Author: Mikhail Barazna
Art of Belarus of the 20th century represents an integral dynamic phenomenon of art culture. Systemic social transformations taking place on the post-Soviet territory, the formation of new states, including the Republic of Belarus, and the choice of their own development path have made the sphere of culture turn to close examination of domestic experience in the field of art.
The appearance of art styles and directions is not planned on schedule, but the traditional chronological review by decades and centuries remains the most common. One of the problems of historical analysis of contemporary culture in Belarus lies in the artificial selection of the year 1917 as a starting point. The methodological error or rank ignorance often perplex those who begin to explore the art processes of Belarus of the 20th century.
After the uprising of 1905 the artistic life of Northwestern Krai – present Belarus – started to revive slowly. Art exhibitions took place more often, publishing expanded, museums were created. Regional art centers – Vilnius, Vitebsk, Mogilev, Grodno – developed intensively. The researchers of this period reveal the interaction of the Belarusian, Russian, Jewish, Ukrainian and Polish cultures.
The First World War and the October Revolution were the tragic events for the Belarusian culture. A great number of mansions, palace and park complexes, libraries, collections of decorative art were destroyed.
Year 1917 was a critical one for the life of a significant part of Europe. But the situation in art was even more complicated: the classical Vitebsk avant-garde had much in common with futurism, Marc Chagall’s art had more bonds with Paris atmosphere of the century beginning, and not with the Soviet plan of monumental propaganda. Creative works by Ferdynand Ruszczyc and Jazep Drozdovich had something in common with the traditions of Secession and European Symbolism. Kazimir Malevich, Wladyslaw Strzeminski, Yudel Pen, Marc Chagall, Mikhail Philipovich, Roman Semashkevich lit up the cultural field of the 20th century. In the early 1900s Belarus had all the possibilities to be included in the European creative experiments. To some extent they were implemented in the 1920s, although they didn’t reach the peak of their development.
The process of crystallization of contemporary Belarusian art school took place, but it was not completed. The originality of the artistic life of Belarus in the early 1920s consisted in the fact that in the eastern (Soviet) part of Belarus art developed on the basis of ideas of the Russian avant-garde and Italian futurism. Constructivist architecture, painting, poster, easel and book graphics were popular then. All this forms made the basis of the avant-garde of the 20th century in Belarus. In the western part of Belarus the ideas of secession and symbolism still dominated. Speaking about the importance of contacts with Russian avant-garde and Ukrainian modernism, it is necessary to stress the role of Belarusian intellectuals in the creation of modern art school.
In the early 1920s the development of fine art was the most productive. At this time Kazimir Malevich began to assert new art through the creation of an association UNOVIS. The persecution of art workers in the 1920s could not immediately stop the extensive development of progressive tendencies. In the early 1930s architectural objects of constructivism were completed, the books declaring the experiments of UNOVIS were edited. The art of the 1940s still needs researching. Fine art of the post-war period (1950s) developed mainly on the basis of ideological beliefs of the Communist Party. Official culture was filtered by the patterns of totalitarian aesthetics.
The period of the 1960s (the Khrushchev Thaw) illustrates the relative development of art and culture in Belarus. Since then the development of Belarusian art has tended to be dynamic. The process of democratization was not a local, isolated one. Fine art of the 1960s developed in a close relationship with the culture of the region. Artists began to rethink the progressive traditions of the Belarusian national culture. This tendency was manifested brightly in book decoration and printed graphics. At that time the first graduates from the Belarusian State Theatre and Art Institute (since 1991 – Belarusian State Academy of Arts) started to work. Belarusian culture was provided with professional staff, trained in the country. In the 1960s the foundation of modern art school of the republic took place.
In the 1970s the preconditions for the development of art were unfavorable due to total regressive aesthetics of "stagnation". Artists turned to the historical past of Belarus, they started to rethink the experience of the previous decade. The euphoria of the 1960s passed. However, it is in the 1970s when the formation of the Belarusian underground space was taking place.
In the 1980s Belarusian artists became interested in the art heritage of the 1920s. Decisive shift from subject to the problem of colourism was made by the exhibitions of the 1980s organized by Minsk group of artists "Nemiga'17”. Public presentation of Belarusian conceptual art was held in 1984 at the "1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1 +1" exhibition in Minsk. The influence of conceptualism is noticeable in the works by V. Tsesler, S. Voichenko. Significant role in the presentation of conceptual art belongs to Minsk gallery of modern independent art ”The 6th Line” as well as the exhibition of actual art «in-formation» in Vitebsk.
The Chernobyl disaster has changed the place of a person in the society, has led to the search for a new concept of personality in art. The events of 1986 have influenced significantly general cultural processes and their irrevocability to ideological dogmas. Artist’s focusing on internal problems, rather than the social world has become a peculiar feature of recent decades. This quality became a reflection of the population mass consciousness. In the late 1980s the nature of exhibitions began to change. New art achievements reflected the attitude of spectators to the past more clearly; art workers changed their estimation of previous times. After the Chernobyl disaster a person did not want to be like a superman, a creator of machinery and a conqueror of the unknown. Belarusian art of that period did not have a huge size, weight, loud noise, etc. From my point of view it made no sense to the Belarusian audience.
Art life of the early 1990s was more multifaceted than in previous decades, but still far from the time requirements. Fine art photography, art design, performance art, computer graphics, etc. developed, the genre spectrum of fine art expanded. However, at the same time a broad wave of commercialization took place. The desire for a rapid commercial success, the lack of leverage from the side of artists and art critics, the lack of well-grounded program for the development of fine art had bad influence on the overall level of contemporary culture. Art trends of the 1990s did not directly continue the traditions of the previous years; there was a factor of the chaotic occupation of the cultural field by citations. The absence of independent sources of financing slowed down the development of art trends as well as the civilized art market.
Dynamic exhibition activity, acute polemics between representatives of different directions, the expansion of international cultural exchange in the field of culture testified to the new qualitative level of artistic culture in Belarus in the early 1990s. Social art in Belarus, in contrast to Russia, was not widely spread. The reasons for this could be a subject of separate research. The works of poster artists, having the awards of the most prestigious international exhibitions, should be noted. The works by V. Tsesler, S. Voichenko, A. Shelyutto, E. Kitaeva, A. Novozhilov, and others can be found today in foreign museums of posters and in private collections.
Some traditional art forms as painting and sculpture remained in Belarusian conceptualism (A. Zhdanov, L. Rusova, T. Kopsha, I. Kashkurevich, V. Piatrou, V. Chernobrisov, O. Sazykina and others, informal groups "Kvadrat", "Komi-kon", "Blo", "Pluralis", "Forma", "Galina"). However, the conceptual art is significantly different from the usual one, because conceptual paintings do not depict anything other than the very art language. The book-objects combining text and art language (L. Rusova, L. Silnova, I. Savchenko) became another form of creativity retaining links with traditional forms of art (graphics, photography and book illustration). In the middle of the 1980s Belarusian conceptualists (I. Kashkurevich, V. Vasiliev, A. Maley, A. Verenich, A. Vorobyov, A. Klinau, O. Ladisov, A. Logvin, V. Zlenko, etc.) turned to installations in their work. In the early 1990s the works of Belarusian photographers belonging to the so-called “Minsk conceptual photography” became well-known outside the country (I. Savchenko, V. Shakhlevich, G. Moskaleva, etc.).
During the 20th and the first decade of the 21st century art school in Belarus proved its ability to develop retaining the quality of the whole artistic phenomenon. The country and its art started the existence in entirely new historical conditions. Belarusian fine art has always been characterized by easy assimilation of the progressive elements of the world culture. The review and analysis of this new stage is an interesting challenge.
Not only the will of an artist, but also quite objective reasons dictate fundamentally new quality of art at the beginning of the 21st century. The new stage indicates a change in expectations associated not only with the social system, but, as at the beginning of 20th century, with breadth of interests of creative intelligentsia expressed in updated creative strategies.