Project “Cai Guoqiang. October" in Pushkinsky became a landmark

Over the past three decades, art Cai Guoqiang- one of the most famous Chinese artists in the world, has been presented at almost all major international exhibitions, and listing all his awards would be too long. Suffice it to say that in 1999 he was awarded the Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York he did a project dedicated to the anniversary of September 11, and in China he expanded the Great Wall of China by 10 km and was a special effects artist at the Olympics in Beijing. A stage designer by training, Cai Guoqiang carefully builds the dramaturgy of his works, and combines entertainment with Eastern philosophy.

Installation "Autumn"

Exhibition “Cai Guoqiang. October" at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts. Pushkin has been receiving numerous visitors for more than a month now - on the steps of the museum, each person entering is greeted by a gigantic installation “Autumn” - part of the exhibition, which the artist himself calls “a monument to collective utopia.” The birches planted in the summer during installation gradually turn yellow, and this is also part of the artist’s plan, who in his large-scale work expressed the course of history, the change of seasons, and the birth and death of all living things.

Cai Guoqiang during the installation of the installation. Photo: Raul Skrylev.

Alexandra Danilova, curator of the project “Cai Guoqiang. October”, for almost two years, at different stages of preparation for the exhibition, she worked with the artist and his team - during this time, Cai Guoqiang came to Russia three times, even before the opening. About why the project became significant for the museum and for the artist himself, how the creative process works in Tsai Guoqiang’s studio, and how Russian viewers enriched the artistic concept of Alexandra Danilova, the site’s observer, Elena Rubinova, spoke.

About the uniqueness of the project

Cai Guoqiang is an artist working in the genre of total installation, and of course, he thinks in categories familiar to contemporary art museums, in categories of global space, which required a certain flexibility from us, as a classical museum.

For Cai Guoqiang, the current project has also become significant, not only because this is his first exhibition in Russia. Collaboration with us in some way marked a new direction in Tsai’s creative activity, namely interaction with more classical museum institutions, and not just his usual museums of contemporary art. Immediately after us, he opens an exhibition at the Prado Museum, and there he will even be given the right to create his works in the genre of gunpowder painting right within the walls of the museum. He is currently preparing an exhibition at the Uffizi Gallery. It must be said that he already had an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, but there the main object was located on the roof, and the current exhibition and subsequent European institutions involve the use of museum space.

About the theatricality of the project

The fact is that Cai Guoqiang is a theater artist by training (he graduated from the Faculty of Scenography of the Shanghai Academy of Arts) and his exhibitions are performances that are performed in front of an audience and which should awaken a variety of feelings in the viewer.

A huge mountain made of cribs, strollers and cradles, blocking the entrance to the museum, is precisely that direct statement, filled with metaphorical meanings. The connection of a person with roots and history is personified by baby strollers and cribs, through which Russian birch trees rise upward. On the other hand, it was important for Tsai that these were objects that were not produced in a factory yesterday, but had already been used by people and had gone through a certain life cycle of the thing. In this sense, by the way, the museum also received a new experience from a crowdfunding campaign for collecting strollers and cribs. Each donated stroller or crib already has a certain history, an anthropomorphic dimension. And this was also important for the artist’s plan. History in general, in Tsai’s understanding, is a multi-component process, and the history of the twentieth century was made up of human lives, and each event has multiple associations and different experiences of a particular moment.

There are also some subtexts that the audience brings in and which the artist did not initially even think about. So, for example, the Russian audience reacted to this mountain unambiguously - stroller - step - Sergei Eisenstein« Battleship Potemkin. It is difficult to imagine what could be even more connected with the revolution among Russian viewers. Initially, Tsai somehow tried to fight this reading, but when he himself placed the most terrible stroller with a torn off wheel on top, I realized that he had come to terms with this metaphor and had even consciously tried to strengthen this association.

Installation of the installation at the entrance to the main building. Photo: Raul Skrylev.

The Russian audience, especially older people, brought another interesting understanding that was not intended by the artist. They often say that they see the motif of a cemetery - fences, birch trees, and in fact they even continued the artist’s metaphor - life from birth to death, which ties in with one of the artist’s main themes in this exhibition - this is the theme “me and we”, the theme "man and history".

Next, the viewer is greeted by the continuation of the installation - a luminous theatrical sky on white Chinese silk stretched over the stairs, and on it a line of the Internationale scorched with gunpowder in Russian - “no one will give us deliverance, not God, not the tsar and not the hero...”. At the end of the quote, Tsai puts an ellipsis, returning the viewer to the problem of the singular and the plural, the problem of memory - collective, which is always controversial, and personal.

Installation "People"

The object is composite, it was made in 2012

The concept of the exhibition is dedicated to Russian history and for the canvas “River of Life”, which “fits” one hundred years from 1917 to 2017, Tsai selects one hundred photographs taken in Russia and representing different fragments of Russian life. Moreover, it should be noted that there are almost no significant events, and mostly we see everyday photographs and people of various classes and nations. The viewer finds here recognizable archetypes that do not even have a strict time reference - a Caucasian family, street children, factory workers, students at their desks, soldiers in tunics, banners and a crowd on the street. Tsai turns to an experience that the viewer can perceive as personal; the general becomes part of life too. In the final part of the canvas “River of Life”, Tsai also places his portrait - a photograph of the 90s, when he was in Moscow as a tourist. This is a photograph of him in the Tretyakov Gallery against the background of his favorite painting by I. Kramskoy “The Stranger,” which he himself, an aspiring artist, copied a lot in his time, imitating the traditions of Russian art, which always meant a lot to him. And it is interesting that his current attitude to Russian art - a mature contemporary artist with a worldwide reputation - is still ambivalent: this approach combines vivid childhood memories and the sober professional view of the artist. So, having visited St. Petersburg and sharing his impressions with me, Tsai said that from the point of view of art, the most interesting artist for him is- Mikhail Vrubel. No less exciting, Tsai said, was for him to trace the influence of impressionism on the early Kustodiev, but at the same time he spent an entire hour in front of Aivazovsky’s “The Ninth Wave”, and the canonical Shishkin inspires no less admiration for him. For him, who grew up during the years of the cultural revolution in China, Russia, and before the USSR, was in many ways a kind of dream country. And this is also reflected in the works.

If Cai Guoqiang calls the installation in front of the museum entrance “a monument to collective utopia,” then the canvas “Garden of Dreams” is a garden of social utopia, and before- garden of ideologies. To one degree or another, everyone lives in the world of utopia, but the artist talks about the need to step aside so as not to fall into illusoryness. Talking with Tsai, I realized that he allows for another reading, in which the public and the personal, the general and the individual, intersect. Each of us also has a small garden, and this is also a human characteristic of living with dreams and ideals.

Cai Guoqiang is the only artist in the world who works using the gunpowder painting method. Gunpowder, as we know, was invented in Ancient China, but the Chinese perception of gunpowder does not coincide with the European one, in which it is associated mainly with weapons and death, while in China it is something joyful, and above all fireworks, a holiday.

The process of creating gunpowder painting. Photo: Raul Skrylev.

About Cai Guoqiang's studio

About the fate of the exhibition

Material prepared by: Elena Rubinova

The material uses photographs by Raul Skrylev,

and the press service of the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin.

About the uniqueness of the project

For the Pushkin Museum, this project turned out to be unique in many ways, but also because until now we have never worked under the commission system, which assumes that a project is commissioned from an artist exclusively for our museum. Of course, the project will be documented and preserved, but, according to the rules, even if the artist exhibits some of the works presented at the exhibition, he will always stipulate that it was created for the Pushkin Museum.

The second fundamental novelty of this exhibition was that until the last moment we worked with non-existent works - only 8 objects were brought from New York, including the exhibit “Earth” - part of the central installation in the White Hall of the museum. Everything else was created here in Moscow, and, in fact, until the very last days before the opening, no one fully understood what it would look like in the end. Cai Guoqiang is an artist working in the genre of total installation, and of course, he thinks in categories familiar to contemporary art museums, in categories of global space, which required a certain flexibility from us, as a classical museum.

And this exhibition is also very personal for Tsai. Although he does not openly state this, I got the impression that he dedicated it to his father, an artist and calligrapher who had a great influence on him, and the intimate part of the exhibition is traditional Chinese ink painting on small boxes on which he was once forced was written by his father.

About the theatricality of the project

The exhibition can be purely conditionally divided into segments, but rather it is one large work, starting at the main entrance, it seems to invade and continue inside the museum. Working a lot over the past year with this artist, and reflecting on his priorities, I realized that for him working with space is not so important as working with the viewer. The fact is that Cai Guoqiang is a theater artist by training (he graduated from the Faculty of Scenography of the Shanghai Academy of Arts) and his exhibitions are performances that are performed in front of an audience and which should awaken a variety of feelings in the viewer. A huge mountain made of cribs, strollers and cradles, blocking the entrance to the museum, is precisely that direct statement, filled with metaphorical meanings. The connection of a person with roots and history is personified by baby strollers and cribs, through which Russian birch trees rise upward. On the other hand, it was important for Tsai that these were objects that were not produced in a factory yesterday, but had already been used by people and had gone through a certain life cycle of the thing. In this sense, by the way, the museum also received a new experience from a crowdfunding campaign for collecting strollers and cribs. Each donated stroller or crib already has a certain history, an anthropomorphic dimension. And this was also important for the artist’s plan. History in general, in Tsai’s understanding, is a multi-component process, and the history of the 20th century was made up of human lives, and each event has multiple associations and different experiences of a particular moment.

There are also some subtexts that the audience brings in and which the artist did not initially even think about. So, for example, the Russian audience reacted to this mountain unambiguously - stroller - step - Sergei Eisenstein “Battleship Potemkin”. It is difficult to imagine what could be even more connected with the revolution among Russian viewers. Initially, Tsai somehow tried to fight this reading, but when he himself placed the most terrible stroller with a torn off wheel on top, I realized that he had come to terms with this metaphor and had even consciously tried to strengthen this association.

The Russian audience, especially older people, brought another interesting understanding that was not intended by the artist. They often say that they see the motif of the cemetery - fences, birch trees, and in fact they even continued the artist’s metaphor - life from birth to death, which ties in with one of the artist’s main themes in this exhibition - this is the theme “me and we”, the theme "man and history". Next, the viewer is greeted by the continuation of the installation - a luminous theatrical sky on white Chinese silk stretched over the stairs, and on it a line of the Internationale scorched with gunpowder in Russian - “no one will give us deliverance, not God, not the tsar and not the hero...”. At the end of the quote, Tsai puts an ellipsis, returning the viewer to the problem of the singular and the plural, the problem of memory - collective, which is always controversial, and personal.

About the field, the river of life and the garden of dreams

The exhibition reaches its climax in the White Hall, where the work is located, which the author called “The People”, deliberately, following the lines of the International, referring to communist terminology. The work consists of four parts - a field that symbolizes the Russian fertile land, a river of life, a garden of dreams and a soaring kite at the very end. The Earth object was the only object brought to Moscow, and we used sea transportation for the first time - the museum had never done this before. The object is composite, it was made in 2012 year for the series of works “Art for Aliens”, held in Los Angeles, and in this fertile field there were completely different signs, and on the ceiling. Here, on the field, images of a sickle and a hammer appeared, and this is best seen in the reflection on the mirrored ceiling-sky. But reflection, of course, is not quite the same as reality. The field itself is a rather unique object; it consists of 2 million blades of grass, each of them is dried and processed and a wire is inserted into each, and in the wooden panels there are 2 million holes into which the blade of grass is manually lowered. True, a cross-cultural difference crept in here, since in our understanding the golden field of a grain field is wheat or, in extreme cases, rye, but in the end it turned out that millet grows in the field. But as an image, especially from afar, it works. On the left is the canvas “River of Life”, and on the right is “Garden of Dreams”, one in Cai Guoqiang’s traditional black and white gunpowder painting, the other in color.

About real and fictional Russia

The concept of the exhibition is dedicated to Russian history and for the canvas “River of Life”, which “fits” one hundred years from 1917 to 2017, Tsai selects one hundred photographs taken in Russia and representing different fragments of Russian life. Moreover, it should be noted that there are almost no significant events, and mostly we see everyday photographs and people of various classes and nations. The viewer finds here recognizable archetypes that do not even have a strict time reference - a Caucasian family, street children, factory workers, students at their desks, soldiers in tunics, banners and a crowd on the street. Tsai turns to an experience that the viewer can perceive as personal; the general becomes part of life too. In the final part of the canvas “River of Life”, Tsai also places his portrait - a photograph of the 90s, when he was in Moscow as a tourist. This is a photograph of him in the Tretyakov Gallery against the background of his favorite painting by I. Kramskoy “The Stranger,” which he himself, an aspiring artist, copied a lot in his time, imitating the traditions of Russian art, which always meant a lot to him. And it is interesting that his current attitude to Russian art - a mature contemporary artist with a worldwide reputation - is still ambivalent: this approach combines vivid childhood memories and the sober professional view of the artist. So, having visited St. Petersburg and sharing his impressions with me, Tsai said that from the point of view of art, the most interesting artist for him is Mikhail Vrubel. No less exciting, Tsai said, was for him to trace the influence of impressionism on the early Kustodiev, but at the same time he spent an entire hour in front of Aivazovsky’s “The Ninth Wave”, and the canonical Shishkin inspires no less admiration for him. For him, who grew up during the years of the cultural revolution in China, Russia, and before the USSR, was in many ways a kind of dream country. And this is also reflected in the works.

If Cai Guoqiang calls the installation at the entrance to the museum “a monument to collective utopia,” then the painting “Garden of Dreams” is a garden of social utopia, and before that a garden of ideologies. To one degree or another, everyone lives in the world of utopia, but the artist talks about the need to step aside so as not to fall into illusoryness. Talking with Tsai, I realized that he allows for another reading, in which the public and the personal, the general and the individual, intersect. Each of us also has a small garden, and this is also a human characteristic of living with dreams and ideals.

About gunpowder calligraphy and gunpowder painting techniques

it is associated mainly with weapons and death, whereas in China it is something joyful, and above all fireworks, a holiday. For Tsai, gunpowder painting is a combination of traditional Chinese culture and contemporary art, to which this artist belongs.

Gunpowder painting is both very simple and very difficult at the same time. Part of the exhibition demonstrates how works are created using the gunpowder painting method. For the first time, Cai Guoqiang gives viewers the opportunity to look into the process of creating his works - we see gunpowder tests. Gunpowder behaves differently, and this is a necessary preparatory step. Tsai then makes preliminary drawings, from which stencils are cut out and placed on a primed canvas to create a figurative image. For complex posters, this is laser cutting. Then gunpowder is poured in, covered with non-flammable cloth or thick cardboard to limit the access of oxygen, a cord is laid inside and set on fire. The main technology is to prevent open fire. Creating even large-scale works takes seconds, but the author himself does not fully know what will happen. While creating the painting, we had volunteers stand one meter apart from each other with wet towels in case of fire. As the artist wrote in one of his articles, the main thing is not to light it, but to put it out in time.

About Cai Guoqiang's studio

Cai Guoqiang's team and studio function like one big family, from dining together at a large table (Tsai even has a chef) to such gestures as inviting and paying for the studio's relatives of the curator to come to the opening of the exhibition in Moscow. The relationships between Tsai's team members are very human, despite the fact that sometimes everyone gets frustrated with the 24-hour work schedule and understands that Tsai is an artist of incredible efficiency. And without the understanding and support of the team, much would have been impossible.

About the fate of the exhibition

Although the exhibition was created for the museum and at our request, all exhibits are considered the property of the studio and will go back to New York. But we hope that perhaps some of what was created will remain in Moscow and, of course, we started talking about the fact that after the end of the exhibition we would be happy to accept some of Tsai’s works into the museum’s collection,but the decision to donate anything is made not by the artist himself, but by the entire studio team.

The theme of the program “Museum Chambers” on Saturday, September 30 is the Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang and his exhibition at the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin.

The guest of the program is the curator of the exhibition Alexandra Danilova, deputy head of the department of art of European and American countries of the 19th – 20th centuries.

Facade of the Pushkin Museum named after. Pushkin has now taken on a somewhat unusual appearance. More precisely, it is almost invisible at all behind the installation of Cai Guoqiang, whose exhibition is being held in the main building of the museum.

The installation is made up of trees and... cots, strollers and cradles. In the summer they were specially collected around Moscow for this work.

The view of the large hall with a colonnade is no less unusual.

In its center is the installation “Earth”, and it is really made up of plant stems.

Well, in order to better see the drawing, you should raise your eyes to the ceiling, which has temporarily become mirrored.

This, however, is understandable to us from a technology point of view. But two large panels on the sides of the hall - what are they? It looks like painting. But the explanation says: canvas - and not oil, not acrylic, not tempera, but... gunpowder!

But before we move on to talking about technology, let's see where the author started.

Yes, that's it. Quite academic painting, and not in the traditional Chinese, but in the European style (almost an imitation of Levitan).

Well, over time, the author came up with the idea of using pyrotechnics to create his works. Is this painting or performance? On the one hand, the author uses stencils to create his works. On the other hand, the effect of burning gunpowder - that is, an explosion - can never be fully predicted. Well, the process itself is, of course, spectacular.

And here, by the way, is a self-portrait of the artist.

Bow to Malevich - black square.

And one of the large compositions for the Moscow exhibition - “River” - was performed in exactly this manner. The images are based on old photographs from Soviet newspapers.

Well, okay, these are all black and white works, the viewer will say. But colored ones are probably just ordinary painting?

And here are the compositions for Moscow.

Chronicle of production (the case took place at VDNKh).

Video documentation of the process is also presented in the halls of the Pushkin Museum.

Text: Tatyana Pelipeyko

Some of the images were kindly provided by the press service of the Pushkin Museum.

A formidable weapon as a means to express love, show the beauty of the world and create works of art. Who would have thought that gunpowder could be used for such purposes? Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang will show the Moscow public how to paint with ashes, how to make an explosion peaceful and prove that a child’s tear outweighs all historical cataclysms.

The White Hall of the Pushkin Museum as you have never seen it before. Underfoot is a symbol of the era. Overhead is a reflection of the era. In some places the spikelet was trampled down, in others they were straightened. Those who are mounting the exhibition already have dazzle in their eyes. And the one who invented it is full of enthusiasm.

This is how Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang looked at the Soviet hammer and sickle from what seems like an infinite number of angles. Inspired by the 1917 revolution, he brought an exhibition to Moscow. I sowed the hall of the Pushkin Museum with millet. And he staged several explosions in one of the VDNH pavilions.

Several dozen spectators and assistants. Well, Cai Guoqiang can’t create in a small workshop. Calls himself a master of gunpowder painting. Explosion. The canvas is covered with ash. There is a stencil under the ashes, which means the design will appear only where it is needed.

I will give a sign when to start extinguishing; there is no need to approach areas that are not affected by the explosion.

Born in China. Lived in Japan. Currently working in New York. Once he preferred air to canvas, and gunpowder to paints. His pyrotechnic shows are like Impressionist paintings bursting out of museum frames.

The canvas “River” is also a gunpowder technique. Stencils - 100 photographs with the main events of the century. Mixed into one large portrait of the era: the faces of the soldiers at the front and the eyes of the builders of a bright future. But we still need to find them here. Think about the meaning and look for images.

“This is about human life, individual life is very important. Like Dostoevsky, a child’s tear outweighs all historical shocks,” says the director of the State Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkina Marina Loshak.

A painting within a painting. Here Tsai hid Kramskoy’s “Portrait of a Stranger.” He loves Russian artists. He admits that in the Tretyakov Gallery he cries with delight. And he takes pictures all the time.

“On the eve of the exhibition, I decided to look at the painting again in the Tretyakov Gallery. I was surprised when I saw that someone was copying it and decided to take a selfie in front of the background. And yesterday, when I painted my painting “The River,” I decided to put it at the end of the river in order to combine the history of my personal life with the history of Russia,” said Cai Guoqiang.

Tsai is putting on an exhibition about the revolution, and at the same time creating her own. In space. The cold classicism of the building of the Pushkin Museum also exploded with its objects. Not only inside, but also outside.

Classical art hid behind modern art. This is what the entrance to the museum looks like now: dozens and dozens of cribs and strollers. Birch trees seem to grow from them. There are so many symbols of new life at once. With this huge installation, Pushkinsky shows that he is ready to let the wind of change into his windows.

“We live in a temple, but the temple definitely needs to be ventilated. And, of course, there must be the living air of today’s life, and of course based on the best examples,” says the director of the State Museum of Fine Arts. A. S. Pushkina Marina Loshak.

The hidden facade and the now closed courtyard, where people used to line up to get into the museum, are discussed in Moscow no less than the future exhibition. Some people understand, some don't. A common thing for a modern artist.

“There was Rembrandt and Goya. When they appeared, they also raised many questions among their contemporaries. And here the question is that the artist is ahead of his time, feeling it very subtly,” says exhibition curator Alexandra Danilova.

Some condemn, others help the master create. Muscovites brought old strollers and cribs here. The artist considers those who once rocked these cradles and those who once slept in them to be his main co-authors.

Exhibition halls
(Denezhny Lane, 32/35, metro station "Smolenskaya")

Exhibition
"Attraction"
Personal exhibition of Chinese artist Shu Cong.

Exhibition time:
from September 22 to October 28, 2018

Shu Tsun received his artistic education in St. Petersburg at the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E. Repin (1999-2005). His teachers were Honored Artists of Russia S.D. Kichko and V.V. Zagonek. In his work, the artist combined the seemingly incompatible art of East and West, the principles of the Chinese national school with the classical, realistic artistic system of Russian painting.

Today, Shu Cong carefully preserves and passes on the system of academic knowledge to the new generation, teaching at the Institute of Fine Arts of Central China Normal University (Wuhan). Member of the St. Petersburg Union of Artists.

Fine art, like music or literature, has its own laws, in order to achieve certain heights, you need to comprehend them and introduce your own, new ones. Therefore, the Chinese artist Shu Tsun followed this path, receiving a fundamental art education within the walls of the Institute of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture named after I.E. Repin in St. Petersburg. Under the leadership of Honored Artists of Russia S.D. Kichko and V.V. Zagonek mastered the secrets of painting.

Based on the knowledge acquired at the institute, Shu Tsun, returning to his homeland, turned to the origins of his national culture. In his work, he combined the seemingly incompatible art of the East and the West. The artist masterfully combines the principles of the Chinese national school with the classical, realistic artistic system of Russian painting in his canvases.

The works of the Chinese painter Shu Cong shown at the exhibition allow us to imagine how diverse the paths of creative quest of the artist can be, who went from a student at the Repin Academy of Arts to a teacher of painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of the Central Normal University of China, who returned to Russia a decade later in order to introduce the Moscow spectator with his art.

This year, we are all, willingly or unwillingly, trying to comprehend the tragedy of the Russian Revolution and the hundred years that our country lived after this colossal break in its history. Just as it is impossible to imagine art that exists without a historical context, it is also impossible not to reflect such a date in the artistic life of Russia, provoking reflection on the event itself, its consequences for the country and the whole world, and the results of the past hundred years. Many museums, galleries and other art institutions presented their projects dedicated to the centenary of the Russian Revolution. Tomorrow at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, perhaps the most provocative, but, without a doubt, the most striking exhibition related to this topic opens - “October” by the famous Chinese artist and pyrotechnician Cai Guoqiang.

Why did one of the main museums of our country turn to a modern author with such a topic, albeit an eminent one, repeatedly awarded, in demand in the world's leading museums, but still a foreigner? Such questions are quite understandable, but they disappear when you see what this author brought to Moscow and how he showed us our history from the outside - as if he lived it with us.

October of one boy

Cai Guoqiang was born in 1957 in China into the family of a historian and artist. In his childhood, he had the opportunity to see an era of great changes in China and feel the consequences of the Russian revolution in his country, so the theme of childhood and the theme of the coup remained a single memory for him.

The artist’s worldview and his formation as an author were greatly influenced by Russian art, with which he was familiar since childhood thanks to China’s close ties with the Soviet Union. The master has retained his admiration and respect for the paintings of Levitan, Kramskoy, Malevich, Plastov, Moiseenko, and Laktionov to this day. In his essay “One Boy's October,” Cai Guoqiang writes:

“How incomprehensible Russian culture seemed to us, the Chinese, then! So vast that for us it was the true expression of a foreign culture, the true expression of the West for the East.<…>And although after the deterioration of relations between the USSR and China, the word “Russia” suddenly disappeared from the cultural life of the Chinese people, Russian culture remained a strong foundation that fed the minds of “cultured youth.”

Konstantin Maksimov. Portrait of a Chinese sailor. 1956. Oil on canvas.

Cai Guoqiang was almost in awe of his teacher at the Shanghai Theater Academy, Zhou Benyi, who at one time studied at the Repin Academy of Arts in Leningrad. And the story of the Russian painter Konstantin Maksimov, who visited China in 1955-1957, especially affected the master’s preferences. The Soviet artist not only taught the best Chinese students the techniques of oil painting, but also seriously influenced several generations of masters of the Celestial Empire, including Cai Guoqiang, who subsequently collected an impressive collection of Maximov’s works and recently fulfilled his dream of visiting the artist’s grave in Russia. Mr. Tsai brought several paintings by Maksimov and matchboxes with his father’s drawings to an exhibition in Moscow.

Cai Ruiqin. Drawings on matchboxes. Matchboxes, pen, ink.

Smell the gunpowder

The study of stage design led Cai Guoqiang to turn to various media technologies, installation, video, performance and a new technique for the art world - gunpowder painting. Living in Japan from 1986 to 1995, the master began to use this original Chinese material in an unexpected way - in creating his pyrotechnic installations.

The exhibition at the Pushkin Museum shows several large-scale panels made by the artist using monochrome or tinted gunpowder, as well as details of the preparatory work for these amazing works. The author conceived them specifically for the Moscow project and made them in the presence of the public in one of the VDNKh pavilions, officially provided for this event. The process of creation itself impresses with its beauty and power, when the artist explodes a carefully prepared structure on canvas or silk, and before the eyes of the audience a unique and largely unpredictable composition is born, which has no analogues in its strength and expressiveness. Watching the birth of a new masterpiece, you never tire of admiring the genius of the master, who retained in adulthood his childish delight in the beauty of the world and passion for his spontaneous and dangerous art. Cai Guoqiang calls himself a big child and considers a positive and joyful outlook on life to be the main driving force of his creativity.

The main exhibit of the exhibition in the White Hall of the museum is a single composition of several elements, filled with allegories and meanings. The center of the hall is occupied by a twenty-meter installation “Earth” made of ears of grain, on which a pattern in the form of a sickle and hammer is applied, reflected in the same huge mirror suspended from the ceiling.

Earth. 2017. Plywood, plants, polymer mirror film.

On the left wall stretches the gunpowder composition “River” - a meandering stream of images melting in the glow of explosions and shocks. The narrative begins as if from negatives of old pre-revolutionary photographs, when life was calm and measured. Further, the rhythm and intensity of the explosions becomes more frequent, the images become blurred and lost in the gunpowder smoke. Collectivization and industrialization were followed by an almost hopelessly dark period - the Great Patriotic War. Continuing further, the river of time flows into today, in the light of which one can discern a selfie of Cai Guoqiang himself in the Tretyakov Gallery against the backdrop of the work of Kramskoy, so revered by him.

River. 2017. Canvas, gunpowder.

Life lives

Tongues of flame, fast lines drawn by explosions, and images of people melting in a flickering dark mass excite the imagination, evoke countless associations and emotions, as complex and multifaceted as the history of our country in the 20th century. Here, the innovative technique of the Chinese author perfectly reflects both the tragedy of the century and the depth of the people’s experience of the catastrophes and upheavals that they had to face. However, perhaps due to his slightly outsider view, perhaps in the traditions of Chinese philosophy, which is very close to the artist, with all the diversity and depth of emotions, he managed to maintain a surprisingly peaceful and bright mood of the work. Towards the end of the “river” the inscription in Russian “There is no death” is clearly readable. In the context of this composition, and the general theme of the exhibition, this phrase amazes with its Christian transcendence and unearthly peace. Perhaps it is peace - as the culmination and resolution of all shocks - that is actually the main theme of this exhibition.

River. 2017. Canvas, gunpowder. Fragment.

On the right wall of the hall there is a twenty-meter composition “Garden”, in which, against the background of flowering plants and multi-colored flashes, images of children, old Soviet postcards, and everything that, like flowers through asphalt, sprout in the most difficult and difficult years appear. Children played in the ashes, trees bloomed every spring, people loved each other and their long-suffering homeland. Explosions of color, in some places completely transparent, gentle, in others thick and intense, as if they make up this elusive matter of memory, with which this amazing canvas is written. According to the artist, the image of the garden also symbolizes the rosy hopes with which people sometimes greeted the revolution and which melted away in cruel reality.

Garden. 2017. Canvas, gunpowder. Fragment.

The central composition “Earth” in such proximity sounds especially piercing and tragically submissive. The ears of corn crushed by the sickle and hammer represent the Russian people, who endured all the disasters of the 20th century, and the huge mirror, like an endless sky, reflected its suffering and labor from the heights of times.

Compositions “Earth” and “Garden”.

The final touch to the picture of the century is given by a kite fluttering in the distance, in which it is easy to see a subtle allusion to the image of the artist, and through him, each person with his individuality and spiritual aspirations. And here the association with the gospel lines “The Spirit blows where it will” comes to mind. Among tragedies and wars, beauty, love and the artist’s revitalizing inspiration are born.

On the colonnade, a large screen displays a computer-generated model of the large fireworks display planned by Cai Guoqiang on Red Square to commemorate the revolution. For a number of reasons, this pyrotechnic display did not take place, but it will be shown as a film at the exhibition. To the music of “October” by P.I. Tchaikovsky we will see piercing and deeply touching images created with the help of colored fireworks. Exploring the expressiveness of new technologies for art, the Chinese master created surprisingly emotionally rich and expressive art, ephemeral as smoke, but powerful as gunpowder.

Autumn. 2017. Strollers. Cribs, birch trees.

The last two weeks before the opening of the exhibition, serious debates have been raging on social networks, because the facade of Pushkinsky gradually drowned in the large-scale installation “Autumn”. Indeed, the slender portico is almost completely covered by a 15-meter mountain of Soviet cradles and strollers, in which hundreds of young birch trees were placed. And this forest rustles quietly, turns yellow and will slowly fly around throughout the two months of the exhibition.

The first impression of this composition is some kind of unaccountable childish happiness, vaguely exciting the soul with its elusiveness, vagueness and nostalgia for carefree and joyful years. And I immediately thought of a quote from the scientific works of one of the first Russian gardeners of the 18th century, A.T. Bolotov, - “raising young apple trees.” (The Pushkin Museum has been “raising young birch trees” for two years, and after the exhibition they will be planted in a place already allocated for them.) Touching and thin trees, so tenderly placed in their beds, are collected into a young, but very majestic forest on the mountainside.

And this is the main metaphor contained in Cai Guoqiang’s idea: life always triumphs, new life sprouts from childhood memories, continuing the eternal process of earth renewal with its vital force. And our memories go further and further, acquiring new shoots of other people's stories. And in this irreversibility and inevitability of life, with its joys and sorrows, hopes and disasters, there is amazing strength and pacifying peace. I am happy that we have the opportunity to touch this healing art and, perhaps, find in it answers to the questions of our history and our lives.

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About the author

Art critic, specialist in Byzantine painting, curator of exhibition projects, founder of his own gallery of contemporary art. Most of all I love talking and listening about art. I am married and have two cats. https://www.instagram.com/olga_poluektova_art/