Art, at the end of the XX century has been said to be the art of postmodernism. This period is evidence of complete exhaustion of the previous art paradigm by reconsidering it both ironically and without naivete [Eko U. 1986]. Now, postmodern art is seen to be a premonition of a new spiritual space – where a person will have deep potential for discovering and experimenting art.
Artists of the postindustrial society most of all are interested in the problems connected to the searches for meanings of human life. “Humanistic ideas” of the renaissance period became vital again. Now, when techniques and money rule the world, ideas of a person’s self-efficiency portray a lyrical and romantic accent, reminding the observer that man is beautiful and both the spirit and the body are sublime.
Thus, during the last decade of the XX century, tendencies for sentimental and naive individualism and for more complex reflection over nature and a probing interest in secrets of human mentality and the foundations of the world itself – arose in the process of art in Russia. One of the representatives of this type of artistic searches was Petersburg’s artist Sergey Volkov.
Sergey Volkov was born on the 21 of November 1955 near Saint-Petersburg. In 1977 he graduated from Mukhina, the famous art Institure for art and industry. He worked as a designer at an industrial company “Krasnaya Zarya”.
All his life the images of the world around were attracting him. As a boy in his sketches of insects, animals and plants he was interested in unusual foreshortening, curves, non-static fleeting poses As a consequence, his youthful interests in music gave the young artist a precisely measured combination of lines and rhythms of coloring to his art works. At first the work of a designer completely engrossed this enthusiast master, leaving painting and graphics for pleasure. After marrying Galina Velina and becoming a parent to children Anna and Alexei, Sergey matured, and his works began to describe colors and themes of the surrounding world. His indefatigable thirst for experimenting enabled Sergey to master different materials and techniques which in turn lead to a combination of dynamic compositions.
One of this master’s favorite paints was gouache. It resembles colored sour cream. Gouache is absolutely not transparent; and when it dries it becomes almost velvet. It is so pleasant to look at; there is a desire to gently stroke its colorful surface. Meanwhile, it appears that the colorful velvetiness of the material’s texture was so “cooperative” to Sergey, that he was able to give a variety of color-intensities in a dynamic of “vortex combination”. This became the basis of the individual method of his creative activity in such works as “Cactuses” 1993, “Irises” 1993, “God of the forest” 1993, “Indoor plant” 1994, and “Fern” 1992.
Plants -flowers and trees- in Sergey’s works are not just simply realistic images, but surprisingly living integrated organisms of a “fast-going being”. “Irises” drawn in pastoso- saturated way resemble coloring searches of E. Moonk and V. Khlebnikova; as for “Cactuses” and “Fern” – symbolic works of K. Churlyonis.
In the “Still-life with a Blue Bottle” and “A Vase for Sweets!!—different techniques were used: the outline of the composition was made with a needle (scalpel) on colored card paper. Then the shapes were formed in oil, creating an effect a depth of the objects which emphasizes an interna! conflict.
Variations of techniques in ink, gouache, oil, and color crayons show that the master had very good multisided experience in working not only in oil but with different materials as well.
Sergey Volkov’s favorite artist was a Spaniard, a founder of Toled school, El Greco. A selection of colors of the great master of the XVII century helped our artist of the XX century to understand that the background is a harmonic continuation of the composition and at the same time it lays emphasis on the most important objects of it. Prolonged and well-measured proportions of bodies in El Greco’s paintings determined the graphic accuracy of subtle features of portraits by Voikov.
Creating philosophical and conceptual images, during all his life, Sergey kept painting portraits of his wife, children, relatives and friends. The distinctive characteristic of the portraits by this master is the variety of techniques he used Portrait of his daughter Anna is a graphic representation showing the contour of girlish beauty and lightness, it is akin to portraits by Toulouse-Lautrec; portrait of Galina (the artist’s wife) is like, in cubism, half drawn image with a wise bright blue eye, evoking thoughts about Pablo Picasso’s women.
Self-portraits are a separate chapter in the creative activity of this artist. Since his very the evolution of his own life, of his own ascension in his creative activity- from his childhood till maturity. In the works by S. Volkov the existence of color and shape obeys certain regularities. They are situated on a multi-varied scale between pure abstraction and being a certain object. But the main aim of the master’s works was – quoting words of Kandinsky- “to influence human soul proceeding from the principle of inner necessity.”
One of Sergey’s favorite subjects was the subject of “ascension”
He devoted three works to it and each time he would revise this process but leave the core of the composition unchanged: a huge mountain in the shape of a peaked triangle resembling the “World Mountain” on the background of navy blue space – the world’s ocean or the endless blue sky and then a small person climbing the steep mountain. A lot of artists and sages were contemplating the philosophical depth of this subject, but its symbolic meaning was revealed the best by V Kandinsky. According to Kandinsky’s definition in “ A Spiritual Art”, the whole “body” of spiritual life is a triangle with its peak oriented upwards. In the lower layers the spiritual interests are not predominant. The higher, the narrower the layer of people interested in spiritual life, and, at the very top there are only those who are standing higher among us. [V. Kandinsky, 1990,56]. Kandinsky’s searches in the sphere of psychological influence of colors On a person inspired the master of the XX century as well.
(This ends the professional art biog)
(below is an article exclusive to the Children’s Album)
All his life Sergey Volkov was in contact with music. Sergey’s brother Vladimir is a famous jazz and classic music musician. Sergey’s wife and his friends are professional musicians, so the atmosphere of the family meetings encouraged him to creatively search in the sphere that is a synthesis of arts. It was a natural inquiry then when one day the artist and his friend, pianist/composer – V. Gaivoronsky, planned a devotion to their children by means of a combination of cycle of musical works and graphics. The guiding focus and criteria they chose for the project was to be a searching for “inner sounds of childhood. This was to an activity that would free them to work free from the tight fetters of being an adult and get completely devoted to the recollections of those untroubled days “ when the trees were high”.
In accordance with their agreement, Gaivoronsky’s piano pieces and Sergey’s paintings were created independently from each other… but they happened to be wonderfully consonant. Each work of the artist, having its “colorful meaning”, got inner sounds which make the soul of a viewer vibrating.
The method of inversion was the dominant in the master’s paintings(inversio (Latin) – overturning, transposition; from versare – to turn, to whirl, to turn over) This method makes objects rotate around their own axes, involving into this mystical dance everything around: objects from the surrounding world and the characters of the story. This method had symbolic meaning for the artist: whirlwind stream of the inversion, characterized by spiral or helical movements, expressed in his works the dynamics of three dimensional cross, that is to say the dynamics of the space itself. This way, whirlwind symbolizes the universal evolution – Ascension. [H.E. Kerlot 1994]
Symbols of inversion, being a graphical expression of transcendence, either obvious or invisible, are felt in all works by Sergey Volkov, from the deformed dancing grand piano in “Playing music at home” (1992) to the latest work – precursor “Last self-portrait” (May 29 1994).
On the 31st of May the artist tragically died. “Last self-portrait” is the symbolic sign of the doom, given to a viewer as a text of the future tragedy, where the master played his last role. The artist depicted himself sitting in the foreground in black clothes and in the broad-brimmed hat which covers half of his face and thus perpetuation of life, active might and spreading of power of the space. [Kerlot H E. 1994]. He showed the stage of transmission from the world of material objects into the world of “eternal cognition”.
The background of the painting is the whirlwind of plants, drawn by the inner centrifugal forces of deep pool- all four sides of the work are filled with representation of water steams, emphasizing the movement of the whirlwind, which is inevitably trying to gulp the figure of the artist. ( his beaten body fell into water where he, being unconscious, drowned, as he did not have power to gel out of the water).
The life of Sergey Volkov was not long but it was full from the creative activity point of view. His ascension both as an individual and as an artist was realized. Among other artists of Saint-Petersburg absolutely obviously he can be called as “ standing higher”.
Submitted for publication by Art critic: N. Reginskaya 31 July 2001.
Translated by Anna Emets in collaboration with Donald White, Publisher.