VISIT OF AN OLD LADY

The Slobozhanshchyna collection of treasures impresses not only the Kyivans, much to the chagrin of the foreign Tretiakov Gallery. Hey, Kharkiv natives! You even have Zaporizhzhia Cossacks of your own! It does not matter that this time the picture was left at home. All the rest seem to have occupied the fifth floor of Ukrainian House that looks as if it had at last been cleansed of the recent art-festival miasma. There are so many good exhibits here that one can suspect prejudice in any selective viewing of them. And the best thing to do in this case is not to hide your prejudice. What touched you in the raw deserves mention.

Above all, faces. Images. My favorite portrait here is Tetiana by Oleksandr Murash: still waters run deep. (The Little Devil was not yet been painted by Sologub, but the quiet seductress, the young mermaid Liudmyla, but under a different name, is right here in the flesh, and the imps are so true to life). Tropinin's Shcherbinin seems to be teaching us foreign dignity and the spirit of aristocratism. But the eyes run around like frightened cockroaches. No, you cannot believe this effeminate slick gentleman, the former warrior of 1812: he is too overbearing. Unlike the "modest toiler" Dmytro Bezperchy (a 1946 self-portrait). Or the Ukrainian ox-cart driver Fedir Mihas with as unruly a forelock as his nature (a drawing by Porfyry Martynovych). These are the examples to follow. Is nobility predetermined as choice and plebeians your friends? But only aristocrats know the true price of equality. The wave of turncoats swept over Russia not since 1917 but at least fifty years earlier. Hence the general-like poise of the famous democratic critic Stasov and the regal nature of his predictable "unquestionableness" in a Repin's study of 1905. Also hence the simplicity of a young peasant girl brooding over the book (it almost reminds us of peredvizhniki nineteenth century Russian realist painters but in fact belongs to the Paris school). She was embodied on the canvas by Mariya Bashkyrtseva, a Haivoron noble lady, dilettante artist, and platonic friend of Guy de Maupassant (the latter role was best for the author). Then we see the world-class masterpiece Matveyeva by the brush of Vasily Surikov. Let modern realist academicians try at least once in their lifetime to paint something of the kind instead of hastening to proclaim themselves successors to the nineteenth century giants. A portrait based on artistic ease and ethnographic accuracy (and, besides, made for as long as a year) has crystallized over a century into the powerful image of an independent Russian "headstrong woman." She could be an inspiration for The Siberiad and our feminists, but they have other priorities. And the somber old man by Giuseppe Maria Crespi forces me to paraphrase the classic: "This thing is stronger than Faust (Rembrandt)." The eye sockets and deep wrinkles resemble the abysses of Haarmens's and Van Dyck's caves.

In general, the Occidental and Oriental branches of most of our museums (Kharkiv's inclusive) seem to be an honorary and not-so-perfect chamber built for want of something better. An exception in the exhibition is Albrecht DЯrer's rarity: a series of woodcuts, The Life of Mary, where every cell throbs in the nervous tension of the Protestant North. You find a kind of unnatural poetry in the unusual fold of a quaint hood on the head of a sixteenth-century peasant. Oh, but this is the Nativity! Never before had the Magi looked so care-free and down-to-earth, never before DЯrer! Never did Gabriel shove so matter-of-factly his two fingers into the stomach of the Virgin Mary standing silently by the desk. I suspect that the grim-faced shopkeepers and money-changers in the engraving Entry into the Temple are the same ones whom Mary's Son would throw out of the temple thirty years later.

The Kharkiv visit is undoubtedly one of the most beautiful events of this art season, which, however, was undeservedly ignored by the press. But this lack of attention is reciprocal: that working with the media is today more important than playing up to the nobility, is understood not only in the West but also in the Ukrainian capital. And for our kind-hearted and naive provincials, who are obsessed by the illusion of official tutelage, this still seems to be a closed book.