(A speech given at the award ceremony for the 1988 R. N. Ettinger Foundation Prize)
When a young person comes to me and says he wants to learn how to paint, I, as I tend to, start frightening him right from the first minute. I explain to him what hard and thankless work it is. I tell him that nowadays nobody studies this work, and anyway, it is out of fashion.
How this conviction arises in the soul—nobody knows. Least of all, me. When it arose in mine, I was being evacuated to the city of Kazan [from Leningrad during World War II]. During the war, I saw no art at all. After I returned to Leningrad, I, of course, found myself surrounded by great architecture, paintings, poetry, and music.
This might sound paradoxical, but I—a professional painter, “an artist with a degree,” as Zoshchenko once wrote—all my life have loved music and sculpture most. It seems to me—quite corresponding to Hegelian thought—that music and sculpture are closer to the idea of the absolute, than painting. Some even say that painting is just an ape, released upon nature, copying everything that catches its eye. That, of course, is not quite right. Still, a certain hierarchy among the art forms does exist. Many artists feel this hierarchy and try to supersede it. By doing so they violate world order.
I won’t bore you with my references to the agnostics and other scientific dullness. I’ll just say, that it’s not dull. It is forbidden to disrupt the order of the world, as it is prescribed by the idea of the world.
Alas, this occurs often and close to home. And precisely this, in my eyes, lies at the heart of the current crisis in fine arts. This crisis is at the forefront. There is no authentic professional instruction. There is no professional appraisal. There are no criteria—because today painting has separated from craftsmanship. It has turned into an activity for “demigods.” That’s why it’s become profitable to be a demigod, and if nobody has proclaimed you as one, then you can call yourself one. We all know examples of this, it’s not worth pausing on them.
And so, painting has been separated from mastery, from craftsmanship, and people have forgotten the words of O. Mandelstam, that “beauty—is not the whim of the demigod, but the honed, evaluating eye” of the master. Having become demigods, painters became, in reality, lumpens, and were wrung out by society. The artist became unnecessary to the public because the public became unnecessary to the artist. This is very sad. It is a heavy and difficult situation.
I don’t know why this happened: either I found myself in a suitable environment, or I am myself like this—but I never wondered about these questions of theory in my youth. It’s only now, that my practical strength has weakened, or rather—my endurance, I started to think on all this. Before, all my life, I only created, what I painted, drew, sculpted. All that my objective encompassed—however normal and “down to earth” it may sound—was to achieve technical perfection. Art provides such lofty examples, that the artist always has something to labor at. He sees life, nature, he sees how imperfect he is in his creations. And so all his strength is channeled in the direction of progress.
I again return to my beloved idea: art today is separated from craft, and criteria is no more. Today the artist pronounces “I wanted to do it like this.” But who knows, whether he wanted it like that, or he did not want it like that. Often he says he wanted it like that, just because he was able to create it like that. Just because, he could not do otherwise. From this arises the accursed circle.
This is all very heavy and sad.
And that’s why I return to where I started. When a young person tells me he wants to learn to paint, I tell him, “Listen, have you thought this through? Look, how I live, how other artists live … maybe you’ll pick something else for yourself?” But in the end, I tell him, “The Lord lives! Let’s begin!”
“The Lord lives! Let’s begin …”
“The Lord lives! Let’s begin …”
(A speech given at the award ceremony for the 1988 R. N. Ettinger Foundation Prize)
When a young person comes to me and says he wants to learn how to paint, I, as I tend to, start frightening him right from the first minute. I explain to him what hard and thankless work it is. I tell him that nowadays nobody studies this work, and anyway, it is out of fashion.
How this conviction arises in the soul—nobody knows. Least of all, me. When it arose in mine, I was being evacuated to the city of Kazan [from Leningrad during World War II]. During the war, I saw no art at all. After I returned to Leningrad, I, of course, found myself surrounded by great architecture, paintings, poetry, and music.
This might sound paradoxical, but I—a professional painter, “an artist with a degree,” as Zoshchenko once wrote—all my life have loved music and sculpture most. It seems to me—quite corresponding to Hegelian thought—that music and sculpture are closer to the idea of the absolute, than painting. Some even say that painting is just an ape, released upon nature, copying everything that catches its eye. That, of course, is not quite right. Still, a certain hierarchy among the art forms does exist. Many artists feel this hierarchy and try to supersede it. By doing so they violate world order.
I won’t bore you with my references to the agnostics and other scientific dullness. I’ll just say, that it’s not dull. It is forbidden to disrupt the order of the world, as it is prescribed by the idea of the world.
Alas, this occurs often and close to home. And precisely this, in my eyes, lies at the heart of the current crisis in fine arts. This crisis is at the forefront. There is no authentic professional instruction. There is no professional appraisal. There are no criteria—because today painting has separated from craftsmanship. It has turned into an activity for “demigods.” That’s why it’s become profitable to be a demigod, and if nobody has proclaimed you as one, then you can call yourself one. We all know examples of this, it’s not worth pausing on them.
And so, painting has been separated from mastery, from craftsmanship, and people have forgotten the words of O. Mandelstam, that “beauty—is not the whim of the demigod, but the honed, evaluating eye” of the master. Having become demigods, painters became, in reality, lumpens, and were wrung out by society. The artist became unnecessary to the public because the public became unnecessary to the artist. This is very sad. It is a heavy and difficult situation.
I don’t know why this happened: either I found myself in a suitable environment, or I am myself like this—but I never wondered about these questions of theory in my youth. It’s only now, that my practical strength has weakened, or rather—my endurance, I started to think on all this. Before, all my life, I only created, what I painted, drew, sculpted. All that my objective encompassed—however normal and “down to earth” it may sound—was to achieve technical perfection. Art provides such lofty examples, that the artist always has something to labor at. He sees life, nature, he sees how imperfect he is in his creations. And so all his strength is channeled in the direction of progress.
I again return to my beloved idea: art today is separated from craft, and criteria is no more. Today the artist pronounces “I wanted to do it like this.” But who knows, whether he wanted it like that, or he did not want it like that. Often he says he wanted it like that, just because he was able to create it like that. Just because, he could not do otherwise. From this arises the accursed circle.
This is all very heavy and sad.
And that’s why I return to where I started. When a young person tells me he wants to learn to paint, I tell him, “Listen, have you thought this through? Look, how I live, how other artists live … maybe you’ll pick something else for yourself?” But in the end, I tell him, “The Lord lives! Let’s begin!”