Puppet show booth, porcelain, and video art

The Arsenal has turned into a huge antique shop: there is a huge number of furniture and earthenware pieces, old books, coins, paintings for glamorous bedrooms of new bourgeois on display. However, the most interesting events at the Salon take place within the framework of the Museum-Guest Program, which is held for the third consecutive year.

Four Ukrainian museums are taking place in this year’s Salon: Chernihiv-based Hryhorii Halahan Oblast Museum of Art, Chrnihiv-based Vasyl Tarnovsky History Museum, Poltava-based Mykola Yaroshenko Art Museum, and Kyiv Museum of Theater, Music and Cinema Art of Ukraine.

The Chernihiv Oblast Museum of Art presented a gallery of painted portraits of the well-known Cossack-starshyna family of Halahans and related to them famous Ukrainian families of Rozumovskys, Darahans, Hudovychs, Kochubeis. It can be said without exaggeration that this is one of the fullest family collections of old Ukrainian portraits (dated 17th-19th centuries) on the territory of Left-Bank Ukraine. In particular, historian Oleksandr Lazarevsky called Olena Halahan’s portrait (early 18th century) “the best of all Little-Russian portraits known to us.” Apart from the family portraits, the owners of the estate during the 19th century gathered a precious collection of paintings by Russian and Ukrainian painters, and the portrait of Hryhorii Halahan painted by Serebriakov in Italy in 1842 is the adornment of the collection.

However, the adornment of the Salon on the whole is the famous Sokyryntsi puppet show booth. It is the oldest from all that have been preserved till nowadays. The puppet show booth together with the puppets and texts of kants (songs for vertep drama) was presented by Kyiv students to the owners of the Halahans’ estate in Sokyryntsi in 1770. Currently the Museum of Theater, Music, and Cinema Art is presenting this unique present outside its walls for the first time in history.

Another section that draw attention is the exhibit of the works by Lviv painter Oleksa Novakivsky from Professor Mykola Mushynka’s collection (Priasiv, Slovakia), dedicated to the painter’s 140th birth anniversary. In the early 20th century Novakivsky implemented in his creative work the newest findings of such streams as impressionism, symbolism, and expressionism, this bringing our tradition into the all-European riverbed of art development.

Extremely interesting is the collection of canvases of the auction home “Gold Crossing.” It exhibits the high-quality Ukrainian art of the 20th century, in particular the works by Maria Pryimachenko, Mykola Hlushchenko (specifically nude nature, rare for this authors), Maximilian Voloshin, and legendary futurist Davyd Burliuk.

The special project “Chiaroscuro” is the most unusual one. A multimedia installation dedicated to the memory of Mykola Vinhranovsky, it combines poetry and music, classic cinematography, and graphics, wooden pieces from the Pyrohiv Museum and video art. The basic element of the entire installation is the scene from Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Yulia Solntseva’s movie A Tale of Ardent Years, where Vinhranovsky performed the leading role. This work was awarded with the Gold Medal at the Cannes Film Festival for the best male performance. The lines from Vinhranovsky’s manuscripts are flowing down the walls, and one can hear the poet’s voice reciting his poems. Video artist Oleksandr Dirdovsky and graphic artists Andrii and Olena Illinsky managed to create a self-sufficient, visually refined space, where the audience finds itself inside the image world of the outstanding poet.

And finally, I cannot but mention the project hidden in the remotest end of the Salon, “Road to Paradise” (curators: Borys Yehiazarian and Mariana Dzhulai). This is just a screening of the movie shot by enthusiasts in the town of Oleshky (Tsiuriupynsk) in Kherson region in the House Museum of Polina Raiko. The Kyiv gallery Nebo is trying at least in this way to draw attention to the unique monument of naive art. Polina Raiko, an elderly uneducated woman painted her house for four years. In this way she was trying to overcome her sorrow after the death of her husband and both of her children. She finished her work not long before her own decease. Today, in spite of the museum status, Polina Raiko’s house is gradually going to ruin, the frescoes crumble, and soon may disappear. This screening is just a part of the campaign which aims to preserve the monument.

The Antique Salon will be open till December 16.