Flowers with life: what is interesting about the retrospective of "Russian Van Gogh"

Colors and faces. Colors and faces. And in them - the cosmos. The monographic exhibition "And the wind rages in the steppe..." to the 90th anniversary of Vladimir Yakovlev's birth, opened in AZ/ART, united 70 of his works from the Tretyakov Gallery, the artist's family and a number of private collections. And it turned out to be not just a formal anniversary retrospective, but actually the first attempt for many years to penetrate into the essence of Yakovlev's art and help the public to love this tragic personality. "Izvestia" was among the first to evaluate the exhibition.

Pain and beauty

The new project occupies the entire art space AZ/ART in the chambers of the XVII century on Maroseike. As it turned out, the ancient brick vaults with their coldness and thoroughness are very suitable for Yakovlev's timeless, metaphysical art, in whose works there is nothing mundane and fleeting. Even when he depicts fragile plucked flowers about to wither, eternity and infinity can be seen in them.

Yakovlev is counted among the pleiad of artists-nonconformists. Formally this is true: like Zverev, Plavinsky, Nemukhin, Masterkova and many others, he is a child of the thaw. He was most impressed by the Festival of Youth and Students, which took place in Moscow in 1957 and allowed Soviet citizens to see the works of American abstractionists for the first time. Actually, it was from that moment that Yakovlev began to actively create, and in the late 1950s his first apartment exhibition took place. Quite quickly the painter became in demand among collectors (though rather narrow), won the respect of his comrades. And yet he always remained separate - outside the trends, directions and associations.

Partly to blame for this mental illness Yakovleva. Living with his parents in a communal apartment, he periodically falls into the hospital named after Kashchenko, and after the death of his mother - in a psycho boarding school, where he is kept in a common room and falls into a deep depression. To this is added another disaster: the artist rapidly loses his eyesight and in later years works, being already practically blind. All these circumstances made hermetic not only his life world, but also the world of his work.

Without letters

Looking at Yakovlev's works, you realize that they are things in themselves: there is no reflection of political, social, everyday realities in them, no response to impressions from the outside - nature, acquaintances with people and the like. If anything becomes an external emotional fuel, it is physical suffering: he compared the many dots on the abstract compositions of 1960 to medical injections, and on the image of a repeatedly crossed-out face with closed eyes (a drawing from the same years) he wrote in uneven handwriting: "Yakovlev. Very difficult. Hospital."

And yet Yakovlev's art is not so much about the personal as about the universal. The figures of people, over which massive crucifixes are painted, are a metaphor for any creator and, in general, for a man who carries his cross in life. Numerous flowers are signs of unearthly, illusory, symbolic beauty. Well, and his amazing composition of 1959 "Rain. Sun" from the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery - a picture not at all weather phenomena, of course, and cosmic infinity, looking into which, falling into this space deeper and deeper.

By the way, about the unearthly think and when looking at the portrait of 1960 - a male profile. Instead of an eye he has a black hole with many tiny red dots. Also stars?

Yakovlev's works are open to interpretation. And here it is worth noting the bold exposition solution of the AZ/ART curators: the works have no labels at all, and in general the textual support of the exhibition is minimal. The viewer, who is used to reading the caption and the explanation of the concept first and only then looking at the image, is left alone with his or her own thoughts and impressions. And, probably, this is the most correct way to penetrate Yakovlev's art. After all, the title, year of creation, technique (oil, watercolor, pencil and so on) are deeply secondary in this case. And knowing all such details does not bring us any closer to understanding the essence.

Glow of the mind

In fact, the style aspects are not what we need to talk about here in the first place. And if in the first room (which, however, may be the last) we can still discuss "isms" (Tachism, abstractionism, expressionism) and point out overlaps with colleagues in the field - for example, the above-mentioned piece from the Tretyakov Gallery is associated with the works of Mikhnov-Voytenko, and another abstract composition from the same 1959 clearly grows out of Pollock - then further on there is only the image as such.

Here are tulips in a glass. Almost monochrome, devoid of external flashiness, as if a random image. Three flowers have bowed their heads (broken? trying to fall out? wilting?), three others - with ridiculously short stems - are lying on the table. What are they about? About beauty and life against all odds? Or about death and ridiculous injustice?

Or a completely different "still life" (one cannot do without quotation marks in genre definitions of Yakovlev's things). A huge white flower does not even fit into the space of the painting and overshadows the sky. An interesting detail: the blue paint in the upper part of the sheet has partially chipped off. The matter, it must be assumed, is not in the idea, but in the difficult circumstances of Yakovlev's works: collectors took them away from the artist, hiding them, wrapping them in several layers. But, it turns out, life itself made this metaphor: crumbling skies.

Reflecting on the life and work of Vladimir Yakovlev, it is difficult not to think of Van Gogh. Both of them suffered from mental illness. Both were deeply unhappy, misunderstood during their lifetime - and incredibly valued after their death (Yakovlev's works today are among the most expensive among nonconformist paintings, and although the Frenchman's records are still far away, let's see what happens in a century). Both only formally belonged to the advanced currents of their time (Impressionism and Nonconformism, respectively), and in fact went much further. But most importantly, in the art of both, one can feel that special glow of pure reason that transforms the physical - the concrete objects depicted, whether sunflowers, tulips, the fields of Arles or the Russian steppes - into metaphysics.

And yes, with regard to both Van Gogh and Yakovlev, it is said without any embarrassment or stretch: genius. Not in the sense of mastery, greatness, or significance, although all of these are certainly present as well. But in the sense of a special, unique, beyond the control of an ordinary person (even if very talented) view of the world. Genius as the flip side of insanity. God's gift and punishment at the same time.

Therefore, no exhibition can fully reveal such figures to us simply because they are unrecognizable in principle. But it is still necessary to make steps in this direction. Especially such as in AZ/ART.