on my work as a painter: a memoir

Leonardo

On My Work as a Painter: A MemoirAuthor(s): Takhir T. Salakhov and Yu. OsmolovskySource: Leonardo, Vol. 14, No. 1 (Winter, 1981), pp. 13-16Published by: The MIT PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1574471 .

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Leonardo, Vol. 14, pp. 13-16. Pergamon Press, 1981, Printed in Great Britain.

ON MY WORK AS A PAINTER: A

MEMOIR

Takhir T. Salakhov* with Yu. Osmolovsky"

Abstract-The author, a Soviet painter and active in the U.S.S.R. Union of Artists, discusses his background that led to the paintings he makes. He is particularly interested in the relationships between the works of writers, musicians and visual artists, and presents his thoughts on them. He is also deeply interested in portraiture, in depicting the workers and landscapes of the S.S. Republic of Azerbaijan and, particularly, in non-traditional artists' subjects stemming from contemporary technology. Photographs of examples of his paintings are reproduced and discussed.

I.

I studied at the Surikov Art School in Moscow and, after receiving my diploma, lived and work- ed in Baku, the capital of the S.S. Republic of Azerbaijan. It was in Azerbaijan that I selected my first themes for paintings and developed the basis of my personal style (Fig. 1, cf. colour plate; Figs. 2-9).

I.

The following text is based on my text in Ref. 1 and deals with my particular interest in the relationship between the visual and verbal arts.

Books may play a special part in the life of an artist. Literature not only can develop one's mor- al judgement and character, it can stimulate one's visual imagination: behind words one begins to perceive images. If, for instance, when reading one of Turgenev's or Bunin's descriptions of nature, an artist fails to sense the cool of the forest, the early morning freshness of the green leaves, the transparency of the air, then, most probably, the artist will remain equally insensitive to these things when surrounded by them in reality.

The influence, I think, is a mutual one: Great works of visual art have influenced and continue to influence writers, helping them to a deeper understanding of a human's inner world and to a more sensitive appreciation of the beauty of the external world. Landscape painters, so it seems to me, have often suggested certain angles of vision and new perspectives to writers.

It is a well-known fact that many people have combined literary with artistic talent and have

*Painter, Gogolevsky Blvd. 10, 121019 Moscow, U.S.S.R. **Art writer, Gogolevsky Blvd. 10, 121019 Moscow,

U.S.S.R. (Received 29 October 1979)

LEO 14: 1 - B

exercised both in such a way that they comple- ment and enhance one another. I think that even one's understanding of Pushkin would be poorer had the poet not left also brilliant drawings in the form of doodles in the margins of his manuscripts. Lermontov's drawings, also, shed light on his character and work, as do Voloshin's and Ciur- lenis's. As to Mayakovsky, his 'Rost' windows are the work not only of a professional poet but of a professional artist as well.

Here I pass over, as self-evident, the influence of works of literature on illustration, which is the reinterpretation of a writer's work by a visual artist. In passing, however, I should like to put it on record that I, like many others of my generation, was brought up on the works of such graphic artists as Favorsky, Lebedev, Mitrokhin, A. Bru- ni and others.

Musorgsky, in his 'Pictures from an Exhibi- tion', gave remarkably subtle expression to what he had seen on artists' canvases in terms of music. The many instances of writers' treatment of art and artists in their books need not be quoted here, and I will limit myself to one instance: When writing of Ivan IV and his times, Russian writers have recourse, of course, to historical sources and works of the period; however, it seems unlikely that any have altogether escaped the albeit unconscious impact of Repin's dramatic picture 'Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan'.

To understand the inner world of one's contem- poraries, really to get to know it in depth, is not easy. Superficial impressions, organized, preda- tory 'raids' on the subject of a picture, are scarce- ly conducive to producing anything truly expressive. It is one thing to produce a unique work of art, another to make a pale copy of reality. A selection of quasi-contemporary features super- ficially recorded thanks to a simple grasp of basic

13



Takhir T. Salakhov with Yu. Osmolovsky

technique is not likely to touch the emotions of viewers or to make them experience the world about them in a more immediate way.

Truly contemporary art is born of artists' indi- vidual involvement with the joys and sorrows, the anger and ecstasy of their lifetime, that is, of their capacity for human feeling. In the work of a portrait painter the subject should, in the words of Belinsky, 'resemble himself more closely than his reflection in daguerreotype, for the artist brings out into the open certain qualities that have been hidden beneath the surface, perhaps even hidden from the sitter himself.'

Look at the faces that surround one in one's day-to-day life; clever, expressive faces, full of inner purpose and beauty; look at people's hands - capable, strong, workers' hands. When painters work on portraits, no matter whether they be of a worker or a scholar, a fisherman or a composer, so long as they are of humans, con- cerned with their time and active in their generation, a dialogue arises between artists and their sitters that (like those between writers and artists, musicians and artists) works towards their mutual enrichment.

Indeed, the more I think of the interaction between writing music and the visual arts, the more it seems to me that it is not so much a question of mutual influence as of a common source - and that source is life itself.

HII.

There can be no doubt that when a painter works on the portrait of a writer or a composer, the subject's work enters into the very fabric of the picture, introducing its own atmosphere in some subtle way that is hard to define but that nevertheless becomes a most sensible element of the finished picture. I remember painting a post- humous portrait of the Azerbaijanian poet Sabir, widely known in the U.S.S.R., who died at the beginning of this century. Of course, I used what photographs I could find and read various descriptions of him in the memoirs of his contem- poraries. In addition to this, Sabir's son, said to resemble his father most strikingly, was kind enough to pose for me. Yet, at the same time, in my mind's eye I had my own picture of Sabir, poet and satirist, ardent apostle of enlighten- ment, scourge of the idle and the cruel, of all parasites and exploiters, a man who welcomed the Russian Revolution of 1905 and, together with a handful of other writers of his generation, helped and encouraged the first proletarian writers to publish in the Azerbaijani language.

Quite another problem was posed by the portrait of Rasul Rza (Fig. 6), poet, translator and editor of the Azerbaijanian Soviet Encyclopedia: Here I was seeking means to express a dynamic personality of this century with a wealth of intel- lectual and artistic interests. In the portraits of composers, such as Kara-Karayev (Fig. 1, cf.

Fig. 2. 'Main e ' etail), oil on cnva, 10 x

Fig. 2. 'Maintenance Men' (detail), oil on canvas, 170x260 cm, 1961.

Fig. 3. 'Oil Worker', oil on canvas, 75 x 70 cm, 1963.

14



On My Work as a Painter: A Memoir

Fig. 4. A Theme from Apsheron', oil on canvas, 75 x 85 cm, 1963.

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Fig. 5. 'Women of Apsheron', oil on canvas, 225 x 220cm, 1967.

Fig. 6. 'Portrait of Rasul Rza', oil on canvas, 130 x 126cm, 1971.

Fig. 7. 'Portrait of D. D. Shostakovich', oil on canvas, 130x 110 cm, 1976.

colour plate) and Dimitry D. Shostakovich (Fig. 7), their music naturally influenced the rhythms, the verticals and horizontals and my choice of colours. Character played no less a part.

When painting the portrait of Kara-Karayev, I wanted to present him in his everyday working environment, keeping in mind that everyday work for composers is an extraordinary process involving high inner tension. I chose the predomi- nant blacks and whites to give an atmosphere of almost sacramental concentration.

It was about the time I was completing the portrait of Kara-Karayev that I began to consider a portrait of Shostakovich. The preliminary work was slow, involving many sketches, and was completed in the early 1970s. It seemed to me that his portrait should be treated in the tradition of the dramatic Russian portrait, for example Repin's 'Musorgsky' and I. Kramskoy's 'Portrait of Nek- rasov'. Unforgettable, for instance, was Shosta- kovich's sense of artistic discipline, the conscien- tious precision with which he did what I asked of him and his obvious respect for the work of a fellow artist. Although his distinctive appearance and interesting personality attracted several portrait painters, mine was the last for which he posed, and, sadly, he did not see the completed portrait. I finally completed it in 1976, after his death in 1975, by adding the heavy mass of the piano in the background and by painting the piano stool on which he is seated a fiery red to symbolize the victory of life over death through music.

IV.

The working people and the landscapes of the

15



Takhir T. Salakhov with Yu. Osmolovsky

Fig. 8. 'Old Romany', oil on canvas, 75 x 92 cm, 1976.

Azerbaijan have repeatedly appeared in my paintings over the years. In pictures such as 'Maintenance Men' (Fig. 2) and 'Oil Worker' (Fig. 3), I am interested in presenting the tense, inner concentration, a kind of dour heroism, of those who work in oil fields. The figures are usually sharp silhouettes against cold back- grounds, relieved now and again by splashes of warm reds. The women of husbands who work at sea are depicted waiting for their return by the shore in 'The Women of Apsheron' (Fig. 5). My approaches to landscapes and interiors are shown in 'A Theme from Apsheron' (Fig. 4), 'Old Romany' (Fig. 8) and 'A Sunny Morning' (Fig. 9).

The visual aspects of contemporary technology have intrigued me since the late 1950s, when I made sketches and paintings in the Baku oil fields of the Caspian Sea. In view of the shortages developing in the world's supply of energy from

Fig. 9. 'A Sunny Morning', oil on canvas, 150 x 125cm. 1978.

non-renewable resources, such as petroleum and natural gas from oil fields, and interest focusing on the utilization of solar and wind energy, the windmills depicted in Fig. 4 may be interpreted prophetically.

REFERENCE

1. T. T. Salakhov, On Portrait Painting and the Relationship between the Arts, Literatunaya Gazeta (No. 50, 14 Dec. 1977) and (No. 18, 1 May 1979).

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LIST OF FIGURE LEGENDS FOR COLOUR PLATE





Top left: Katherine Gould. 'Standing Woman, IV' (detail of Fig. 3, cf. page 2), oak, 230 x 50 x 50cm, 1980. (Fig. 4, cf.

page 2)


page 2)


page 2)


page 2)


page 2)

Top right: P. K. Hoenich. An image from 'Light Symphony, No. 1'. (Fig. 5, cf. page 40)





Center: Adam Wsiolkowski. 'The Unknown City, C', oil, acrylic, canvas, 110x110cm, 1979. (Photo: K. Rzepecki,

Cracow, Poland) (Fig. 7, cf. page 21)









Bottom left: Takhir T. Salakhov. 'Portrait of the Composer Kara-Karayev', oil on canvas, 120 x 200 cm, 1960. (Fig. 1, cf.

page 13)


page 13)


page 13)


page 13)


page 13)

Bottom right: Joseph Germana. 'Sunshower Enlightment', watercolors, acrylic gel medium, modeling paste, illustration board, 16 x 16cm, 1979. (Photo: M. Strawn, Blacksburg, Va.,

U.S.A.) (Fig. 4, cf. page 35)











on my work as a painter: a memoir

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