Last week a symbolical and quite extraordinary event took place in Kaniv, which is sometimes called a Mecca of the Ukrainian people. An exhibit “Unfading Fame. In honor of Taras Shevchenko” was held at the museum on Chernecha Hill, namely near Taras Shevchenko’s grave, within the framework of the project “The Great Kobzar through the eyes of Chinese artists.” It will be noted that this is the fourth joint Chinese-Ukrainian exhibition project which has been fully funded by the Chinese side.
The co-organizer of the event, pro-rector of the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture Ostap Kovalchuk emphasized that the most famous Chinese artists, who are well known in the world, interpreted the oeuvre of the Ukrainian writer and presented their vision as portraits of Taras Shevchenko, illustrations to Kobzar and various styles of Chinese hieroglyphs – the art most highly appreciated in China. “Zhi Luong, a 79-year-old maestro from Beijing, an academician, who has worked in the field of literature as an illustrator and still continues to paint, painted the portrait of kobzar Ostap Veresai and an illustration to Kateryna,” Kovalchuk noted. “The artist got immersed in our history, he has visited Ukraine, and now he is painting it. Another picture is A Ukrainian House in the Village Moryntsi, painted by an academician, famous artist, and a TV star Dong Hao.”
“Calligraphy, which is not a background, but a huge artistic domain, where everyone, from the emperor to Mao, has worked, was created in a harmonious and beautiful way. At the exhibit calligraphy is presented by the rector of the Central Academy, head of the PRC Union of Artists, imagine what a response this topic had in China,” Kovalchuk noted, adding that on the whole owing to this project, which was held with the assistance of the embassies of Ukraine to China and China’s embassy to Ukraine, the Ministry of Culture, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ukraine has wonderful cultural relations with PRC.
“FREEDOM WAS TARAS SHEVCHENKO’S MAIN CALLING”
The main organizer and curator of the exhibit from the Chinese side was the vice president of the Chinese Academy of Painting and Calligraphy Alan Yu. “Taras Shevchenko is the spirit of Ukraine, a fighter for the freedom of Ukrainian people and an image of the Ukrainian nation. Presently he is a bridge connecting China and Ukraine,” Yu noted during his visit to Kaniv. “Today Taras Shevchenko is not only Ukrainian, he is also a Chinese, and generally a person of the world uniting every one of us. Freedom was the main calling in his life.” The vice president of the Chinese academy also thanked the organizers for the possibility to hold the exhibit in the most significant culture places of Ukraine – in Kaniv, the Ukrainian poet’s home, and previously, in May, at the National Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kyiv. “Shevchenko is a symbolical figure both for China and for me personally,” Yu says.
Where does this vivid interest of the Chinese to Ukraine and one of its greatest symbols, Taras Shevchenko, comes from?
In the 1920s, Chinese artist and literary critic Mao Dun for the first time published the biography and selected works by Shevchenko in Chinese in The Annual Journal of Tales. Later the Chinese learned about Shevchenko owing to the “cultural exchange” between the PRC and the USSR. “The Chinese artists, who have painted these illustrations to Kobzar, were born mainly in the 1930s-1940s and heard about Shevchenko back in the Soviet time. Besides, many Chinese artists were taught at Maksymov and Tetiana Yablonska schools – the Chinese artists are pupils of the Soviet artists, which is why they know about Ukraine,” Alan Yu says.
WE’VE NEVER SEEN SHEVCHENKO LIKE THIS. CHINESE ARTISTS PORTRAYED “THE FIGHTER FOR UKRAINIAN PEOPLE’S FREEDOM AND THE FACE OF THE UKRAINIAN NATION” IN THEIR OWN WAY
Last time Kobzar was published in China in 1982 and was translated from Russian. But its translator, 73-years-old Ge Baoquan did not stop on that and started to learn the Ukrainian language with a special aim to make as close translation of the collection as possible. Generally he made 130 translations of the works from Ukrainian. It was planned, that the Chinese artists, who are professors and teachers at the Chinese Academy of Painting and Calligraphy, would create their illustrations namely for this publication. In August 2015 they came to Ukraine for the first time and under supervision of the chief keeper of the National Taras Shevchenko Museum Yulia Shylenko they visited museums, including the National Museum of Folk Architecture and Folkways of Ukraine in Pyrohiv, and the National Art Museum.
“The artists have been three times in Ukraine, they visited Kyiv, Kaniv, Moryntsi where Shevchenko was born,” the Chinese supervisor of the project Alan Yu says, “They also saw many pictures from the entire world – how the artists portrayed the Ukrainian writer. They saw Shevchenko monuments in different countries. Each one of them had Kobzar in Chinese, so they could read and find inspiration for their works. Based on this, every Chinese artist had an understanding of what he wanted to paint, a portrait, an extract from Shevchenko’s work or hieroglyphs.”
“A NEW LOOK ON KOBZAR”
For a year the Chinese artists under the supervision of Alan Yu have worked on their paintings. But later they faced some problems, because the widow of the translator Ge Baoquan, who owned the rights for publication of his translations, for some reason didn’t want to realize this project. So these pictures were released as an exhibit, and its catalogue included the translations of Ge Baoquan. The artists added their own commentaries to every illustration. “It turned out that some Chinese artists have a much deeper, voluminous understanding of Taras Shevchenko’s works,” the co-organizer of the exhibit, the chief keeper of the National Taras Shevchenko Museum Yulia Shylenko shared her impressions, “In Ukraine Shevchenko, who has been made something compulsory and disseminated, is perceived in quite a superficial way, without any understanding of the depth of his oeuvre. Chinese have gotten deeply into the matter and looked at Kobzar from a different angle.”
“So, as we had expected, the result of the work turned out to be wonderful. For Shevchenkiana, Shevchenko studies, for our museums, and our country the launch of this exhibit and this project with Kobzar generally is a great event,” Yulia Shylenko says, “In the time, when the war is underway and culture is underfunded, it is extremely complicated to realize a project. And suddenly the Chinese side, after traveling across Ukraine for a month, became imbued with the matter and invested huge money into the development of our culture, to promote it in the world. The entire world and we ourselves will be able to understand Taras Shevchenko better only when we will not perceive him narrowly, but within a context. He must be brought up to the categories that are understandable for all peoples – and this is exactly what this project is doing. Likewise, next year together with Spaniards we will be working on the project “Goya and Shevchenko” – one Spanish artist who got inspired by this idea is going to put his money in it – we won’t receive a penny from the Ukrainian side. Unfortunately, the Ukrainian government is deaf to our ideas.
“Telling The Day about the prospect of Chinese-Ukrainian cultural relationships, vice president of the Chinese Academy Alan Yu noted that already this September in the center of Beijing in the World Art Museum the exhibit of these works based on Shevchenko’s poetry with towels and tablecloths from Viktor Yushchenko’s collection will be held. “This will be a fusion of Ukraine and China,” Alan Yu noted.
“The Chinese will continue cooperation, including the cultural cooperation with Ukraine,” Yu continues. “A month ago Ukrainian and Chinese governments agreed about the simplified visa regime for the Chinese. Previously for the Chinese it was easier to go to the European countries than to get a Ukrainian visa. Now there is hope for expanding the connections and generally a prospective future.”
RUINED “UKRAINIAN MECCA”
The organizers of the exhibit “Unfading Fame. In honor of Taras Shevchenko,” after the aforesaid event it is planned to implement a global idea of opening a museum of Taras Shevchenko in Beijing. This will be a worthy step or the development of the Chinese-Ukrainian relations and the support of Ukrainian culture. On this occasion, I would like to mention the contrasts of the exhibition. When you find yourself under the high ceiling of the Kaniv Museum, which looks luxurious, and stay in a spacious light hall where the exhibit is held, you won’t understand that the adjacent premises in the same building are in a terrible half-ruined condition. The reconstruction of the museum which was held in 2003-10 under the poor management of the Yanukovych’s people was done in a negligent way, without sufficient level of hydroisolation of the building, so every time it rains the exhibit halls are flooded, and the moisture, fungus, and mold destroy the plaster, making all the more premises unusable. This is a terrible state of affairs, taking into account that the place is considered a Ukrainian Mecca. If this is the way Ukrainians treat their own Mecca, there is nothing left to say about less significant places. Besides, what will be the attitude to Ukraine and its culture of foreigners, like Chinese and Poles? This is about self-positioning of the state.
“At a recent conference of the international union of museums and professional museum employees in Italy one of the speakers was professor of the Economic University in Australia David Throsby,” Yulia Shylenko comments, “Back in the 1990s he wrote the book Economics and Culture, where he notes that culture is the main factor of the state’s economic growth. At that time his thesis was perceived with skepticism, but already in 2002 this doctrine was taken as the most important one at the session of the World Bank. Investment in culture pays back as economic growth of the state. People have long ago proved this thesis scientifically – but the government of Ukraine still doesn’t understand the priorities that need to be chosen in state governance. Culture is our identity and peculiarity that distinguishes us among other peoples. When we invest in culture, we invest in our future. But I have an impression that the funding of culture in Ukraine has stopped lately.”
Is the state investing in its future? There is an impression that other subjects of international politics are doing this for Ukraine.
