 |
  |
People and events:
Y.Karpova
The German classic Ernst Theodor Amadeus Hoffmann is known worldwide as an exceptionally gifted person, who wrote music, directed an orchestra and was brilliant at painting. His writing talent, however, shone the brightest and his literary legacy is vast beyond perception. What figures most prominently in it is the fairytales, which even though written more than 200 years ago continue to cause admiration in both children and adults.
The enchanting world of Goffmann's tales inspired many musicians, artists
and directors into all sorts of creative work. The Russian artist and sculptor
Mikhail 
Shemiakin
is no exception. Avant-garde in form Shemiakin's style strikes pleasing
harmony between the real and unreal thereby tuning in to the art of the
great fairy tale author. Though the artist developed a passion for Goffmann's
works at a fairly young age it took him several decades to fulfill his
dream of reproducing the writer's literary heroes on canvas. In 2001 the
Mariinski Opera and Ballet Theater in St.Petersburg produces "The
Nutcracker" by Petr Tchaikovsky. The plot based on Goffmann's fairytale
under the same name. In co-authorship with maestro Valery Gergiev Shemiakin
acts as a director and author of the libretto, costumes and settings. While
working on the play the artist used drawings he had made years ago. Mikhail
Shemiakin drew particular inspiration from Goffmann's works. Here is what
he says.
"I've known and loved Goffmann's works since early childhood. Some of his characters appeared in "The Nutcracker". I've been collecting his drawings, even though this is pretty difficult because a number of albums were published in Germany in the late 1930s."
"The Nutcracker" in the production by Shemiakin is highly popular with the public both in Russia and abroad. However, it all but made the first part of Mikhail Shemiakin's Goffmann series.
This May the Mariinski Theatre featured the premiere of the ballet "Wonder Nut", which was written by contemporary Russian composer Sergei Slonimski. "The Wonder Nut" is a prologue to "The Nutcracker" on how a boy is transformed into an ugly toy. Both the production and settings for the play were authored by Mikhail Shemiakin. And quite recently an exhibition of Shemiakin's sketches to the ballet opened at the Russian Museum in St.Petersburg in the run-up to New Year and Christmas celebrations. The exposition also includes extravaganza costumes and scenery sketches that take the viewers through the intricate maze of the plot, funny and sad, grotesque and romantic.
The next chapter in Mikhail Shemiakin's Goffmann series is an animated cartoon project he is into in cooperation with director Stanislav Sokolov and playwright Viktor Slavkin. The pilot version of the film the authors are planning to launch in full format at the "Soyuzmultfilm" Studios was presented in Moscow in November. The film's tentative title is "Goffmanniad" and it is targeted at both young and grown-up audiences. The music to the film will be written by Moscow composer Shandor Kallosh and speaking for the characters will be the best of Russian actors. The whole picture is an intermixture of plots from "The Gold Pot", "Little Zahess", "Princess Brambilla", "The Nutcracker" and "The Flower Man". Goffmann in person is one of the characters - with a fabulous ease he transforms into his characters on the screen. To make the storyteller more convincing a character the authors studied in detail the writer's archives and diaries and inserted fragments of them into the picture. And the film's main asset is that its characters are all puppets.
"Unfortunately, fewer and fewer artists in the West work with puppets and draw nowadays, - Mikhail Shemiakin says, - and this is because they are all after computer graphics, which poses a certain danger both on the psychical and perceptual levels. I think puppet films will be winning over audiences' hearts bit by bit. When you put your heart and soul into your work, it endlessly grows in value for the viewer".
T.Zavialova
The Exhibition "World of the Beautiful. Objects. Installations" has opened at the Tretiakov Art Gallery in Moscow. The exposition is made up of works by two conceptual artists from Moscow - Igor Makarevich and Yelena Elagina - and includes both individual and joint compositions. 150 works selected from the collections of the Tretiakov Gallery, the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art and private galleries cover the period from the mid70s to this day.
Running
fundamental in the works by Igor Makarevich and Yelena Elagina is the minutest
attention to the concept. For one, the "Laboratory of Action"
composition consists of a myriad of different-size collages and pictures
and probes into the process of musical art from the composer's random sketches
to pages of score for the orchestra.
The artists are equally masterful at diverse artistic techniques, such as painting, etching, silkscreening and sculptural modeling. They also excel in photography, metal treatment, wood-cutting and textile techniques. Standing out in this host of installations is the expressive "Drawings by Old Soviet Masters" (2000). Igor Makarevich explains: "I'm guided by Kazimir Malevich's method, who suggests in one of his articles that things should be set free from their trivial sordid quality. Likewise, I "liberate" drawings by a number of Soviet artists of the 1930s from their roughly realistic core. All of them are easily recognizable copies but for each of the drawings I have a metaphysical object, which is a "released" one and in my view makes the drawing's formula".
Depending on the approach "Drawings by Old Soviet Masters" may reveal fairly curious details. The copies are made so meticulously well and with such a tremendous respect for the authors that you can hardly believe in the seriousness of explanation by the artist. The more so since Igor Makarevich and Yelena Elagina are known as the masters of virtuoso mystifications their works crowded with mythical characters. One of the favorites is the wooden doll Buratino - the Russian version of the Italian Pinocchio. The artists present a number of "Futuristic Buratinos" and portraits of the fairytale character in the styles of primitivism and cubism. In some installations Buratino is an ugly old man crooked by time and misfortune.
"In my opinion, the story of a wooden puppet written by Italian author Collodio in the late 19th century is a small myth of the 20th century, Igor Makarevich said. - It incorporates a powerful ideology which is adapted to kids' conscience. Hidden in the innocent tale of the wooden doll is the text of the Gospels. Pinocchio is a carpenter's son, who goes through blessing of water and has his Herod. The temptations of the Savior he experiences in a simplified form. Pinocchio dreams of becoming a real boy. And the Russian Pinocchio-Buratino invites all his friends to a magic theatre - an earthly paradise, where everything is made by hand and where everybody is happy. The story is a myth of the great utopia, a temptation of the grandiose myth all daring revolutionaries in art were working on in the early 1920s.
Mystifications by Makarevich and Elagina thrive on. There's a new character - the mycologist, who allegedly wrote a lengthy thesis on the history of shamanism and poisonous fungi in Russia.
"In the last installation, "Pagan", - Igor Makarevich says, - we trace the origin of the fungus cult, which exited since the glacial period on the vast territory of present-day Russia and in our opinion sent out powerful impulses. These impulses stayed in the sub-conscious and come to the surface from time to time in the form of innovative works of art".
The exhibition of works by Igor Makarevich and Yelena Elagina will be
on at the Tretiakov Gallery until mid-January. Hence there's enough time
to get a glimpse of the artistic duet in a retrospective that has never
been held before.
12/13/2005
