Free course - “Communism-Art” is being brought to Barnaul, an exhibition of works by legendary Siberian punks. Paintings of Russian rockers “Brandrealism” with a dadaistic heart from Sergei Shnurov

There is an opinion that a talented person is talented in everything. Many famous Russian rock musicians are no strangers to painting. Some show their paintings and sculptures at exhibitions, others simply paint covers for albums or sketches for themselves and friends. We provide you with the opportunity to evaluate the depth of the musicians’ artistic talent and draw your own conclusions about it. And about talent “in everything,” in particular.

Let's start with the master of Russian rock - Boris Grebenshchikov

BG, despite all his merits and popularity, is not prone to various forms of “star fever”. His paintings, in which experts see elements of expressionism, surrealism and primitivism, attract attention with ironic and social overtones.

But they are filled with metaphors and analogies, allusions, and appeals to hidden meaning. In an interview, the father of Russian rock admitted that he enjoys the process of drawing, and the opportunity to convey his feelings in another way, besides music.

Subject paintings on the theme of the Communist Party:

The leader of the world proletariat is aiming for the Tsar-Father. Boris Grebenshchikov

Other works:

Sunrise over the sea. Boris Grebenshchikov

The heart of St. Petersburg. Boris Grebenshchikov

Armen Grigoryan

Armen Grigoryan, the leader of "Crematorium", also draws, and considers his work to be a complement to music. Having spent his time enjoying the workshops of his artist friends, he eventually took up the brush himself. This is what came out of it.

Ilya Lagutenko

Ilya Lagutenko, aka Mumiy Troll, is an orientalist by training. His grandfather and father were famous architects, perhaps this gave Ilya such versatile creative potential. He is a singer, musician, artist, actor and even a writer.

“Autumn”, Ilya Lagutenko

Golden Gate, Ilya Lagutenko (“Mumiy Troll”)

“Brandrealism” with a dadaistic heart from Sergei Shnurov

The extraordinary, shocking Sergei Shnurov, leader of the group “Leningrad”, now “Ruble”, is an artist by training. He writes in his own genre, which he calls “brand realism.”

In the Hermitage. Sergey Shnurov

Oil, Sergey Shnurov

Act, Sergey Shnurov

Victor Tsoi

Singer and actor, Viktor Tsoi, one of the most significant rock idols of Soviet youth. Perhaps because he left young, at the height of his creative life. Making us rethink our messages and think about what he didn't have time to say. Few people know that he was also an artist and woodcarver. He loved to carve small figures from netsuke wood and give them to friends.

His grotesque paintings combine the contradiction of simple, even caricatured forms and deep meaning. Tsoi sold his drawings for 5 rubles so that he wouldn’t come empty-handed to Boris Grebenshchikov’s gatherings. Tsoi did not sell the picture below, but simply gave it to the director Obi Benz in New York.

Over time, the images in V. Tsoi’s paintings acquire features closer to realism, but the musician was unable to work in this direction - his life was tragically cut short.

Yuri Shevchuk

Yuri Shevchuk, another pillar of Russian rock, is also an artist by training. He has been drawing since childhood, but his paintings are quite difficult to find online. One of the most famous is “Time-Beginning”.

Thunderstorm, Yuri Shevchuk

Konstantin Kinchev

Konstantin Kinchev (Panfilov), the leader of the Alisa group, as far as we know, also transfers his perception of the world onto canvas. In his youth, he worked as a milling machine apprentice and graphic designer. He worked as a model at the Surikov School. The most famous, and so far the only work available to fans, is “Self-Portrait” from 1984.

P.S.— the editors of the site thanks the community http://vk.com/army_alisa “Army “Alice”” for clarifications on the publication. In the CD “True and Fairy Tales” (1998, “Rock Encyclopedia” series, electronic publishing house “Kominfo”), illustrations by Konstantin Evgenievich were used in the design.

K. E. Kinchev, CD “Facts and Fairy Tales”, illustrations

Andrey Knyazev

The Sinister Prince, aka Andrei Knyazev, from the group “The King and the Clown” is not lacking in artistic talent. His paintings, mainly based on the band’s work, are perceived as illustrations to the lyrics.

Egor Letov: “Communism-Art”

Yegor Letov's Dadaist collages are dedicated to the collapse of the union and the difficult changes in Russia in the 80s and 90s, when yesterday's values rapidly lost all meaning and were suitable only for stained glass windows and collages.

Collage “Good”, Egor Letov

These collages were made by Egor Letov, Oleg Sudakov and Konstantin Ryabinov in the late 80s and early 90s. At this time they formulated: “Living and creating in the glorious and stormy time of Armageddon, we affirm the total shame and disgrace of human existence - all its slobbering match culture, all its picky virtues, its manna blessings, shoulder codes, hand-to-hand hopes and worm-intricate nature."

The exhibition will be held as part of Design Week in Barnaul - as an example of the art of graphic design 20 years ago.

“These are wonderful works, and I believe that such an exhibition will be simply a discovery for Barnaul,” says Natalya Tsareva, head of the department of Russian art of the 20th-21st centuries at the regional art museum. — Such an example of a classic collage that one can only dream of. Collage is a technique that unites the artist with the viewer. They see the work - and suddenly it contains a familiar photograph from a newspaper, a piece of wallpaper that they had in childhood...

Russian artists began to work on collages in the tenths of the last century, following Picasso; there was a new surge in the sixties, and then just in the nineties. The time was not so commercialized then. People did things and didn't think they would get paid for it. Now, for example, the most expensive artist in St. Petersburg is Africa. He has the highest fees. Did he think about this in the nineties?

For three days you can go to the exhibition hall of the City Museum and watch how Yegor, even dead, continues to tell what he thinks about our society, our state and each of us individually.

Egor Letov:

— I don’t do things for the intellect at all. I create certain objects that should work in the cultural or non-cultural space of our country. This is the main criterion. So far everything is working. I’m already over forty years old, and in principle I could already die. And I didn’t live my life in vain, but I did a lot of right things that blew someone’s mind, demolished something old, and erected something new. In this sense, I am a provocateur-builder.

Igor (Egor) Fedorovich Letov - leader and founder of the group "Civil Defense", Konstantin Ryabinov (Kuzya Uo) - one of the founders of "Civil Defense", Russian/Soviet punk rock musician, Oleg Sudakov (Manager) - leader of the project "Motherland" ", was the manager and vocalist of the group "Civil Defense".

The exhibition “Communism-Art” will run at the “City” museum from September 22 to 25 at the address: Lenin Ave., 4 / st. L. Tolstoy, 24.

These collages were made by Egor Letov, Oleg Sudakov and Konstantin Ryabinov in the late 80s and early 90s. At this time, they formulated: “Living and creating in the glorious and stormy time of Armageddon, we affirm the total shame and disgrace of human existence - all of its slobbering match culture, all of its picky virtues, its manna blessings, shoulder codes, hand-to-hand hopes and worm-intricate nature"*.

The exhibition will be held as part of Design Week in Barnaul - as an example of the art of graphic design 20 years ago.

These are wonderful works, and I believe that such an exhibition for Barnaul will be simply a revelation,” says Natalia Tsareva, head of the department of Russian art of the XX-XXI centuries of the regional art museum. - Such an example of a classic collage that one can only dream of. Collage is a technique that unites the artist with the viewer. They see the work - and suddenly it contains a familiar photograph from a newspaper, a piece of wallpaper that they had in childhood...

For three days you can go to the exhibition hall of the City Museum and watch how Yegor, even dead, continues to tell what he thinks about our society, our state and each of us individually.

*Magazine “Counterculture”, No. 1, 1989. Manifesto “Conceptualism within.”

Quote

Egor Letov:

I don't do things for intelligence at all. I create certain objects that should work in the cultural or non-cultural space of our country. This is the main criterion. So far everything is working. I’m already over forty years old, and in principle I could already die. And I didn’t live my life in vain, but I did a lot of right things that blew someone’s mind, demolished something old, and erected something new. In this sense, I am a provocateur-builder.

Reference

Fact

The exhibition “Communism-Art” will run at the “City” museum from September 22 to 25 at the address: Lenin Ave., 4 / st. L. Tolstoy, 24.

Poems by Yegor Letov

Dembel song

A brave word struck the ice,

A heart flashed, a machine gun went up,

Roads flooded, bridges trembled.

Wait a little, you can rest too.

My glory, glory, ringing yoke,

Juicy ditch, watchful thorn,

Funeral foam, crow soot,

If there is a change, I will rest too.

Late fatigue on your shoulder,

How long do we have left, how much more do we have?

How much space do we have, how much gray hair?

How much shame do we have, how much winter do we have?

My memory, my memory, tell me about it

How we died in the blue sky,

How we waited, how we didn’t wait,

How we didn't give up, how we didn't give up.

My grief, my grief, rain in the morning.

Rainbow over the field, banner in the wind.

Cold, anxiety, war holidays.

Be patient a little, we’ll rest too.

This is how the steel was tempered

The pretty aunt was dragged to the basement,

People were loaded into freight cars,

Confident dads continued to teach:

This is how the steel was tempered.

The treacherous uncle was led to execution,

The Kremlin chimes rang the all-clear,

The abandoned body was bitten by the moon,

Skillfully scribbling on his chest:

This is how the steel was tempered.

The treacherous uncle was led to execution,

Blind eyewitnesses said: “Fate!”

Confident dads continued the hike,

Leaving orders with red-hot blades:

this is how the steel was tempered

History was made with a hardened blade,

History was destroyed with a hardened blade,

History was stabbed with a hardened bayonet,

The guilty story was discarded.

This is how the steel was tempered.

Blind thorn

Here comes the pioneer

He has no eyes

He has a HURRAY

And even then not his.

And instead of a face, the pioneer has only a blind thorn.

Here comes the girl

She has no legs

She has a hand

And even then not hers.

And instead of a face, the girl has a blind eyesore.

Here comes the major

He has no tears

He has a star

And even then for the chase,

And instead of a face, the major has only a blind thorn.

Here comes Ivan Govnov,

He has no words

He has one thought

And even then it’s not his,

And instead of a face, Ivan has only a blind thorn.

And instead of a face, Govnov has only a blind thorn,

From the first frames of the film, there is a feeling of a fairy tale (the adjective “magical” in this case is not evaluative, but functional), although we are talking about matters that are disgusting and unsympathetic: closed cities, visits from the secret police, the icy Siberian wind or the rough neck of a locally made guitar. And the more tangible details appear, the less it becomes clear where, in fact, what comes from - well, yes, Chris Cutler's records, yes, the Novosibirsk rock festival, yes, the company of his older brother, but all this does not predict and does not explains to the end the emergence of such a powerful virus as “Civil Defense” appeared in the second half of the eighties. Her work really has a distinctly viral nature, which is probably why there is simply nothing more to add in this language; here you can either act within the framework of a general initiatory infection, or look for an antidote, which, as practice shows, can take more than a decade.

However, Letov was always distinguished by the extremely clear organization of his own myth, and it would be strange if he did not leave any pointers for the further unfolding of this myth. I think that he always had a backup method - the method of the group "Communism" (it is no coincidence that they are still touring to this day), and in a sense, today any conversation about Letov (if it is not his direct speech) is still automatically communism -art, be it the extremely meaningful comments of Sergei Zharikov or simply someone’s childish delight. And the film “Healthy and Eternal” one way or another meets the declared principles of communism art, which precisely allows for both careful work in the archives and free improvisation.

Photo: Beat Films

The narrative is constructed like a collage: Soviet announcers on TV are suddenly replaced by our left-wing contemporary, the philosopher Alexei Tsvetkov. The film was made for such an academically long time that some of the speakers on the screen simply had time to die (Cherny Lukich). If you look closely, this film is actually about writing by hand, one of the main characters here is Letov’s neat handwriting, and this film is in a sense a dedication to his ability and desire to record everything that is inescapable. (Letov, for example, once told me that he felt uneasy about unsigned cassettes; any unidentified music seemed to him a crafty and dark matter.) “When we write something absolutely incomprehensible, this is the essence,” he ponderously summarizes in the film Kuzma (Konstantin “Kuzya Uo” Ryabinov, guitarist, one of the founders of Civil Defense. - Note ed.).

Photo: Beat Films

This is the second performance about Letov in a year - in the fall the premiere of the play “Shine” took place, where Alisa Khazanova consistently and deftly turns Letov’s songs into comic couplets, zongs and romances (which again clearly fits within the boundaries of the above-mentioned communism art). What for me personally does not quite fit into the framework of communism art and certainly goes far beyond comments and memories is one fact that flashed through “Healthy and Eternal.” According to the film, it turns out that Letov began writing songs in Kraskovo, near Moscow, around 1983. But the problem is that I spent my entire childhood in Kraskovo - including 1983. I was always sure that I only caught the “Defense” virus in high school, but it turned out that this theoretically could have happened earlier. In the end, the dacha village of Kraskovo was not particularly densely populated, and now, naturally, it seems to me that a whisper was already born before the lips and, walking at the age of nine with a net along the banks of the Pekhorka River, I could meet a strange young man in glasses, only... only starting all that nonsense, which will subsequently earn the two highest and most obvious points: healthy and eternal.