The French Cultural Center, assisted by the French Embassy, organized one Christian Zeimert display at Kyiv’s Museum of Russian Art. The French artist won acclaim by its canvases reminiscent of latter-day creative trends and styles, with a touch of subtle intellectual humor.
The 1970s marked the peak of Zeimert’s career. In his words, Paris (he was born and works there) was the capital of world art in the 1930s into the 1950s, yet in the 1960s the trends of globalization made themselves felt as all over Western Europe. Zeimert and his Panic creative group resisted the tidal wave of US pop art with a European perception of an art guild society, painters working in their studios, using traditional forms and classic material to keep the easel art alive.
In the late twentieth century, Aquille Bonito Oliva, Italian critic and international modern art curator, spoke of globalization as a dominant trend, stating that art as such was in danger and had to resist the concept of anorexia. “Anorexia is a phenomenon aimed at destroying and shrinking the human body; in other words, it is aimed at implementing a certain androgynous model relating to the system of fashion. Anorexia is also an aggressive model wishing to asserting not the body, through its disappearance, but the skeleton; after all has been said and done, it wishes to avoid reality and enforce the principle of presence through the absence.” Zeimert with his sensitive European artistic heart, consciously monitoring the characteristics of cultural trends, both vanishing and taking shape, was fully aware of the globalization principle. To keep fading pictures of history in his work, Christian Zeimert seemed to play a film backward, using and rethinking techniques, styles, and trends: symbolism, mystic canvases, pointillism, Fauvism, and a antimilitarist grotesque.
Since 1970 he has actively shown his works at prestigious art galleries and museums in Paris and elsewhere in France. His one- man shows are popular and his pictures sell high. Zeimert receives government commissions. He refers to the sensational exposition with the pop art king Andy Warhol as a severe confrontation, yet both twentieth century classics, while using symbols of different cultures, served the same idea of watching and analyzing modern realities, creating whole perspective. That perspective could be used as a point of reference in developing a universal language of art. Zeimert’s play of notions, revealing the dual, comic essence of words, juggling creative manners and names of French classic artists, trademarks and literary heroes are meant for intellectually advanced European audiences. Viewers often need explanations, but after establishing an enjoyable and lively contact with his pictures, each having its own joke to tell, one is left eager to see more.
The classic pictorial foundations of his creations also serve to build witty compilations varying in time and style. Precisely this trait makes Zeimert ever modern, style restrictions notwithstanding.
Graphic evidence is found in his Water Lilies and Confetti, Monet No. 2 and Water Lilies and Confetti, Bridge No. 1 (early 1990s) included in the Kyiv display. Monet’s water lily series fathered impressionism and is generally known to mark a separate period of his work. From 1916 until his death Monet painted large-format pond views in a giant studio. Christian Zeimert brilliantly conveys individual moods in his quotes from Monet. Here the irony is even in the small format. Confetti scattered on a wooden bridge and water lily foliage symbolize human presence and a fleeting celebration counterpoising the tranquil boredom of the still water in the pond, the dark waters of eternity.
Zeimert also carefully treated the family archive of events dating from World War I. Thrilling antiwar puns demonstrating the artist’s keen awareness of the most minute details of the Prussian, French, British, even Swiss military uniform at the time of President Raymond PoincarО.
One of the most intriguing canvases on display is called Portrait with a Cigar. Against the expressive background of thick smoke are sharply outlined full lips, once smooth and sensual now wrinkled by ruthless age, gripping a short thick cigar; the sensuality is still there, in the very process of inhaling. The cigar burns like lava, turning into ash. The author calls it Z. Davidoff. With reason, for it is a very realistic portrayal of the lips of Zino Davidoff, the Ukrainian emigre, holder of the world-famous cigar and cigarette trademark. With a single sarcastic stroke of the brush Zeimert breaks the attractive shell of publicity, penetrating to the prototype’s hedonistic core.
Globalization of life and the arts require the broadening of consciousness and enriching world views. Paolo Bratta, president of the 49th Vienna Biennale, calls for learning about artists, who are at the wave crest, their trends and style, and conveying that other truth (hierarchy notwithstanding) about them, without knowing which of the concepts of our times will be incomplete. Europe and its age-old cultural tradition retain the invariable essence of artistic creativity, which has placed man on the podium of history. Christian Zeimert ranks with those preserving and continuing this tradition. His lesson in history demands an answer and dedication to the subject. An interested viewer cannot but smile at his own knowledge and teacher’s keen sense of humor.
