“Some caliber”

Only 16 out of 68 contenders have been shortlisted this year for the National Taras Shevchenko Prize. Among the most interesting are Viktor Baranov for the book of prose Death in White, Pavlo Hirnyk for the collection of poems The Dawn Is Breaking, Viktor Hontarov for a series of canvases “My Gogol,” and the cycle of paintings “1933. Ukraine”, “Eclipse”, “Evil Years” and “1933. The Last Kobzar”, Kost Lavro for illustrating the classical works of national literature and monumental wall paintings based on Ukrainian fairy tales at the State Puppet Theater, and Larysa Kadyrova for playing women’s roles in the one-person shows The Dowry of Love, Sarah Bernhardt, To Be, and in the production We Are All She-Cats and He-Cats.

A question has been raised over and over again in the past years that the prize-awarding mechanism should be changed. For example, in late 2008 Mykola Zhulynsky came to chair the Shevchenko Prize Committee. He is known to favor establishing expert commissions that will be assigned the task of spotting extraordinary phenomena in the artistic life and, hence, propose them for the committee’s perusal. Only after the prize has been awarded will there be the winners’ presentations, reviews, productions, public debates, etc. But this will be in the future.

Meanwhile, there was a rotation of the committee members. Out of the “old” ones, there still remain the poets Ivan Drach and Vasyl Herasymiuk, the prose writers Maria Matios and Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, the violinist Kyrylo Stetsenko, the composer Myroslav Skoryk, and the art researcher Yevhen Shevchenko. The new blood consists of such personalities as the theater producer Roman Viktiuk, the rock musician Oleh Skrypka, the film director Oles Sanin, the actor Bohdan Stupka, the choreographer Vadym Pysarev, the singer Taras Petrynenko, the culturologist Petro Honchar, the film critic Serhii Trymbach, and the graphic artist Serhii Yakutovych.

The Day has asked Mykhailo Slaboshpytsky, a member of the Shevchenko Prize Committee, to comment on the list of this year’s nominees.

“Unfortunately, we have failed in the current year to establish a badly needed institution of experts. In that case, the nominees would represent the works that really shine on the skyline of Ukrainian culture. It often happened in the previous years that some hopeless pen pusher was on the nomination list side by side with a name that is an asset in, say, national painting. And our compatriots could naively believe that the two works were things of the same magnitude and importance. We have inherited this from the Soviet era, when it was written in the provision on the prize: the people will nominate and debate on the candidates and the committee will award the prize on the basis of the people’s will.

“This does not the case anymore, which is our first achievement. I can say we are now in a transitional period in the history of the Shevchenko Prize. A new provision has been drawn up, but it has not yet taken legal effect. In other words, it is no longer yesterday but not yet tomorrow.

“What concerns this year’s nominees, they are not many, as you may have seen, for outstanding phenomena are not born as often as prizes used to be dished out. There is keen and fair rivalry among them. I would say this year’s list of nominees is some caliber.”