More than three thousand works, ranging from figures barely the size of a thistle to compositions standing taller than a man, have come out from under the chisel of sculptor Oleksandr Koniayev, a Ukrainian folk master. This would be enough for a small museum of unique wooden sculptures. Yet, it is impossible to reunite them, for they have spread all over the world, over seas and oceans to places Koniayev has never been and is never likely to be.
The city of Perm, where Koniayev comes from, is proud of its stone carvers: it is there that the world-famous Kungur carving art was born. Koniayev used to be a somewhat untraditional Perm resident, for he preferred wood. While stone requires competition, wood allows you to talk with it.
Once little Sasha discovered for himself a hall in the Perm Art Gallery with a collection of sixteenth and seventeenth century wooden sculptures. He would stand enchanted for hours on end with nails in hand among the huge figures darkened by time. It was very interesting and very frightening to guess if they would come to life.
Koniayev had to fill a host of orders, among them carved iconostases, Golgothas for churches, and oak crosses for tombs. However, he always returns to the fairy tale, as eternal as the world itself, where beasts and birds talk and where good always triumphs over evil. His works are free of any cracks or break, as the wood of they are made are rotten.
At first glance, a pure accident decided Koniayev’s life. By a fluke, his works were singled out at a city exhibition by the director of Kungur Stone Carving School, who invited Sasha to join. He worked in stone at school and in wood outside the classroom. The teachers, captivated by the student’s persistence, got in touch with their Moscow colleagues from the Bogorodskaya (Holy Virgin) Art School and recommended the gifted boy. On leaving the school, he was preparing to apply to the famous Leningrad Mukhina Art School, only to be drafted. Koniayev got to the Navy and also by pure chance spent a long time there.
Koniayev’s first naval commander properly appreciated the sailor’s nonmilitary abilities and allowed him to do the woodcarving in his off-duty time. When his active service was coming to the end, word had already spread about him, perhaps throughout the armed forces. He was told on the eve of being discharged that he would get an apartment of his own if he stayed behind for another five years. And Koniayev did stay — for twenty.
Twenty years of service brought him to Sevastopol, Severodvinsk, Severomorsk, Kamchatka, the village of Rybachy, and Kyiv. Koniayev rose to the grade of petty officer. He would go on duty and watch, he commanded a naval training sub-unit where he conducted damage- control exercises with young sailors. By the end of his service, Oleksandr had become the commander’s personal artist. He worked for Admirals Gorshkov and Chernavin. He got orders from the Council of Ministers. The most memorable order was a gift for Leonid Brezhnev. He still keeps the sketch: a globe 1.3 meters high with a spiral seemingly going into outer space, thus symbolizing the life path of Mr. Brezhnev. You can see 650 figures here, associated with Mr. Brezhnev’s opuses, The Little Land, Revival, and Virgin Land. If not for the addressee’s death, the grandiose concept would have been put into practice, blessed by the highest possible art councils.
In general, Koniayev can tell many funny stories about “art councils.” Once, in the early seventies, he made a huge wooden mask: a comically appalling mug devouring small naked figures. When you come closer, the mug takes on life, ferociously rolling its eyes and growling. It was decided to send the work to a high-ranking exhibition under the Communist Party Central Committee aegis, with a name in the spirit of those time: The Face of America, as if to say: this is a vicious country where sex, drugs, and other filth are pervasive, an aggressor which devours such freedom-loving nations as Chile, Grenada, and Salvador. The work foundered at the very last preview with such a stir that a council had to be convened. The object of doubts was the nude body: could an exhibition of this level to show a bare ass? After all, it was allowed to display it, but with a detailed caption explaining what the author exactly wanted to say. Incidentally, it is the Americans in whom this mask evoked the greatest admiration. And when Koniayev told them, “Look, it’s you, boys,” the latter became as cheerful as children.
After retiring from the army, the master faced the problem of earning a living. One cannot make a fortune on wooden sculptures, especially if one does manual carving work rather than spins off faceless baubles on a lathe. Piecework consumes a great deal of time and effort and, accordingly, costs more. Earlier, Koniayev-class masters could get along thanks to state orders from organizations, enterprises, and creative unions. When the system fell, Koniayev had, as he jokes, to place himself “on a new economic footing.” Of course, he could “find a patron,” but the years of army service had developed in him a firm allergic reaction to such orders as making twenty chairs and thirty stools. Koniayev decided to master a new specialty, interior decorating, from doors to panels and stairs.
Could you imagine an armchair you are sinking in with certain fear? The wood willingly receives you in its embrace, and you carefully listen to your own sensations for some time, for you can’t believe that wooden furniture can possibly be more comfortable than the customary soft cushions! Meanwhile, you reach for an armrest, and you feel the warmth of the wood. And you understand you can sit so forever and dream about something lofty. For in a chair like this and at a table like this there is no place for trivial and extraneous thoughts or banal street corner talks. This kind of furniture calls forth associations with such words as clan, home, and family heirloom.
Koniayev himself thinks up all kinds of furniture sets, cupboards, tables, and beds — from the angle of the backrest to the ornamentation. If a rotary mechanism is implied, he designs it himself; if there should be lighting, he will slave over the wiring and bulbs. He draws inspiration from historical films, picture reproductions, and art albums along with his own imagination. Swift little animals climb up the armrests; a cheerful bear, who has driven the hunters away from the bonfire, is having a feast in a carved sideboard as big as the wall. Outlandish birds are hovering under the ceiling. Of course, this fairy tale is not for everybody. A regal chair will hardly find a place in a tenement, and a huge oak table is not for our cramped apartments.
This furniture stirs a melancholy vision of a dream never to come true. But can all of us afford, for example, to hang a genuine Degas on the wall? However, if there were no misty watercolors of his in the world at all, would it not impoverish all of us, irrespective of the level of our individual possibilities?
Koniayev’s furniture masterpieces, on which he has been working for months, find their way to country retreats. But he dreams that his “furniture for the select” can be seen by all, not only by the narrow circle. This makes me think of a museum, a wood room.
It is his idea, on the analogy of the famous Amber Room. For one can make anything you want out of wood, even lace that no lace-makers have ever dreamed of. That room will include all the hues of wood from honey-golden to bay. Everything from furniture and kitchen utensils to pictures, from ceiling to floor, is made of wood. Wooden portraits is his latest enthusiasm. An incredibly complex technique without analogy in the world. Koniayev fell for this idea when he saw the works of a carver, a colleague, from Vinnytsia oblast. But latter’s portraits are up to five centimeters deep, while those of Koniayev up to fifteen.
What this results in is a multi-layered wooden surrogate canvas. He has already made a pilot cycle of four pictures and is now experimenting in the broad four by two meters image. A thing like this would be a true gem of the Wood Room.
