Film “Modern art of Belarus. Vladimir Kozhukh” ....
Film “Modern art of Belarus. Vladimir Kozhukh” ....
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Vladimir Kozhukh confesses his way of turning and returning to the same canvas sometimes in very distant periods to change the vision and the character of the picture. He used to think in a new way of an old subject and that led him to paint over the old image to give it a new perspective. Thus many of the works of Vladimir Kozhukh are results of multiple sessions and bear rich stories of artist’s imagination.
Vladimir Kozhukh used to compensate the limits of topics traditionally covered by painters by representing them under peculiar aspects.
Vladimir says there are too many ideas to be realised. A lot of things he imagines stay in his imagination or finish on draft papers. These drafts however may become quite valuable after time when the author turns to them after years and naturally asks himself why he has not realised before this or that picture. At that moment what was perceived as an intermediary and incomplete version may take its full shape and manifest itself as an evocative image.
Vladimir took pleasure in this interaction of ideas, where one artistic solution could inform a new series of works or bring to a different vision of an old work. Definitely, during his life Kozhukh revisited many of his own works. This demonstrates his critical view of the artistic process and the intellectual honesty in front of his creativity which always demanded from him new solutions and renewed efforts. Indeed, he felt responsible to his vocation of an artist which is inevitably linked to sacrifice and the search of the truth.
Vladimir used to start 5 or even 10 pictures at a time, all of them were awaiting their development and were silently communicated among them by the concept Vladimir was researching at that time.
Kozhukh says that the fact that a picture has already been exhibited and published does not mean it cannot be changed. “It happens to me to modify the pictures so that they cannot be recognised”, he says.
Vladimir Kozhukh clearly states that he is in constant process of research and perfecting hoping it will bring its fruit. This is the way for a painter to develop his or her style and way of writing.
According to renown Belarusian art critic Tatiana Garanskaya, Vladimir Kozhukh escapes the definition of an ethnographist. He approaches traditional Belarusian culture with very careful reflection. In his depiction of “rushniks” that he filled the images of villages, animals, fruits and flowers, the author reproduces the way these “rushniks” were originally created many centuries ago – through stylisation. These ornaments were created in Belarus for thousands of years through interiorization and personalisation of reality that surrounded people. This led to the creation of very specific cultural codes, that Vladimir Kozhukh was seeking to decipher and to revisit in his works.
As a young boy Vladimir Kozhukh used to pass the summer in the village with his grandmother where he was enchanted by the lyric atmosphere. It happened so that in Drogichin, that was quite a small town, there were three artistic schools. And Vladimir used to go to all the three having demonstrated the leaning to art since his very early years. Further on, he used to purchase books on art of Belarusian masters to see their paintings of the city of Minsk. He was particularly impressed by the works of Danzig and Joltak. The first experience of Vladimir Kozhukh oil painting was an image of Drogichin Christian Orthodox church which left his parents surprised. It was a winter picture done in blue tones. The current place of this work is unknown.
When Vladimir decided to apply to the artistic professional college and passed the entry exams his parents did not oppose his plans. Vladimir admits that the destiny gave him many wonderful teachers.
After the college, Vladimir studied at the Academy of Arts, where he was highly appreciated and was given an opportunity to have personal exhibition in the Academy premises every year.
The image of woman is a cult topic for Vladimir Kozhukh. Woman having a rest, woman in war, village woman, woman who moved to the city ... Artist thinks a lot about the adaptation of a woman to new circumstances, the changes the internally foregoes, the process of her becoming … Vladimir plays a lot with the topic of woman’s transformation by surrounding the women in his pictures with objects traditionally associated with female role of the guardian of traditions, like wooden chests, ceramics, “rushniks”. The centrality of a woman gives additional value to the achievements of Belarusian culture presented in the picture. All this, according to Tatiana Garanskaya, paves the way to the modernity, accompanying the woman in her way to our today’s life. And there is completely no banality in this process. It’s like a multifaceted crystal in the sunlight that presents all that surrounds it in ever different way.
Vladimir Kozhukh seeks to uncover the archetype of the image. He has a whole series of works dedicated to women with flowers, different women, different flowers. Through schematism and symbolism it is easy to see the character, the nature of the person, her unparalleled situation. These pictures could be defined as impressionistic canvases of Belarusian art where the author interwinds female bodies.
The graduation work of Vladimir was called “Harvest celebration” and brought him summa cum laude diploma. After graduation from Academy, Vladimir was directed to a peripheral city of Myshkovichi where he was a teacher of art. He and his family were given the maximum comfort of life that could be achieved during soviet time. But Vladimir lacked the artistic discussions and the interaction with other painters, writers and people dealing with culture. Further the destiny brought him to work under the guidance of Mikhail Savitsky in Minsk among other five painters chosen by wide all-Soviet jury.
Ms. Garanskaya is impressed by the immediate readiness and willingness of Kozhukh to visit Chernobyl zone to recreate the images of the catastrophe he witnessed there. This revealed him as a generous man, a man with a generosity that sublimated the tragedy and brought to the mankind the images that he observed at the cost of his health. That painting session in Chernobyl later had severe repercussions on his physical well-being. The extensive collection of pictures and drafts done in Chernobyl is the result of a titanic work he did. He himself went through thousands of images and scenes to distillate his vision of the atomic tragedy and the figure of a human being who happened to go through all that. The desire to express his dramatic feeling of what happened in a sharper way explains the use of disproportion in figures. Vladimir used to paint people of all kinds and professions that he saw in Chernobyl zone in 1987. Many of those people were still ignorant of what has just happened to them, and even if they knew it, they were unable to understand the full amount of damage. What impressed Vladimir particularly were the abandoned houses. Some of those houses were left neat and clean with the hope that their inhabitants would soon come back, which they never did. A part of Kozhukh collection of Chernobyl pictures was exhibited in the UN headquarters in New York, in the European Parliament and in the NATO in Brussels.
Sometimes you need to understand the author more deeply to be able to penetrate his works. If we take the topic of Christianity, much of it is banalised in the modern art, while Vladimir brought his vision through tears and strain. Yes, sometimes, it’s grotesque, sometimes it’s a fruit of careful reflection and delicate work, sometimes it’s a relation of an icon and a man, sometimes it’s a man and an icon.
Vladimir Kozhukh was working on any subject not in a standard way. Like a surgeon he was dissecting the topic, making visible such pain points, like wars on Belarusian territories. He showed how the war time is honoured, how the women overcame the loss of their husbands, how strong they were in rebuilding their life and the life of their relatives. According to the words of the art critic Tatiana, notwithstanding the pain and deformation the pride and the courage of these women let appear the notes of music of a female beauty and female spirit.
Article “Artist Vladimir Kozhukh dreams of painting his own Mona Lisa”, “Belarus News”, 09 January 2014 ....
Article “Artist Vladimir Kozhukh dreams of painting his own Mona Lisa”, “Belarus News”, 09 January 2014 ....
Distinguished and Honoured art worker of Belarus Vladimir Kozhukh dreams of painting his own Mona Lisa. This is what he confides in a conversation with a Belta agency correspondent. The painter works in the genre of narrative painting and landscape. In his artistic work, women’s' portraits play an important role. “In the majority of cases the themes of nature and feminine origin are closely linked. As a rule, my works are dedicated to women’s’ work or are related to the mythological images. Each painter aims at unrealistic goals. Certainly, I cannot say that all the pictures could stand an ambitious comparison with Mona Lisa. But I believe that the better is yet to come. I haven’t painted my Mona Lisa yet” says Vladimir Kozhukh. He was awarded by the order of the Head of State with a special presidential premium for the creation of painted works with high artistic value. As Vladimir Kozhukh himself admits, for him the main indicator a high-class artistic piece is the use of professionalism. “It is not easy to assess high artistic value of a canvas, the criteria may vary greatly. For me it is the expression of professional approach. Somebody else will pay more attention to the artistic or conceptual tools”, he says. In 2014, the painter plans to present to the broad audience his works done starting from 1980s till today. When asked about the exact quantity of the painted works, the master has a difficulty to reply. He says that the quality is far more valuable than the quantity. Vladimir Kozhukh was born on March 7th 1953 in the town of Drogichin in Brest region. He studied at Minsk Artistic College named after A.K. Glebov, at the department of easel painting at the Belarusian State Artistic Institute, took training in the artistic workshops of the USSR Artistic Academy in Minsk. For the series of paintings “The black truth of Chernobyl” Vladimir Kozhukh was awarded with a Premium of Trade Unions of the Republic of Belarus.
Exhibition of Vladimir Kozhukh is being prepared at the National Museum of Art ....
See the invisible
12.05.2018
Last May Vladimir Kozhukh donated his last picture to the charity auction for the benefit of orphan children. And after two months he passed away. This news reached everybody immediately, the telephone call of his wife Marina astonished not one person, but really many: it was at the National Museum of Art during the opening of Marc Chagall exhibition, such events always attract lots of people. Abandoning the lithographs of Chagall people rushed to the next hall where the paintings of Kozhukh are exhibited… This spring he would have turned 65, but a year ago he was already too ill to think of preparing the anniversary exhibition. But he found the force to respect all the engagements and completed a series of portraits for the National Academy of Sciences. The family and the museum will still need some time to organise the exhibition without him. Also because numerous pictures remained in his studio. To choose the best among them, the most admired, the most famous, or on the contrary the least known, for one exposition, is almost impossible. Each work is impeccable. And it is a hard duty to combine them in a single space. But the National Museum of Art has already started its work on it.
This painter never imitated anybody, even himself. The Great Patriotic War, Afghanistan, Chernobyl, women portraits, landscapes, mythological and biblical scenes - he presented each subject in a way that was different from his predecessors or his colleagues. And each new series of works inevitably produced in the media the exclamations of the kind “Such Kozhukh we haven’t seen yet”. Many pictures remained unfinished in his studio, many prepared canvasses stand there. Kozhukh did not create for the public. It would be better to say that he lived through each of works. Like colours, he put on the canvas his feelings, eternizing them in a complex palette. This is where the lively breathing emanated by his pictures comes, and it cannot be felt in the reproductions. However a person, even if he or she is an artist, can get tired by emotions, it is impossible to maintain the same mood during all the time necessary for the creation of one work. So, Kozhukh moved to new topics, new horizons where the others would insist on applying technical professional tools. Only when his soul got filled with the necessary colours could he come back to the unfinished picture. It could happen even that he repainted the picture that had already been exhibited to the public… The less there is in a picture of these apparently invisible, but extremely essential things, the easier it is to make a digital copy. But to feel the painting of Vladimir Kozhukh you need to see his works in direct proximity. Probably this is the reason why he is still being spoken of as an underestimated painter. And I do not speak about the art critics who will certainly say many deep and bright things about his creativity. I speak about the public that increasingly tends to study the art by reproductions in internet.
Bananas
— We celebrated our university graduation in the restaurant together with our teachers,— remembers Marina Kozhukh, the widow of Vladimir. — Mai Dantsig sang wonderful songs, and Yevgenyi Zaitsev invited me for a dance and spoke about Volodya all the time: «Artists as him appear every 10 years, and it is already a fortune if they do». But I didn’t need his words to realise it. Why didn’t you become a painter? What did I have to do near a genius? Play the second fiddle? It’s not funny.
We got married on the university graduation year. The collective farm “Sunrise” sent a request to the Artistic Institute for a graduate painter. Vassilyi Starovoitov, the head of the Soviet best-known collective farm needed a director for the child painting studio, who had to be necessarily a young professional and necessarily the best one. In the village of Myshkovichi a new Palace of culture had just been finished at that time. There was a pond with golden fish inside surrounded by real palms with real, though small, bananas. In the middle of the village square there was a light-show fountain. Just across the square, stood our house with the garage. In the end of 1970s all this seemed to be a fairy-tale. Volodya was offered a salary of 240 rubles for part-time work. He also managed to make mural painting in the local restaurant, afterwards in this hall, his sending off to the army was celebrated. All the village came. So, we had a lot to lose when Felix Yanushkevich who studied together with Volodya in the Institute informed him that a department of Soviet-wide artistic workshops will be set up in Minsk under the guidance of Mikhail Savitsky. Our daughter went to the kindergarten and Volodya’s application was chosen in Moscow. “How you decide, so it will be”, - he told me at that time. But I knew his potential and I knew that he lacked artistic communication in that rich village. Vladimir Kozhukh needed much bigger things than a garage with a car, a car that by the way we have never acquired.
«When the night becomes a day»
Apples
— It happened that people asked me: «How do you live with him? He is so silent all the time». You know, sometimes it is good to be silent together. But when Volodya returned from his stay in Italy, he was talking and talking and talking all the time… But so many times he refused to go anywhere. His paintings travelled to Switzerland, Austria, USA, Finland and many other countries, but he preferred to stay in the studio and not to spend time on the trips. Books were all that he wanted. For very long period, he had a studio on the Trinity Hill in Minsk with nearby a book market where he used to buy something almost daily. And then he got to Italy where the ancient art is everywhere within reach. Volodya was invited to a plein-air, all the formalities were done, but he as usual decided to close himself in the studio. You won’t believe me, I needed to strongly convince him to go there.
«Dowry»
Although when he decided to go to Chernobyl only one year after the catastrophe, I could not convince him to stay home. After that he did a series of pictures and got a prestigious award for them. Volodya arranged for the artists the possibility to come to the reactor as closely as possible. But what impressed him most of all was not the reactor, but other things. It was spring and the apple-trees were blossoming. But the last year apples had not fallen, they hang mummified on the branches and interfered with the new flowers. And people were living there. They turned to their homes against all the prohibitions… And then – after less than a year – he fell ill severely. He could not breathe. And the cure was of no help. Thanks God, we met a famous doctor Voitovich who cured Volodya with a special diet. At the same time he quit smoking, even though as his father he smoked excessively. His father was detective in Drogichin, a hard job. But Volodya chose a job which, I think, is not at all easier. After father’s death he started smoking again…
«Si-minor»
Muses
The film “I remember” realised by “Belarusfilm” and traditionally included onto the TV programmes of the national channels on the anniversary of Chernobyl catastrophe, starts from the pictures of Vladimir Kozhukh. The main character of the film is an artists who returned to his village near Chernobyl 20 years after. By the end title, he gets a baby, he gets new inspirations for the creation. One year after this expedition the youngest daughter of Vladimir Kozhukh was born. And his art became different. More profound and multilayered also in the direct sense. It bears the slight echoes of ancient legends, archaic motives dressed in a new form which is directed to the future. At the same time his muses appeared – shining and inspired heroines of dreams. Quite similar to them, there were also the women from Belarusian villages, women who became memories… After his miraculous recovering he did not turn to the doctors, but the illness, as it came evident after, did not disappear.
«Black on the white. White on the black»
He did not have enemies. Al all. And Marina is sure about it. And this considering that for many years he was the head of painting department of the Belarusian Union of Artists, where it was quite easy to get enemies. It was impossible to go against his talent. Even Mikhail Savitsky who at first was irritated by the artistic experiments of Vladimir Kozhukh, in the end realised it. These pictures never became an object of fuss and vanity, and Vladimir Vladimirovich himself was too intelligent and delicate to advertise his own painting. We need to speak about Kozhukh’s art, we need to watch it. His works are in the permanent exposition of the National museum of art. Keep an eye on his exhibitions not to miss them. You’ll be able to see the things that cannot be described with words and that cannot be felt through the screen.
Author of the article: Irina Zavadskaya
Belarusian painter Vladimir Kozhukh: “Aristocratic beauty does not lie in the sophistication of forms”, News Agency, 10 January 2014 ....
Slender weightless beauties on the pictures of Kozhukh soar in the skies, drown in flowers and bring into the studio this extraordinary “fifth” season of the year, the season that Anna Akhmatova used to call love with. Among the artistic pieces of Kozhukh dedicated to the personage of Flora there is the triumph of beauty and naturalness. Flora is a collective image, it is an attempt to put together the natural and the female. There is something specific about these “girls not from here” that recalls both the heroes of myths and legends and the ladies of Turgenev. According to me, there is an illusion of revival of that special kind of aristocratic beauty that went away together with the emigrants of the first wave and the Russian seasons of Serge Diaghilev.
- Aristocracy does not necessarily mean the obligatory sophistication of forms. The appearance of a woman does not have to remind of Ida Rubinstein. There is no need to be a standard of reference. First of all there has to be spirituality, intellect, observes the master.
Vladimir Vladimirovich does not feel any sympathy towards the glamourous:
- If I notice that something of the kind is coming up in the picture, I try to correct this.
He does not feel at all like speculating on the topics such as the meaning of beauty and why people warship it. He jokes that he is destined to reflect upon it in his creative work. Not by chance was he born on the eve of the International Women’s Day – 7th of March. In addition, the family is a kind of flower garden:
- Upon mother’s line I have 8 aunts. Grandmother had 11 children. I have two daughters. But no granddaughters yet. Only a grandson.
The rural women-workers on the canvasses of Kozhukh also have romantic allure and slightly remind of wise truth-tellers from the soviet children’s films inspired by Russian popular fairy-tales.
But this manner of painting did not appear from the beginning. As a student of national artists Mai Volfovich Dantsig and Mikhail Savitsky, he was true to the rigid realistic principles in the painting art. Until the moment when … Chernobyl catastrophe happened.
- One year after the incident I went with a group of painters to the exclusion zone. At that time it was believed not to be so dangerous any more. I was an active young communist. We received an order to form an artistic group. And surrendered to the romanticism we made our way there. There were even concerts in the contaminated territories that were supposed to give courage to the people. Actors, musicians came there. We spent there three weeks. And even stayed for two days at the nuclear plant station. We were given military clothes and felt a bit like partisans. Thanks god, there have been no fatalities related to the trip of our artistic group.
Especially depressing impression was conveyed by the city Pripyat and the abandoned villages. I remember that we were making the portraits of policemen that were on duty overseeing the roadblocks, when a very elderly lady came and said: “Let me go, my house is there”. The answer was: “We do not have the right to let you go. But don’t you know how to find a way round?” She made a sign of regret with a hand and went away looking for another way to come in. I still have impressed in my memory the image of her standing at the barrier gate and sadly looking into the deep, this inspired my work “Nostalgia” where this story is reflected.
During the trip we were doing drafts, and upon our return to Minsk I started to look for conceptual solutions. I did not aim a factual and documental representation. The concrete facts on the photos were enough. After our trip we organised an exhibition in the Belarusian capital. It had a big success. And exactly in that period Chernobyl topic and the humanitarian aid were discussed at the UN. And we accepted the proposal to exhibit our works in the UN general quarters. So, the exhibition made people speak also there.
By the way, the experiments in the painting became the reason of discord with Mikhail Savitsky whose education Vladimir Kozhukh received in the artistic academic workshops at the Ministry of Culture.
- He even stopped to speak to me at that time. But around five years before his death we began to speak again. It turned out that nothing tragic has happened, says Vladimir Vladimirovich and recalls another story related to Savitsky:
- In the middle of 1980s, I did a picture on the topic of war in Afghanistan. I brought it to the exhibition committee. At that time all the pictures passed through a strict selection to get to the republican exhibition. They told me: “You know, this subject is not yet common to the people”. At that time the troops had not yet been brought out. So, I took my picture and headed to the exit of the Palace of Arts. And then I meet Mikhail Andreevich who asked me about life. I said about my picture that had not been accepted. He wanted to see it first and then said that it was really good. So he took it out of my hands and brought it back to the committee where it was included into the exposition. This picture had a curious history afterwards. Shortly after the exhibition I received a letter from a village near Borisov saying that four soldiers from that place were killed in Afghanistan. And the picture was bought for the memorial room. Afterwards I discovered that the small museum together with the picture burned completely. It can now be only seen on the photo.
In 1990s, at the time of glasnost, when the painters got attracted by the topical subjects, Vladimir Kozhukh gave himself to the romantics, painting sceneries, still-lifes. Last year, he made a series of works dedicated to the Christian holidays. And he continues to create a gallery of his muses. But don’t even think of asking about their prototypes. You’d only embarrass the master with this tactless question.
Author of the article: Irina Yudina
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