2019 is rich in anniversaries in Ukraine. In January, for example, there was the 90th anniversary of release of Ukrainian Soviet film by Dziga Vertov (David Kaufman), Man with a Movie Camera, and director’s brother Mykhail was a cameraman. The very same Mykhail Kaufman in the same 1929 created a masterpiece of early Soviet but also Ukrainian cinema In Spring. Both films were reaction and a specific response to Walter Rutman’s experimental movie of 1927 Berlin: Symphony of a Great City. Films Man with a Movie Camera and In Spring, where one can see the documentary-cinematic «symphony» of Kyiv in the spring of 1929, will have a sequel in the world-famous film Symphony of the Donbass. All these films are considered to be the classics of the world vanguard and are much appreciated in countries that foster artistic culture but in 2019 hardly any major Ukrainian edition mentioned the anniversary − the 90th anniversary of brothers Kaufmans’ experimental films. I am not saying that anniversaries are to be celebrated just as our Soviet ancestors did, but such dates can be a good occasion for meditation and reflection…
What is the reason of silence? Maybe because these films are not only Ukrainian but also Soviet-Ukrainian? And Ukraine has allegedly undergone decommunization… Or because the authors were Polish Jews (born in the imperial Russian Bialystok (Białystok) who worked for Ukrainian film industry? I do not think so…
My impression is that this silence is connected with the fact that in Ukrainian culture artistic vanguard, and especially the Soviet vanguard, is still not an important part of the accepted cultural canon. The vanguard in Ukrainian cinema, art or literature is closely connected to the Bolshevik Revolution which aimed not only to change the political system but also to fundamentally reform the society of the «wrong» past. The artistic vanguard in the western regions of Ukraine which participated in the construction of the USSR only after World War II, had slightly different roots. It grew not out of political revolution, as it was in the USSR, but rather followed European aesthetic experiments and was consequence of social and cultural revolution that unfolded in Europe before and after World War I.
National incomprehension or unwillingness to appreciate artistic vanguard is gradually changing, of course, and it can be proved by an exhibition Ukrainian Vanguard Scene which took place in 2014 (Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv) and scientific conference about Malevich in the same year. In 2018 the works by David Burliuk were presented at the National Museum in Lviv, and Mystetskyi Arsenal once again pleased the public with Boichukism. Project of the «Grandiose art style». Little by little Ukrainian critics and art historians are forming the idea that our national vanguard actually existed, but as if it was mainly in the east, in Kharkiv or in other centers of Soviet Ukraine. To balance this point, in 2018 the Center for Urban History in L’viv carried out a project Culture (without) spaces: On vanguard heritages in L’viv which sought to show that L’viv was an important center of vanguard in the western part of the country, and still is.1 But have these projects changed the guidelines for the vanguard, which was created on the territory of modern Ukraine in the first half of the 20th Century? The question is rhetorical, especially since in 2019 L’viv National Gallery of Art presented the blockbuster art exhibition Angels (designed and implemented by curator Pavlo Hudimov), while the historical event of creation of group Artes in 1929 L’viv, members of which, such as Roman Selskyi and Margit Selska-Reich, linked interwar art practices and post-war Ukrainian art was left unprecedented for the state exhibition halls. Angels still «conquer» the vanguard both in the imagination of institutions of art and in the minds of contemporary Ukrainians. I’m saying that the artistic vanguard is not really the topic to which one can bring many visitors, although the importance of the vanguard itself for the evolution of art is overwhelming. One can only hope that at the beginning of October 2019, the art communities of L’viv will remember that 70 years ago Alexander Aksinin, one of the most important artists of the post-war period, appeared in the city.
The theme of late Soviet vanguard in L’viv (please view Soviet as a period, not as a quality!!!) or informal art was brought up during Kyiv exhibitions in 2017 («L’viv: Allies» at the National Art Museum of Ukraine) and 2018 («Red Book: Soviet Art in L’viv in the 80s and 90s» at PinchukArtCentre)2. These projects, as well as exhibition by Myroslav Yahoda at L’viv National Art Gallery in 2019, tried to take a fresh look at the late-Soviet Ukrainian art, but received little or no critical response in press or the mainstream Internet media, and the display of Yahoda’s works even became the cause of a local scandal. Why does not the theme of early or late Soviet vanguard, just as the L’viv pre-Soviet vanguard, awaken the hearts of our compatriots? Why don’t critics and numerous «others» have any interest in art that evokes a sense of pride and admiration among Europeans?
One of the reasons, of course, is the different post- war experience. While the vanguard was deliberately promoted and popularized in the West as an antithesis to totalitarianism and interwar fascism, the artistic vanguard in the USSR at the beginning of the century was largely considered to be an immature revolutionary art. During the Stalinism era, the vanguard was defeated by the kitsch of Socialist Realism and attempts to revert to experiments in art during Khrushchev’s Thaw were stopped by the authorities. Formal experiments in the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s did not become the acquisition of the masses: many artists were forced to create their works for the drawer, and the Soviet vanguard was acquired by private collectors, maybe. It was only in 1987 that informal (and mostly young) Soviet art was given an opportunity to exhibit in public, which caused quite a stir. But even the liberalization of the late 1980s did not change the attitude towards artistic vanguard – its problems and aesthetics continued to remain under review of the «chosen» ones only.
I think that at this stage, and that is 30 years after the end of the Soviet empire, we are dealing not with return of a certain cultural heritage, but rather with an effort to at least understand ourselves. The aforementioned exhibitions or projects about Ukrainian vanguard do not form new narratives about experimental art or deconstruct the old ones, but appear as certain stories that are sporadic or, as Andrii Boiarov states, «start jumping out, pulling out, and look at you from the thick and yet often deliberately worn rug of Ukrainian culture of the 20th Century.» Ukrainians who again became the hostages of geopolitical contests in the Eastern Europe, subjects of the state occupied by the oligarchy and victims of their own disorientation, still cannot grasp the achievements of national culture. The culture without folklore and «ancient» kitschy plots, without romanticism and groaning with the invocation of Washington’s spirit. In the 1990s, Yurii Andrukhovych called such state of culture a «disorientation in the terrain» because «that’s how Ukrainian society of the 1990s felt, confused, disorganized.» Nowadays, Ukrainians seem to have become much more organized than in the 1990s, better able to see and understand what they need. However, understanding of one’s own culture, and even more so understanding of artistic culture, is still a long way off.
In the late 1980s and early 1990s many Ukrainian artists had the feeling that we (as a culture) were moving somewhere, just at that stage there was some transformation euphoria that was to end. Everyone was waiting for a revolution, if not political then aesthetical! This transformation was to lead to a new, better world with new and, correspondingly, better art. But from the perspective of 2019 and several unsuccessful revolutions that took place in Kyiv after the first student speeches «on Granite» in 1990, it is becoming increasingly clear that we have not come anywhere. Or, as L’viv artist Vlodko Kaufman outlined this situation, we seem to have stuck in the hallway, leaving one space and yet not entering the other. Another L’viv artist, Andriy Sahaidakovskyi, has a metaphor of dense space in which everything, as in weightlessness, hangs and flies nowhere. So, we seemed to have got lost in the hallway, leaving the old room or hovering in space, bouncing and naively thinking that we would jump up to something…
The above mentioned Andrukhovych said about Ukraine that it is a country that allegedly strives to become part of the West and «juggles with pro-Western rhetorical blocs» and therefore has no right to be passive. On the other hand, he does not believe in our country’s ability to be «proactive», since he claims that Ukrainian politicians are «not drama but a constant farce» and that perhaps everything is ahead and all our «farce and vaudeville will pass at least to the level of optimistic tragedy someday.» As we can see, political farce and vaudeville are not going anywhere in Ukraine, except they are sprinkled with daily drama – a droplet of blood of Ukrainian soldiers who die regularly. This leads to the fact that our society has no expectations for a great or bright future (and the future is an important part of the vanguard project), people respond only to the call to end the present (as if to stop time), which does not suit anyone … In such a society one can hardly hope for attention to art, and the vanguard all the more…
HAS THERE BEEN ANY ARTISTIC REVOLUTION IN UKRAINE?
This year Ukraine is «celebrating» one more anniversary — festival of popular songs Chervona Ruta took place in Chernivtsi in 1989 for the first time. Kyrylo Stetsenko, one of its organizers, once said:
«Chervona Ruta» was a powerful cultural revolution that destroyed the complex of national inferiority in the eyes and ears of those who were there.» He also said that «every generation needs its own music», and this thesis was in line with the statement of the Akuvido Art Formation, which created its own manifesto for the video project The Crosses (1993). The authors wrote: «Everyone invents fun for himself and plays it. We need to invent new fun. Creation of new associations, new institutions, new relationships between people gives new forms, new meaningful connections, new words, new pleasure from life, new hypnosis.»
If the Chervona Ruta in 1989 became a «powerful cultural revolution» in popular music and contributed to the emergence of a new Ukrainian-speaking song, was the late-Soviet Ukrainian art able to create a revolution that would positively influence the formation, as Akuvido wrote, of a new artistic play, associations or institutes? Sometimes Kyiv exhibition Youth of the Country in 1987, where young revolutionary artists A. Savadov and G. Senchenko exposed a famous work The Grief of Cleopatra, is called such an event. But both this and the subsequent exhibitions were compromise, where a clear Soviet «paid material» was on display alongside with the works of the young «revolutionaries.» At L’viv exhibition in 1987, which name was in the spirit of the time – We Invite You to a Dialogue, there was no revolution either. A scarce auction at the exhibition finissage in L’viv found only one person willing to buy underground art, but the purchased artwork had dubious artistic qualities and showed more of a buyer’s attraction to eroticism than to alternative art.
On the second open-air for experimental artists in Sedniv in 1989, a pale version of the pop song festival Chervona Ruta took place, namely for the first time in the party of young experimenters some of the artists were described as «artists-nationalists». The question «and what exactly is the new Ukrainian art?» arose during the second festival in Sedniv, exactly when The Chervona Ruta festival raised the issue of «what should the new Ukrainian song be like?» The answer seemed to be on surface – the new must not be old, so that is not to be Ukrainian-Soviet. But since this was not possible, Ukrainian artists simply began to «reproduce» what was «there», not «here.» According to Lesia Smyrna,
The «new wave» of Ukrainian art has evolved rapidly, branching out in style and corporate interests. There arose artistic groups/associations, namely: «Limit of the Efforts of National Post- collectivism», «Painting Reserve», «Paris Commune» etc. At the beginning, intuitive and personal ways were sublimated into corporate programs. Styles and directions to which they turned became basic in the development of Ukrainian art and made up the «matrix of Ukrainian visuality» (according Tiberii Silvashi), being repeated and reproduced with regularity in the future. Thus, for Oleh Tistol, such a matrix was the Ukrainian Cossack Baroque, for Tiberii Silvashi and the «Painting Reserve» – the idea of American expressionism, color field painting, European lyrical abstraction and, to some extent, «new realism».
So, does it turn out that without historicism, that is, without reference to the past, contemporary Ukrainian art could not see itself? This late-Soviet Ukrainian eclecticism was described by one L’viv artist: «When I first got to the Museum of Contemporary Art in Berlin, I saw all contemporary Ukrainian art, only the signatures were not ours.» Such a state of «imitative postmodernism», when artists chose which of the famous artists or what historical style one should follow, remained in Ukrainian art until 2004, when the country was shaken by the «Maidan» which repeated tropes and toposes of the «Revolution on the Granite» in 1990. Then the political revolution brought to the surface new young people, namely the R.E.P group (Revolutionary Experimental Space). Even though great personalities such as Nikita Kadan, Volodia Kuznetsov, Lada Nakonechna (R.E.P group and Khudrada group) or Zhenya Belorusets (Khudrada group) stood out in youth groups, their participants upheld the aesthetics of collective action. The next group of «revolutionaries» in Ukrainian art actively gave voice during the next political revolution in 2013-2014. The Open Group, which, like the REP, professes collective action, has become a new discovery (at least for some people) and has shown old conflicts within the artistic environment.
The conflict between revolutionaries of 1987 and 2004 manifested itself well on Facebook in 2019. Actively Protesting against participation (for public money) at the Venice Biennale 2019 of the Open Group, whose representatives «revolutionized» art in 2013, Arsen Savadov, icon of the 1987 Youth Exhibition, stated proudly in response to the young artist: «We are the artists who have destroyed the empire, and you, jailbait, will not tell me where to go.» Jointly he, a «revolutionary» of 1987, called Nikita Kadan, a «revolutionary» of 2004, «layman-hermeneutic» and promised at the same time when they will meet to «kick the shit out» as he put it, of a «boar» (the last name of Kadan is close in spelling to «kaban», which stands for a boar). Is this the state of culture when, as Andrukhovych said, farce and vaudeville should already be transposed into an optimistic tragedy?
The Open Group project for Venice Biennale was remarkable at least because it embodied both the subjects of the newest Ukrainian art: it’s displaced Sovietness through the reference to the idea of technological utopia (the largest Soviet aircraft in the world Mriya), and its aesthetic utopia, namely a fantasy about a miracle. By design, the Ukrainian aircraft AN-225 Mriya was supposed to fly over the Venice Gardens, where the Biennale takes place, and cast a shadow on the pavilions of other countries. The largest aircraft in the world was intended to become an archive and a museum with wings: it was planned to put a list of the names of all contemporary artists in Ukraine on its board. However, nothing happened − the myth about Mriya remained a myth. Young project curators noted:
The pavilion was the result of both the obvious and the covert actions of the main participants of this situation. The result of a complex relationship and coalition confrontation was portrayed as a station to convey the myth of the Mriya flight over Giardini. Storytellers’ conferences were held simultaneously, mixed, superimposed. They turned into a palimpsest. The only thing that united was the simultaneous reading of the main myth about flying over gardens.
The synchronicity of Ukrainian artistic revolutions with political and social revolutions in Ukraine is, in my opinion, symptomatic. This testifies that, in fact, no revolution in Ukrainian art occurred in either 1987, 1990, or 2004 or 2013. Instead, there is a constant and simmering evolution, an endless transition from one state to another, which in no way completes. Young and revolutionary Ukrainian art that gave birth to Cleopatra’s Dream in 1987 and to «revolutionary space» in 2004 has evolved into the only reality of Ukrainian art, its myth. And the myth is realized through rituals…
RITUALS AND TRANSITIONS AS MODUS OPERANDI OF UKRAINIAN ART…
I think the feeling that we are lost in the hallway and cannot get out is right and wrong at the same time. It conveys well the state, as Tamara Hundorova said, of Ukrainian transit culture. But on the other hand, the way is also a set of ritual actions that mark constant transformations. Rituals allow us to better understand reality and what is happening in human communities, motivate and drive us. Through ritual we build families and communities, undergo transformations and commemorate important events in our lives, we express ourselves in joy and sadness, and perhaps most importantly through rituals we create and support identities. Artistic rituals are a part of the historical process. One psychologist once said that the comparison of rituals from around the world shows that these rites of passage have an archetypal structure, because they contain the same basic laws and procedures and are therefore universal. Some researchers assert that the ritual unites people, their destinies and hearts, just as a protest does. When we stand together on a square, united by love and mojo for change, often dirty, sweaty and unprepared for clear scenarios of the future, we thus form a community, a society of trust and solidarity. Such situation goes beyond the ordinary, incorporates archetypal patterns of behavior. It is dangerous but it also promises the future… Not surprisingly, the last Maidan in Kyiv caused a lot of activity among artists.
The scheme that describes the rite of passage is used not only to explain important transformations in human life. Victor Turner, for example, considered theatre as a form of non sacred ritual, he even wrote a text From Ritual to Theatre: The Human Seriousness of Play (1982). The researcher explained the theatrical performance as a form of action, allowing to stop the time of profane life (discontinuum of action) and to reflect on life. According to the anthropologist, such «reflection about life» involves reflection and reflexivity. Reflection allows one to look at oneself in the mirror, so that others could see, and the reflexivity is understood as the practice of honest dialogue.
In Ukrainian history 1989 has certainly become the year of transition; it had a pre-liminal phase (the creation of new forms of culture after 1986, for example) and a post-liminal phase (the Declaration of Independence of Ukraine in 1991). And 1989 itself was the threshold that had to be crossed, and protests on the Maidan in 1990 were a part of that transgression. These ritual actions created a model of protest behavior in our country, and they were repeated in 2004 and 2013, when new Ukrainian art was being born. Now is the time to bring reflection and reflexivity to an understanding of what has happened to Ukrainian culture over the last 30 years. To look at oneself as if into a mirror so others could also see and practice honest dialogue. We need this to move on…
Biba Shulc, L’viv, 2019