Where ART Lives Magazine Volume 3 Number 2 | Page 58
contemporary art
One day to my great surprise, I found out that my favorite producer Antonioni,
which had been creating movies in direction of new realism, opened an
exhibition of abstract oil miniatures. Now I am not surprised anymore – I think
these are facets of the same creative process – sometimes it is nice to see the
world in whole and sometimes to penetrate deeply into its forms. It is a
pleasure when a realistic work has enough spontaneity to let its forms be
admired, but also it is great when abstract work shows needed depth which
wakes up imagination of the audience as a starter provoking to making new
worlds. It seems to me that speed of painting a work is a pledge of its
quality – faster is better (I mean professional work indeed). When I begin new
realistic work, it is often already formed in my mind completely and sometimes
even in smallest details. Unlike realistic work, an abstract one is the other way
round – there is a special pre-feeling which is concerned with a ce rtain color
gamma. Sometimes I feel mass of such spots, but the rest fully depends on
spontaneity. New work needs new techniques, otherwise the artist starts
reproducing his old ideas and gradually become degraded in his art. Realistic
works are more national, because their subjects are often concerned with ethnic
life or particular places. Abstractionism is a result of industrial world. It seems
to me, we have been children of a single Culture for a long time already.
In different parts of the world we listen to Scofield and Bach, read Orwell and
Dostoevsky, watch movies of Tarantino and Visconti and of course use the
Internet. And if a national trait appears, it may be because of a philosophical
subject of Slav or extreme form refinement of Japanese.
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