Nikolai Blokhin - Николай Блохин

Nikolai Blokhin - Николай Блохин

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Article to the new catalog

''Nikolai Blokhin artist who everyone - education, attitude, artistic language - related to the Russian academic school.

Fundamental principles of academic education as early as the era of classicism, including reliance on the artistic vocabulary which has developed since the Greek and Roman antiquity; increased requirements to accurately an figure; studying logical and universal laws of composition, orientation to the highest achievement of world art, in the first place the Western tradition - are basic to the opening of the Imperial Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg for over 250 years. Throughout its history, the academic system does not remain unchanged. Fresh impetus in the second half of the nineteenth century brought realists "itinerant" headed by Ilya Repin, who expanded the range of themes and subjects, have shifted from the study of antiquities in nature. A brief period of avant-garde experiments in the walls of the Academy in 1920 related to the revolution of 1917, followed by a return to realistic traditions (realism, though, was the "socialist") in Soviet times. The Iron Curtain almost 70 years pulled Russia out of the context of world art process. However, any phenomenon has a dialectical unity of the pluses and minuses. Due to isolation and conservatism in Russia remains a classic art school, in most other countries lost.

Academic training is too long in certain art circles was considered to be routine, many radicals are still confident that the regulations in dry personality, restrict freedom of expression. However, one can only criticize the Academy, provided that it exists, is a tuning fork and the guide gives clear criteria and sets the bar. For the academic system of art education - it worked for centuries collective experience. The weak identity, the system can absorb and neutralize, strong personality makes a powerful start for take-off and disclosure of their talents. When the system is absent, then everything starts to break up, petty, the criteria they falter and everything tends to the inevitable nothingness. How original and complex would not have been the inner world of individual expression is an internal "I" means the visual arts requires knowledge of craft - the ability to hold a brush in his hands, mix the colors on the palette, paint, color and assemble work. Once you've mastered this system, you can either develop in her womb, or refuse it entirely, but without reaching an understanding of deep, fundamental bases of morphogenesis is almost impossible.

We may recall that the norm and the conservatism of the Academy has often led to feeling exhausted its possibilities, but each time there is a strong creative identity, formed the Academy and is proving the viability of the academic system. In the nineteenth century it was the great Russian artists of Art Masterpieces, Alexander Ivanov, breathed new life into the classic canon, the Wanderers have changed the thematic repertoire, but retained the basics of the artistic language - Ilya Repin, Vasily Surikov. The academic foundation is read in the papers Vrubel, Valentin Serov and artists of the early twentieth century, Zinaida Serebryakova, Boris Kustodiev, Philip Malyavin, Nicholas Feshina, Alexander Yakovlev, Vasily Shukhayev. In the Soviet period, a new interpretation of academic art manifested in the works Evsei Moiseenko, Andrey Mylnikov and many others.








The Academy of Fine Arts for most of its history, not just teach professional techniques, here are taught the ideology that distinguishes Russian artists: sympathy for the lives of ordinary people, the importance of humanistic values and belief in the great mission of art. Therefore, for artists with academic education-seeking big themes and big shapes. Moral issues of society, the meaning of human life and death, the eternal search for the answer to the question "What is Beauty" is embodied in the traditional form of easel paintings, often gravitating to the monumental significance of the artistic language.

Today, when the crisis passed another change of social indicators, to be patriotic artistic life became confident generation of forty years, which is owned and Nikolai Blokhin, a new reflection of academic tradition, which gives rise to the birth of the "New Academy".

Nikolai Blokhin was associated with the Academy of Arts prior to his admission to it. He was born in 1968 in Leningrad, studied first in the children's art school, then was adopted by the Leningrad Art School at the Institute IE Repin. The next logical step is admission to "Repinka" where Blokhin chose the studio of Professor VI Reyheta, notable for special attention to the basics of beautiful culture. The first result of the knowledge and the first declaration of his own artistic program, usually sold in an outlet, thesis. As the story of his diploma (1995) Nikolai Blokhin chose Carnival. Carnival - this is the most cheerful, most riotous and truly universal celebration of winter and spring meetings. She devoted a lot of rituals - pancakes, masks, putting up and burning effigies of "Pancake Day", sheds, riding from the mountains, fisticuffs and the capture of snow town. In this cheerful commotion, which lasted a whole week before Lent, the people's zest for life was manifested, reflected Russian character, sometimes not knowing the measures and restraint. Bright colors, open emotions, laughter and joy over the end of winter and the anticipation of the arrival of the spring sun is always associated with this holiday. In the current situation of his note plays and today it looks more like the "event" than a ritual, since traditional way of life in Russia violated a long time. But the pancakes on Pancake Day so firmly entered the flesh and blood, that no transformation of social systems will not stamp out this Russian habit.

Blokhin, however, did not write a modern carnival, and even historic, although character types and costumes, selected when the action is reminiscent century before last. He tried to get up at the same level as graduates of the pre-revolutionary Academy (here, first of all recall the works of Vasily Surikov and "cabbage" Nicholas Feshina, one of the best academic qualifications). The obvious purpose of this work was to demonstrate its capabilities in building large-multifigured genre pictures - the multiplicity of actors, a variety of motivations conduct a variety of characters, unbelievable views, gestures, relationships, different levels of dynamics - from the deliberately complicated external movements of characters to the intrinsic geometry of the composition, challenging the decision of color issues. And if the very fabric still remained at large applications for the future, the preparatory drawings for "Shrove Tuesday" is certainly the work of a mature master. The very format of the pictures - some almost life-size - leaves no doubt that originally they make sense of the artist not only as preparatory material, but as independent works. Nature close to the images of the XIX century look no farther than necessary. The processes of globalization and standardization of life affected, not all segments of the population in Russia, and grassroots social layer resides generally in the intractable exact definition of time. These actors, as "old lady", "Smokers," turned into a "- is eternal characters, immutable sign of Russia. At the same time an occasion to glorify ode academic preparatory drawings, which gave artists the opportunity to show their ability to grasp the immediacy of the status and the organic movement, transmit extremely complex angles and points of view. Is striking a powerful plastic lines, a game which not only builds a form, but also expresses the artist's freedom in dealing with it. Sure the accuracy of each line and their own lively, energetic rhythm are independent aesthetic value. But it does not lose the complexity of the characters, caught in gestures and facial expressions, the accuracy of psychological characteristics.

Three years after graduating from the Academy and an internship in a creative workshop, Blokhin started teaching drawing in the studio successor Reyheta Professor VV Pimenov.

An important place in the works of Nikolai Blokhin took the portrait. The artist here takes the classical humanist tradition, according to which man is understood as a seamless, where the external features of the individual can identify the essential basis of personality, in all the complexity of his psychology, biographies and spiritual life. One can not but notice the influence of Impressionism and a desire to pass an accident condition, or mood model, which preserves not only the effect of naturalness, but also the freshness of first impressions. At the same time for the artist is important to organize the work as a complete aesthetic unit, where his portrayal did not divide the product of the model and the background, appeared a single plastic structure. So here observed parity real and nominal, fine and decorative, that brings to mind duality of Art Nouveau. However, soon find themselves and the traditions of academic workshop productions of the Soviet school. However, because painting and painting, that not all amenable to verbal interpretation. Hard drawn pictorial chords, their freshness and spontaneity to make portraits of the artist from the earliest - "Portrait of a Woman" (1991), "Portrait" (1997), to mature works 2002-2008 year - "Girl with knitting," astronaut S. Krikalev, R. Kekkalaynena, typically "blohinskih" composite paired portraits of women ("Mother and Daughter") - works just Blokhin and not replicas of historical styles.

His constant models are very close to him people - his family. Subtle and vibrant images of the artist manages to create a portrait of his wife, Natasha, is not only a beautiful woman, but also the most interesting artists. The complexity and depth of her nature is read in full tender portrait of Natasha in a scarf "(1994)," Natasha "(2002) among others. His daughter Ann became a source of constant delight. He does not hide his feelings, enjoying a casual grace of a baby, soft modeling of the facial features of the child. A Little Princess, Infanta, a ballerina, he introduces her image in their imagination (Street musicians. Selfportrait with Aney.2006). It is like a tuning fork sets sunny optimism around the artist.

Nikolai Blokhin is not limited to portrait painting. Interestingly the artist is revealed in landscapes, especially in the depiction of his native St. Petersburg. In his canvases passed state forever rainy weather, the atmosphere of constant humidity and dank atmosphere of the city on the Neva. But the melancholy gray paint acquire luxury spillovers antique silver ("New Bridge. St. Petersburg, 2006), and blurred silhouettes and a lack of parts, oddly enough, reveals the enormity of the space perfectly-planned town, built by with imperial scale and grandeur (" The Summer Garden ", 2006).

Equally attractive and exquisite still life painter of the first half of 2000-ies. Forming the "white" and "gray" series. They are characterized by a noble restraint of color, subtle comparison of forms and volumes, the classical perfection combines with graceful ease of a broad impasto painting. By contrast, still lifes of flowers becomes a pretext for creating beautiful suites. By themselves, the flowers in this still life is not so important, how important a sense of richness and full of color harmonies, pasty, wide painting. A colorful medley seems spontaneous and at the same time strictly organized, each stroke is not simply the effect itself, but works on the general impression of the composition.

Typically blohinskimi motives are a series of recent years, where the main topic - a topic and masquerade masks - the masks, jesters, organ-grinders, "gallant" theme - a lady and gentleman, the Queen and the page, senoritas, Roma; Theme Theatres - ballet, variety shows, Harlequin and Columbine. One can see that it emphasized the canonical themes of classical art (D. Lanin. Introductory article. Nicholas Blokhin. Moscow, 2007). Immediately the question arises - these topics and the choice of the artistic language fulfills the wish of the artist's return to the past to repeat already passed earlier? Or behind it something else?

On the banner of art of the twentieth century, and the beginning of the twenty-first standing in the word "freedom". Freedom of expression of individuality, freedom of search, the rejection of the exclusion order, the freedom to choose art systems, the freedom to unscrew to base any design, search capabilities outside of the arts and all areas of development have inspired many artists. Nikolai Blokhin modern artist, because freedom is also one of the powerful motivations of his work. But his understanding of freedom has a different base. For him, freedom - is the freedom of dialogue with the cultural tradition of European schools, the freedom to speak with them in one language, the achievement of freedom in the use of techniques of drawing and painting. We may recall the term of art criticism Transavantgarde securing the rights of the artist's use of any artistic experience of all time ever in the history of the former, but you can also remember that the entire history of art and have a dialogue with their predecessors. This dialogue might take different forms - the full acceptance, development of the various parties to the dispute, the denial, but previous experience is always the starting point for development. Blokhin will not copy, do not imitate, do not imitate, he enters it in the dialogue. Links to the surface - the great Spaniards Diego Velazquez and Francisco Goya, a realist Ilya Repin, Impressionist Edouard Manet, Auguste Renoir, Konstantin Korovin, western and Russian modernist late XIX - early XX century, Andreas Zorn, Mikhail Vrubel, Valentin Serov, Leon Bakst, Philip Malyavin, Abram Arkhipov, Nikolai Feshin, large master the Soviet school - Evsei Moiseenko, Boris Ugarov. However, this list could easily continue in a different time lines.

The first being drawn comparisons to Nikolai Feshin, which, due to forced emigration in 1923 was not only Russian, but American artist. It is interesting that there are some parallels, even in the fact that Nicholas Feshin and Nikolai Blokhin, just graduated from the Academy of Arts, have gained rapid acceptance in the U.S.. There is some similarity in the positions you select the main thematic issues - the connection of beauty and ugliness, and subtlety of the boundaries between them, their interconnection and interdependence, dialectical grip exquisite and grotesque, attractive and repulsive, holiday and primordial horror of being a game in disguise. Clearly read and similarity of plastic devices to connect natural forms and conventional painting maestro, love to create vibrant texture painting surface, the quest for sophisticated complex angles and poses a figure. However, at the Blokhin with Feshin just as much in common, how many and excellent. Powerful, dense, vigorous line of sauces and pastels Blokhin's the opposite of subtle, weightless lines of coal drawings Feshina. Refined restraint coloring Feshina Russian period has little in common with the festive color extravaganza of painting Blokhin, and the color intensity feshinskih works created in America, has a different quality. For Feshina is primary full-scale momentum, he did not compose their stories, and directed the real situation, whether a portrait or a genre composition. For it is not organically thinking characters. Blokhin increasingly expressed in his fantasies, and often his images carry the figurative sense. However, the two artists is a fundamental unity in the framework of a common language. For Feshina Blokhin and natural, the natural form is the foundation, which gives unlimited possibilities of interpretation of different meanings. Not so much rational constructions, which can be expressed verbally, as constructions of plastic - game shape and color, line, spatial solutions, and composite devices. And Feshina, and Blokhin important organic life of the paint test or vital energy lines, their self-development, pulsation, continuation of the creative act in time, where an impression of the ongoing development of our eyes is the desired result.

The same dialectical chain of relationships can build with other masters of the past. One can see that many images of queer characters often have a resemblance to the portrait by the artist himself (and it's not just that he is his own model, which is always at hand). He tries on a different role - a faun, a clown, harlequin, Icarus, he sits in a circle among his "Singing". He was funny, interesting and scary look at themselves from different sides of the possible and imaginary. He ryadit their heroes in unexpected, outlandish costumes. Tempted to recall the great Rembrandt and his endless study of his own face, emotions, states and changes, as well as desire to deliberately unusual, exotic clothes heroes of his paintings on biblical subjects, which enabled them to break out of routine and of the ordinary. I Blokhin, it is clear reason to disguise quite different - this is a game in the game, but in either case, the brightness of the costumes has become an occasion for the picturesque extravaganza.

It is easy to recall the portraits of court jesters and Infante Velazquez, Goya, max, direct roll songs and even the names of Vrubel ("Gypsy," "Lilacs", both of 2006). But the meaning of work is constantly transforming itself. Girls' Lilac Vrubel - the personification of nature, have Blokhin - a basis for artistic proficiency. Women's individual all its Spanish women, gypsies, princesses, that is unreal, almost fairy-tale characters in a fruit of imagination, but both were taken off the street - modern girl, ordinary, even rustic, which suddenly revealed to be the king and the eternal mystery of femininity.

It is a show, clowns, harlequins, clowns, organ-grinder - all the characters areal art, grass-roots of its shape. But because of their primacy, they are simple and directly reflect the original purpose of art - to entertain, laugh, walk away at the time of trouble. However, in these works, there is an internal imbalance - its clowns, jesters and harlequins not so glad with all the luxury of bright, festive colors, rather they have a sense of internal fracture of a hidden tragedy.

For Blokhin, these characters need to once again ask the question - who is an artist, or who he is himself, his place in this world? Chute, entertaining the audience? Seller illusory happiness? It gives only a momentary oblivion tinsel glitter of the carnival and the promise of fulfillment, obviously unfulfillable? Or an artist act of his will can choose from a rough texture of reality is the most noble and beautiful?

And what is the reality - the reality of the visible reality or imagined, of the ideal domestic space, which creates the visible world, or is just the opposite? Questions unanswered. Here reigns a picturesque medley, delights color combinations, a free outpouring of a picturesque stream, opening receptions, which pose a real picture, which for Blokhina only. The artist does not answer the questions, which sets life, he only responds to those issues that defines art.

And here it becomes clear that art Blokhin not looking back, and explore opportunities to advance (go forward could only memory, but not forgotten "), he explores the same issues as contemporary art. This is the same definition of the limits of meanings and values of art and its archetypes, canons, codes, language capabilities, its place and importance in the flow of information, globalization, tehnokratizatsii, computerization, primitivizatsii and everything else that happens in the world. The art still speaks to the irrational language of feelings and emotions, it keeps the warmth of the human soul and creates the inner world of man. This is old and trite as the world, but without this no man, and each new generation discovers these truths anew.

Permanence games, disguises, turncoats, closing and overflow one into another in Nikolai Blokhin occurs at different levels - it is often for their own compositions as models for use with friends, as a rule, artists, and in fact portraits of friends, picturesque and scenic, included in his system masquerade, because he ryadit them in various costumes and may sharpen the images of the grotesque, creating, however psychologically accurate and succinct portraits ("Samurai." Portrait of the Artist Akhrieva D., 2007, "Florentine." Joyce Yu Kalyuty, 2009 and many others). It gives free fantasy reliability, and the introduction of the play in reality can be vividly the essence of the characters.

Large-scale, huge compositional drawings, as if preparations for the paintings, most of them are in themselves a significant work.

Artistic value pictorial triptych and picturesque composition "Singing" (2006) is tantamount, in this case is impossible to talk about the figure as merely a preparatory stage. The theme for the artist is very important. Conventional space and the situation tells us that this is not playing a real scene, and no recollection of hymns to rural klatches, and a few distant calls of the traditions of Russian choral genre paintings. In the XIX century in images procession, community gatherings and rural mass ceremonies and celebrations refracted idea of Christian togetherness and traditional communal way of Russian life. The picture as a window into the world of fixed the reality in its own forms. Blokhin did not specify the place and time of action. It realized a desire to convey the deeper layer - the general emotional state, when escaping from the inside, who was born in the dreary old times, compassionate, and drawn-Russian melody connects these people together. This song can be felt only at the sensory level of the subconscious, where our hidden genetic memory of times when there were no individual outside the clan or tribe, and measured, calm and majestic rhythm of life of people asked by nature.

Subject western carnival and his Russian options - carnival - with each new stage becomes more complex, pulling the same, the profound meaning of carnival in Bakhtin sense in which life itself is but a game at the time of life becomes when temporarily merge the ideal and reality, when birth of a new organically combined with death of the old.

R-West Russia, which is the reason for the opposition, and for comparison, its highest point gains in the triptych Venice Carnival, over which he worked for several years.

Festive and grotesque, charming and alarming at the same time the image of the Venetian carnival, embedded in the composite scheme goyevskih Mach on the balcony "- is a fantasy, which combines past and present, dream and reality. Unattainable, but always attracts beauty and mystery. Flickering flash of color, going from dark blue, addictive, the depth of night, alive awe picturesque extravaganza transmits this feeling to the fullest.

And the other pole - "Carnival" as the Russian Calvary. Pagan and Christian, national and universal, and merges into the theme itself, and in its interpretation. From Hosanna to the removal from the cross, from the celebration of Carnival before its incineration - is forever repeated circles elevation and execution, continuous cycle of ups and human tragedies. Increased, baroque dynamics of lateral parts of the triptych, where the men first erected a discharged man of straw, and then with the same fervor of his overthrow, contrasting stress internal stress more succinctly solved the central composition. Inside escaping, hysterical cry of a crucified man-carnival, as it absorbs all the primordial horror of being. This Pancake in Russian art was not yet.

Nikolai Blokhin artist not only has a high level of professional painter and a brilliant master of academic drawing, not only combines the breadth and depth of thinking with subtle lyricism, but also successful. Exhibitions throughout the world, prestigious awards, teaching activities in their favorite alma mater, the St. Petersburg Academic Institute. Repin, a close circle of friends and associates, admirers and collectors of his art in the United States and Russia. He is much given, and he can do a lot, and there is still a whole creative life.''

Galina Tuluzakova

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Nicholas Blokhin - Member of Artists Union of Russia, a teacher of the Russian Academy of Arts