And in connection with this, for two different reasons, Victor and I could not integrate into the so-called space of contemporary Russian art. Victor was saved from this temptation by personal tragic circumstances. I -by the experience of creative maturation, expressed in a multifaceted life and thought experience, which preceded the actual creativity. By the way, I have teachers of exquisite literature, or inspirers in the highest sense of the word, and these are the two congenial older contemporaries, Vladimir Vysotsky and Joseph Brodsky.
The state of happiness fixed at all stages of joint creativity and indicated in the project "The Space of Happiness of Love Time" is an unconscious but certified result of the harmony of the coexistence of two talented people; happiness as a consequence of the natural course of things, as sincerity and diligence, as mutual conditioning and mutual support. There is no other purpose for man than happiness; we managed to materialize this idea. And at the same time to explain that happiness does not have recipes and panacea - a full-scale enjoyment of the fact of existence, together with the creative practice of creation, is always individual, and the achievement of a happy unity in the joint creativity is unique and beautiful twice.
Intuition and skill
For a long time, I perceived surrealism as something incomprehensible, but it was an acutely necessary, some important support of the intuitively growing ego. And in the end I formulated the thesis - surrealism as a household detail. And immediately appeared a clear line, connecting the autonomy of our creative efforts with the search for Soviet non-conformists. Trying to understand wherewith the surreal trend in Soviet art is fundamentally different from surrealism as such, I unwittingly accentuated the phenomenon called "automatic writing". Why? - ask I myself now. The answer is difficult to formulate so far, but I will try. "Automatic writing" was based on the fact that the imagination, accustomed to logical thinking, was released to freedom and any verbal constructions were able to reproduce new meanings, the illogicality of which led the thinking to a new level of logic and developed the language. The imagination of the Soviet man was firmly blocked by mystical fear, and the logical structure had not been building – for a reason that no European can comprehend and which I will call: the totalitarian reduction of the language. Language as an organic component of human nature did not develop, but it was asked as something dead, like Latin. The Soviet man was brought up in mental of Russian folk tales, spoke in the language of classical literature of the 19th century and mentally depended on the slogan`s dogmas from birth to death. The dictatorship of language blocked the imagination in addition.
Still, if we talk about the artistic direction that could most accurately characterize Soviet reality, then we should talk about futurism. Everyday deprivations in the name of a beautiful future by anyone except Andrei Platonov is not only not described, but not even denoted. Surrealism as a household detail was organically included in the philosophical essence of Futurism - and this dangerous mix still needs to be differentiated. Mikhail Zoshchenko tried to fixes and decompose on the mental components the "new-language" of yesterday's lackeys (the peasants who had just become townspeople learned the language of Russian literature, but neophytes-townspeople reproduced the language and mentality of lackeys). The absurdist designs of Daniil Kharms fixed the death of the language as such. Eugene Schwartz spoke not in literary Russian, but rather in Russified Danish.
***
"Time... worships language..." wrote Auden, meaning that time separates from the human masses the one who would embeds reality into eternity, the one whom God at the time of birth generously blessed with talent and intuition. The creator of the language with great difficulty recognizes himself as such: at first the unconscious repeatedly exceeds the possibilities of awareness, and to go through the path of self-realization, finally taking the unconscious by the hand is not easy.
The clip is the organics of the perception of the modern world, the form of self-expression in time and space that is born from within as the only intelligible and the only accessible to oneself way to communicate with reality. The content of the clip varies from the simplest to the most complicated, but this very aphoristic form does not allow hackwork, and the "simplicity" organized in the form of the clip must be extremely accurate in its own self-expression. If it is not - the form itself destroys. Of course, this applies to any form at all times – in this is no opening; but in "new bottle" it is impossible the "wine" of the traditional novel. The old authors who survive by the digest-provocation will find a new life. But the originator of the digest-clip of the classical novel maintains its own name a priori, because the work it spent is comparable to the work of the author of the original. A careful reading of the novel, the isolation of the most significant in it - the essence of the plot, the canvas of the author's presentation with the most characteristic accents for the stated topic. This corresponds ovo equal efforts of both.
The same is the structure of the clip: the author sets out the most essence, squeezing the space of the phenomenon depicted and compacting the time of the author's monologue to the state of quintessence.
In order to make the clip language universal, it requires a thorough study of the content. The form itself can both knock out the usual perception, and disorient - depending on the strength of the impact. And at the first stage of creation, when the author is guided by intuition only, there can be no question of universality. Trying to realize created by him, the author himself is lost from understanding his own uniqueness and from the categorical absence of what could be considered a tradition and on that one can confidently rely - being the progenitor, the author hardly could use to this status.
http://mirmuz.com/post/2722/IOV
Of course, I am now talking about my own way of self-knowledge, talking about myself in the third person, about having managed to look outside my own creative research. "Clip-thinking" is a term not simply borrowed but - right away negatively colored by the not ripened worldview of Russian "today". I gladly accept this concept as the most capacious stylistic characteristic of the direction I have declared. "Simultaneous analytical conceptualism", abbreviated "SimanK", I am ready to introduce into full-scale usage, consistently and in detail, decomposing it into convincing components.
In fact, I am an unconditional creator in my nature. Therefore, the use of any generally accepted methodology does not seem interesting to me. Discoveries - this is my creative hobby, including methodological discoveries. By the way, structuralism as a method of analyzing artistic creation in itself is remarkable by the fact that it is conditional: restrictions in the formulations of certain concepts are refuted by their interpretation, which always tends to infinity. Therefore, I admit terminological clich;s in an attempt to explain my own direction, reserving the right to designate this expansion as an obviously indisputable given.
Andre Breton's surrealism arose as a reaction to a new metaphysical reality, as an attempt to call an unnamed, designate incomprehensible. It was this name that the Spaniard Breton came up with for the new phenomenon; surrealism is the language of world-perception. "Language was given to a person as the subject of surreal use" Breton states in the Manifesto of Surrealism in 1924. Russian writer, philosopher and poet Andrei Bely in 1909 wrote an article "The Emblem of the Meaning," in which the same phenomenon refers to as symbolism. "Symbol" in Andrei Bely and "surrealistic image" in Andre Breton - equal concepts. "The process of the formation of new qualities, the verbal representation of the dialectic of the flow of new verbal meanings" in the "realized to the end synthesis" of symbolism is due to the surreal "dictation of thought without the compulsion of reason and without any aesthetic or moral concern": I quote Bely and Breton simultaneously.
The acquisition of language
I had a completely opposite problem: the surreal language of everyday life no way could be translated in the language of the nineteenth century - the language on which I still used to say at the end of the twentieth century. Forcible rejection from the language of my time paralyzed consciousness, but - stimulated the subconscious: I happened to jump over the everyday lie of the language, in order to pull the logic out of the emotional subconscious confusion. Fortunately, the subconscious is much closer to the unconscious than consciousness; the transcendental array is capable of attacking a dogmatically oriented, stubbornly clich;d consciousness and to crush at a moment – either in form of a violent insanity or an incurable brain damage that we now often see in reality. And Andrei Bely, one year before his death, in 1933, summarized – in a letter to Boris Tomashevsky: "I have long been aware of my theme. This theme is a tongue-tie, what constantly overcome by a fabricated language (I forced to speak aloud as if with pebbles inside the mouth) ... " Before – and post-revolutionary timelessness language fell into the abyss of dumbness, the intuitively exact metaphysics of the slogan "we are not slaves, slaves are dumb" was sophistry. It would be right to say, to emphasize, to confirm: "we are slaves, slaves of the dumb". And further transformation into the nonsense "we are not slaves, slaves are not us" most clearly demonstrates the logic of the development of lies called "ideology."
It's time to remember the post-revolutionary phenomenon of Unification of Real Art as another analogue of European surrealism: the pedaling of the term "real" as the root of a new concept calls for a new comprehension of reality, which is not yet perceived so. The need to live a reality, identify oneself as a person from within and towards others, build itself inside time and try to speak the language of time, an indifferent and merciless - at first glance, almighty loving - in essence (but how much need to be passed to feel it): that is the task that is put before the writer. Who writes the life of time in its divine language – reach the level of genius and the life of Time is like the life of Jesus, the human hypostasis of the Eternal.
At the same time, I want to state that the seed thrown into the soil of Russian literature by Andrei Bely and by the Unification of Real Art did not die - but one left one. Nikolai Zabolotsky, who survived physically – the only one from the Unification of Real Art – switched to Tyutchev's language, organically fitting into the era of totalitarian archaism – a concept that requires a separate interpretation. Therefore, the comparative reading, for example, of Daniil Kharms and Henri Michaud, comparable in form but not stylistically competitive, compels me to give unquestionable preference to the absurdist delights of the Frenchman, behind whom is the solid foundation of centuries-old cultural reality what is mastered carefully in each transformational hypostasis. So Harms barely had time to try on the metaphysical space of Gogol, as he was physically destroyed. And I now have to admit that the European classics of the twentieth century, in excellent translations of great enthusiasts, is an unconditional and to much obliging basis, on which I already stand and which I try comprehend best in this literary discourse.
***
It was incredibly difficult to get out of the fetters of everyday surrealism. Suppression of consciousness by regular injections of pseudo-axioms of ideological doctrine transformed reality into hypnotic sleep. It turned out that the everyday reality of actual sleep suppresses the imagination and affects the subconscious to such an extent that dreams almost disappear. For a long time I had been obsessed with the same dream: I am inside a closed dark brown space, but - without walls. A space, torn from the absolute blackness around, and in this space there is a staircase leading to nowhere and something looks like the elevator, some suspension on the rod with a tin concave base of a small diameter, suspension that I enter, but it swings over the abyss of the elevator shaft. In my first book, Poems and Translations, there is a verse "Confession," in which I outlined these impressions. And when I finally began to see dreams more unfolded in content, and the dark brown color gradually having been reduced its presence - I experienced real joy. The verse "Rehearsal of easy death", included in the book "The Island of Ejected Christ", trace this sensation.
In the state of ideological hypnosis, a person mechanically reproduces only the clich;s implanted to him and considers any other information only from this angle. Any information of a different kind or kind is simply not perceived - for the time being. Fortunately, the process of thinking is difficult to suppress finally, without using special drugs - they are known to have been widely practice in the psychiatric dungeons of the USSR. A person who has not fallen into the hands of totalitarian punishers is able to start thinking independently - simply in search of the meaning.
When I started to think, I was faced with a catastrophic inability to hold the thought, to build a logical chain of interconnected and interdependent premises and arguments. The abyss springe up not only between two proposals, but also within each single phrase. It is no coincidence that I, confident that someday I will become the "second Dostoevsky", began to write poetry: the pace of thought was organized by rhythm; the rhyme extended the frames of images. And the meaning merged with the idea, clearly, in my opinion, expressed - but the reader little understood by not participating in the process of another round of self-understanding. Virtually all the poems I wrote from the beginning of my poetic career met the criteria for high and genuine poetry. Preliminary preparation for creativity, the development of necessary internal criteria for a creative message provided the corresponding result. Needless to emphasize that at first, and - for quite some time, about ten years approximately, I could neither analyze my written, nor - give it to the reader in the process of public reading aloud. The active work of the subconscious was for a long time and ineffectively suppressed by the environment, struggled to get revanche. I wrote a lot, the scope was wide, the analysis was profound. This was preceded by many years of intellectual work, coupled with the reading of serious philosophers, European and American writers who became classics of the 20th century, modern European and American poets, Russian poets of the "golden" and "silver age". Many attempts to "approach the prose" ended with nothing: even philosophical sketches, recorded in several notebooks under the general title "Diary of my delusions. Diary of my insights "- as an attempt at least some sort of systematization - each time left a feeling of insuperable spiritual heaviness, and pauses between short flashes of thoughts lasted sometimes for a month or longer.
Evolution of prose content took place as follows. I wrote an essay "Philosophy of life of Viktor Zakharov - a sculptor, painter, graphic artist, poet" and, at the same time, an unfolded preface to the book "The Island of Ejected Christ". Then I began to practice detailed comments and dialogues on poetry sites, including a series of essays about interesting poets: the cycle "Poets whom I Love" on the website "House of Poems" and several analytical articles at the "Baltic Championship in Russian Poetry" on the site Stihi.lv. Then went the short essays in the online magazine MAYDAY.ROCKS and, in parallel, on the site OPEN RUSSIA. The form of narration corresponded to the strictest criteria established by myself, and the content exist suited me completely.
https://www.stihi.ru/2015/09/12/8988
Per aspera…
Andrei Bely, describing the psychological aspects of his formation as, first and foremost, an extremely receptive child, again and again returned to the fact of blatant psychological violence initiated by a hysterical mother. Having learned to fluent reading to five years age, at six - he forgot how to read: the mother insisted on "the harmfulness of early development." Absolutely in love with music, the child did not dare to confess to it musical mother - fearing that the music would be taken away the same just as the books were taken away. The despotic influence of the mother, her categorically reluctance to at least to some extent respect the identity of her husband, a talented man and a mathematician, did not allow son to build normal relations with his beloved father.
The stories of the strongest psychological violence can be found in the biographies of many great talents, and if we consider this fact in the highest sense, the first tests in the family will strengthen the spirit of an outstanding person whose further life will be filled trials only. Realizing this now, I, nevertheless, remember with horror my own story. The desire to express my own conclusions, the need to articulate them clearly, came across once and for all to mother`s mocking: my friend Arkady, do not say nicely - a quote from the excellent Turgenev novel "Fathers and Sons." Mom, a teacher of Russian language and literature, categorically did not want to perceive me as an original thinker - the ideological hypnosis of social interaction did not allow anybody to declare a bright individuality. The features of an independent thinking person in her own child had been frightened her and had been plunged her into a state of despair. Mom's influence was strong and unchallenged, I loved her; and her role as a social victim, from which she could no longer exit, was projected onto every member of the family: father, I, brother - we were all potential executioners. Therefore, the phrase "... do not talk nicely" made me become dumb. At least, unclear dreams about something connected with philology, were exterminated and a further choice in favor of one of the most famous technical universities, no longer seemed nonsense.
I was one of the few for whom the collapse of the USSR was perceived as an absolute good. I was still far from realizing the boundless inner freedom, and even to the initial understanding that a person forms circumstances, and not vice versa. But - intuitively - I understood that the formal breakdown of the state system, which existed only as a form, being pure theocracy, or rather, being demonocracy, is indeed absolute blessing. Spiritual paralysis as forcibly inculcated diagnosis and an indispensable attribute of hypnotic sleep, by itself disappeared and the process of recovery came. The facts, carefully concealed and secretly existing all these years, had a particularly powerful effect, because the brain, freed from hypnotic spasms, craved self-comprehension. At the first stage not all was available for comprehension, but an incredibly subtle clever, philosopher Lev Shestov was able to instill the taste for charming clarity. At first, falling asleep (as I already stressed) on every second page of him reasoning, I soon found myself in full control of him. The soft tone of the exposition and the convinced firmness of inferences, always based on a thorough analysis of the original source, set the vector of further comprehension of wisdom. Practically the Lutheran depth of the thoughts and intuitions convinced me: in the philosophical aspect, my teacher is he, Lev Shestov.
***
Louis Aragon in his "Wave of Dreams" wrote that he prefers materialism to vulgar realism. The term "materialism", meaningless Soviet truism and at the same time synonymous with "realism", has a very definite meaning and includes the possibility of correlating man with the universe - as in the slight so in his endless manifestation. The Surrealists, like any ideological founders, did not differ in the exhaustive accuracy of formulations, and only the experience of self-understanding allows us to seek and find response to our own searches in searches of forerunners. In 1999, Viktor Zakharov wrote a completely surrealistic poem "Bichegrad", in which the denial of the real - the reality is described as an assertive and destructive nonsense - is balanced by the perception of the material, the universal. Society, from Viktor Zakharov's point of view, is the dictatorship of slavery: one can get out of this dictatorship by excluding it from the world view only, making it immaterial. The author succeeds it only in the framework of the written poem; the metalanguage on which he speaks, appealing to Eternity, is incomprehensible to himself, but since the poem is written, the semantic message - "everything becomes clear onlywhen reality loses its rights" (Aragon) - inspires the author; the artist draws constant inspiration in own poetic creation.
The term "surrealism" is a statement of the inability to choose a language for a new reality - reality, not preceded by anything similar to. In the 20th century, the completely historical path turn out to be worthless literally overnight - if we consider time on a scale of epochs. It required a thorough immersion in the "well-forgotten old", where freedom from the prejudices of the intellectual tradition was combined with freedom from the prejudices of the value of human life. In the prehumanistic era, brilliant insights were counterbalanced by everyday atrocities, recreating the harmony of the era: Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake of the Inquisition and this symbol marked the statement of the categorical unacceptability of atrocity. In the 20th century, intensive industrialization recreated the Holocaust and the Gulag in Europe, not counting the Asian and Latin American counterparts of a smaller caliber. The conscience of the 21st century preserves this experience of civilizational barbarism as a new symbol and criterion. Still there are not enough words for ascertaining and the Holocaust is still one of the surreal elements. But the essence of it is reduced to a single: big money smells of great blood and one who blindly plays without rules on the field of a great war, automatically becomes a victim of potentially defeated. The financial and industrial lobby had well-pronounced national features and all who were involved to the nation by the birth mechanically shared her fate. The elite, who established these very rules, did not suffer and played the game to the end. Most of the nation - was saved, coming out of the European rules of the game. The minority - was killed along with those who, due to weakness, this war unleashed. Here in fact it is important to emphasize that the Germans and the German Jews were equally losers. And before the war, Jews in Germany claimed a higher social status - and quite, it would seem, deserved it. The devil is in the details. The financial and industrial lobby - as the newest ideological reality - won. Blind and led mass - was defeated. But in Russia everybody was defeated. The ideological phantom outside any material basis, the primitive clich; of "justice" in equality and in personal nonentity yet only should be study to better understood. The potential of barbarism is far from being exhausted and the present localization of barbarism within the respective institutions of power is an unquestionable achievement. There is an alternative to barbarism. And the choice remains for those who want to choose.
…ad astra
In essence, conceptualism as an artistic direction is based on ascertaining fact someone else’s historical experience: the fact like a result of this experience. The conceptualist presents a fact, or - gives a combination of facts, and the viewer has to go back the way and discover, so to speak, an artifact, the original cause, which prompted initially to create something that has become a fact now. "Ready-made" is a typical illustration of the logic of conceptualism. Once upon a Time, the master came up with the idea of creating an object, or - its improvement to the desired level. This subject now has a history of life and use, a history of transformation, a history of interaction with other objects, a history of destruction and a history of rebirth: through restoration or by recreating by analogy.
If correlate conceptualism with the notions of philosophy, then can consider that conceptualism, among other things, is a provocation the essence. The form presented for review can content both - genuine philosophy, and unscrupulous scholasticism: depending on the viewer's worldview scale. The subject of the review is multifunctional, but to each individual viewer only function is visible which is familiar and customary a priori. For those whose worldview is more complicated, because the process of self-reflection is in intermediate stage, difficult construct objects are the most interesting, and the apparent simplicity cause an irritated aversion. And in this regard, conceptual art is simply an art in which the visual series consists of metaphysics, psychology and anthropology, even if it externally retains a picturesque, graphic or sculptural form or includes text.
Conceptualism is a kind of borderline state between the direct and reverse perspective of the worldview. The process of comprehending the experience of several millennia for the purpose of its effective use in the present and future is described and illustrated by conceptualism as well. And conceptualism, like any other statement of the creative interpretation of reality at a given time, is simply a statement of a meaningful fact, a phenomenon.
The natural need for understanding reality required the existence of an object of comprehension as such, that is, reality. Instead of reality to the artist was offered ideologized and flattened substitute. Therefore, any thought was translated into a format of sarcasm, and any metaphysics - into mysticism. Imagine that a man, as it were; exist in the already familiar world of prison. Everyone could be accused of any crime at any time, and this self-awareness of the perpetrator constantly recreated the desire to "transgress". The object of this surrealistic everyday life was a m;salliance of anti-esthetic household minimalism and conditionally aesthetic maximalism: primitive furniture for home use - and the designs of the aviation and space industries. But the main thing is that the landscape disappeared. That is, it existed, but not as a human habitat, but as an object of potential destruction in the name of a great goal. The Artist Oleg Vasilyev remarkably reflected the destruction of the landscape: a beautiful, exquisite lifelessness: and referring to the work of last-century homonym, Fedor Vasilyev, and laughing at touching authenticity his paintings.
So, it was necessary to create an object of comprehension. Since - at the time of the emergence of our creative alliance - I comprehensively analyzed personal existence, trying to isolate my own "I" and pull it out of the fetters of the totalitarian "sur", my personality became an object of experiences, actions, reasoning. And - accordingly - the identity of my co-author, whose creative accumulation was much higher than my own what was required reflection.
My friend for a long time and inexorably resisted my motivation to his process of self-reflection. At some point, I was sorely lacking support: loneliness was beginning to be perceived not as a blessing of self-alienation, but as a hopelessness of soul-searching and self-obsessed. But the moment came when Viktor Zakharov firmly and clearly formulated the creative credo. I will describe it in my own words, taking in quotation marks for greater clarity.
"The need for an image, be it drawing, painting or sculpture, was so vital, and, on the other hand, so unusual for the perception of others that it was possible to keep this sacred fire only in the deepest secrecy, not only without attracting nobody's attention, but also in every possible way be shielding from him. Than? By external similarity to them. Therefore, I earned a living not by making art, but a hard work, the result of which was clear to the majority. It never occurred to me to evaluate the result of my inspiration. And for the result of my work I received a salary at the factory rate. The designer remained an artist, extracting creative use from any ideological task, because improved on his craftsmanship. Some private orders also encouraged me to give all the best. The wide range of the incarnate creations promoted continuous search, but some subconscious canons for a long time did not allow turning around in full force.
The most important result of my creative search I consider the pictorial cycle SPACE OF HAPPINESS OF THE TIME OF LOVE. Parallel experiments in graphics, the indisputable result of the searches and discoveries of previous periods of life, confirmed me in understanding my own achievements and, as it were, convincingly substantiated my own way of creative development, outside of one or another formal school. For me, the most attractive object of the image was and remains the female body, and in this I am quite traditional. The very essence of the concept of "love" is embodied in this metaphor and continues to drive both creativity and the world. This feeling is still deeply hidden in the secrets of the soul and its holiness is the main hypostasis of my art. "
Victor Zakharov
***
In an effort to compare my own creative direction with the phenomenon of surrealism, I finally figured out the following. There is a fundamental difference between the surrealistic being and the surreal subconscious. "Surrealism as a household detail" implies only an external form of existence that confuses, but does not affect the mental structure of the individual - except for the most finely organized individuals, the psyche of which could be disorganized any time and place. And the fact that in the end the attempt to comprehend being leads to the need to plunge into the depths of the subconscious, excludes the possibility of discovering inside itself a monster crippled by civilization. Involvement in any form of interpretation of economic development and pseudo-prosperity makes the mind wriggle, pretend, mimic, but the subconscious continues personal life based on enthusiastic dreams of the beautiful. And, let's say, what is now defined as sadomasochism is inherent in the barbaric consciousness in its extreme manifestations and is not considered perversion, although it explains the logic of those to whom this is inherent in one way or another.
Surrealism as an artistic phenomenon arose in Europe based on scientific research in the field of psychoanalysis and, in fact, the works of its founder, Sigmund Freud. The vigorous collapse of religious doctrines, accompanied by the intensive development of science as a whole, singled out the problem of the absolute vulnerability of the human psyche, which has lost, even if conditional, a foothold. The search for this very support compelled the individual (suddenly separated from the Creator) to plunge into the intricacies of one's own emotional state. The trend was immediately perceived and picked up by creatively oriented personalities - professional philosophers, writers, artists, musicians and so on. The desire to settle scores with the moral canons of "parents", unsuitable for "children," the surrealists called "revolution", putting into this concept a sharp change in moral guidelines in search of a new spirituality.
At the same time, a number of social phenomena arose, conditioned by the search for a new religiosity, which most clearly manifested itself in the phenomenon of National Socialism in Germany and totalitarian socialism in the USSR. And if in the USSR the ideology of totalitarianism has grown on the basis of a communal way of life and a mystical cocktail of state Orthodoxy and popular paganism, in Germany Hitler appealed to the same paganism of Wagnerian persuasion with simultaneous mass extermination of the biblical people, who had to pay for the religion of ancestors who found themselves in the newest conditions Insolvent. The population of both countries had to pay the history bills. The Austrian Jew Sigmund Freud confirmed Nietzsche's "God dead" and offered his own vision of the problem. By that time, Russia, in the person of the USSR, not ripe even before it was staged.
Relatively speaking, in the 20th century the Russians felt the most severe deformation of the body, not the soul. The fears rooted within the Soviet man were (and remain) completely rational: fear of hunger, fear of sudden or painful death. Surrealism researched fears irrational, almost not understandable for Russians. As Joseph Brodsky wrote, "I never wanted to sleep with my mother, and I never felt fear of castration in communicating with my father" (I quote approximately).
Looking at the works of Frida Kallo, Francis Bacon or Salvador Dali, you realize that the obvious physical transformation in the image of a person implies a transformation of the inner, psychological breakdown, metaphysical perversion. In the USSR, physical deformity, widely spread after a cruel, self-destructive war, was perceived by consciousness as superfluous, not suitable for reflection and practical use, and therefore - not worthy of being imprinted on canvas or sculpture. And this was not reflected in the mental warehouse, and therefore there were no impulses for creative embodiment.
But most importantly - dreams. The automatic letter of the Dadaists, which Breton emphasized as the basis of the fundamentals of exactly surrealism, was something impossible for the barbaric consciousness. More precisely, the mystically colored "flood of the subconscious" Russians did not correspond with the imagination of the thinking Europeans. And the array of ideological pressures that each of us experienced in the 20th century excluded the dream as a dream in principle. The subconscious turned out to be, as it were, "mystified" by mystical fears of incredible power - fears that have a logical explanation in the period of material deprivation and which have no explanation in the relatively prosperous years. Imagination did not work out - only the fears of ordinary life, always - of a negativist plan, were imagined.
If there is formulate without emotion, then you come to the following conclusion. Delay in development preserves mental status and recreates the psychoanalytic lacuna of the worldview. The borrowing of the forms of European art, which was quite successful in the 19th century, is impossible already in the 20th: the advantage has turned out to be irreplenish, European psychoanalytic reflection carefully reproduced in good translations is still inaccessible for understanding purely terminologically. The absend of reflexive Christianity, not to mention the Old Testament canon, deprives the Russian reader and contemplator of the fullness of the perception of European masterpieces. Therefore, an attempt to identify contemporary or actual art in the sense in which it is accepted in the world continues to be forever untenable. At the heart of Dali's masterpiece are personal relationships with the Creator and they can be understood only similarly of their analogies. And to reproduce - especially.
In this way, as I have already explained, conceptualism has acquired its right to exist, as the most essential definition of this type of contemporary art. And the direction, the idea of which we formulated, based on the experience of living, experiencing and comprehending, is the bridge between European surrealism and Russian conceptualism, the bridge, whose pillars are strengthened in the elements of the full-fledged subconscious, coupled with the spiritual experience of the contemporaries accumulated, through oneself missed.
***
For quite long time I was unable to identify contemporary art in its worldwide manifestation. The form - auctions, prices, fakes, etc. – always came to the forefront. Fantastic digits paralyzed perception - it seemed impossible to comprehend the essence of the phenomenon. But in the end, based on experience - as, indeed, always - my own understanding of art, I discovered an immutable logic in what seemed as irrational as art itself as such. And this logic is directly related to the level of development of modern civilization.
In the nineteenth century Nietzsche stated: "God is dead". The brain of man as a miniature of the universe took the place of the Unattainable Abstraction. Literature and art gradually began to occupy the place of the sacred incarnation, the church, the saints and the church attributes in general. Literature acquired the properties of philosophy and theology, the fine arts replaced icons and crucifixes, and galleries and museums - the temple.
The works of artists and writers organically included the whole experience of comprehension of the centuries-old history. At the same time, the emphasis was placed on the boundless possibilities of the human brain in all its manifestations. All that confirmed this thesis sacral became. Interest in reflection, coupled with intuitive insight, demonstrated at art exhibitions and book fairs, was refined at art auctions. The value of the original thought, clearly represented in the form of a work of art, symbolized scientific development. And everyone wanted to be involved in this phenomenon - gadget users wanted to worship modern thought and for this they went to galleries; The creators of the Internet search engines gained inspiration, possessing a masterpiece of modern painting.
Prices for masterpieces of Dali or Picasso are comparable to the value of intellectual property per se. This trend will allow both discovering new names and rethinking phenomena already familiar. "The will and work of man do wonders" - Nekrasov, 19th century, Russia...
* Natalia Troyantseva's essay "Philosophy of life of Viktor Zakharov - sculptor, painter, graphic artist, poet" published:
http://mayday.rocks/?p=4650
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