Art shows what we must help to protect in Ukraine
IENJOY going to art exhibitions, and one of my big gripes that we do not get the good ones up here. The National Gallery has sent some Turners to the Laing in Newcastle, and I will make sure I see them, but I also like to see more radical unusual stuff. It often has symbolic meanings, which makes me think and discuss with my wife, who often sees things I do not.
There are two exceptional exhibitions on in London at the moment which I was lucky enough to have a chance to see. One is German Expressionism at Tate Modern, and the other is In the Eye of the Storm at the Royal Academy. The latter is a collection of Ukrainian paintings which were smuggled out of Ukraine to make sure they were neither damaged nor seized by the Russians.
They both represent the period of “Modernism”, which roughly speaking is after the First World War up until about 1940. They rejected the norms of classical painting, and instead experimented with bright colours and different perspectives. It was also very much an international movement which gave great scope for women. They rejected the traditional imperial and nationalist ideas, and also traditional gender roles.
The exhibitions have similarities. They concentrate on the period after the First World War when in both countries there was a period of artistic freedom and new ideas flourished. The movements were very international. Then along came the dictators, Stalin in Ukraine and Hitler in Germany. They did not like the international aspects, or the fact that these artists were experimental and often depicted things that did not glorify their model of a new society. They wanted pictures of healthy happy workers and peasants. Otto Dix in Germany for example painted grim pictures of the war wounded.
I think the best example is in the Ukrainian exhibition. A painting by Manuil Shekhtman shows the Jewish survivors of a Pogrom. It emphasises their grief and utter despair. The Pogroms were a dark side of Ukrainian history. Shekhtman was himself Jewish, and concerned about the growing antisemitism of the time.
Shekhtman’s other pictures showed the grimmer side of Ukrainian life, including the sick and disabled. Certainly not the heroic workers that Stalin wanted. Shekhtman was later executed as a “Bourgeois nationalist” on Stalin’s orders.
The German Expressionist exhibition is certainly worth seeing. One feature which you notice immediately is the prominent role woman played in the movement. A prominent figure was Gabriel Munter, one time partner of Kandinsky, who both painted and acted as patron to some of the others. She liked wearing big hats. Although Kandinsky is perhaps the best known of this group, he does not figure greatly in the exhibition. Franz Marc with his brightly coloured animals is prominent, and also Marianne Werefkin, another rich hostess. These artists with a few strokes and bright colours created portraits which revealed much about their subject. An example is Werefkin’s the dancer who is both beautiful and seductive, but underneath is dangerous.
It is a great exhibition and certainly worth seeing, but what really blew me away, to use a phrase, was the Ukrainian exhibition. If you have to go to London, and have an hour or two spare, go and see this. The Royal Academy is in Piccadilly and easy to get to with London’s excellent public transport.
Most of the paintings were produced in the 1920s, a century ago from Ukraine’s present troubles, and the exhibition certainly has echos of what is going on now. Before the Great War, what is now Ukraine was in the Russian Empire, with parts in Austria-Hungary and Poland. (What is now Lviv was then Lemburg and in Russian Lvov). After the First World War an independent republic of Ukraine emerged, but contained various different nationalities and internal conflicts. It was absorbed into the Soviet Union in 1922, but still retained significant cultural autonomy until Stalin came to power after 1929. Most of these paintings are from that period.
The liveliness and freshness of the paintings almost jumps at you as you go in. Malevich, who later became well known for his abstract pieces, is there with pictures of villages in bright colours. Most of the artists travelled throughout Europe, and you can see the influence of other artists and movements. One, Boichuk, preferred to concentrate on historical Ukrainian culture and iconography, and his paintings, Women under the Apple Tree, is a highly stylised depiction of traditional Ukrainian costume in the flat manner of an icon, features on the exhibition poster. He later painted frescos on public buildings depicting traditional Ukrainian life, and was able to survive the Stalin period, but there are subtle meanings in his paintings if you look for them. One woman in the “Apple Tree” is dressed more like a factory worker, and the one who is more traditionally dressed looks at her with a worried expression. Perhaps she was thinking of what might come in the future. There are also some lively paintings of theatrical costumes.The sketch of “masks” by Vadym Mellier is particularly striking.
I have mentioned Ukraine’s troubled history. But what this exhibition shows is that there is a lively vivacious culture which is distinctly Ukrainian, not Russian or anything else, and it is very important that it be defended against aggressors.