Andrii ZAHDANSKY: “Vagrich was the Art itself”

I still remember the day in November 2009, when documentary director Andrii Zahdansky called me from the US. Just a week before that, we saw him off after his trip to Kyiv. While I prepared to answer to his ironic remarks, I failed to notice how much his voice changed. He said just one phrase: “Vagrich Bakhchanyan died today…” I am ashamed to admit that back then, this name spoke very little to me. However, when I later read his books and saw his hilarious and merciless drawings, cartoons, collages, I realized how much I could have lost if I had not done that.

Zahdansky knew Bakhchanyan. Even before meeting him in person (which, by the way, happened in a curious fashion: writer Oleksandr Henis and his wife Iryna invited Bakhchanyan and Zahdansky over to meet little Herodotus, a cat who later became a prototype for one of Henis’ books), Zahdansky knew about him a lot. He remembered his collages in Literary Newspaper in early 1970s, even though he was a mere boy at that time. He saw book covers of many Russian authors in the US, heard a lot of the artist’s jokes, since people who knew Bakhchanyan quoted them as often, as, Zahdansky thinks, “Kozma Prutkov was quoted in the 19th century.” Indeed, how can one not remember Bakhchanyan’s “I feel a sense of humor for my homeland” while watching modern political talk shows? Or tear themselves away from the Internet, pick up a book, and note that “an eyelash falls on the page in the shape of a bracket”? And what about “the marriage union of soviet socialist republics,” “bad glory of the CPSU,” “beads sewn on a pig’s skin,” “resell motherland”?

There are a lot of such famous phrases. Bakhchanyan’s colleague at the Twelve Chairs Club and Literary Newspaper Igor Makarov wrote about an attempt on the analysis of the artist’s Notebooks: “Studying his art is an unrewarding occupation, equal in its purposelessness to ‘toilet paper for drawing’” [another one of Bakhchanyan’s phrases. – Author]. Journalist and literary critic Vladimir Korkunov added: “It is true, and writing about Bakhchanyan’s book is similar to looking for a verbal needle, which has gotten into a multidimensional space of the free, paradoxical artist, who transformed reality, everything that surrounded him into something he thought should exist according to his taste and views. It would not be correct to call him a post-modernist. Bakhchanyan is so original, that any cliche, any cultural classification would not be able to describe him. He is an artist of word. And that is it… The book starts with: ‘First there was the phrase-mongering.’ And it ends with: ‘I leave my apples for you to take care of them.’ And that is basically it: there was a person, and now there is no more. And there is his personal space between these periods…”

Zahdansky was friends with Bakhchanyan. They celebrated New Year together often: with the Henis family, or with Boris and Evgenia Frumin. Those who read Henis’ books, saw films by Frumin and Zahdansky can burn with “anthracite envy,” while imagining what those New Year nights were like.

Zahdansky always valued Bakhchanyan’s opinion and consulted with him, for example, when he started working on Vasya, a film about Russian painter Vasily Sitnikov who was declared insane by the official Soviet medicine. “It is funny to say,” Zahdansky recollects, “but a lot of my colleagues found the idea of a documentary with animation inserts radically unusual back then. I showed animation material to Bakhchanyan, asked him for an advice about the style. He had a perfect artistic intuition.” (Vasya won the New York Expo jury prize (2002) and diploma at the film festival in Vyborg (2003).

Zahdansky felt and understood Bakhchanyan. He says: “Vagrich did not know English at all. He worked at home. He loved New York. And Central Park. And the Metropolitan Museum. It was like a second home to him. And Central Park was like a third home. Soviet Union was a country of his native language and culture, but it was also a country that was unkind to him. Whether it was Kharkiv, which he was pushed out of, or Moscow, where he had to rent an apartment without official registration. He and Iryna went through a ton of hardships until 1974, the year when they left. But Vagrich was never mad at anyone or anything. He felt a ‘sense of humor for his homeland’ indeed.”

Now, documentary director Zahdansky works on a film about his friend, the artist of word Bakhchanyan. A full-length documentary is called Vagrich and the Black Square. It is going to be a “funny, bitter, smart, sometimes metaphysical film. It is going to be a hybrid, in which documentary material will intertwine with animation and theater. I am thinking about this film every day… I create pictures about things I want to understand. Since all we want to understand about others and the world is what we want to comprehend about ourselves. This desire to ‘comprehend’ creates a strong internal tension. And only the ending of the film promises a release of some sort. That is why I made a film about father [My Father Evgeni. – Author]. And about free people – Vasya and Konstantin and Mouse. And on what art is. And that is why I am making a film about Vagrich. His name means ‘little tiger’ in Armenian. Bakhchanyan was an extraordinary figure. Time will pass, and they will erect a monument in his honor in Kharkiv, I am sure of that. But first, I am going to make a film about him.”

So, that is probably it. I would love to end this by wishing Zahdansky a successful finishing of his picture and a great premiere, but the “staff of life” [Bakhchanyan’s phrase. – Author] is not as slender as it sometimes seems to be.

Vagrich and the Black Square is a film that ends the trilogy about Russian nonconformists. The first two are Vasya and Konstantin and Mouse, they can be viewed online.

Shooting of Vagrich and the Black Square began in September 2012, when private grants appeared. The group filmed the opening of Bakhchanyan’s first personal exhibition in Armenia, artist’s funeral (his wife performed his last will and scattered his ashes high in the Geghama mountains over a stone covered with thousand-year-old petroglyphs), episodes in Kharkiv, where Bakhchanyan was born, in Moscow, where he worked as an artist in the legendary Literary Newspaper, an interview with his friends in Moscow and New York. A few minutes of animation were created as well.

And in January 2013, it turned out, that the crew was out of money for further shootings. The person who promised to finance the film decided not to do it anymore. It happens. Seventy percent of the material was filmed, rough cut was partially done, but the work has stopped.

Now the group has to film some more interviews in New York and Moscow, stage and film one of Bakhchanyan’s absurdist plays, finish animation episodes, purchase rights on a few minutes of archive material in Ukraine.

In April, fundraising to finish the film was launched on a popular American website Kickstarter. About 70 people from various countries responded, they sent as much as they could. The campaign will last until May 23 – Bakhchanyan’s anniversary. There is very little time left, and the director doubts that a minimum sum (30,000 dollars) will be gathered within these few days. It would let the crew carry out the necessary work, but Kickstarter rules are simple and strict – if you do not gather the necessary sum before the deadline (even if it is 29,999 dollars!), the money is not taken from the potential donators. It is all or nothing. And everything will become clear on May 23.

And the last thing. When I asked Zahdansky: “Who was Bakhchanyan? In what way can he be described to people unfamiliar with his works?” he said: “Vagrich was the Art itself.” And then added: “I always wanted to make a film about him. During the late 1990s and early 2000s we managed to shoot a few hours with him. On November 12, 2009, Vagrich Bakhchanyan died. My desire to make this film became a necessity.

“Vagrich was a genius. But besides that, he was an amiable, attractive, warm, and kind person. His friends loved him. He was the embodiment of avant-garde. It is pure happiness and bliss to make a film about such person as Vagrich, and I want to share this bliss with the audience. It is my main goal.

“As a sign of gratitude for participating in our project, we offer DVDs with our previous films, Bakhchanyan’s original postcards and a right to view the future film as soon as we finish it through a personal link on Vimeo website. Those who are interested may go to Kickstarter for more details. Amazon.com carries out the finance logistics of all the projects on this website. All main credit cards are accepted. Any financial fraud is impossible. Kickstarter helped dozens, or even hundreds of independent cinematographers to carry out their projects.”

The Day’s FACT FILE

Vagrich Bakhchanyan was born in Kharkiv in 1938. There, he studied at the School of Decorative Art, where he was the student of Vasily Yermilov, famous avant-garde artist of the 1920s. At first, Bakhchanyan worked as a designer of red corners at plants. During late 1960s – early 1970s he worked at the humor section of Literary Newspaper, which was incredibly popular back then. In 1974, he immigrated to the United States.

At the beginning of the 2000s, Bakhchanyan came to Moscow for the first time. His works were exhibited at the ERA Foundation, Pop/Off/Art Gallery, Russian Museum, Stella Art Foundation. At the exhibition in the Sakharov Museum, the artist’s collage became one of the reasons a criminal case was initiated against the museum director Yury Samodurov and art critic Andrei Yerofeev.

Bakhchanyan is the author of the books Demarche of Enthusiasts (1985; co-authored by Sergei Dovlatov), Signac under the Eye: Pointillaviv Poem (1986), Nulla dies sine linea, Year’s End Report (1986), Eddy of Flies: Artricks (2003).

On May 23, 2013, Bakhchanyan would have turned 75 years old.