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5 answers from Konstantin Batynkov (KB) to questions from Alexander Petrovichev (AP) about the exhibition "Children"
(June 15-July 16, 2006)
AP So, is your new project about "the basics" again?
KB Actually, I had an exhibition about children about a decade ago. It was called "Repression". The term was derived from psychiatry, where 'repression' is a special method of affecting a patient's psyche so as to rid his or her mind of compulsive images. The idea is that the patient gets rid of compulsions through visualizing compulsive thoughts.
To be frank, in my opinion the whole of art is itself "repression". Even in his or her most reasonable intentions an artist realizes, or, to put it directly, gets rid of, images maturing in his or her creative mind. Such ideas are very compulsive sometimes, though not really painful, as with, say, Goya or the Surrealists.
AP Why children then? Are you followed by their images?
KB More likely it's the other way round. I think something opposite is happening here. It's what I don't agree with in the real world that is being expelled and replaced by fragments of the past that seem ideal today. Fragments of another life -from a once-great, shut-down country, with its illusions, insane plans, construction sites, ice-breakers -all left behind in our childhood. And the images of children are in a way carriers of the past. After all, the memory stores only good things; the rest washes away like slag, as non-relevant. You don't remember all the summer camps for Soviet pioneers, or the school years, far from the happiest. These small particulars are not meaningful. But childhood stays in the memory as something unequivocally rosy and integral.
Images from childhood, and I mean precisely the images, something ideal, do follow me. This is probably because children's lives are more expressive and full, which is something adults to a great extent lack. For me, the archetypal infant is more understandable and attractive than the archetypal adult. With the latter there is more posing, affectation, correctness, if you like. An infant is unaware of that. It is harder to draw children. There are many examples in the history of the arts, far from all successful. I too, as usual, have drawn tons of pictures, but I'm happy with only a few.
AP You talk about archetypal children. In general, working with such a system of images, you have chosen the most appropriate stylistic technique of imaginary realism, a kind of mimicry of realism. After all, you don't work with nature and your landscapes and portraits are imaginary, aren't they?
KB I'm not revealing anything new in saying that life is more interesting than art, even on a purely visual level. One cannot overcome this. Whenever art opposes itself to reality, pathology very often emerges. Whenever an artist proposes his own alternative to God's, the resulting product includes an unconditional defect. Nothing can be done about it. This is why abstract art, a phenomenon quite limited, synthetic and contrived, is so helpless. Far-fetched systems are infernal, as a rule.
I am not interested in creating my own myths. It's much more useful and productive to look at what's already been created. I avoid demiurges.
AP So a contemplative position is more "you"?
KB Most likely. I do not have anything to add to what's already been created. I do not want to prove anything. On the other hand, I can't stand passive reflection, which is very often business-oriented. Children with faces like they have in my painting would not be accepted in glamourous glossy magazines. Glossy magazines are interested in either Barbie-doll babies or some sort of monster constructed out of newly fashionable fantasies, preferably with fangs. I hate such things. I am not at all a glamorous artist. I don't live by their synthetic rules or play their games. If that means I'm not part of the mainstream, I don't care at all. I am not a fashion-conscious artist. It's neither gain nor loss for me.
AP Approximately a year ago, the Krokin Gallery exhibited your project "Son of the Regiment". Some of that material is relevant to today's exhibition. The same images of childhood, in, admittedly, a different social situation. The same archetypal portraits, which are highly comprehensible, let's put it this way, to different social groups. Is this of principle to you?
KB My audience is large enough. Actually, I don't address anyone in particular. I paint what I like. And I do it all for my own pleasure, and don't worry about it. And one can always find a reason. The theme of children has always been relevant. The problem is one of interpretation.
Besides, I am 47 and do not feel like wasting myself on trifles. And in any case there's a lot of rubbish painted. I wish I could produce a masterpiece, but it's not happening. Clearly, I don't have the hands for it. I remember that Matisse once said that an artist should create his or her work as if it was the last one. But he himself produced all sorts of doodles. Well, it's a process. One can't help it either. The main thing is not to stop. Indeed, it's not about masterpieces; there's no time for them nowadays.
translation: Darya Bielecka, Alistair Gainey
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