Oleg
Vitalievich Yakovlev

Rich man, poor man

Thinking about Oleg Yakovlev, I remember the verses of his another friend, also an artist and poet Vladlen Gavrilchik: "was he modest, he was honest / don't Lovcen and therefore /Completely unknown/ was unto his people." About the first lines I will not say, do not want to do of Yakovlev's "last boy scout". But finishing very applicable. The modern artist must necessarily "Dodge". Not that doomed to do with self-promotion, promotion, solicitation of potential collectors. But on the strategy of representation is bound to think. And that means – "locked" on some iskatelei in communication with curators and gallery owners, to enter into alliances with successful directions of friendship with the critics, particularly against someone. All of this Yakovlev organically alien. If not funny. In his Paris Studio for the last dozen years has been the mass of all kinds of art-people, often very influential and useful. Yakovlev spending power, money, love, health, time in addition to career. Concern about his own art took place under the sign of "so be it". – "What are you, old man, do you want to see? Well, so be it, I will tell." If a person is really not afraid of the stacks of canvases on stretcher frames stored in a separated space of the loft, he showed dozens of dusty things. It was abstraction that are typologically quite close, so that the guest can immediately snatches to savor the details. However, the author did not expect the analyses and dissections. Of course, he noticed, if somehow "punched", if – no, I wasn't in a hurry and bring the visitor from the pantry into the wild, into the light. It was necessary to have an iron will to see this through to the end and not off to more interesting pursuits, to which the owner was a great hunter: the feasts, "the Paris show" and other Bohemian stuff. Proud that I have watched stacks of Yakovlevskoe paintings already in our first meeting thirty years ago. What's more – fell in love with these things. And personally dragged something in Russian Museum where these works are now (on display at the exhibition 2001 "Abstraction in Russia"). Of course, I was not alone in his recognition of Yakovlev. The compilers of the first and, perhaps, in scientific terms, still not surpassed by the edition of the Other art. Moscow 1956-76" (1991) is not passed by the artist, who emigrated very young, but thanks to a strong start in Moscow, not lost among the hardened masters of the underground. Publishers of the legendary Russian-Parisian magazine A-ya in the first issue (1979) published his work. In the end, his works appeared in the Tretyakov gallery. Recently Moscow "gallery on Vspolny"a joint exhibition by O. Yakovleva and N. Alekseev. It seems, at the initiative of the latter who started around the same with Yakovlev time preserving a relationship with him and who wrote about your friend warm and accurate text.

And yet – "it is not known to ... his people." Here it is not purely Russian, not straightened decades of Western life, the carelessness of the artist who does not want to live according to rigid laws  contemporary   art. Here it is in representation. Yakovlev somehow it is not inscribed in the layouts and balance of power. First, it is not covered by the well-known galleries, is not involved in the marathon biennales, festivals and fairs exists as something separate, as I would say he is not Techa. And secondly - as there is! Managed to get out of the Brezhnev of the Union, not for political or national issue as the majority of immigrants, and known throughout Moscow love (to reunite the artist with his fiancée, a Frenchwoman of good family, it seems, asked the Brezhnev almost the himself the then French President). Moscow gold, I went to G. Costakis and adopted in the "best houses", boy in Paris did not disdain to work as a bouncer and a cook ( in the restaurants where he was employed, queues specifically "Russian chef"). Inherited Herzen's house in England (the artist – "one of those Yakovlev", however, the house brings only the ruin). Made the name and fortune on graphic design and renounced it "for the sake of painting," which attracted the excellent, rare advancement collection (it now began to buy Western  contemporarythen it was a unique case: remember the Andy Warhol silkscreen, painting Lanskoy, and I think things Artshvagera), and easily part with things. Gorgeous la femme La femmeî which is ruined and not less kazov ( such as any Japanese bought "all that was in the workshop) again raised... Yakovlev lived my life wrong clearly. Not chominski bright it wherever I go, but old-fashioned bright passions. This life drawing fit the modernist, normal current artist, also with complexes "born in the USSR", this is not. Besides, Yakovlev has been working consistently in the abstract, and contemporary abstraction, we considered the important art of a stretch. (Post-pop-art konzeptualisierung abstraction somehow our criticism not reflexed). And so it happened that Yakovlev chose not to get involved. Abstraction ( of course, this refers to the second coming of her associated with the "second avant-garde") is primarily Zlotnikov, Leon and slepyan ( the least want to belittle their really significant role). Young, Yes early in the history of the underground will not consider.

It does not hurt and like! Consider for yourself. So, O. Yakovlev, born in 1948, studied at MVHPU, with the very young who are in the midst of nonconformists, began to engage in abstraction in 1972. By the time the first "thaw" a passion for abstraction slept, leaving only a few followers (for most non-conformists of the older generation, embraced figurative art version of abstract expressionism after the American exhibitions of the late 1950s, abstraction was a means of initiation to contemporary art, as told by K. Petrov-Vodkin on the cubism tool "to gramatics"). Yakovlev exhibited strange diagonal design of squares. These diagonal threatened to disintegrate, to collapse, they were something focusname, prestidigitators. In fact, a young artist looking for his point coordinates in the densely populated field of abstract art. If to speak about the situation in Russian abstract art of the period, when I started Yakovlev, I would highlight the following. There was still abstraction "educational" so to speak, abstraction of the transition period. Was common and version of abstract expressionism, as a mass character, and the individual. They have existed often as a tactile articulation of the unconscious.There was a strong line geometric abstraction, on one pole which was interesting semiological experiments Y. Zlotnikov, on the other demiurgical-spiritual opus E. Steinberg. And between the many individualistic versions. Yakovlev seems to be leaning towards the geometric tradition. However, there is not a reduced rationalist or metaphysical sense sublime. In Yakovlevskoe geometry was present resource some objectivity (as a vestige or potential – does not matter). In fact, it was an abstraction, the last test of pop art. In this respect – I first made this conclusion, she echoes art practice began at the same time and also is undervalued at the present day M. Chernyshev.

Almost simultaneously with the search of his place on the territory of abstraction, Yakovlev is taking steps in a completely different direction. However, some people think that both directions are close together: in the end, it is still about pointless. Namely, the work of Malevich, which Yakovlev very early felt the need to comment. I still think that between the sphere of abstraction and that line there is a fundamental difference. She, along with literary works, stories and poems, expresses some very important part of the nature of the artist: his peculiar sense of the comic and absurd. Of course, the subject of Dada (armianskoi recension) of humor Yakovlev – not the work of Malevich as such, the scale of which he as a modern artist understands fully. He speaks about the "cult of Malevich", the injection of which the artist felt at the beginning of the 1970s This process had several dimensions. Yakovlev had to walk about a spiritual affects that accompanied it, and about ozerskogo, pragmatic attitude to the heritage of the great avant-gardist. He begins a long series, which is reflected in the exhibition "on Vspolny"and gave it the working title of "Casimir Muhlevich". This line, of course, is a parody of the plan. It allows you to pull together some pictures and plates Yakovlev with Sots art: there is ernicheski, destructive and Soviet myths and the liberal slogans and appeals ( such as "Shame skotolozhtsev First horse!"), there are parodies of popular Suprematist techniques. I especially like things that "typical" Suprematist rectangles does not systematically and not spiritual crowd and were pressing each other like horses at the watering hole. This long-term series, supported by numerous poems and stories Yakovlev, caused after the exhibition, many even irritation: he could not so early to show a critical stance regarding the classic textbook abstraction. Many critics have questioned the date of the creation of some works is not certain, though it was quite in the spirit of the avant-garde hoax? Say – no. Not only because these things I saw in the Studio Yakovlev thirty years ago. But first of all, because parody, ernicheski, bold line, no matter how close it is to the artist's heart, for it is not the main. No he and no proximity to Sots art: work on deactivation of myths requires a sequence of intellectual, Yakovlev also – not the "head" artist. And "mockery" over a certain type of abstraction and, moreover, artistic thinking – in fact, a means of self-identification. He is a parody of rejection method – checks that he is not totally suited. Well, what is suitable?

We have already mentioned that the abstraction Yakovlev is in a specific coordination with geometric project, throughout the twentieth century in all of its many manifestations, which remained perhaps the most influential direction of abstract art. You need to determine, in relation to Yakovlev, the degree of this coordination. I've had to write about the early geometrical abstractions of the artist that conceptualized they seem to pop art. That is, they contain the potential for a kind of objectivity. This is a very important point. When talking about the geometric conceptualization of the project, usually referring to the contacts of the so-called concrete art and pop art. Let me remind you, concrete art, there is a version of abstract art, is localized in 1930-50-ies. The name itself belongs to Theo van Doesburg, who published a Manifesto " Art   Concret"which declared :" a Work of art.. doesn't borrow anything from natural forms, contains nothing sensual or sentimental... Technique, the execution must be mechanistic, in other words, antiimperialistic". The banner of the movement picked up D. Albers, moved to the US and created there a whole school, and M. bill, proclaimed the rejection of "naturalistic representation", a radical emancipation from "nature's patterns". What are these phenomena somehow match the password concretism ? The closest thing to a classic  concrete   art I think the art practice group  Zero and other phenomena of the 1950s and 60s : op art,  color-  field   painting,  hard-  edge   painting. Among the chronologically more close phenomena - minimalism and neo-geo. Practice pop art in many respects contrary to the initial settings  concrete   artbut it can be and contact points : interest in face, form and machine mechanical compositional techniques - rapport, repetition, etc. to Summarize: in the most General approach, all these variegated phenomena brings a common vector is the degree of the generalised form, from which comes a kind of materialization of its presence in the world, its self-sufficient ( without evidence of authorization, of accomplishment, of man-made origin) obektivizirovat. That is, the independence, disinterest in any figurative and symbolic associations.

What Yakovlev? In his first abstractions already present, this potential of obektivizirovat (I have identified it as a source of objectivity). What's next? In the direction of "native form" he did not go, compositional techniques – the coarse grid and the wave "monitor" pulsing lines rather pretend to be "mechanical" - so they are very Amateur (in the terminology Yakovleva – "finger paintings"). Meanwhile, in his abstraction some obektivizirovat continues to be. And – not vestigial, residual. There is a feeling that the artist has consistently sought to secure the existence of a "pure appearance". There is a tradition to use the term "pictorial representation" only in relation to figurative art. Abstract art, divorced from reality, by definition, is not representative. As it is, in Rilke, is "behind nature." Meanwhile, it is not so. There are the type of artists, insisting on the imaging capabilities of the other realities, not connected with reality, with the cash a reality. We are talking about the representation of internal mental processes, matrix of consciousness, perception. I think Yakovlev busy just that. There is a job that, in my view, can serve as a key to the poetics Yakovleva (This does not mean that the artist himself reflect on her offer as, perhaps, he did not thought about it specifically). This is a known thing D. Jones "Blind", a variant of which is in the Ludwig Museum in the Russian Museum. It is as if the transition from abstract expressionism to pop art. From the last -the real materiality (basis - blind with a metal cornice), the painting is a typical self-contained abstraction. But – only externally: set the topic of the transition from daylight to darkness, a situation where the retina retains information about the light and the curtain is already down. I think Yakovlev is very important for a real touch of consciousness. No wonder he so often starts with a certain mesh – color or monochrome at all often applied by pencil or ball pivot. It is this grid, of course, can be seen as a kind of coordinate system. But most likely, it is the image of the retina. Preparing the scene for the theater of perception. That is theatre, nothing scientific, physiological. Except, maybe, the articulation of the state of dreaming by R. Arnheim, "sensory attenuation", or, conversely, of awakening, of readiness for new visual experiences (K. Petrov-Vodkin called this situation "wash eyes"). Yakovlev unusually diverse visualizes the dramaturgy and perception. It visualizes and not verbalicious, like Salvador Dali ("dream caused by the flight of a bee around a pomegranate a second before awakening", or "View Gave back writing Galu, immortalized in six actual squamous membranes of the eye, reflected in six real mirrors"). He does not seem to be interesting points of articulation of States of consciousness, his stuff completely absent surrealist allusions. It focuses on perception in transitional moments: sleep, awakening, light-dark, the inertia of perception - insight. It does not analyze in this respect closer to him the interpretation of perception as a vague and unconscious, according to Leibniz, rather than as a clear and conscious ( apperception). It thematizes not, I repeat, the state of consciousness (almost inevitable in this regard, elements of the narrative, or at least associative), and the time settings of consciousness, it is restarted. In his works there is always reflection on the retina, a retinal memory, traces or anticipations of certain visual and optical advances. Hence all these grids, alignment, floating spots, eye funnel, drawing the observer. Of course, visual Yakovlev always affective-emotive, hence the diversity of its rhythmical-color solutions. And, by the way, the emotional content of these craters, which somnambulance rushes the viewer. It is, as a rule, not ominous. On the contrary, carnival, enchanting. No wonder Yakovlev likes strange colors – aluminum or some especially festive, Christmas – including gold and glitter. There is one quality that I want to draw attention. Mentioned the transition of perceptual States, which thematizes the artist. And cited the example of sensory attenuation (sleep), awakening, transitions osveshenia, etc. So, N.Berdyaev called any art platninum dream. Continuing the metaphor, I would say that in the works of Yakovlev perception ( the dream, etc.) is compacted and as if separated from his Creator. Materialized in the form of a picture and starts a life of its own. This is related to the important aspects of the poetics of the artist. Above, we have noted the peculiarity of the abstraction that is meaningful in the context of pop art: the degree of the generalised form, from which comes a kind of materialization of its presence in the world, its self-sufficient ( without evidence of authorization, of man-made origin) obektivizirovat. In the works of Yakovlev all of this is justification: and materialization as a consequence "uplotnenie of dreams", and the lack of the very signs of accomplishment. Hence the fact that Yakovlev never negotiate authorship, "individual style", demiurgic gesture: closer to him understanding that his work "grow by themselves" and continue to develop independently. In this he becomes closer to the traditional far Eastern Zen installing:-the determination of the position of the artist in the world, the non-centrality of the position.

Oleg Yakovlev, as already mentioned, the artist who needs no presentation. The main thing for him is that he lives a private life in which anything can happen – and magical, and mundane. Now he lives modestly: the dilapidated Studio, mountain paintings, cat, infrequent visits of friends. Most importantly, he knows his presence is materialized in the world, in works that live by itself. But you can always play the role of lifebuoys. Will bring to viewers, Museum professionals, gallerists. So, in fact, it turns out that something prompted the owners " Lazarev   gallery"on that, as I browse all the stacks of paintings in his Studio. So, from the Paris air materialized and this exhibition. I'm sure that without copyright trouble, somehow – in all fairness - is objectified and Yakovlev's position in the history of our art. True, and piles of pictures will not tell.

Alexander Borovsky