...IN RINGS OF YEARS
...and to dissolve a secular talk
in a woody quietness.
Boris Chichibabin
Painting and sculpture compositions in wood are very important in the creative work of Alexei Shtern and deserve a special attention that the sensitive experts from the Rus¬sian Museum begin to pay. A great number of works in this technique, their obligatory demonstration at exhibitions and inclusion into catalogues and now this album prove that it is not an occasional experiment but a conscious way of expression being a kind of discovery.
The artist is moving again to the most "realistic" representation correlating the outer appearance with inner one. When showing a portrait he asks sometimes: "Is it alike?" But even if you cannot recognize the person immediately, the image is always pierc-ingly real. Aiming at similarity is characteristic not only of Shtern as the art constantly returns to it. During the last half of the century, in photo- and hyperrealism, in objects, ready-made, installations and environment, things were not just portrayed but even represented. However, all these fashionable terms do not suit the "objects" of Shtern. He is far from a purely formal search and is not concerned about his part in it. But he has created his own style and is in search of means of expression: these are collage insertions in pictures, painting cobbles, sculpture models of genre scenes. Painting/ sculpture compositions in wood can remind models of people too. The word "model" introduces us to the atmosphere of theatre where Shtern is a well-known master. Many painters work in the theatre as well. For some of them, painting and theatre are abso¬lutely different spheres, for the others they are an indivisible confluence of embodi¬ment. A half of Alexei Shtem's works is related to theatre. When painting goes beyond the canvas limits, it seems radical but is natural for theatre. Therefore, the artist's experiments are not a challenge to traditions but an involvement of adjacent arts enabling to express himself more fully. Such are his works in wood, they are both sculpture and painting, object and model... a character is recognized in the picture as in old novels and becomes more and more real, especially the faces which are the most expressive object in the world.
They say that one can learn by year rings on cut of a tree not only its age but also how it lived all these years. A human face has traces of years too. In these works of Shtern they meet and overlap. And they reflect the years they have lived at the same time. This resonance is not evident but sometimes it affects imagination, adding ma¬teriality to the portraits. Anotherfeature increases such impression -that is the outline of faces coinciding with the form of a wooden board. There are no identical faces as there are no identical trees and their correspondence needs to be found. You smile involuntarily with pleasure on seeing how the artist finds them unerringly and wittily with his "predatory" eye. Not only cracks on the cut of the tree coincide with wrinkles of faces, as if they were an intrusion into fate, a genetic memory of the era of cut forests. Double correspondences, double resonance existing in imagination do not "swing" the natural form emphasized by strong painting. Besides, the author shows that it is all a game, going from an emphasized conventionality to "making" figures of abstract rectangles, by only rarely highlighting an expressive detail. Details are sometimes not fixed and this enables us to improvise. Works existing independently can form eloquent mis-en-scenes with humour characteristic of the artist. Unlike picture characters, the "wooden" ones are not fixed to the background and can be placed anywhere like in real life. Potential opportunities in these works make us use our imagination, which is one of the most popular methods in modern art.
When any discovery is made, it seems simple and associated with many familiar things. Here one also sees analogies suddenly, far and near, low and high - from the ancient Paraskeva Friday to modern sandwichmen, from the folk wooden toy to a sculpture of hyperrealism, from social art of Alexander Kosolapov to monuments of Tatyana Nazarenko, from a twig resembling a dwarf found in a forest to theatre models, puppets, masks... Perhaps even the author himself does not know what happened in the subconscious when he first wished to paint on a "delicious" uneven surface of a wooden board. But for him this is not only one of his finds (so natural) but a totally original sphere of creative work, his further contribution to art synthesis, to immortalization of the image of our contemporary.
Nikolai Blagodatov 19.09.07 Saint-Petersburg
THE DOUBTFUL MAN
For me the way is closed to a cloister quiet,
Where all is pious - placatory and light
A black bat and a crafty spirit evil
Do not tempt in his sleep a brother even...
Georgy Shtern
There is a character in the picture by Alexander Ivanov «The Appearance of Christ to People», who is called «The doubtful man». I feel myself in this role sometimes when I see the Saviour in the christological cycle of Alexey Shtern. Compared to the others, he looks a kind of colourless, indeterminate man, somebody like a scared intellectual» in a rudely seething milieu of life. The artist replies to my doubts, that this is the way he imagines Him. And I begin to doubt, in what I doubt: the artistic success of the image, the sufficiency of its interpretation or my own capability to feel keenly the artist's concept.
A greater part of the creative work of the artist Alexey Shtern is devoted to portraits of contemporaries. From a number of very similar pencil sketches, then, in solitude, no longer a portrait, but an image, sharp toughened, sometimes grotesque is created in a complicated mixture of techniques. Its vital force is such (though it can be an image of an old man, dying in a hospital), that it literally pushes it out from a canvas. Reliefs of texture and collage insets press towards the effect of diorama, and, it seems possible to light up from a spark of cigarette. It happens that images «scramble out» into a volume - on a cobble, in loam, on «pieces of wood». Sometimes they find themselves in a genre picture, forming an awfully realistic situation, being, actually, a well thought-out theatrical sketch with an intriguing implication. The religious compositions are equally sanguineous, though they make us recall the canons and symbolics. After all, the characters also have real prototypes. All but the Main character. HE, though recognized at once, looks like noone around. Maybe it is impossible to find the appropriate model in Russia, or the painter does not consider himself to have the right to use a real prototype, being afraid to fall into the heresy of Nestorianism. By selecting something average from the rich world of iconographiñs, the artist avoids the trend of the «Vehement Eye», which seems to be closer to his blatant rough scenes. He approaches his bright placid rural landscapes in the naive technique of the «coloured cardboard»... Having reflected upon that, despite all my doubts, I have no more scruple, that this Image, not giving sufficient feed for my eye, bestows it more than enough for my thought.
Nikolay BLAGODATOV
ALEXEY SHTERN: WIDE-OPEN EYES
Emmanuel Kant wrote, that most important thing during the epoch of the Enlightenment was «the courage to use one's own mind». We often forget, however, that both the straight tbought, and the overt view on life demand themselves bravery indeed. Meanwhile, in a world where it is so difficult to distinguish the eternal from the transient, where a great deal of things are simply incomprehensible, the knowledge itself helps to remain human. Alexey Shtern is not the kind of artist who calls for the truth which is indispensably connected with «a prohibited subject», with an accusation or social invectives. His works appeal to the capability of a person not to avoid the truth. This is an over¬whelmingly important mission of art. The courage of looking 1 eaches us the knowledge and bravery. There is no fear if you look and see.
Shtern's art takes root in theatre, in the art where the imaginary can turn into reality, and a face can change into a guise, where a made up actor dies and immediately takes his curtain call, but where I hey tell about life, death, and love in such a way, that the spectators leave in deep emotion. «... They do but jest, poison in jest; no offence in the world», Hamlet says about the performance of actors. But what can be more serious than this acting! Shtern always keeps aloof very theatrically and ironically. Maybe because otherwise it is difficult to keep the bravery. When selecting the models for portraits, he does not search for unusual people - ridiculous, sad or miserable. He does not search for a gloom or wrath in people. He is not afraid to see everything in people and that's enough. Everything including the abysses of destiny, the spiritual precipices («Portrait of Ustiugov»), the unbearable vulgarity («Temptress»), the tired intellect and the finest individualism. And, certainly, his natures and situations are quite tragical. His theatrical nature, I am not afraid to repeat it, instigates him to a constant pursuit of new decorative turns, techniques and materials. His definitely new touch is represented by picturesque portraits on wood boards - some kind of phantoms of bas-reliefs with a surprising material cogency. As a matter of fact, they are similar to the images of wood sculpture on flat wood -a complicated system of multiple reflections. I would not affirm, that behind the rigidity of lines and con¬strained smudging of colours distinguishing Shtern's painting, there is the indispensable exit to good and optimism. His support is in the beauty of the nature of art (its rhythmical system, plastics, colouring, individuality of vision) and the joy of a touch to the truth, not so much ennobled the beauty, as perceived by it. The art makes the vision brave and helps us to look at the world with wide-open eyes.
Mikhail GERMAN
WHO WILL NOT BE FORGOTTEN BY MY HEART...
And everyone, who will not be forgotten by my heart,
And everyone, whom thee in truth dearly loved,
For thee will be a live.
Anna Akhmatova
The largest exhibition of works by Shtern was opened in March, 2002 in the museum of Anna Akhmatova in the Fountain 1 louse on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the artist. The verses which made the heading correspond in the best possible way with the atmosphere of the place, with the artist's attitude, with the nature of his works maintaining the memory of people, of events and of his experience. Certainly, everyone has his own destiny and a measure of touch with the memory. It is important to reveal something personal that determines a degree of such a touch. I n the diversified artistic life of St. Petersburg, the creative work of Alexey Shtern is rather noticeable. It is imbued with a kind feeling, despite the painful hardship of life shared by the artist and his relatives. Not only because of the last name (Shtern means «starlet» in German) it is possible to speak about some kind of emanation of good and humanity - both in affirmation and in negation. Perhaps, this was promoted by his destiny. It prepared for Shtern a chance of close relations with the family of Nickolay Pavlovitch Antsiferov, with professor Boris Vasilyevitch Kosarev, «the most remarkable teacher, unusual and talented». Alexey Shtern, being as a son of a person prosecuted under Stalin's rule, was not allowed to live in «capital cities». The town of Kharkov and the local art institute, where Shtern learned from Boris Kosarev, has become for him «the Jewish pale». And later, according to Shtern, he «did not meet such a bright and original trainer in fine arts». Alexey Shtern also had an occasion to experience an effect of traditions of Nikolay Akimov during his work at the Comedy theatre, to join to an enormous stratum of St. Petersburg culture, to communicate creatively with Oleg Yefremov in Moscow at the school studio of Moscow Arts Theatre (MHAT). A talent is rarely one-sided: he has been a director-producer, actor, theatrical painter, artist, graphic artist, sculptor and teacher. Each tendency has affected the activity of Shtern in its own way. So, when working in the Comedy theatre, he could not but experience the magic of Akimov. But the irresistible Akimov's grotesque, occasionally leading up to a cartoon, is «extenuated» in the works by Shtern. The irony does not destroy an image. It is creative. The sharpness of portraits, sculptural and genre pictures is quite often shaded in lyrical landscapes, especially in summer, water colour ones made to «tune up» the painter's brush.
The theatrical principles of Oleg Yefremov were embodied not only in actor and producer activity of Shtern, but were projected on his pictures. «Oleg Yefremov demanded very strictly a deep-laid internal penetration into a play, a role, and to this very day it is overwhelmingly important for me! I paint according to Stanislavsky's foundations and I am not embarrassed by it». Indeed, the influence can be felt in Shtern's works, but not borrowings or «quotations». But first of all a peculiar vigilance of the attitude to a model or situation is apparent. A character, an internal effect is shown in it. There arises the psychological context of the work, created by the appearance of a hero and surroundings, by an expressive outline, by the colours in struggle and consent, by tense painting. Shtern's portraits are well and distinctly staged. Every pose and gesture is related to a picturesque milieu, forming a concentrated figurative space.
One of the exhibitions of Shtern in the «Delta» gallery was called Dialog». A dialog of the artist with people, circumstances, with nature, humanized by affectionate feeling. But, obviously, first of all it was the dialog of the artist with himself. Shtern's portraits are diverse. Portraits of energetic men of different occupations, of pensively-beautiful, lightened women, of sad intellectuals, representing personalities, not in their social position, but in essence: genuine, not impostors in the «intellectual elite»). There are sometimes a kind of trade pirates, who have expelled peasants from the market. They are impertinent, cynical, indifferent They are real, maybe they are even heroes of certain realms, but evoking a corresponding attitude. A particular respect is aroused by the portraits of old men with their wisdom, pain, quite often with hopelessness. There is a sequel to the good traditions of Russian portrait painting here with its credo «there can be no other's grief». Among those portrayed, there are many well-known faces. The writer Victor Konetsky, an idol of Peters¬burg's public (and not only). He was painted with that naturalism and freedom, akin to the writer himself, unfortunately, having gone. Such is the portrait of unforgettable Elena Yunger, that the artist finished mystically on August 4,1999, the day when the actress died. Among the portraits, there is an impulsively-intense image of an actor and producer Yury Tomashevsky. The portrait of the producer Alexey Shapiro was made in a medal-looking profile. One can feel a fervour of the artist G.Ustiugov. There is a touching, inspired «Liudmila», an art critic, selflessly fostering children in the Hermitage. And «The Italian Woman in St. Petersburg» seems to be abstracted with thought for good...
«I try to peer into, to get used to the person, as to the character... It is important for me the resemblance of the person, that his voice, his intonations were audible in the portrait». They are appreciable in an intent stare, in a pose, in tensity of painting; in the symbolics of a «plastic course» and in the subject of the «Portrait of Levon Lazarev», a sculptor, who gives rise to his works in reality as in the myth about Pygmalion. Portraits by Shtern are filled with inflexion by the expressiveness of conveyed mood. By this, we mean more detailed compositions of a portrait-picture and aggregative compo¬sitions, resembling a movie take, fragmentary, focusing attention on a face of a model. Such is the strikingly exact «Portrait of Evgeny Ukhnaliov», a person and an artist. It seems that he overcame the destiny, in which there had been an exile, furtive sketches made in a prison camp and the position of the main architect of the State Hermitage, the Head of the Heraldry Department, Ukhnaliov created piercing real and at the same time imaginary urban views. In the appearance of Evgeny Ilyich, there are the wisdom of creator and a vestige of the past. The similar significance marks the portraits of professor Kondratiev, D.A.Tolstoy, M.F.Kitayev. Many portraits were made as if (or to be precise, surely) with a kind smile, such as, for example, the image of querulously stringent Felix Volosenkov, of invariably expressive E.Barsky, of perpetually inquiring I.Vlasov, and even of a comically caricatured «couple», in which Valery Lukka is furiously clipping a beard of resigned Nikolay Blagodatov. The situation (taking into consideration the amenablity of Valery) is paradoxical but amusing. Such features, some kind of burlesque on a canvas, can be found in other works of the artist. They are in t he images on stub cuts — the stuff quite accomodating the ironical grotesque of Shtern.
Shtern is partly similar, not superficially, but in the essence of his motion to a cradle of personality, of nature, to one of his heroes -Abram Raskin, an art critic, historian and poet. His portrait (exhibited among the others at the exhibition «The Portrait in Russia. 20th century» in the State Russian Museum) represents a model on the icon» background with a style in his hands as a chronicler of phenomena, fates of art and its creators.
The secrecy of many images of Shtern is appreciable in a series of gospel characters. Christ and his progeny are terrestrial and sometimes it is possible even to recognize prototypes. The artist seems to be carried with them into the biblical epoch, when «the characters do not know yet that they are saints, apostles. They are common people», the features of whom were seized by the painter while reading «the Book of Life», peering into the contemporaries.
The real accords are combined with the exalted, the worldly with the heavenly in stylistics of his works. It is hardly possible to call a series of the gospel characters of Shtern a «religious subject». There is, however, a devout of saints in his quite mundane heroes. An influence of Fayoum portraits can be felt in his works.
Although the artist asserts that he «never draws people in a landscape» (in most cases it is true), nevertheless they occur in a pictures in urban environment. «The Petersburg Woman» seems to overshadow the city, Fontanka river, the bridge with turrets. The acute angle of perspective and energetic space do not deprive the image of elegy. In urban landscapes, the place is not simply recognizable, but it is given in a definite situation, a certain scenic act. In the nature, such an act becomes seemingly palpable. «It seems that air, wind, trees, clouds are equally material... The texture of weather is like this...» The Spectator is trusted to comprehend this condition. It would be right to say only partly that the landscapes of Shtern are attune on the lyrically-aloof intonation. Certainly, «The Winter in Florida» is extremely placid. But in «Fontanka River», seen in a surprising «movie perspective» from above, in the landscapes cramped by strained silence «Kuznechny Lane» and «Dostoyevsky Street», in «A Bench» with a romantic drawing in a scene of fire wall, of dark trees - the scenery and animated corner, when the bench in the shaky light of lanterns is not simply a subject, but something covert. A riddle and alert can be felt in it.
Today's exhibition of Shtern has its spiritual principles somehow incarnated in each work, especially in the pictures made by crayon, with the images of his grandmother, mother and the father, who had experienced the reprisal and following persecutions, but did not lose the talent of personality, geologist, poet. They arise as the inflow of memory:
If sparks of glass,
That at one time, clinking, dispersed,
Would again accrete - here what
In them would now remain
(Anna Akhmatova).
Alexey Shtern creates in the coordinates of fruitful traditions of various kinds of art, having found his own way, view of an intellectual, creator, responsive person. In this motion, he is implementing the covenant of his father - Georgy Shtern:
This way is hard,
To snowy acmes of art!
Return, if you want to have a rest,
Without reaching a half-way!
But if attracts thee high into the air,
Go forward and do not relax.
Anatoly DMITRENKO