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Mikhail GERMAN "Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun "
“Everything that has no tradition becomes plagiarism,” wrote the Spanish philosopher Eugenio d’Ors y Rovira. This opinion is especially apt as regards modern art, and most particularly in relation to germane or “topical” art as it is often called.
Over recent decades, the iconosphere, the aggressive hoards of images created by art, has become almost more densely populated and vigorous than nature itself. And it is indeed the case that it is absolutely impossible to create anything completely free of tradition – everything that is different still remains nothing but a direct borrowing, or self deception.
And at this point, everything depends on the strength of character and individual giftedness of the artist: to become a passive participant in these tricky games, or firmly to put them to serve one’s own talent.
Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun understands and feels this perfectly. One must suppose that to a great extent it is precisely because of this that he has been able to create his own world of rhythm, where the artistic memory of generations is in consistency with his own artistic personality.
One Chinese thinker and artist asserted that only when one had understood the rules could one succeed in making alterations. The excellent academy training that Grigoryev-Bashun received (he graduated from the graphics department at the Repin Institute), gave him the foundation without which unrestricted exploration in the expanses of non-figurative art is doomed to end in barren flirtation. Entering into conflict with materiality, without the skill to control it, is a matter for dilettantes.
In actual fact, Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun does not leave the visible world too far behind. It is no coincidence that his favorite artist is Henry Moore the sculptor, who created unprecedented forms, but without flying in the face of nature, rather as though in line with nature, and in tandem. According to one of the most expert modern art historians, Herbert Read, the challenge for modern artists is to create a “clear and specific visual image of sensory experience.” And, as it happens, this is what Grigoryev-Bashun does, seemingly synthesizing his emotional knowledge, memory, fantasy into concentrated images that are always precisely illustrated and “condensed” down to an explosive energy. They combine materiality and speculativeness in a strange and mesmerizing manner, while at the same time commanding a special significance, or, to use a term from astronomy, a certain “super-heaviness”. And by means of his rhythmical completeness, his sharpness and his finality, the artist does not accept the use of innuendo, so revered by many as an indispensable element in spontaneous creativity.
Grigoryev-Bashun is focused on an absolute, from the starting point of his mathematically calculated composition devices, and he leaves no place for uncertainty.
In non-figurative painting, this is a highly effective approach. Lessing endorsed the view that it was only what left room for free imagination that was effective in art, although he was commenting on movement, gesture and plot: the viewer conjectured the further development of these aspects. In the pictures of Grigoryev-Bashun, the viewer’s imagination must seek and identify in space and meaning, rather than in time: the distinctness of the forms allows room for their intuitive interpretation; after all, non-figurative representation is no more than an intuitive picture of the unconscious, that self-same “visual image of sensory experience”.
Gertrude’s much cited phrase from Hamlet “Thou turn’st mine eyes into my very soul” seems too filled with pathos for the measured world of Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun’s pictures. In his art, there is no swirling mist of a confused unconscious, but a strict and serious view deep inside the unconscious, an endeavor to find logic and harmony there.
In Russian, the translator of Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass coined a marvelous word “zazerkalye” which sums up in one word the topsy-turvy world the other side of the mirror, and which becomes a perfect metaphor for this type of new art. The original English title, however, provides an insight into how Vadim Grigoryev-Bashun passes “through” the amalgam of visible reality, and sees a secret logic of the invisible, hidden rhythms, and tenuous but logical connections between objects and their reflections. At the same time, he boldly and with unequivocal success works with objects, combining painting and solid forms. Here also the thoroughness and artistry of his work with wood or metal make his works triumphantly convincing, and lend the natural sharpness that conveys to the composition an integrity and “finality” that belongs to nature itself. But, at the same time, they give an unquestioned understanding that the piece has been crafted, that the materials have succumbed to the skilled hand of a true master.
The artist’s reference to ancient symbols (runes, the cross, etc.) does not come across as a tribute to fleeting fashion and banally conceived esoteric tastes. On the contrary, this yearning to touch the original symbols of consciousness, the representation of emotions, is so cherished in serious art when it is directed towards an understanding of the universal.
Nevertheless, philosophical interpretations are merely marginal asides for serious art that has the rhythm and intellect of individuality, and it is precisely in this category that the art of Grigoryev-Bashun should be seen.
The world of his art might appear even rigid at times. But it contains the logic of clarity of thought, the celebration of color and a zeal for knowledge (and in a world where there is much evil, knowledge is always the anchor of salvation). There is passion and commitment to secular values. There is an original rhythmic intonation rooted in an understanding of artistic and philosophical heritage.
Despite all the personal originality in his work, it belongs to time and the world. “Today art is taking routes that our fathers could never have imagined… everywhere one artist passes a sign to another: a single glance is sufficient, or a handshake, for them to understand each other,” wrote Franz Marc, the wonderfully subtle artist from the turn of the 20th century.
The art of Grigoryev-Bashun makes its contribution likewise to the creation of a new and integrated world which can be understood without words.
Mikhail GERMAN
Professor, Doctor of Art History
Academician of the Academy of Humanities
Member of AICA
Chief Research Fellow at the State Russian Museum