Anatole Krasnyansky
Beautiful Paradoxes
by Morris Shapiro, Gallery Director, Park West Gallery
With an entirely mischievous twinkle in his eyes he greets me. I ask how he is, and as usual he responds, “Still alive,” with deadpan seriousness.
I have known this man for more than 15 years and
every time I am with him I am again surprised and amused by his paradoxes. He is a walking paradox; a tangle of contradictions and ironies in living color. Spend a few moments contemplating one of the twisting, turning, swirling, multi-colored, multi-textured figures that inhabits his art and what is true about him in reality, becomes symbolically true in pigment.
He walks slowly and carefully and carries a cane, but I have watched him dancing (think Groucho Marx meets Henry Kissinger). He is intimate with the architecture and the liturgical symbolism of the world’s greatest cathedrals and yet I have seen him irreverently posing for photographs as a “saint” by holding a plate over his head to act as a “halo.” His physical appearance and demeanor both exude sophistication and refinement built on his classical cultural training, yet the genesis of much of his imagery emerges from something as foreign to classicism as rock and roll and “over the top” American entertainment. He cites the stimulus for creating one of his styles as experiencing the band “Kiss” (while working as a set designer) and how he was traumatized to the point of needing to create a cathartic artistic exorcism to feel normal again.
No surprise then that this duality carries into his extraordinary art. I know of very few artists who have worked simultaneously in multiple disparate styles. Yes, artists almost always pass through transformations in their work which often yield dramatic differences in style, subject and content, but Anatole creates a continuing artistic dichotomy to mirror his paradoxical nature.
His “Cityscapes,” which delight so many viewers reveal his deep experience as a draftsman, his brilliance as an architect and his poetic ability to create a poignant, evocative mood through a facile command of the unforgiving technique of watercolor.
His “figural” imagery, steeped in the ground breaking theories of visual perception that pass from Cezanne, through Picasso, to the aesthetician, Rudolph Arnheim (Art and Visual Perception, 1974) continually wrestle with the complex visual problems of plastic space, color interaction and orchestration of form. Yet both styles reside harmonically in the creative world of Anatole Krasnyansky. He has also sought ways of “reconciling” the two styles of his art, and fusing them into a unique conception. These works display his figures in architectural interiors, with lavish cityscapes seen from the windows, or figures flying above complex architectural structures beneath them. Most recently, he has begun to populate interiors with modeled figures (akin to a notion of sculpture) in various poses and activities, with elaborate and detailed vistas of architectural designs in the distance.
Regarding the content found in his works, there is also a fascinating duality. Though his works initially appear to be driven by formal concerns, as they “dance” and entertain the eye in an aesthetic “performance,” he also contemplates carefully and with great detail the messages he intends to present. I have listened to him discuss a painting and describe one-by-one each figure presented. With great precision he illuminates the subtle nuances of expression, position, apparent activity and even the costume worn by the figure and these relationships to his messages. Often they carry political meanings and incipient statements about dictatorship, hypocrisy, guile and manipulation stemming from his experience as a Soviet citizen. It is rare to find an artist so fluid in the formal language of art to be so articulate as well in the meanings of his imagery. Most artists allow the viewer to draw one’s own conclusions. Anatole welcomes these as well, but typical of his paradoxical nature is anxious to reveal and articulate his own allusions.
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It is also this two-sided artistic coin that makes him so interesting in the early 21st Century world in which we reside; a world which seems to be less and less attuned to beautiful artistic dichotomies. Herein is another irony. In a world where the “elite” art of our time resides in an anti-aesthetic, an obsessive artistic narcissism wherein art continually looks at itself in the “pool” of context and asks itself over and over again, “Am I art, or not?”—Anatole’s art evokes powerful responses from thousands of people all over the world. The enthusiasm for his artwork is often dramatic, certainly passionate, and enduring for his devotees. I know collectors who have dozens of Krasnyanskys. Anatole and I have discussed the history of art many times. We’ve walked museums together and contemplated dynastic Asian sculptures, paintings by Velasquez and “installations” composed of truck mud-flaps and lunch box thermoses.
In all of this, I feel comforted though by the thought of future generations viewing his impressive and expansive body of work; his paintings, drawings and prints, and seeing his historical position in the pantheon of the champions of beauty. He has “walked the walk.” And he has devoted his life and career to enriching us through his unflagging efforts, often in the face of extraordinary challenges and difficulties.
Dr. Eleanor Hight’s excellent article which follows adroitly sketches the arc of Anatole’s life and career. It is important that his story is told and the details of his accomplishments be recorded in this beautiful book, this record of his life and art at this place in time. But I know much more.
I know the story of how he got permission from customs to take the watercolors he painted during his honeymoon out of the Soviet Union. How he walked on the backs of the originals to make them look old and unimportant. When the customs officers located them with his belongings, Krasnyansky paid full price for the paintings as he departed Ukraine. I have seen these paintings as they now hang on the walls of his living room. I know that when he proclaimed his intent to leave the U.S.S.R, he became a “marked” man and of the fear and uncertainty he and his young family faced, especially as Jews. I know while barely able to speak English, after presenting his portfolio of architectural designs and paintings, he secured his first job as a scenic artist at CBS and later at ABC television studios so that he would not have to go onto the streets as a beggar to support his family. I know of the widow of a famous Russian painter who lent him her husband’s studio in California without charging a cent, to allow him to work because she believed in him. I know of his insecurity when he first showed his works to the Dalzell Hatfield Galleries in Los Angeles with master paintings on the walls surrounding him and the joy he felt when he was invited to exhibit there. I know of his love for his family, his strong, smart and devoted wife, Nelly, who has stood by him all these years and been his “rock.” I know of his love of Louis Armstrong, and Mozart, of Kandinsky and El Greco. Yin and Yang. Two sides of a coin.
I know too of his uncompromising dedication to his art; his refusal to accept anything that does not meet his standards; the way he labors and studies his imagery and considers carefully the content it conveys, his preliminary drawings, his printing proofs. He knows that his work needs to be uncompromising because every painting and print released to the world by Anatole Krasnyansky is a piece of his soul, a testament of his dedication to his chosen profession, his struggles, his triumphs and his mark on the history of art. It is part of the narrative of a man born and trained in a communist world whose journey has brought him to a world of nearly limitless freedom. This is a story that resembles many artists who have walked a similar path in their quests to find freedom for their art. But, I can’t think of another who has walked as uniquely as Anatole Krasnyansky. Or one who has walked it with so many beautiful paradoxes at play.
Morris Shapiro, Park West Gallery® Director
May 2009
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Bridging Two Worlds
The Art of Anatole Krasnyansky
by Eleanor M. Hight, Ph.D.
Anatole Krasnyansky, the artist and architect from pre-Stalinist Ukraine, has made a significant impact on contemporary art with his unique, energetic, and deeply evocative works. As with the majority of great artists Krasnyansky allows the people, experiences and surroundings that have shaped his life to inspire his art. Particular inspirations derive from his youth and young adulthood in the U.S.S.R., his formal education as an architect, life in Los Angeles following his immigration to the United States, and his lifelong love of music. Within these memories, these artistic building blocks, he expresses the passion that distinguishes his art, and resonates with art historians, curators and collectors alike.
Krasnyansky earned his Masters of Architecture with the special title “Artist-Architect” from the Kiev State Art Institute in 1953. In the stimulating environment of the Art Institute the artists and architects exchanged ideas and exhibited their work. Krasnyansky and his fellow architecture students took courses in painting, drawing, and the history of art and architecture. Studying architectural restoration at the Academy of Fine Art in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) afforded Krasnyansky the opportunity to work on the restoration of Potemkin Palace and the Marble Palace at The Hermitage. This background in art history and restoration fueled the artist’s great admiration for historic buildings and Russia’s architectural heritage, which would later figure prominently into his artwork.
For the next two decades, Krasnyansky embarked on a number of major architectural projects in and around Kiev. Working in the style of international modernism under the watchful eye of the government, Krasnyansky designed the Central Medical Emergency Building and the Polytechnic Institute Subway Station, as well as hospitals, art pavilions, exhibition installations and monuments. He also worked on a number of important restoration projects, including the 14th century Vladimir Cathedral and the 16th century Monastery of St. Michael in Pereyaslav-Khemlnicky, Ukraine.
While architecture was Krasnyansky’s profession, his avocation was art; he created numerous drawings and watercolors during breaks from his projects and in his travels. Working in the traditional style of European realism, Krasnyansky interpreted the historic architecture of his homeland in watercolor and acrylic paintings like Kizhi, Russia (painting 1996; serigraph, 1998), in which he depicts one of the most extensive and highly visited tourist sites of Russia. The unique wooden architecture on this small island, in what is now the Republic of Karelia, includes the Cathedral of the Transfiguration, the Church of the Intercession, the Belfry, and several peasant houses, and is included on the Unesco World Heritage List, which documents natural and historical sites of significance located all over the world. Krasnyansky was equally adept at painting naturalistic landscapes, as seen in his watercolor, Outskirt of Prague (painting 1999; serigraph 2001). The beautiful washes of color in this work, with the touches of turquoise in the sky fading into the foggy distance, point to the technical mastery and gift as a colorist that Krasnyansky would demonstrate throughout his career.
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Frustrated with the continued government mandate on Socialist realism in art and concerned by the growth of anti-Semitism, Krasnyansky decided to immigrate to the United States with his wife Nelly and daughter Rimma, where he planned to support his family as an architect, if not as an artist. After settling with his family in Los Angeles in 1975, Krasnyansky went from one architectural firm to another armed with the impressive portfolio he developed while in the Soviet Union, but in the Cold War Era the only opportunities open to him were in the television and movie industries. Despite his limited knowledge of English, his inability to find an architectural position and his lack of a social network in America, the ever-resourceful Krasnyansky began a new career, first as a scenic artist at ABC TV studio, then as a set designer at Universal, MGM and Twentieth Century Fox studios.
While serving in these positions, Krasnyansky continued to nurture his artistic talent. At fine art museums and galleries, he met European and Russian intellectuals and was exposed to elements of advanced 20th century modernism distinct from the familiar Eastern Europe realist tradition. After the conference “Russian Literature and Art” organized by Olga Matitch, the chairperson of the University of Southern California’s Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, the Krasnyansky family frequently invited important Russian dignitaries, scholars and musicians living in America to their home, including Matitch, cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich, and author Vasily Aksenov. Freshly stimulated by these relationships, Krasnyansky began to develop his watercolors in a new direction. He was encouraged by the response to his new work in exhibitions such as “The International Watercolor Masters,” where six of his new watercolors were exhibited side by side with works by Picasso, Chagall, Pissarro, Klee, Vlaminck, and Rivera.
During these early years in Los Angeles, Krasnyansky’s artistic goals changed from realist depictions of nature and architecture and the occasional portrait to a new search for intense emotional expression through color, form, and technique. Krasnyansky had long worked in watercolors and he continued to see them as final works of art rather than as preparatory studies for paintings in oil or acrylic. He decided to combine the highly developed precision of his watercolor technique with new explorations of the expressive effects that could be produced with highly textured papers.
“It is like playing a violin,” Krasnyansky says of the highly unforgiving medium of watercolor. “A false note is easily recognizable. Move your finger just a touch and the sound is not that which it should be. In order for the instrument to make the right sound, in order to play the violin without committing an error, it is of the utmost importance to have an impeccable technique and a good ear.”
Krasnyansky begins the process of creating a watercolor work by preparing a sheet of paper, covering it with washes of watercolor pigments and then roughing the surface. The color and heightened texture created a kind of abstract, expressive environment in which his subjects took form. Krasnyansky integrated the inherent characteristics of watercolor – its lucidity and transparency – with textured papers to achieve an organic interdependence of the materials.
Krasnyansky’s new experimentations resulted in a series of representations of human “types” in watercolor, such as The Dissident, The Immigrant, and Man of Destiny. In this last watercolor, painted in 1976, we see through a web of jagged lines an illuminated Christ-like visage, marked by a sense of struggle, pain, and uncertainty. Krasnyansky based this figure on the main character of the book Monument to a Cross Bearer by Arcibald Kronin. The textures created by the paper and lines create a heightened emotional tone in a manner reminiscent of German Expressionists such as Kirchner, Nolde,
Pechstein, Mueller, and Schmidt-Rottluff. At the same time, the undefined contours of the face evoke an abstract feeling of personal or collective suffering, rather than a more concrete portrayal similar to the Expressionist themes of isolation and retreat.
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These new experiments allowed Krasnyansky to transform his art from the naturalism developed in his years in Kiev to explorations of the symbolic use of color found in late Impressionism and Expressionism, and the distortions of form in Cubism and Surrealism. In the process, he developed two distinct and seemingly dissimilar styles that both sprang from his love of history, architecture, Russian and Ukrainian fairytales, and the performing arts. His views of architecture in the old cities of Europe have the more obvious connection to his architectural background and heritage. From his early sketches made in Europe, Krasnyansky made more detailed watercolors, such as his monumental painting, Memories of Venice (painting, 1995; serigraph, 1996). Though the tonalities of this work may initially seem muted, upon closer inspection the masterful handling of colored patches of watercolor that highlight the architecture dazzles the eye.
By the 1980s, Krasnyansky had developed yet another new technique, one that combined watercolor and acrylic paints on handmade Japanese paper. The heavy texture of the paper and the glowing colors create a dreamlike, atmospheric effect. Such use of texture and intense color is reminiscent of the heightened emotional intensity found in the later works of the French Impressionist Claude Monet. In Old Towers of Rostov Kremlin (painting, 1996; serigraph, 1998), the architecture looms large, while the people who are going by are all but overwhelmed by the dominating presence of the buildings.
“The reason why I create such pictures is that I would like to remind people who see my work that they shouldn’t forget their historical roots,” explains Krasnyansky. “One of my goals in my art is to show people how beautiful and sophisticated art and architecture was before it was developed in our country. Architecture was like an art and not a technology, with many different styles in different epochs. Looking at architecture helps us to understand life in another time.” While his earlier works served more as records of his direct experience before a scene, images such as this and the serigraphs Pont des Art (1997) and Portofino, Italy (1998) create an emotional nostalgia for old Europe.
The other side of Krasnyansky’s art — his works depicting musicians, dancers, and scaramouches (buffoon-like characters from traditional Italian comedy) — developed through the influence of his life in Los Angeles. Krasnyansky created these paintings and prints after he attended his first hard rock concert in 1980, when, somewhat stunned by the experience, he attempted to express the noisy agitation of the sound and light show in a new style. The unfinished study Rock and Roll was the product of several years of experimentation to find a technique suitable to express his sense of bewilderment at this experience. The image combines elements derived from the flat, colorful, disjunctive planes of Synthetic Cubism and the strange, metamorphic forms found in Surrealism, as well as the fluid forms of the “psychedelic” art popular at the time in California. Krasnyansky created a series of related experimental works in which the contorted figures — half formed, half animal — represented his view of the condition of the human psyche as it is shaped by fear, uncertainty, and a constant bombardment of environmental stimuli. Through these explorations of 20th century modernist art, Krasnyansky created a new art form to express his intense emotional reactions to contemporary life in Los Angeles.
While this style has its origins in American rock music, Krasnyansky’s musical subjects in the works that followed were usually inspired by the genres of classical music and jazz. Since his youth, music has always played an important role in Krasnyansky’s life. He began taking violin lessons when he was around the age of six, and performed with a group of chamber violinists in concert halls. Though he was more attracted to drawing, music was nevertheless emphasized as an integral part of his culture by his mother and uncle. While he was living in Tashkent, his mentor, the prominent Russian film art director Alexander Black, also stressed the importance of classical music to nurture his heart, no matter what his life circumstances might turn out to be, and to inspire his art as well. Works with such musically-inspired titles such as Capriccio (painting, 1995; serigraph, 1997), Orchestra (painting 1995; serigraph, 1996), and Cellist (painting, 1999; serigraph, 2001) combine references to classical music with his harlequin-like figures. Krasnyansky transforms Picasso’s static, cubist harlequins into colorful, often joyous forms in various stages of movement. His figures and settings are also reminiscent of the theatricality of the Baroque, which is perhaps the period of art, architecture, and music that has had the biggest impact on the artist. As in Baroque art, the construction of twisting forms and use of color are vehicles for conveying complex meanings and emotions.
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Krasnyansky explains this goal in relation to his work Cellist in the following way: “The musician is playing a song, an etude, or a symphony. The song has a theme — love, hate, whatever. During the song, lots of memories are stirred in the musician and the viewer, different emotions come out. I tried to put into visual forms all of these ideas.” Like the great Russian painter Vasily Kandinsky, Krasnyansky equates the ability of the painter to create a range of emotions through color, texture, and form to the similar role of the musician.
With this second style, Krasnyansky could also achieve a completely different kind of emotional expression. In Dictator (ca. 1985), we see “all of the people carrying the heavy weight of dictatorship wearing masks,” says Krasnyansky. “They look happy at first glance, but you can also see sad profiles. Several figures, on the lower left and lower right, try to escape. The shadow of the group is the shadow of the dead, and the frame is made out of dead bodies.” However, in keeping with his positive spirit, these works tend to focus on music and the theatre. Masks, too, have special symbolism for Krasnyansky. “We are all wearing masks,” he says. “And there are different masks — whether we are in business, with a loved one, with children. Only when we are in a dark room, naked and alone, are we without a mask.” The style he uses in these works also emphasizes the state of constant metamorphosis a person experiences during his or her life.
Other works, such as Celebration, Fly Over the City, and Blue Bird (all paintings, 1997; all serigraphs, 1998), allow his splendidly colored figures to rise above the world, often a cityscape, in much the same manner seen in illustrations for Ukrainian and Russian fairy tales (which the Krasnyanskys collect), as well as in the work of the Russian artist Marc Chagall. And in several cases, such as Winter’s Song or City Serenade (both paintings, 1999; both serigraphs, 2000), Krasnyansky effectively merges the two styles and themes of his art into one evocative image. As with his scenes of old Europe, Krasnyansky has translated these theatrical paintings in watercolor and acrylic into new works in serigraphy for Park West Gallery®.
Since 1994 Krasnyansky’s serigraphs have been printed, published, and distributed exclusively by Park West Gallery® in Southfield, Michigan. Krasnyansky utilizes his paintings as a starting point to create new original works of art in serigraphy. One of the most important differences between his paintings and the prints are the variations in color and tone Krasnyansky can achieve with the master printers to produce alternative moods with his imagery. Krasnyansky’s partnership with Park West has also extended beyond his art to architecture. He served as an architectural consultant for the house of his long-time friend, Albert Scaglione, the founder and CEO of Park West Gallery®. Krasnyansky also designed the elegant façade, full of references to the historic architecture he knows so well, for the gallery during its renovation in 2001.
One of Krasnyansky’s most moving paintings is Song of Love (painting, 1997; serigraph, 1998). In an interview with Richard Carroll for Park West Gallery®, Krasnyansky described the work in the following way:
A man and a woman fall in love but each with their own memories — sometimes happy, sometimes depressed. Doubt prevails, caused from previous experiences. He thinks, “Is this real love?” She has many faces. [She thinks,] “Does he love me or just want me?”
At the same time, there is an energy field. The background is like an aura. We all have a biological energy radiating from us. Memory is always with us, and we all have different emotions. Our brain works faster than our tongue. I have to use symbols, color, and outlines to express the energy and emotion in order to send the message. Some paintings are lighter, others more complex.
Having abandoned the realist style of his early work, Krasnyansky now relies on abstracted forms and expressive color to convey meaning. In this work, Krasnyansky seems to be reinterpreting his life in the form of a fairytale. There is one tightly compacted form illuminating the background. At the top of this form is a masked face, one of the brightest areas of the form. Following the shape along its right and left edges, it becomes a coat of many colors hanging down to his sturdy but highly decorative shoes. On the left is another face looking up at him, while opposite her face is the stringed lute. Though alone in this world, they have each other; they are protected from the elements and society by the coat and inside it, they are sustained by a Baroque ebb and flow of color and music. With their masks, we cannot know who they are, but together in their own world, their survival seems sure. Rising above the obstacles of his youth to become an architect, risking everything to immigrate to the United States with his beloved wife and daughter, embarking on a second career to support his family, he maintained his passion for creating art. Song of Love seems to embody the secret to Anatole Krasnyansky’s resilience and success. Long ago his childhood mentor Alexander Black, a well-known film industry art director, told him, “Listen to music and it will help you to be free.”
Anatole Krasnyansky’s art is characterized by dualities: old world and new, history and imagination, hazy architectural forms and sharply defined performers, subtle tonalities and intense primary colors. His scenes of old Europe juxtapose against his highly imaginative, harlequin-like figures that seem to float in space. Though seeming worlds apart, the dual subjects and styles of Krasnyansky’s art pay homage to both his roots in the traditions of Europe and to the theatrical exuberance of Los Angeles. At the same time, his art demonstrates a sophisticated engagement with American and European modernist art that might not have been possible had Krasnyansky remained in the Soviet Union throughout his career. Today, Krasnyansky and his art continue to evolve, and his new works contain the same passion and exuberance as his earlier pieces, as he further solidifies his position as one of the great artists of our time.
Dr. Eleanor M. Hight
About the Author
Dr. Eleanor M. Hight is an art historian at the University of New Hampshire, Durham, and lives in Newton, Massachusetts. She has published essays on Surrealist, German Expressionist, and contemporary prints, as well as a book on the photography of László Moholy-Nagy.
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A. Krasnyansky:
My Art and “Real Life”
My Roots
I have often asked myself, “Who or what pushes me to sit for hours and hours with pen, pencil or brush drawing and painting?”
Perhaps it began in my days as a child during World War II when my family was forced to evacuate our home. After my mother would go to sleep, I would get out of bed and draw. I lit a candle (we had no electricity) and placed my history book from school upright to act as a screen from the light so as not to wake her. Then I would draw for hours.
From an early age I was fascinated by art and through my love of it, transported away from many of the situations which surrounded me. Eventually, when I became an architecture student at the Academy of Art, all of my free time was spent painting watercolors. When I think back to those times and of the places and subjects I painted I experience an overwhelming sense of joy and happiness recalling my contact with nature and history and the profound effect this had upon me.
Architectural landscapes have always fascinated me. Even today when I paint the “old cities” of Russia and Europe I attempt to convey my continuing excitement and deep respect for art and architecture created so long ago. In these works, I try to send a message to the viewer: “People, let us never forget our past. Never forget where we came from. Never forget the accomplishments of our cultures…the foundations of our civilization and our valued traditions.”
My Techniques
When I am asked the question about why I prefer water-base paints in my work (acrylic and watercolor), I find it is not an easy question to answer with a simple response.
When I was a student I diligently studied the technique of watercolor. Watercolor is a medium often used by architects for their presentations of architectural designs and I was exposed to it at an early age. Only serious study of this unforgiving technique will allow one to master it.
I have been fascinated with the art of ancient Egypt, along with Egyptian architecture, paintings on papyrus, and later the invention of paper which allowed the advent of printing techniques and the use of watercolor. I am also deeply interested in the art of central Tibet from the time of Songtsen Gampo and his followers in the Seventh Century, who introduced Buddhism from China and India and created wonderful Buddhist paintings in tempera on cloth. I have also studied with fascination, manuscripts from the third through the 17th Centuries when the art of miniature painting reached its peak of technical accomplishment, and Flemish tapestries with their complexity of multi-figurative compositions often in large scale. In addition Gothic, Romanesque, Renaissance, Baroque and traditional Russian icons have also influenced me greatly.
All of this study and these influences in some ways triggered my desire to use water base paint-- watercolor, tempera and later acrylic paint mediums in particular. And the idea to potentially bring back these ancient water base mediums and their expressive potential into our contemporary times struck me. All of this has become the foundation and a primary influence for my compositions as well.
Although watercolor has traditionally been viewed as a secondary medium as compared to oil painting and used primarily for studies and compositional sketches, the idea of watercolor as the medium for a finished painting is not new. Artists have used watercolor for “finished” landscape and seascape paintings, portraits and compositions. These works were created using the academic watercolor technique of applying paint onto a passive flat surface of paper. The emotional response therefore was based primarily on the mastery of the artist and rarely on the medium.
In contemplating this, I asked myself, “What is the secret of the emotional response found in oil painting?” And, regarding watercolor “Is it possible to elevate the emotional response of the viewer and raise the level of importance to that of an oil painting?”
My belief is that this secret is found first in the mastery of the painter, but that this elusive response is achievable through the use of unique techniques incorporating applications of textured pigment and heavy brushstrokes which can achieve a relief effect.
After several years of study I came to the conclusion that paper could become an active part of the watercolor medium. And that I needed to create the method to make different paper textures. Finally, I discovered a way to do this and through this method I have been able to paint watercolors with a newly developed emotional power. It is my hope and belief that by doing so, I have in some way contributed to elevating the quality and importance of watercolor paintings closer to the level and importance of oil paintings.
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The Evolution of my Imagery and Style
My family and I came to America in 1975 from Communist Ukraine. My work in Hollywood, exhibits of contemporary art that I viewed, the “speed” of American culture and life and the “avalanche” of information to which I was constantly exposed triggered in me positive emotions and a hope for success. Even the hardships of adapting to a new country and culture did not depress me. And I knew that if I was destined to work in the creative field of art, I must not lock myself into only realist landscapes.
Consequently, without being fully conscious of it, American life, political events, news in the world of art and culture, my meeting with the rock-n-roll group Kiss (and my “cultural shock” after this meeting), pushed me toward surrealism. All of this became a base, a foundation for the development of my style—a style in which design, realism and abstract art are all brought together. A style which may be characterized in one word—Masquerade.
All aspects of our lives—everyday life, political life, are but a masquerade, multi-faceted and potentially dangerous…. We all have many faces. It depends upon where we are, what situation we are in and whom we are with…but in each case we are different. We are always different. That is why in my paintings my figures have a multiplicity of faces.
The first painting which became the basic foundation and launched the development of my newer style was Rok-N-Roll, (pg. 59) painted in a surrealistic manner with an apocalyptic feeling. In this painting one can recognize the influence of art of the Middle Ages, Gothic art and Russian icons.
In the process of developing new visual ideas and compositions, my preliminary sketches play an important role. I will develop an idea completely from a rough drawing all the way through to a precise and sustained composition in my sketches.
In my case, as the drawing becomes more refined and complete, it begins to suggest its own compositional balance and rhythm. When this process is finished and I have a completed drawing, it will stand alone as an independent work of art with its own visual power and message.
Then, I can conceptually “move away” from my concerns of structural integrity and any anatomical balance (since I have already achieved these qualities in the finished drawing) and focus on more intuitive elements of my painting process. This includes color balance and other aspects, but I work in this sensibility as if working on a purely abstract painting.
This process of combining rigorous fully developed drawing (which has resolved the problems of composition and structure) with the freedom of my more intuitive “abstract” painting process has created an effect which I believe is unique, and through this same methodology, a style which is recognizable even without my signature.
In addition, political events play an important role in my art. Paintings like Dictator (pg. 120), Glastnost (pg. 125), The Victory (pg. 121), Vanka-Vstanka (pg. 124), paintings now in progress at the time of this writing—Masquerade in Venice, Who Are You to Judge? and Witchcraft reveal a clear understanding of this area of my interest and in the possibilities of my style. Real lives of real people also play a great role in my art. Compositions like The Last Bottle (pg. 102), Opium Dens (pg. 103), Good Bye (pg. 108), and Busybodies (pg. 106) reflect on my responses to human weaknesses, addictions and unhealthy habits.
I also give great attention in my art to music and musicians. Music plays a very important role in intellectual life. The power of music contains an emotional message which triggers the best and most positive responses in the human soul whether classical, jazz or other forms.
I am also often asked about the influences of other important modern and contemporary Western artists on my life and work. Artists like Picasso, Miro, Chagall, Dali, Braque, Rothko, Pollack and so many others have had an influence on me and without their work I would have never created my style. But I cannot name one artist who has influenced me the most.
Rather, it has been this wonderful atmosphere of freedom, free unfettered and pure creation, and creation without rules, limitations and restrictions. This, along with the “avalanche” of information to which I am exposed, and respond to every day…all this has become the very stimulus for my creative passions and inventions. |
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