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Metaphysical Landscapes
| Article
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21947 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
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4 / 1991 |
2,088 Words |
| Author
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Cathy Young
Cathy Young is author of Growing Up in Russia. |
Before glasnost and the unprecedented cultural thaw it brought to the Soviet Union, Sergei Potapov's metaphysical landscapes imbued with overtones of Christian and Buddhist mysticism could be shown only at friends' apartments. His one public exhibit, allowed to open at the Jurchatov Institute of Nuclear Physics in Moscow in 1980, was shut down by the authorities within three days.
In 1988, Potapov was admitted to the Artists' Union; more importantly, his works have since appeared in four exhibitions in the Soviet Union (two of them in Moscow), three in Paris, and several others in the United States and Western Europe. In late 1990, his first one-man show opened in Moscow. He has appeared on Soviet television and traveled abroad.
Yet, when Potapov speaks of the extraordinary developments of the past few years, he sounds anything but upbeat.
In his apartment on an embankment of the Moscow River, in a room filled with books and canvases, Potapov talks about the phantasmagorical, often grotesque, nightmarish images that appeared in works of his contemporaries, the Russian avant-gardists of the 1960s: "If in the beginning it was a sort of game, it has unfortunately become a prophecy--a prophecy that is being fulfilled. The nightmare has become something of an everyday reality." What started out as invigorating social and cultural change has become disintegration.
"And this," the slim, soft-spoken artist says gravely, "is an instance of karma, of payment for what was done over decades--the bloodshed, the violence. ...Everyone can see the positive changes; but those in power have not repented, and they are really incapable of repenting, it is beyond them in a karmic sense--and this is part of the nightmare that is emerging, before our very eyes. I recall the words of a friend of mine who is now emigrating to the West: 'You know,' he said, 'half of all the people in this country are butchers and the other half are victims.' If you think about it, it's quite scary."
These are deeply personal reflections for Potapov, whose family included several victims of the Stalinist terror. His maternal grandfather died in the labor camps: "He was an artist and glassworker who had nothing whatsoever to do with politics; but there was an operation to neutralize people of German and Polish extraction, and he was swept up in it because his last name was Braun. Just like everyone was swept up, for nothing at all. My uncle, for instance served ten years automatically,
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