The history of Russian an is dominated by die symbolic — icons. for example, are symbols much move than they are representations. Paradoxically, ibis can turn the creation of an apparently realist image into a symbolic an. Sergei Chaika's almost monochrome paintings took back to the Russian Symbolism of Mir Iskusstva. the luxury magazine that was Serge Diaghi lev's first venture as an artistic impresario. Among the artists associated with the magazine were Mikhail Vrubel and Isaac Levitan. When Mir Iskusstva was displaced by the Union of Russian Artists, whose centre of gravity was Moscow rather than St Petersburg, one of the leaders of the new group was Valentin Serov. I mention these names in particular because it is easy to see parallels between some of the work they produced and what Chaika is doing now.

Yet of course the context within which he operates is very different from that which prevailed in the earliest years of the 20th century. During the last hundred years, Russian art has passed through two dramatic experiences — radical Modernism and Soviet Socialist Realism. Chaika has absorbed both, and has rejected both. Sometimes it is possible to read political meanings into his paintings — examples are the image of a house on fire, and of the eternal flame — but these meanings are never forced upon the spectator.

 Even when the action depicted is apparently violent, as in the image of two boxers, the tone is one of discreet melancholy. The work is contemplative, not pro-active.

When Russian artists returned to a version of avant-gardism In the closing decade of the Soviet regime, this change of direction was generally misunderstood by enthusiastically admiring collectors, curators and commentators in the West. What they saw was a reversion to the true gospel of Modernism, as established outside of Russia. In fact, the art of the Perestroika period was heavily dependent on a Soviet artistic vocabulary, which it mocked and subverted. When the regime collapsed with dramatic suddenness, that vocabulary became a dead language. Since then Russian artists have had to construct new ways of seeing and telling.

One of the resources available to this new generation was the astonishingly energetic Russian culture of the 19th century, of which the Mir Iskusstva group was a final flowering.

Few nations have produced so many geniuses - literary, musical and artistic - in so short a space of time. Chaika considers this heritage with a wondering eye, but at the same time he criticizes it. He wants to make images that are universally available - that anyone can understand, and that will remain valid however the political and social situation may change. At the same time, he recasts familiar scenes and gives them a contemporary tone. Aa example is the painting with three figures, the one in the centre apparently inured, and being carried away by two companions. This recalls both Baroque painting showing she Deposition from the Cross, and certain Socialist Realist images of heavy industry. However, neither of these allusions its specific. We read them into the work only if we choose to do so. The ambiguity of the scene reminds us that we live in a world where everything is now provisional, where established meaning may shift and dissolve at any moment. Chaika's gift, essentially, is that he gives monumental form to ephemeral situations. For me, his painmgs are very precise symbols of the kind of world we now live in.

 

Edward Lucie-Smith