Andriy CHEBYKIN: “We have managed to preserve classical artistic education”

Andriy Chebykin, now professor and academician, has been stepping over the threshold of the Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture since he was eleven years old (earlier, this building housed an art school). The boy lived in a dormitory. His father, a schoolteacher of history and geography, had brought him from Basyn, Vinnytsia oblast, where the family lived, and gave him 15 rubles a month. The pupils were provided with breakfast and lunch, but Andriy had to find his own supper. In the first two months, he would lie on his bunk in a room he shared with seven boys and cry. He also cried because he, a school overachiever, began to get mediocre grades in Kyiv. However, he managed to receive only excellent grades by the end of the first academic year.

When an internal passport was being issued to Andriy Chebykin, he was recorded there, without his consent, as an ethnic Russian (his father was Russian and mother Ukrainian). Ironically, his brother was Ukrainian by passport, so they turned out to be of different nationalities. The brother would write poems and was admitted to the philology department of the Vinnytsia Pedagogical Institute. Once he slapped his dean who brutally propositioned a girl student. That was the end of his studies at the institute. He, a Ukrainian, lives today near Blagoveshchensk, Russia, working as an engineer and directing an amateur theater. But the Russian Andriy Chebykin graduated from the Kyiv Art Institute, taught there, then became a professor, deputy rector in charge of research, and rector. He also became president of the Ukrainian Academy of Arts.

“Mr. Chebykin, American artists once told me that painting is not really taught in their country, stressing that all Ukrainian artists are excellent painters...”

“Our academy and the Ukrainian school of artists in general is indeed precious in that we have managed to preserve these traditions. It is perhaps for this reason that so many foreign students come here, including from Western Europe. They strive to gain a classical artistic education. For in the West, quite a few artists are simply able to draw something resembling a human being. Many foreign colleagues of ours claim that traditional art belongs to the past, while the modern artist works primarily with a computer. For example, I visited the Toulouse Academy of Arts in France, dating back to the times of Louis XIV. But it has had a different name for the last fifteen years: the School of Arts. The very word academy is considered dated. Students there work like this: they shoot photos, scan them down into a computer and then, applying various programs, they experiment with it, simulating painting or graphics. Naturally, this work also requires certain skill and good taste, but you no longer have to know how to draw. This greatly impoverishes an artist.”

“As far as I know, our students, too, work with computers. Are you afraid to bring about the same result?”

“Everything depends on the objectives we set. Our students draw for two hours every day. They study plastic anatomy, descriptive geometry, form, and perspective. So this doesn't threaten us.”

“I hear you have opened some new interesting studios which turn out specialists that were not trained in Ukraine formerly.”

“New times require new specialists. In this country, industrial design — commercial packing, signs, symbols, and logos — is on a very low level. It is an open secret that the buyer is always attracted by an item made tastefully, brilliantly, and originally. For this reason we opened department of graphic design as an integral part of industrial design, and we want to promote the establishment of an Institute of Applied Art and Design in Kyiv. We have opened a sub-department of art management in the department of graphics. These specialists will be working in the press, in art galleries as curators, and, moreover, they will constitute an institution of art agents (now nonexistent in this country but long existent in the West), which our artists need badly. The agent helps the artist to sell his works, he is a link between the artist and society.

“We have also opened a movie and television set design studio, where we train film and television production designers (in the former USSR these specialists were trained for Ukraine at the All-Union State Institute of the Cinema in Moscow) as well as a monumental painting and church culture studio within the painting department. Ukraine is now living through a time of the renovation and restoration of churches, and a host of dilettantes and nonprofessionals are cashing in on this. Our graduates, who have studied the history of church culture, styles, canons, and know the secrets of genuine Ancient Rus tempera painting on levkas (a mixture of alabaster, chalk, and clay used as a base on the surface before painting —Ed. ), will be able to paint church walls, make mosaics or stained-glass windows, paint icons, and decorate an iconostasis. What I mean is not the restoration of old frescoes but the decoration of, say, new church structures, that is, absolutely independent work by an author.”

“Mr. Chebykin, you taught even in Soviet times. Do your today's students differ from those?”

“They do. They are now much less inhibited and more enthusiastic. They are much freer in their creative work, not weighted with the necessity to choose ‘socially significant' and ideologically loaded subjects for their work as they once did. On the other hand, unfortunately, they are much less patriotic, for I am convinced the feeling of patriotism is one of the integral traits of a true intellectual. The upbringing of a young person in the family is playing the leading role today, for the school seems to be groping for the concepts of upbringing. Naturally, in our art educational institution we, if you like, indirectly instill love for the fatherland in young people, for they study in depth the history of its art, traditions, rites, beliefs, etc. The trouble is that all this is not done in technical colleges and universities. For if the process of upbringing has been lost, we lose the individual to a certain extent. ‘A holy place is never empty.' If this influence leaves, another will come in. Incidentally, the Ministry of Education is beginning to draw up programs of upbringing.”

“Aren't you afraid that if we begin to ‘press' an ideology, the latter will in turn ‘press' again on us by methods we are already familiar with?”

“A state, as we know, cannot exist without ideology. The truly democratic society we are trying to build has laws, regulations, and a mechanism which ensures observance of them and guarantees democratic rights and human freedoms. As for patriotism, look at the way people of any Western country, especially the USA, take pride in their fatherland and their language. Language reflects its rhythm and stylistics on the people's mentality, which concentrates all their ethnic particularity. Learning a language is a way to understand the people's mentality. This is why I don't understand people who, living in Ukraine, do not want to learn the Ukrainian language. We cannot build a nation state of our own, thinking in the language of a neighboring state. And this, by the way, is mainly an urban problem. Go to any village in any region, and you will hear people speak Ukrainians.”

“This is surzhyk (mixed Russian and Ukrainian jargon —Ed.).”

“No. You find surzhyk close to towns. Our tragedy is that people coming to the city from the village were afraid to speak Ukrainian and try immediately to switch over to Russian. Hence surzhyk. Ukrainians felt ashamed to speak Ukrainian in their own republic. The Ukrainian language was associated with provincialism. But now, thank God, we can already hear good Ukrainian in the streets, on public transport, and in stores. I am happy to illustrate Ukrainian literature.”

“What exactly, for example?”

“Now I am illustrating the collected poems of a very unconventional Volyn-based poet Vasyl Prostopchuk.”

“What is your attitude toward the idea that genius and maliciousness are incompatible?”

“Unfortunately, history has given us various examples, but I personally would like to believe that a true genius is, after all, incapable of meanness.”

“And have you come across it in your own life?”

“No, I have never come across artists like this. Of course, I've seen fakes. I've seen their faults and more. But still, such people enjoyed the reputation of being good artists. At least they were not geniuses. In general, I am afraid of this word. But it is gospel truth for me: Yakutovych is a genius, as are Yablonska and Lider. Zoya Lerman is a very gifted person by birth. Sylvashy, Zhyvotkov, and Boiko are very talented young people. I will always remember Stefan Turchak, a true genius in music. And do you know how he treated people? He did it in a simple way, never stressing his superiority and also never losing his dignity. If a person works hard and is really talented, devoted to his/her trade, and capable of creative work, he/she will never feel envy or jealousy toward his/her colleagues but only rejoice at the other people's successes of other people. And one who feels uncertain will never utter a compliment to a colleague, he/she will at best keep silent. The ability to be happy with another person's success is the preserve of talented people. They always wish others well. And the main thing is that nature and God inspire such a person to be encouraged, not tormented, by others' creativity.”