Arsonists have burned down the Paris studio of the artist Vasarely. There was no museum there, or canvases, so no concrete artwork suffered. Vasarely produced bright patterns compressed into the format of paintings. He was a virtuoso of mistaken illusions, as colorful as they were empty. There was no fire in his works, only plenty of geometry. We all loved Vasarely, at least in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when amid the drab and uniform chaos anything predictable seemed like a revelation to us. Then it was all forgotten. All cities should burn occasionally. That is part of their nature: fits of urban fever without which no history textbook is possible. Modern cities do not burn as willingly and sweepingly as before. This is not surprising, for as we know, history as a process ended in those same 1990s, and nobody needs cataclysms anymore.
In any case, the fire in the studio of this forgotten Hungarian painter went absolutely unnoticed, except for a brief report on the newswires, which got no feedback. My heart fills with sorrow: why did we not rise in defense of this famous Hungarian whose special effects we admired?
Meanwhile, if the arsonists from the suburbs had gotten all the way to the Louvre that would have caused a public outcry. But they didn’t. And the Louvre is no studio. It’s good that it didn’t burn down. But this is not about the Louvre, it’s about the burned-out Vasarely.
In fact, he was like one of us, because in his linearity and dull predictability he resembled our multistory, monotonous existence. At the same time he was bright enough to seem exotic amid that Soviet cubature. He supplied us with this recognizable, and hence comfortable, wonder.
I understand why French youths are setting fires in the suburbs. To understand, it is enough to have a closer look at the landscapes where this is happening — the suburbs of the splendid Gallic capital. They are so familiar it hurts: the same inexorable mechanics of dormitory suburbs, the same hopeless geometry of multistory buildings for the poor. Maybe the youths do not have enough money? Or maybe they are in no mood for work? Yeah, right! They are simply doing what their home country couldn’t or wouldn’t do: they are adorning this impoverished landscape with bright colors. They are setting fire to pompous and self-confident cars — as if straight out of a Vasarely painting — creating their own art and shocking passersby and police officers — the world’s best audience — with their fleeting, blazing masterpieces. It appears that this is the only act, one that is almost creative, that the wayward ghetto artists are capable of.
All of them were indiscriminately placed into the reality of a concrete and neon-light zoo, the neon reality of Vasarely — and they burned Vasarely. They had no other chance to express themselves.
When I look at the new buildings mushrooming in central and suburban Kyiv — buildings for the metropolitan elite, who have no idea that similar buildings in Europe are inhabited either by the poor underclass or impoverished immigrants — I wonder when to expect fires in Kyiv’s Teremky, Troyeshchyna, or Pozniaky. All these sprawling ghettos cover our cities like some Soviet architectural ulcer.
Roughly on the same day when the first trash bin caught fire among the multistory buildings of Saint Denis, the animated film Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit by the British animator Nick Park aired in Ukraine — a wonderful and unparalleled gift for Ukrainians. The cartoon follows the adventures of a silent, heroic dog named Gromit and his amusing master Wallace. It is funny, witty, fascinating, and fairytale-like; Park’s artistic, screenwriting, and directorial imagination is breathtaking.
One particular detail was most touching. When the camera zooms in on Gromit, you can see the papillary lines, or fingerprints, of the person who crafted him on his funny muzzle made of modeling clay. You can see a genuine, unique work.
These fingerprints cannot be forgotten or burned.
All genuine, profound things — in construction, fine art, onscreen, and in child rearing — are done the same way.
So there may be no need to call in the firefighters.
