La Jolla Night Paper

From “Horror and Hope” by Greg Gianas, Art Seeker …Vladimir Ryklin, as a person, appears to be less serious than Chemiakin and Neizvestny; although appearances are often deceptive. Ryklin loves to laugh and joke. However, this rollicking love of life is usually not prominent in his paintings which he says are “strongly influenced by the literature of Poe and Hoffmann – literature in painting” he calls it. Thus, Ryklin’s oils are surreal like Dali, earthy like Brueghel, often foreboding like Bosch, and always playful like Chagall, with motifs of growth and music pervasive even though often pictured in a dormant state. A commercial artist for fifteen years in Moscow, Ryklin was commissioned to make posters of the New York City Ballet, the Vienna Symphony, Soviet Ballet and Moscow Circus before he was granted asylum in New York last year. He says that Russian artists “live two lives – one of prostitution”. This “prostitution” results from not being able to express oneself as an individual. Ryklin explains that artist in the Soviet Union must apply for permission to show their paintings to another person. If the permission request is accepted – if – then five to ten people must review the paintings to validate their acceptability to Party politics. As you might expect, individualized expressions are outlawed or confiscated. Showing photographs of earlier paintings, Ryklin revealed the effect of oppression. One painting depicted a mass of ears and telephones “the instruments of the KGB”. Another, portrayed people in bottles “searching to be alone but hiding in a prison of their own making”. Ryklin was especially enthusiastic when describing a series of paintings titled “the Bound People” which revealed people whose arm where bound with rope but whose minds were full of fecund thoughts. As the paintings of the “bound” people progressed, the arms were freed but the minds were left empty of creative thoughts. Talking to these artists at least raises two questions and one conclusion. Do people need to suffer to be creative? Do people create suffering to become “artists”? The conclusion comes from Romain Rolland, a Nobel Prize winner in literature: “In a field of Art there is not – there should not be – any rivalry among nations. The only combat worthy of us is that which is waged, in every country and at every hour, between cultures and ignorance, between light and chaos. Let us above all have all the light that can be saved.” The minds and spirits of these dissident Russian artists – if not some of their art – offer hope for a freedom we often take for granted, at our peril.