Today, the avant-scenium of artistic life is increasingly not only known representatives of the main opposing directions: such as the mainstream and underground, commercial art and creativity of professionals of diverse traditional and Innovative spectrum, but also bright masters of the obvious “third direction”, former long years in a shade, but having applied to itself attention not even the product of creativity, and unique and principled attitude to it as to constant laboratory of formal Searches as to the subject of combination and interaction of real, natural and conditional, metaphysical. The bright representative of this “third direction” is the Moscow artist Vitaly Gripkov, now in demand and collectors, and exhibition projects, and, mainly, the draught of the experienced spectator not so much to the plot and stylistics of his works, but Also to the special theoretical aspect of his creative work.
Speaking about the underwater currents of modern art, V. Grikov believes that “Surikov” usually replenished his traditional wing, graduates of the Architectural Institute and “Polygraph” determined the face of nonconformism, and “Stroganoff” were as if Middle. The latter adjoined to the pupils of Surkovskaya school in their search for the absolute, in rapprochement with the world directions and authorities. So, in Moscow painting in 60th years of last century there were “severe style”, “Cezanne”, apologist “The Jack of Diamonds” and “The World of Art”, Neoacademism and Photorealism… Vitaly Gripkov, a graduate of Stroganovka, was also out of this motley spectrum of directions, and far from the next wave of domestic avant-garde, and, especially, from the rolled way of official art with its social order, thematic exhibitions, Workshop collectivism. He was among the eternal experimenters and irrepressible singles, who were aptly called “unnoticed Generation”. And fungi is his most typical representative, even on the line of creative biography.
After Stroganovka, where the artist received the secrets of the profession from the hands of prominent teachers, his creative development began with an exhibition “Under the Open Sky”, almost synchronously my vision with the famous “bulldozer”, but did not receive such a ringing Public resonance, but only the direction of the search. The exhibition was a non-lethal and simple happenings, although in the early sixties it was still absent this genre definition. There were exhibited abstractions, collages, assemblages, that already much later became the subject of retrospective interest at exhibitions in gallery “Regina”. And then adherents and Odnokashniki-Stroganov Vitaly Grimakov, Pavel Barbashev, Anatoly Krylov, Vadim Lugovskaya have organized creative group “fiction”, however, without losing hopes, even in narrow frameworks of the laboratory, on the subsequent communication with Spectator.
In the creative biography of Grikova the organic basis for such communication were trips in Vologda and Novgorod regions, in the reserved places of the Russian north, whence he brought not so much the richest luggage of landscape impressions, how many checked In kind the view of the beautiful absolute. The essence of it was to unite illusionism and conventionality, so that the conditional image on the canvas became as beautiful, self-precious and full as the real picture of nature. In the genre of landscape, the author offered a pictorial abstraction with obvious features of reality and even a specific geographical theme. The paintings (landscapes not only of large format, but also of large spatial respiration) created on the material of travel, “Novgorovsky courtyard”, “Yuri”, “Church of John Baptist” contained the free combinations of colored squares without dense, accent strokes, Dissonising with free music of light and gentle air flow, the semi-fantastic extravaganza on the border of the real and the Dreaming, the limitation, the weakening of the color solution to the illusion of improvisational drawing, as if a preliminary The sketch, which appeared to be successful and exhaustive, was enlarged and symbolically deepened by the not loud color melody… In this last creative discovery of fungi first unconsciously, and then consistently and dynamically began to converge with the unique lightning speed and air magic of the picture of Kuzmina, Milashevsky, Sofronova, Dreina, that is the very “group Thirteen “, which made itself known in the 1920s, and in the second half of the XX century suddenly penetrated into the consciousness of the artist, even without really knowing about its characteristic method.
The subsequent influences and transformations of Vitaly Grimakov were not so mediumically spontaneous, but quite consciously and even purposefully. Thus, he created still life in the spirit of “metaphysics” de Kirico, wrote portraits (especially the portrait of mathematician and philosopher V. Kotrovskogo, a cycle of images of actresses of the world cinema: Marilyn Monroe, Sylvia Christel, Tresi Lordz) in the manner of Matisse, and at the same time in a unique manner Refined decorative grace, unusual, slightly simulated and boldly sharpened angle, elusive color symbolism, genuine and unobtrusive bohemian charm. Paris school fascinated the Russian master and at the same time warned: with the attacking language of Picasso and Matisse is impossible to compete today, need a more capacious spiritual dominant, which is so favorably distinguishes from French contemporaries Works of Larionov and Goncharova.
Critics of Stravinsky’s creativity said that his music was created from music. A similar idea comes to the head of the paintings of Grikova: his painting is created from painting. From the first specimens of Hellas, from Masterpieces of foovism, from the transparent, extraordinary elements of painting of Russian Frenchmen Serge Palakov, Andre Lansky, Nicholas de Staal. Experimental game with images of the latter is in the creative work of Grimkov Peculiar “Ommashi” (Fr. -Worship, initiation). Just as his five canvases from the cycle “Avignon girls”-the obvious Ommazh Picasso. His “Green nude” is the stylistic sister of the “Red Dancer” van Dongen. and numerous girls in cafes, actresses, models, strippers-a talented reunion from Renuara, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Bonnar.
In this kaleidoscope of motives, themes, echoes and ghosts Paramount for the enthusiastic interpreter are the possibilities of language, the special specificity of the form. In this process of search of a language at V. Gribakov always There is a “ratio”, aspiration to internal classification, as though subordination of style to idea, then the form creates an image. Even in such a very “grounded”, extremely chamber genre, as nude, the author operates not on the one-way, geisha and strippers, and deals with symbolic women’s images, which have a full volume of psychological conditions, worldly experiences, Pristine erotic moods. The author of the nude sometimes expresses a paradoxical idea: the model-it is not an end in itself, and a win by chance to interest the viewer.
So the necessary communication between the artist and The Spectator is born. While the latter admires the luxurious and intricate nude, the first solves the theme “Geometry and Body”, mentally correlates the Poetics of Antiquity and the pragmatism of modernity, embodies the harmony of the Triad “plane-rama-sign”. At the same time about himself and jokingly and seriously says: “I am not an artist in the ideal sense of the word, I am an art critic, who studies the depth of painting with a brush in his hand.” And, indeed, the conclusion begs the appropriate. Thematically and stylistically, in most of their nudes, portraits, landscapes and even abstractions, fungi seems to exist within the artistic mainstream, but psychologically and ontologically it acts as a researcher of art with a certain Detachment and constant readiness for a new experiment in any of the listed genres.
This artist has other creative roles. He is a teacher with many years of practical experience, a philosopher with a sufficient printed list. He is an art critic not only with a brush in his hand, but also with a feather. This Peru, in particular, belongs to the recent brilliant article about Vrubel, which asserts the genesis of most of the innovative directions of the twentieth century from the Treasury of the artist-prophet. It is possible that the author’s confession in his own primary inspiring source may be concealed in this art-historian Ommadi Vlybelyu.
Nikita Ivanov