“Naive art knows no aggression. This is what it is: sweetness itself. And our world lacks it,” muses Petro HONCHAR, one of the curators of the exhibit “Pure Art.” The project is currently open at the Mystetskyi Arsenal exhibition center in Kyiv and includes several hundred works.
The organizers meant this large-scale exhibit as an attempt to make naive art transcend the boundaries of the ethnographic, and place it into a broader context of the development of Ukrainian artistic tradition. The current exhibit continues a series of projects held at the Mystetskyi Arsenal, such as “Windows,” “Kateryna Bilokur. Wanting to Be a Painter,” and “Maria Prymachenko. The Unbounded,” and is the result of joint effort of the National Art Museum of Ukraine, the National Museum of Ukrainian Traditional Decorative Art, the National Center for Traditional Culture “Ivan Honchar Museum,” to name a few.
“RUN, PETRO, RUN…”
The exposition is divided, albeit rather conventionally, into five parts: “Original and Replica,” “Names,” “Portrait,” “Archetypes,” and “Boundary.” So in the first part the curators try to see what naive artists see as a replica. Next to the works created by self-made painters one can see pictures by Ukrainian classic artists Mykola Pymonenko and Kostiantyn Trutovsky, which were replicated as postcards and thus inspired self-taught artists.
It is a matter of mutual influence: a professional artist borrows a plot from everyday life or folklore, and later amateurs create their own versions of a well-known picture. For instance, Petro, Run Away with Natalka, for Her Mother Is Coming With a Rolling-Pin is a formula of a popular traditional plot, which was not uncommon among renowned artists as well. “A picture with such a plot would decorate virtually every house,” remarks Honchar. “In fact, it reflects the Ukrainian view on love, family, and parents.”
“NAIVE” REMBRANDT AND SASKIA
Works by contemporary painters hang next to those by naive artists in the section “Names.” Maria Prymachenko’s fantastic beasts and wonderful flowers are displayed next to Homage to Maria Prymachenko by Arsen Savadov. It turns out that Savadov has spent a lot of time studying the works of the legendary painter.
Heorhii Maliavin (Odesa) is probably the only representative of urban naive art at the exhibit. On pieces of cardboard he painted his own versions of the world’s most famous pictures, such as Mona Lisa, Danae, a portrait of Rembrandt with Saskia on his lap, Girl with Peaches and so on. Now we can enjoy these works thanks to our contemporary Oleksandr Roitburd, a long-time collector of Ukrainian naive art, who has a collection of Maliavin’s works. By the way, next to Maliavin one can see the works by Roitburd and follow the influence of naive art on his paintings.
A LUCKY FIND
The visitor confronts nearly full-length figures of people with broad faces, often serious and unsmiling. This is a gallery of portraits created by Panas Yarmolenko and his daughter Yakylyna. Section “Portrait,” to be sure. “Panas worked before the war, his daughter helped him. Panas always signed his paintings, Yakylyna never did,” tells Lidia LYKHACH, one of the curators of “Pure Art.” “The drama of naive art is that we will never know it if it is not shown, not published. If the Ivan Honchar Museum had not found Panas Yarmolenko, if the museum staff had never walked into the house to stop dead in their tracks, astonished by his portraits, we would not have them now.”
Yakiv Yushchenko’s paintings hang next, for instance, Years Fly By Like Birds…, showing an old mother and her adult daughter sitting side by side. This simple plot will touch your soul, and this is what makes it so attractive.
PARADISE AMID PAIN
Works by Polina Raiko have incredible power. At the Mystetskyi Arsenal we can see the projections of images from the walls of her home. The artist began to paint her house in Oleshky (former Tsiurupynsk), Kherson oblast, at the age of 69.
In essence, Raiko painted Paradise in her house. The walls portray scenes from her dreams and fragments of her life alongside with pagan, Christian, and Soviet symbols. The peasant painter used bright, pure colors. The circumstances, in which this paradise arose, are striking. Raiko began painting on an impulse in the 1990s, following the loss of her daughter in a car crash, the death of her husband, and the imprisonment of her violent alcoholic of a son. She kept painting until her death in 2004.
The dark room, in which Raiko’s paintings are projected, suggests the somber environment she lived in. Yet her paradise-like pictures inspire tranquility and radiate light. They are like a powerful protest against the pain which life inflicts. Despite everything, the artist admires the beauty of the world, joins in creating it, and shares it with other people. This paradox can be noticed in the fates of other naive artists. Many lived a hard life in a terrible epoch, yet their works literally glow with the simple joys of being.
THE SOUL OF THE NATION
The section “Archetypes” will be interesting for researchers into collective unconscious. In the pictures by anonymous artisans ancient symbols are woven into daily life. Some plots, too, become archetypal: a young couple near the water well, or a girl with a stag (i.e., a bride and groom). The images of significant figures, both historical and legendary, also acquire sacral meaning. For instance, Taras Shevchenko of Cossack Mamai. Such pictures were sold at markets and could be found virtually in each and every house.
“Rural environment has created its own culture, shaped by the market, when artists painted what was ordered by their customers and sold their works. The paintings were used to decorate homes, just like embroidery. They had a range of archetypal subjects: home, love, turtledoves, swans, or guardian angels. It was all about the soul,” muses Honchar.
THE BOLDNESS TO DISCOVER THE WORLD
The boundary between naive and professional art is a matter of individual choice, should one choose to draw it. In the section “Boundary” naive and avant-garde works neighbor kitsch paintings.
But the boundary between naive and traditional art does exist. According to Lykhach, it is the tradition itself that makes the difference. It is art based on ornaments used by generations. Consequently, naive means individual. And there are transitions from traditional to individual.
An example can be seen in the story of Tetiana Pata from Petrykivka, whose works are represented at the exhibit. In the early 20th century this artist made painted ornaments to decorate walls, which she sold at the market. Once a professional artist from Petersburg, Evgeniya Evenbakh, came to Petrykivka. She asked Pata to paint something for her. “I guess it was a whole different format, a different tradition. Tetiana unintentionally abandoned her flowers, which she had made her entire life, and created beautiful pictures,” tells Lykhach.
“For the most part, naive artists do not realize what they make. There inner harmony is translated on paper due to uncontrolled conscience. And what makes naive art valuable is just the absence of boundaries for creativity, thinking, and sensation,” says Honchar. “Professional art is limited by market conditions, technique, and the school. Naive art knows nothing of it: the artist paints as he will. And sometimes they make wonderful discoveries! The boldness of naive artists broadens the capacities of the formal view of this world.”
The exhibition “Pure Art” is open at the National Art and Culture Museum Complex “Mystetskyi Arsenal” through May 9.
