Alexander Morozov

Natalya Nesterova. PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

ART AND PERSONALITY

Valery Turchin, Alexander Morozov, Natalya Nesterova, Yuri Rost, Alexander Rozhin
Natalya Nesterova. PORTRAIT OF AN ARTIST

#2 2020 (71)

Let the game begin. Have these hollow cocoon-bodied figures really reached us from some metaphysical remoteness, or does it just seem that way? Their figures are wrapped with bandages of playing cards, like the wounded or the mummified dead of Ancient Egypt. They are speechless, they have nothing to say, yet we understand that they are arrivals from unknown lands in which passion burns souls to ashes, which is to say that they are allegories in the most banal and most elevated sense with regard to style and the meaning of the figure. We also know that it was the artist herself - Natalya Nesterova - who invited them: it is at her canvases that we are looking, those are her colours and her images. On a table in her studio on Arbat Street there is a partial deck of cards, a game of solitaire spread out nearby. Let the cards foretell.

ON THE 65th ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY DAY

Alexander Morozov
Memory and Glory-Soviet Art of the Great Patriotic War

#3 2013 (40)

The experience of the Great Patriotic War found a crucial place in the heritage of Sovietera art. As a theme that continues to stir strong feelings in Russian society to this day, its existential conflux of tragedy and triumph on a personal level overlapped with official interest in the subject, considered a crucial one for cultivating patriotism and political stability in Soviet society. Accordingly, warthemed art combined deeply personal motivations with levels of opportunistic ambition, something that determines both its variety and quality.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Alexander Morozov, Natalia Alexandrova
In the Russian Tradition
A Historic Collection of 20th-century Russian Painting

Special issue N2. USA–RUSSIA: ON THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES

The idea of writing these notes came up in anticipation of the “In the Russian Tradition.” exhibition, due to open at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC in December 2004. The collection to be shown in Washington and later in Minneapolis, at the Museum of Russian Art (TMORA), features Russian paintings from the period of 1900 through to the 1970s, from both the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Minneapolis collection.

ON THE 65TH ANNIVERSARY OF VICTORY DAY

Alexander Morozov
MEMORY AND GLORY – Soviet Art of the Great Patriotic War

#1 2010 (26)

The experience of the Great Patriotic War found a crucial place in the heritage of Sovietera art. As a theme that continues to stir strong feelings in Russian society to this day, its existential conflux of tragedy and triumph on a personal level overlapped with official interest in the subject, considered a crucial one for cultivating patriotism and political stability in Soviet society. Accordingly, warthemed art combined deeply personal motivations with levels of opportunistic ambition, something that determines both its variety and quality.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST

Alexander Morozov
Nikolai Andronov Today

#4 2009 (25)

I have known Nikolai Andronov for as long as I have remembered myself as a professional art critic. When I was graduating from college, in December 1962, the famed show at the Manezh was taking place, with Andronov's “Rafters” one of those works that especially impressed us at the huge exhibition marking the 30th anniversary of the Moscow branch of the Artists' Union. It was not that you understood or liked everything in the picture, but it left an indelible stamp on the memory.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

Alexander Morozov
On the Cross-roads of Mastership

#2 2005 (07)

Preparing for the exhibition of Andrei Vasnetsov's work, held in honour of the artist's 80th birthday, it was hard not to feel a curiosity on the issue of how his work would be perceived today, at the dawn of the 21st century. The grandson of the eminent painter Victor Vasnetsov, Andrei Vasnetsov has been known as an artist since the late 1950s. One of the main young painters to bring the tendencies of the “thaw” into Soviet art, Vasnetsov was also among the first to introduce revolutionary modernist ideas and techniques. Despite repeated dressings-down from the Communist Party, he did much to develop contemporary mural painting and composition, combining vigorous modern rhythms and forms of expression with a humanist philosophy and free intellectual spirit. He also became one of the greatest teachers in late 20th-century Russian art. An academician and professor at Moscow's Polygraphic Institute, for many years he guided pupils through their studies; a People's Artist of the Soviet Union, he was to become the last chairman of the Soviet Union of Artists.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

A. Morozov, N. Alexandrova
In the Russian Tradition

#1 2005 (06)

The idea of writing these notes came up in anticipation of the “In the Russian tradition.” exhibition, due to open at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC in December 2004. The collection to be shown in Washington and later in Minneapolis, at the Museum of Russian Art (TMORA), features Russian paintings from the period of 1900 through to the 1970s, from both the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow and the Minneapolis collection.

CURRENT EXHIBITIONS

A. Morozov
A Link Through the Years

#4 2004 (05)

Viktor Bondarenko, Konstantin Khudyakov and Roman Bagdasarov’s project "Deisis" has two particularly striking features. First of all, the form they have chosen to express their idea establishes no boundaries between the artists and viewers: the language of the Iconostasis can clearly be understood by all. This is a rare factor today, when few artists address "the city and the world", preferring communication with their own kind. This may be why so many separate cultures abound today: youth culture, the "A-list" set, the worlds of gender, popculture, hip-hop culture, gay culture… The naturally portrayed figures of "Deisis" and their emotions are modelled with all the clarity that modern computer graphics can offer. Their visual form is more accessible to any – even the least sophisticated – viewer than classical realist art.

THEORY

A. MOROZOV
THE LIVE PHENOMENON OF REALISM

#3 2004 (04)

Writing about realism in connection with contemporary Russian art is not an easy task - nor an encouraging one. On the one hand, we still remember our experience of a continuous struggle for realism, on the other, we know that today’s creative thinking is not obviously oriented towards realism. Those who have made a choice in favour of global integration into the "world artistic community", or to be exact, into the Western art-market, feel no need to speculate on the subject. Even those who make the heritage of social realism their business will – sooner or later - acknowledge that money is paid not for realism as such, but for the peculiar aesthetic phantoms involved. Any discussions on realism are based on rather an unstable theoretical background. Thus one question arises: what to discuss – something belonging to the past, museum artifacts, or the so-called "actual"? And what to analyze – traditional or living creative principles?

THEORY

Alexander MOROZOV
RUSSIAN IMRESSIONISM. REFLECTIONS AFTER AN EXHIBITION

#1 2003 (01)

WE COULD NEVER HAVE EVEN IMAGINED THAT WAYS OF RUSSIAN IMPRESSIONISM MIGHT BE MET WITH SUCH MISUNDERSTANDING AND EVEN ANTAGONISM. OF COURSE, WE HAD REALIZED THAT THE PROJECT MIGHT FALL OUTSIDE THE MAINSTREAM TOPICS WHICH OUGHT TO BE CONSIDERED "IMPORTANT" IN THE POST-SOVIET HISTORY OF ART. BUT, IN THE FIRST PLACE, THE EXHIBITION HAD BEEN DEVISED FOR A VERY IMPORTANT OCCASION – TO MARK THE CENTENARY OF THE UNION OF RUSSIAN ARTISTS. SECONDLY, IT WAS ONLY RECENTLY THAT THE ZEALOTS OF THE IDEA OF "IMPORTANT ARTS" REMEMBERED ABOUT THE IMPORTANCE OF PAINTING. AND, LAST BUT NOT LEAST, THE TRETYAKOV GALLERY DID NOT MEAN TO PRESENT THE RUSSIAN TRADITION OF PAINTING AS A PEAK OF PERFECTION. NOT AT ALL: THE PROJECT WAS MEANT TO COMPLEMENT OTHER EXHIBITIONS COVERING OTHER TRENDS, SUCH AS MOSCOW ABSTRACT ART 1950–2000 OR AVANT-GARDE ART ON THE NEVA RIVER AND THE LIKE.

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