Oil and Soil
Nowadays, one often sees an artist who is smart, educated in contemporary art, and good at building his own strategy – but his work still lacks something. So what is missing? One might suggest a bit of insanity, but we do not want to resurrect the insane genius myth. We can, however, bring up obsession: an artist’s passion for a certain subject which becomes the main theme of his art. In principle, this subject can be anything. Vladimir Migachyov is definitely an obsessed artist, and the subject he is obsessed with is the land of his people, the soil where life and history are made. It sounds strange, but the artist who chooses this theme appears almost marginalised on the national art scene. Even though this subject is always ‘right under one’s very nose,’ and the topic is ‘in the air’ these days, few of the artist’s contemporaries have addressed it in earnest.
There are probably two important reasons for that. The first reason is the political shyness of today’s ‘enlightened’ artists and their fear of being accused of ‘protectionism.’ This word, in the language of the Western curators, means cultural nationalism that they believe is inherent in the representatives of fallen empires. The second reason lies in the extravagance of the Russian character: we often overlook and fail to appreciate the very basics of our life in the here and now.
The effect of currently trending art is often called therapy. It means that the art armed with irony, like a syringe with an anaesthetic, relieves society of acute pain and anxiety (in both medical and Hegelian sense). Migachyov with his romantic/traumatic works achieves the opposite effect. That’s why he is out of favour, repeatedly pigeonholed as a landscape artist, with many deliberately ignoring the conceptual framework of his art – and in any case failing to call it by its name. However, this non-recognition, both accidental and deliberate, only encourages the artist to intensify his conversation with the viewer and more firmly identify the real subject of this conversation. That’s why the graphically refined and figurative works of the early 2000s were followed by the brutal ‘earthy’ pieces and ‘ruined landscapes’ where the earthy substance seriously threatens to destroy the schematic illusion of the ‘Great Russian Plain.’ The artist challenges the landscape painter’s – that is, idyllic and dulled – view of reality, and forces the viewer to feel the non-picturesque reality of the land, which is not merely a supply stream of resources that subsequently transform into the abstract categories of wealth and living standard, but also the fundamental fabric from which the life forms spring and to which they inevitably return.
By Mikhail Ovchinnikov
