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Leigh Turner
HMA Ukraine, KyivKruk, Chiparus and the Great Sculpture Exhibition
Anyone in easy reach of Kyiv who hasn't yet seen the "Great Sculpture Exhibition" at the Український дім (Ukrainan House) - it's worth a look.
I was fortunate to be able to attend this show last year, when the highlights included a collection of little-known Giacomettis and the fabulous stone sculptures of Dnipropetrovsk (I know I keep going on about the latter, but they're terrific) as well as a huge collection of modern scupture which is for sale. This year, the modern sculptures are bracketed by a collection of London-based classic post-war works by the exiled Ukrainian artist Kruk, who died in Munich in 1988, never before exhibited in Ukraine; and exquisite art deco statues from the 1920s by the Romanian artist Demetre Chiparus. I'm ashamed to say that I'd never heard of either artist; both are outstanding.
The opening of the exhibition is a chance for me to talk to Fedir Kurlak, the Chief Executive of the Association of Ukrainans in Great Britain and the curator of the Kruk exhibition, Ludmila Pekarsk, both of whom helped make the Kruk show in Kyiv possible. They are delighted at the opportunity to present the works of this important Ukrainian artist for the first time in his native country, where Kruk is little-known. After this the works will be travelling on to Lviv, in the west of Ukraine, before returning to London. I, in turn, will be in Manchester in mid-March when I hope to be meeting representatives of the AUGB based in my home town. Looking forward to it.
Ukrainian Cats (for sale) A Chiparus
Leigh Turner
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East or West - not a zero-sum game?
A common theme running through Ukraine's history is its position at a crossroads between Europe and Asia, or between East and West. The concept has come up in the presidential election campaign, with suggestions that Ukraine has to "choose" between getting closer to the EU and revitalising historical connections with Russia. Sometimes in the past Ukraine has been placed on one side or other of barriers dividing East and West, such as the Curzon Line. Conversely, some of Ukraine's most impressive artistic artefacts, such as the bronze-age stone sculptures of Dnipropetrovsk, show how different cultures have helped enrich the country over the millennia.
I was struck by the East-West theme and by how cultures can be enriched by cross-fertilisation when visiting a couple of "Museums of Western and Oriental Art" in Ukraine this year. The first was in Odesa. The second, in Kyiv, was the Bogdan and Varvara Khanenko Museum of Art. Sited in an exquisitely-restored gallery built in 1887, it features a host of world-class artefacts including ancient Iranian and Iraqi art (I particularly like the 13thC "Preparation of Medicines"), works by Velasquez and Rubens, some exquisite Japanese netsuke and tsuba, rare 6th and 7th century icons from the Sinai Peninsula and, of special interest to government officials, a statue of Man, the Chinese God of Civil Servants. What's more, the museum attendants are amongst the most friendly and helpful I've ever encountered. I wrote recently about how Ukraine's multiculturalism could give it a competitive edge in the modern world. Similarly, there's no reason why Ukraine can't draw closer to the EU while retaining links with Russia: it's not a zero-sum game. On the contrary: history shows, as exemplified by recent celebrations of the fall of the Berlin Wall, that building barriers between different parts of Europe never helped Ukraine or anyone else.
Stone statue from Dnipropetrovsk "Portrait of the Infant Margarita", by Velasquez, from the Bogdan and
Leigh Turner
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03 January 2010
06 January 2010
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I Can Burn Your Face
You've got to admire the Dutch secret service, the AIVD, for their low profile. In fact when I see references to them in a show by US artist Jill Magid at the Tate Modern in London I log onto Google when I get home to check they exist. Even the Wikipedia entry notes that "there is very little known about the AIVD". This seems exemplary for an organisation which has "secret" in its title. The Jill Magid exhibition is called Authority to Remove. It charts how, when the AIVD were having a new HQ built, they approached her to produce some art for the new building. The artworks are based around her experience of contacts with the organisation (or, as she calls it, The Organisation) and its representatives. They include an unpublished, censored novel and neon signs called "I Can Burn Your Face" (which Jill Magid says refers to "a slang expression used among spies for the threat to expose another agent's identity"). The one-off show, running until 3 January, appears with the AIVD's agreement.
All this tells us something about how a democracy - in this case the Netherlands - manages the balance between the need for secrecy and freedom of speech. You can argue about where the boundaries should be. Plenty of people would argue that many democratic governments, including that of the UK, are too secretive; or that the restrictions they place on the media are excessive. That's one of the purposes of a democracy: to provide a mechanism to decide how far those freedoms should go. This is relevant to Ukraine too, and its forthcoming elections. As I've written before, two of the finest features of Ukrainian society, and those which make Ukraine so special to the UK and the EU, are its vibrant democracy and its free media. It will be important that whoever is elected president in the forthcoming elections is passionate about both.
The rest of the Tate Modern, meanwhile, is as good as ever. As well as old favourites like "The Pack" by Joseph Beuys (which I discover was inspired by the artist's plane crash in Crimea) and Anish Kapoor's "Ishi's Light", I see Robert Therrien's "Red Room" - a good antidote to Santa's Christmas-time attempt to monopolise red - and a visceral, violent video of 1960s Viennese "Actionism". No wonder the place pulls in around five million visitors a year. I like modern art, and look forward to seeing what galleries in Kyiv have to offer when I'm back. The fact there's so much cross-fertilisation between the two cities can only help the art scenes in both.
Part of Jill Magid's Exhibition
Leigh Turner
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23 December 2009
24 December 2009
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What's An Original Worth?
To the Art Arsenal for a sculpture exhibition featuring work by household names such as Rodin and Dali plus less instantly-recognisable stuff by Pompon (excellent polar bear) and the Ukrainian artist Exter. Many of the sculptures, eg Rodin's "The Thinker" and "The Burghers of Calais" are well-known to exist in a number of versions, and there's a display-board about the Parisian Airandor-Valusani Foundry where works were cast using the lost-wax process for Degas, Picasso, Modigliani and others. This prompts the question: which if any of these castings is the original, and do they have equal status?
Pompon's Polar Bear
I'm reminded of this later in the day at the top-of-the-table Ukrainian Premier League clash between Dynamo Kyiv and Shaktar Donetsk, two teams which have dominated Ukraine football for the last decade. It's a terrific game, with Dynamo's outstanding Artem Milevskiy scoring two goals and Shaktar missing a penalty as Kyiv run out 3:0 winners. But for an armchair fan, it's weird to watch a game without replays. It's almost as if the multiple camera angles and replays of disputed moments (cf France's endlessly re-shown dodgy goal against Ireland) have become an intrinsic part of the big-match experience, and a live game without them is somehow diminished. Surely that can't be right. But judging from the fact that the beautiful but compact Lobanovsky stadium, capacity 16,900, is far from full for this vital clash, many fans seem to have decided that watching it on TV is in fact superior to – or at least better value than – the original.
Dynamo-Shaktar
Leigh Turner
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23 November 2009
25 November 2009
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