FROM THE LIFE OF DOLLS

Talking about dolls is not simple, primarily because the very notion of a doll makes possible and even implies so many interpretations, including mutually exclusive ones. You are reminded of your favorite doll, a tender and sentimental memory. Or of the Glass Doll from a horror tale, a nasty creature, no better than the Black Hand or Green Spectacles. It is also a mascot dating from pagan times, and, stuffed with dry herbs instead of cotton, then the latest of remedies to depression. A weird creature is that doll. It has the sinister ability to acquire human traits (usually the worst) and turn into an image, a character living a life entirely independently and as a puppet show making the world believe the strength and beauty of that character’s emotions. Last but not least, a doll is an objet d’art.

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The dolls created by Vira Butova are above all objets d’art, worth being displayed at exhibits. In a word, they are dolls by an author ever so popular these days.

They are alike and different from other dolls. Perhaps the thing is that they are not so much decorations as they serve to convey the author’s emotions. A fashion designer’s dream of spangles, beads, filigree needlework, etc., is not for them. Instead, yellow-green artificial apples spotted at a souvenir store and the instant thought that they would look splendid on the dark-blue fabric (available) were more the thing. And a toy violin, but that is a different story.

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We will let you in on a little secret. There aren’t many Butova dolls, fifteen or so. It is not that the artist started making them recently, it is just that she cannot afford the luxury of doing it as a hobby by making dolls for herself. And this was given the dolls’ amazing and fortunate ability to stand out when on display or in a catalogue and make viewers remember them long afterward.

Vira Butova can spend a long time working out – or rather crystallizing – the idea of a new doll, and the same applies to its clothes or accessories like her toy violin or a line from a poem she likes (among her creations is a Yellow Angel dedicated to Vertinsky’s verse – yes, verse, not the author), a combination of colors (like “A Girl with Apples” with yellow-green and dark blue combinations), or the title of a literary work or, more often, a poem she suddenly remembers (like “They’ve Forgotten All About You,” courtesy of Alexander Blok).

Finally, after all the pieces fall into place and the picture becomes whole and clear; there is a sudden creative outburst and another doll is put together at a remarkable speed. Her recent personal exposition at the Children’s Academy of Art, titled Dialogues (actually, her first such exhibit), started with six dolls. Two months later there were eight. Mathematically speaking, an increment of 33.3% (Vira Butova is a mathematician by training).

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Most of her current author’s dolls are models, meant to show clothes, so the latter are meant to attract the artist’s and viewer’s main attention. As for the faces, they remain dollish in the truest sense of the word, meaning pretty and perfectly identical, except for makeup in the form of various beauty spots, shadows, and speckles. There is probably some logic there. However, the notion of a doll’s magic, ever so popular as to become banal, does not imply clothes, even if haute couture. A doll is a character in its own way, meaning that it has a face.

Vira Butova starts on a doll beginning with the face. This is a credo that has its extreme aspect, for in some cases the face is as far as it goes; the rest is not interesting (no comment in view of everything already said). It was thus that a large and interesting series of doll heads came to be. Yet her traditional dolls are better. The heads are an experiment, while Windina, Ariel, or Colombina are each an emotional expression with its own “soul.”

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Let us make something clear here and now. Except in cases when a doll was made somehow to fit a certain definition, Vira Butova’s creations have no appellations. Usually names or titles, even if written on price tags and entered in catalogues, are more or less successful impromptus – and ones done by someone else, not the artist.

A doll as a tangible artifact, rather than a materialized idea, starts with the head and the face, of course. The head is molded of plasticine and then converted into papier-m ц ach О , this being the oldest doll material. Incidentally, her dolls’ hands and legs are also papier-mЙchО, yet showing every sign of virtuosity. The way they hold their hands, their gestures have as much meaning as the expressions on their faces. And then comes the hairdo, of course, along with the clothes and accessories: little bells sewn on the skirt, birds and butterflies perched on the shoulder.

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Vira Butova dedicated one of her earliest dolls to Vera Matveyeva, a Moscow bard who died so young. It was an experiment that proved a success in every respect, yet her subsequent dolls took a somewhat different course. Even her dolls dedicated to various people, such as the “ Yellow Angel ” or “ They’ve Forgotten All About You ” , proceed from Blok’s and Vertinsky’s verse. In most cases her dolls are perfectly independent, even self-sufficient characters in their own way. They are not just immersed in themselves. They always stand out, and everyone likes them, yet they keep to themselves. But in their own world they keep constantly in touch, at times rejecting, but for the most part logically continuing each other. Sometimes they literally reflect one another, like Ariel and Windina, or the Yellow Angel and the Green Angel done following the same plastic model. In fact, such paired dolls only serve to prove that the face is an extremely important but not the fundamental thing. Moreover, one does not notice this family resemblance unless told about it.

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And so Colombina wearing a skirt with little bells and a dashing teenage hairdo, holding an apple; a cheerful and smart one, with long gray braids – you could call her a Harlequin or a Folk Story Teller; God’s Fool that shocks one speechless; the Green Angel wearing a wreath and transparent wings (apparently borrowed from an old elf), his next of kin Yellow Angel (firmly established at a cabaret), and A Girl with an Apple, to date Vira Butova’s last and probably one of the best, born of a combination of two colors, yellow- green (the apple) and blue (the dress), originally conceived as a perfectly ordinary girl but turning out to be quite contemplative.