Success days!

In so many ways, yesterday and today have been fantastic successes. Like so:

Tuesday, July 6
--Interview with Aleksandr Dashevsky--fun! Hiked out to Petrograd Side in the scorching sun; he met me on the sidewalk with a sack of plums & nectarines, he was late because he had to go to the store. You NEVER show up as someone's guest empty-handed; I brought a half a kilo of green grapes. We climbed the 7 flights of stairs to his top-floor studio. The staircase was narrow, asymmetrical, and cool, with clouds of flies ("It's too hot for them, too, in the sun," he joked) and richly-hued, threadbare carpets on each landing. His comments were very interesting--new contemporary art and contemporary artists are all the same, dealing with the same issues of mass media, consumer culture, the failure of capitalism no matter where you look; as long as artists deal with such universal issues their art cannot be tied to their national, personal experience. In Russian contemp. art there is nothing that Russians can call their own, for just that reasons--the issues they deal with are the issues that are fashionable. Artists move to Moscow from the far east and the south and instead of continuing to create art that's linked to their personal experience of having lived where they lived, they look around at the art that everyone else is making, the pseudo-indignant, conformist-in-its-feigned-subversion art, and copy it. There have been enormous breaks in the history of Russian art, with the Revolution and then with the end of the avant-garde/the beginning of Socialist Realism, and with Stalin's death and the onset of sots-art, and then the fall of the USSR; as a painter (which is surprisingly rare these days, in fact) Dashevsky wishes to sew up some of these rifts, to link himself concretely to the history of art in his country and the rich tradition of canvas paintings. We ate nectarines and plums and grapes and the sweat rolled down our faces, and the lighting was perfect for my video. I left in high spirits.
--Interview with Vitaly Pushnitsky. Amazing! His opinions were strong, convincing, and contrary to my expectations and what I've received so far. I only succeeded in asking him a few of my scripted questions because he rendered so many of them superfluous. He spoke of the deep link between language, thought, and art, and for him "Russian Beauty" is an impossibility because beauty is universal and 'Russian' isn't an ideal that Russians champion; he described it as a common misfortune that all Russians share: to have been born in Russia. His views of Russia were bleak--if Russian Beauty exists, he says, it is a beauty "In spite of" instead of a beauty "because of"; in America nationalist patriots hold up the flag and say "We love the USA because of this, and this, and this--our strong economy, our revolutionary history, our comfortable place in the sphere of world events, etc etc etc"...while nationalists in Russia can only say "We love Russia in spite of this, and this--its dirt and its dysfunction and its corruption, its poverty and confused identity; nevertheless, we love her." He spoke of the impossibility of contemporary national/folk art that avoids becoming ethnographic. He greeted me warmly on the landing outside his new, clean, spacious apartment ("We just moved here"), gave me slippers at the door and then put his finger to his lips, said his baby son was sleeping. He offered me coffee, I brought him strawberries, and after the coffee he insisted that I eat something, practically forcefed me a delicious traditional salat (uh, salad) of beets, potatoes, pickles, and dill. He began speaking immediately, almost unbidden, uninhibited as though we had known each other forever, something about national differences in character linked to the physical climate of the country; in Russia the seasons are unpredictable and harsh, and the people are just as intense. His former teacher Ivan showed up with a new student of his, Dasha, in tow, and she & I listened as though to a televised debate as Vanya and Vasya argued over whether or not national art can exist today. As I left he tried to convince me that I was, in fact, an artist, despite what I might think. "To be an artist means only to ask good questions. You don't have to have the answers." I left, again, in high spirits, but exhausted from the hours of comprehension and blurting out scrambled, nearly indecipherably butchered Russian.
--I walked home, decided to treat myself to a cold drink at a nice cafe where they don't have wi-fi, because I wanted to take a breather in the here and now instead of losing myself in cyberspace as I am wont to do when I have nothing else on my schedule. I picked Stirka, a bar/club a few blocks from my home, where you can do laundry in the functional washing machines along the back wall. There were jolly American voices all around when I walked in, and I sat down by myself and spent a few moments in shock before I realized that I needed to take this opportunity for some no-business socializing. I introduced myself. Law students from Cleveland, and they don't speak a word of Russian except for Spasibo and Pozhaluista. They were so nice! Chris bought me a beer, and I had a long talk about art with Natalie, and by the time I tottered off to meet with my landlord Nadezhda I was thoroughly drunk.

And I spent today relaxing, playing music, writing postcards, cooking, reading; went to the market. I had a meeting with Irina Vasil'eva at 7 PM, which was great fun but not very useful; she wasn't very enthusiastic about the idea of the interview and preferred instead to invite all her friends over to sit with us in this cute little cafe of her choosing (she knew everybody in the place). Several bottles of wine were produced and the company got raucous, so I turned off my voice recorder and just let myself enjoy the company. I excused myself at 8:15 to give myself ample time to walk across town to Loft-Etagé, an art center with a fantastic little cafe where I was meeting Ivan Tuzov, a photographer/contemporary artist-turned-animator, at 9 PM. He's the youngest artist I've talked to so far, only 26 years old and a little shy. He was awkward with words so our interview wasn't too productive, but it was interesting and, again, good company. We took the same train to get home, and we parted warmly with a promise that he would send me links to his new animations and I would send him info about Louise Bourgeois. I dashed home to make a very, very important phone call to the United States (yeah, you, I'm talking to you.) and cooled off sucking on frozen grapes and sipping iced tea.

Baskin' in the warm glow of time well-spent! I have another interview tomorrow evening, and more translation to do. Plus....

Sarah is effecting her triumphant return to the motherland tomorrow afternoon!! REJOICING ALL AROUND!