Depiction of naked female body is one of the oldest themes in the world art. In Europe the beauty of naked body was discovered by the Greeks. Images of valiant heroes and beautiful goddesses were captured by classical sculpture with exceptional expressiveness and strength. In the Greek sculpture man appeared a perfect creation of nature, his proportions were ideal, his movements natural, his shape supple. The Middle Ages brought about the idea of sinfulness of naked body, therefore despised and ascetic, but exalted the strength of human spirit. These two conceptions defined the way of the naked body theme developing in the European art of the following periods. In the XIX century male model depicting moved to the drawing classes and stayed there, and the nu theme became attached to the depiction of the female body almost exclusively. It was within this theme that the struggle between the Academic art and the newer styles unfolded in the end of the century. The nudes were no more mythical goddesses, they turned into ordinary models or women getting dressed. The twentieth century went even to greater lengths. It destroyed integrity and naturalness of the image the naked model represented, turned naked body into a similitude of a machine, into a plastic dummy, a lifeless mechanical copy, or into an orgiastic cult object, provoking forthright lust.
Russian art even in the XX century managed, along with avant-garde experimenting, stay true to the classical tradition, and created poetic images by V. Lebedev as well as vigorous images by Deyneka.
But is it possible at the beginning of the next century to blindly follow into the predecessors’ footsteps, and repeat things that have already been pronounced? This exhibition gives us answer to this question. Even while rooted within tradition one can look at the nude model in a new way. The author doesn’t disguise the fact that all his models are models, and that they are posing as models. Plasticity motives seemingly have already occurred in the art of the previous periods, but here they are perceived in an entirely different way. The artist’s attitude to his models is not so much admiration and sensuality, but rather matter-of-factness and irony: now he mocks classical subjects and scenes (Venus’s looking-glass motive, allusions to a Bible fable – Susannah and the Elders), now we are reminded of “lubok” (popular print), now a most peculiar profile strikes the eye, or a playful and coquettish posture. His viewing his model also betrays the fact that the artist was brought up among the modern architectural and industrial structures: the shapes now become pronouncedly geometrical, now nervous, and the gaps stare from the silhouette; movements turn mechanical, the rhythms those of chanting.
But there is one more feature of the presented pastels: shade of sad day-dreaming – it is no accident that all of them are in the blue-violet color scheme. And this dreamy shade of melancholy regrets may declare best of all the author’s attitude, his understanding of the irrevocability of the lost ideal.
Painterly-graphic “Nu” Symphony by Leonid Petrushin may be properly appreciated only in the global context. In Russian art there is practically no nu art traditions, which is connected with the prevailing role of eastern-asiatic mentality in our society. In Soviet times female images in art were mostly connected with cotton-padded working jackets and rubber boots. Naked body was persecuted, as it is persecuted by Islamic fundamentalism.
So as to the sources of Petrushin’s creativity, they may be perceived in periods when the nudes art genre was only forming, in the Renaissance (if we abstain from traveling mentally even further, to the Ancient world). It was in that period that the idealistic concepts of what female beauty is to be were materialized into works of Giorgione, Titian and others, and then developed further, century by century, through the ample baroque curves of Rubens, the intimately-domestic treatment of the genre by Rembrandt, the refined and gracious rococo pieces by Boucher, the perfect classicism of Ingres, the barren second part of the XIX century, through the pronouncedly modern model character by Edouard Manet, and to the quest for new means of expression in works of Picasso and Modigliani.
A critic who undertakes to analyze Petrushin’s works finds himself in a most awkward position. In other cases, with another kind of basic materials, one usually starts talking with the “description and the analysis” of the image. But in this case composition “analysis” would inevitably bring the critic into situation closely resembling stagnant and monotonous dialogue with one’s own self. Of course it would have been most proper to reveal the underlying ideas of the artist, based on his own works, that would have let us understand his esthetics. But originality of the most specific subject-matter of the “NU” Symphony would bring these efforts down to exclusively technical aspects, in other words, to development, from piece to piece, of the means of expression that provide for the theme. The models being isolated from anything that would connect them with the outer world (the complete lack of any accessories that may mark it) seemingly leave out philosophical, religious, sociological, psychological and other aspects. But if this is the case, how can we possibly explain the extraordinary distinctiveness of the models, their obvious belonging to the present day, to the beginning of the XXI century? Artistic image, as a self-sufficient dimension of inherent worth and sensuality, manifests itself as the triumph of the corporality that is its component, as material substance it expresses esthetic energies in terms of its own language, emanating self-existing emotional expressiveness.
The explanation to this roots, naturally, in the manner in which the artist presents his conception. In the finesse of the technique and being true to the genre, in mastery of drawing. One may say that (though that is an awkward compliment) it is “genuine painting”. And indeed Petrushin is unafraid of bold color consonances, and exploits pastel decorative advantages in his large sheets to the full, but while doing this he, and that is most important, painstakingly preserves specific features of the graphic art. These means of expression, these formal mediums allow the author to accumulate his intellectual pondering and the experiences acquired, it is a sort of painterly reflection, an incessant quest… Quest for what? For formal perfection, for expression of underexhibited emotion, or, which would be closer to the truth, is it the striving to create by summing up varied states a unified awareness of some more significant phenomenon?
An object, after having been repeatedly reproduced, looses its immanent properties and turns into a sign, a hieroglyph with its own content and its own beauty. Thus Petrushin’s compositions through being laconic verge towards sign (the artist was trained as poster designer, and has been successfully working for many years in this sphere of art, with which the meaning of symbol is paramount), and, like any phenomenon of the kind, may produce most varied associations for the beholder, depending on the mental level of the latter. These associations may take one far beyond the premises of the artist’s studio, into the noisy nowadays, or to the long silent past with its biblical fables.
Along with draughtsman’s mastery his works embody a composer’s artfulness. The artist set for himself conditions under which the figure, the image of the model is to be fit into rectangular space of the sheet, but not in one, but in several dozens of versions, and so as to avoid monotony too – the artist has solved the task with such brilliance, that, in spite of the predominated serial property of the cycle, each sheet possesses a compositional singularity of its own, and looks an independent, separate work.
It is no accident that Petrushin named his cycle the “NU” Symphony, it is indeed a symphony of color, that is the primary means of characterizing – one is tempted to say “the model” – but no, not the model, which serves the end of re-transmitting the artist’s mood, and it is the mood that is the titular theme of the cycle. As it was already said in the “NU” Symphony the nude model is seen and captured by a contemporary artist. It is worth mentioning that in the serial character of the cycle, that implies repeating of the similar subjects, there is also something linking it to pop-art, though it is dubious that the artist has had this as goal even unconsciously. But the trends of the epoch sometimes prevail over our intentions.
Here we have to come back to the beginning of our narration, to those, let us say, two trends, that Picasso and Modigliani marked out. And, if it is necessary to compare Petrushin’s art with anything, it would be the Modigliani’s myth-making, of course, though as for analogies, the only one to be found is the same distinctive way of viewing the model, which might be named the chastity of the revealing. Unlike the wide-spread (of late in our arts too) deformational trends of the new XX century art that often mean ineffectual imitation of the traditional avant-garde masters, pertaining to Petrushin is the realistic manner of drawing (though it has never been established yet what realism is). But this realistic manner is by no means caused by affected enthusiasm for patristic traditions, but by inherent, as well as acquired in the process of self-development and becoming, respectful affection for the existing world.
It is necessary to mention one more peculiar and important property of the Symphony that lends it an extra sound: the artist is never shown in the pictures, which separates it from the also very wide-spread again thanks to Picasso “the artist and the model” subject. Only once we glimpse the half-turned face of the artist and his easel in a mirror. This treatment of the model, which is free of any immediate collisions, stresses the external-to-being nature of the “NU” Symphony, that is perceived first of all not rationally, but precisely as music is, subconsciously.