Why do I care? (Hopefully, my last article about Russian Avant Garde)

What makes me write emotional articles about Russian art on the language which strictly speaking is not even second but rather third or even fourth language on which I only started to speak at 35? Does it really matters the exact number of forgeries in early twentieth century Russian art. After all I totally agree with the thesis of Dr Adam Lerner that we are way overemphasizing the value of provenance and name at the sake of energy and magic of picture. Who cares who and when did paint the picture, if it radiates exactly same light as original?

From the point of view of an art, I would probably not pursue with religious zeal finding the truth about the origin of masterpiece. Acknowledging art as the most powerful, beautiful and kind dimension of the world, I could have probably persuaded myself to take it easy and would never ventured to write any sentence about this topic if I didn’t have a solid academic background in history.

As a historian I see in art not just harmony and beauty, but a brick in the building of epoque it belongs, and in this sense original and only original could be placed in frame. While working as a journalist, I wrote not less than 200 article, and I never repeated any story twice except the following one which I would use again to illustrate my thought. It happened at the time of political freedom of late eighties in Russia, when Western culture, luxuries and technologies found their way to the country liberating itself from yoke of communism. With other graduating students we were celebrating somebody’s birthday in expensive restaurant and we ordered several bottles of exclusive collectible koniak. Everyone without exception ravished in admiration of the taste and quality of the product, but when it came time to pay the bill was much less than expected. We thought that waitress probably made a mistake and told her about it. “Guys, — responded charming lady, — we were out of this particular collectible brand, so I served you another one which may be not that fancy, but still an excellent drink, which by the way is almost ten times cheaper. After leaving the restaurant we talked only about this koniak and decided that we should have leaved the waitress all the price of expensive alcohol for excellent demonstration of one of the core principles of life. Normal, ordinary human being has certain limits of sensitivity after which she or he stops differentiating quality, however expert, in the given example trained tester with extremely high sensitivity to smell and taste would feel subtlety of flavour way beyond ordinary person’s scale. I am sure that Yo Yo Ma could be traumatized by such mistakes of the orchestra which nobody else will mention. So, for the Yo Yo Ma in history to develop sense of close familiarity with certain era, an expert would need to come in touch with as much material as possible, and those who studied history just by books edited by communists have no chance of developing such degree of professionalism. By the way, i do not mean in any sense that I could have belonged to this scholarly elite in history. Among other things I miss fanatic devotion to the subject.

Unfortunately, to enable Russian Avant Garde in late twenties and even thirties the whole layer of history was edited. Considering the fact that even before that Russian chronicles and documents were highly unreliable after being constantly edited by generations of communists, recent exercise in creativity of Russian Art mafia may have being the last straw due to which a lot of essential information to the point that certain facts already could not be established with certainty. Reading some works of some of the contemporary “historians” of Russia is nothing but terrifying.

Recently, I met a painter who in nineties in Russia did gazillions of copies, replicas and imitations of masterpieces of art. Let’s call him Slava. I totally believe Slava’s words that he had no idea how his imitations would be used. Slava had no reason to doubt the “official” legend which he was told that he paints replicas and imitations of the famous works of the Russian Avant Garde for not-so-fantastically-rich people who wanted to brag having original work of Malevich. Slava told how deeply he studied every available material about the period, artist and his/her style. According to his words he was so preoccupied with authenticity that he virtually couldn’t stop working and continued to create images even while sleeping. When Slava talked about Malevich, I got an impression that he actually studied all the available materials and contemplated on every known work. I am absolutely sure that Slava’s contribution of hundred or so works of the Russian Avant Garde made the world better and more beautiful place. I am also sure (by the way as Slava is now) that most of these works became lost-and-found “originals” of of early twentieth century masterpieces. My certainty, among other things, is based on information I got from art-mafia’s chat where they openly discussed biographies of their made-up artists and their styles.

In one of his late novels the great Soviet Kyrgyz writer Chingiz Aitmatov tells the story of cruel nomadic tribe which turned people into loyal slaves by damaging the area of the brain responsible for keeping history and stories of the past. Thus slave owner were able to convince their slaves, who were called mankurts in Kyrgyz in everything masters needed to turn slaves who forgot who they are into loyal and obedient tools. Mankurts were accepting any facts from their masters and correspondingly accepted all necessary beliefs about the world and their mission in it. By stealing our past art mafia wants to turn us all to mankurts trusting each and every word they say.

I am sorry, but to define the idea of central government supported Avant Garde after the revolution, and especially existence of educational institutions similar to German Bauhaus, I can not avoid using the word bulls**t. At the very best it could have been tolerated, especially in culturally different places like Ukraine and Byelorussia (which is actually a fact), but not supported from above. The turmoil of first years after the revolution and Civil War known as razruha — devastation, brought to positions of power completely illiterate, marginalized elements immortalized by genius Bulgakov in the character of Sharikov — a person with dog’s brain who was a result of mistake of scientific experiment. Some of Sharikov’s came from villiages, others served five or more years in the army before and after World War I and demobilized withour any practical skills and any form of government support. Those illiterate Sharikovs oftentimes were not just unable to read, but also unable to count, but they were trusted by communists due to their active participation in the revolution. After the revolution, Sharikov’s were made supervisors of “Czarist” experts who graduated best imperial universities and often fluently spoke four-five languages and whom Sharikovs hated by every cell of their doggy brains for experts education and knowledge. For Sharikovs who only considered workers and peasants to be humans, all intelligentsia as educated people (educated in perverted, old-world bourgeois way) were class enemy.

United in propagandist groups (агитотряд), Sharikovs were travelling to villages and cities and yelled in their often drunken voices masterpieces like Гитара — отребье мещанского быта. Гитара должна быть и будет забыта (roughly — Guitar is an old-world bourgeois garbage and it should be forgotten). Very often they beat to death everyone who didn’t look as proletariat. My granny, who actively participated in the political life in the country and who had her own office in Smolny, headquarters of the revolution as a unique and indispensable source of information about the period, shared that some of her informed contemporaries believed that Lenin’s “Red Terror” policy was not a decree from above, but justification of inaction in case of mass lynching by the gangs of Sharikovs. As heros of the Revolution armed Sharikovs could be hardly stopped, and at least in one case they even turned their guns against working class killing participants of peaceful meeting of workers appalled by the fact that “commissars” take best residential accommodations.

Considering the fact that Lenin was not only absent during actual revolution, but hardly had any close friends in top-level party bureaucracy, I personally believe that he very likely was just a transitional figure resulting from the necessary compromise between two camps — Trotsky’s theoretics-idealists and Stalin’s career terrorists involved or practically organized acts of terror, who were called professional revolutionaries in Soviet time. Though this is purely my take on which taking it seriously, I do not have right, but opposition of two camps which silently hated each other was real. For Stalinists Trotsky camp was weak and idealistic. For Trotsky Stalin was almost barbarian. It seems that at first Lenin was closer to Trotsky’s camp due to fact that their books and speeches energized masses and thus largely contributed to success of revolution, but later he clearly favourited Stalin’s camp. This change could be explained by the fact that Stalin’s camp was clearly ultimately prevailing.

Though it is not unlikely that considering present hysteria around Russian Avant Garde about which I will tell a couple of words later, any information in Russian web could be edited, I grew up in a period when Lenin’s works were studied by heart at school, so being a straight-A student I can for some extend rely on my knowledge. Lenin didn’t talk much about art, but when he did, he clearly saw it first of all as propagandist tool which correspondingly should have glorified working class. No influential, top rank party leader openly spoke in support of Avant Garde while enmity of Sharikovs to it was clear and commonly expressed. Considering the fact that all property was confiscated by party and instead people were given pocket-size parts of the room separated by plywood which left no privacy, it is hard to imagine how avant garde could flourish in such conditions, though as I have already mentioned, there are lots of facts indicating that it was tolerated in province.

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