Contemporary Russian artist Erik Bulatov is one of the most expensive, whose works fetch millions of dollars at auction. A man whose work was recognized thirty years later. Europe discovered it. Thanks to exhibitions held in galleries in Switzerland, Germany, and France, people started talking about him in Russia. In this article we will talk about the paintings of Eric Bulatov and the features of his style.

Parents of E.V. Bulatova

Erik Bulatov was born in 1933 on September 5 in Sverdlovsk (now Yekaterinburg), where his pregnant mother went with her father on a business trip to the Urals. Father, Vladimir Borisovich, was expelled from the party in 1937 and everything was heading towards arrest. An enterprising mother rented a dacha near Moscow, and my father lived there for more than six months. They forgot about him, or rather, according to the allotment, they took another one, the main thing was to check the box that a number of enemies of the people were captured. He volunteered for the war in 1941, and was killed in 1944. Bulatov recalls that his father, seeing his drawings, believed that he would turn out to be an artist. Erik Bulatov began painting his first paintings as a child.

Mom is Polish. She was a gifted person. I crossed the border from Poland to Russia without knowing a single Russian word. In two years I learned Russian so well that I began working as a stenographer. Mother and father had different views on the line pursued by the party. But since they loved each other, politics faded into the background.

Studying at school and the Surikov Institute

Eric's studies began at an art school, which belonged to the Surikov Institute. He studied so well that upon completion, Erik Bulatov received a medal, so he did not have to take entrance exams to the university. The situation at the institute was difficult, the time was difficult: the 50s, the death of Stalin, the fight against cosmopolitanism.

Invaluable assistance at this time was provided by Robert Falk and Vladimir Favorsky to the young Eric Bulatov in gaining strong independence in relation to the official doctrine pursued in the country. By the end of the institute, the understanding came that a real artist should be free and not depend on orders from the state. But in order to develop, funds were needed. There was no question of private orders. There was only one alternative - illustrating children's books.

This work was out of necessity. The autumn-winter period was reserved for earning money, which consisted of creating illustrations. Eric Bulatov painted his paintings in spring and summer. Moreover, they contained what I sensed, what I felt.

Bulatov - children's book illustrator

To start working as an illustrator, it was necessary to learn this, since Erik Vladimirovich had a different education - he was a painter. At the publishing house where Bulatov worked, there were certain requirements that had to be met. Eric Bulatov in his interviews recalls working in a children's publishing house: “When you illustrate a fairy tale, a completely different principle of thinking comes into play - children's. The child has his own ideas about this or that fairy tale hero. When working on an illustration, you should show exactly this - a child’s vision, not your own. And the work of an artist is a completely free consciousness. It is in the painting that you express your vision, perception, reflection of the world.”

Paintings by Erik Bulatov

A characteristic style by which Bulatov’s paintings can be recognized is the collision of large poster text with a landscape component borrowed from the press. This is the absurdity of the reality surrounding the artist and the oversaturation of Soviet symbolism shown in the picture. This was Erik Bulatov in the social art theme. His early works are based on the interaction of painting and space. But this stage of the artist’s work was not appreciated in his homeland.

Illusions about paths stretching into the distance in the paintings of Eric Bulatov are read as dead ends. The figurative metaphorical nature depicted in the artist’s canvases is understandable to the audience. Eric Bulatov depicted these blocks in paintings with the titles “Horizon” (a wall made of a red carpet), “Krasikova Street” (a stand with the image of a walking Lenin), and “I Live and See” (the Kremlin).

How Erik Bulatov came to Sots Art

The social art tendency in Bulatov’s painting manifested itself against the background of the American pop art, which united the space of art and a layer of second reality. Bulatov understood that for Soviet people, ideology was nothing more than their reality. She took up all their space. But many Soviet artists They believed (thanks to the same ideology) that the dirt of life should not be shown, creators must live in perspective. Therefore, his comrades who worked in social art did not share the vision of Bulatov, who tried to express in his paintings the consciousness of people, formed by Soviet ideology.

Bulatov managed to bypass the restrictions of the official Soviet art, developing a very personal style.His paintings are mainly iconoclastic assemblages in which image and language are linked.In landscapes, portraits, and cityscapes, he uses both the iconography of the Soviet regime and more traditional ideas about nature as his inspiration.The choice of colors, geometric compositions and the use of images from films, art history or advertising define Bulatov's visual language.

The photo in Erik Bulatov’s painting “Program Time” looks like it was taken from Ogonyok magazine. He depicted the hopelessness and despair of a lonely old woman listening to news on TV. Fictitious communication with a talking box and the ideological intoxication of people during the Soviet era is the theme of this film.

Russian European artist

It so happened that Eric Bulatov and his wife have been living in Paris since 1992. I didn’t emigrate, but simply went at the invitation to work. This happened after his exhibition, organized by gallery owner Dina Verni. It was she who organized the vernissage of paintings by Erik Vladimirovich Bulatov, exported from Russia by private collectors. The works left the country legally, without obstacles, with the seal of the Ministry of Culture “Has no artistic value.” Bulatov understood that paintings needed to be given life, they needed to be sold, even if not expensively. And they were exported from the Soviet Union.

The exhibition in Zurich was a success. After her, gallery owners from different countries began to invite Bulatov to Germany, France, and America. Vernissages made it possible to stop making a living from illustrations and devote myself entirely to painting. My wife and I decided to live in France. I really liked Paris with its centuries-old culture.

When asked why he went abroad, Bulatov says in his interviews that it was interesting to look beyond the horizon. In the Soviet Union, his interests were limited to social space, which prevents the real. In Europe, he discovered an existential horizon that included social spaces.

About exhibitions and spectators

Exhibitions of Erik Vladimirovich’s works abroad are held much more often and not on specific dates or holidays. Gallery owners show the artist's paintings to the public quite often. Throughout his life abroad, Erik Bulatov's paintings were repeatedly exhibited in galleries. As the artist himself says, his latest exhibitions, starting in 2005, have been quite successful. They took place in Paris, Geneva, Moscow. The artist is pleased with the interest in his works, and people in different countries show keen interest. Bulatov does not feel offended either abroad or in Russia.

The audience is young people. Many skeptics argue that to the younger generation nothing is needed and it is not interesting that art is over. No that's not true. Young people perceive the works not as something of the past, but as living, and this indicates that they understand the artist. After all, you need to judge an artist’s work from his perspective, to understand his individuality. And, as Eric Vladimirovich himself put it, he wanted to express time.

About the paintings of the artist Erik Bulatov from different times

Recently, more and more paintings taken away by Western collectors have begun to appear at auctions. They are now purchased by Russian collectors. That is, the paintings began to return to Russia. These are mostly works from the 1970s and 1980s. Just pictures with social topics that time did not exist in Russia. And Bulatov’s paintings are like a monument to a bygone era. The fact that these works live and make an impression just shows that the artist was able to express and capture that time.

And here last works Collectors in the West buy more. This is due to the fact that Eric Bulanov works mainly with Swiss, German, and French galleries.

Gift to the Tretyakov Gallery

One of his works, as Bulatov himself says, which he got very hard, he donated to the Tretyakov Gallery in June 2017. The painting by Erik Bulatov is called “The Painting and the Spectators.”

It is of impressive size - two by two and a half meters. It was carried out long and scrupulously. “The Painting and the Spectators” is the fruit of Bulatov’s reflections on the work of Alexander Ivanov, “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” Bulatov organically integrated modern visitors contemplating their ancestors into the picture, combined eras and styles, connected avant-garde and traditional realism.

The only place for the painting is the Tretyakov Gallery, so the author decides. After all, this is where his life passed. The Tretyakov Gallery has three more works by Erik Bulatov from his early period when he was working on abstract forms.

Bulatov, Eric Vladimirovich

Eric Bulatov. Louvre. Gioconda. 2006

Bulatov's paintings are recognizable all over the world. This happens thanks to a unique technique. Sots art or pop art in Russian. His paintings are always replete with symbolism, which in an encrypted form presents the viewer with his observations of the absurdity of Soviet reality, which, on the verge of a turning point, rushes from side to side, looking for a way out, but there are only dead ends around, there are only officials around with their complete arbitrariness and the omnipresent industry of the West, which powerfully like a wedge breaks through the weakened shell of the culture of the Soviet people.

Often these are words and sentences taken out of context from Soviet posters of the time, superimposed on the painting itself, confirming, self-deprecating or complementing each other. All this, like dissatisfaction with reality, like ridicule, protest and revolutionary mood, is reflected in the art of Erik Bulatov.

Eric Bulatov. Horizon. 1971–1972

In this sense, the artist turned out to be a real talent. There are not many artists in our country who, in the avant-garde field, were able to earn such popularity throughout the world. Here the point is not even in anti-Soviet sentiments in some countries of the world, which find support in his paintings, but in the author’s talent itself, his approach to painting, to symbolism, to the new genre that he nurtured and put on its feet.

Bulatov's works are constantly exhibited at contemporary art auctions. Thus, at the Philips auction, the work “Soviet Space” went for about 1.6 million dollars, two more canvases on Soviet themes, including “Revolution - Perestroika,” were sold for a million dollars each, which made Bulatov one of the most expensive contemporary Russian artists.

“Brezhnev. Soviet space" (1977)

Eric Bulatov. Krasikova street. 1977

‘ I wanted to show Soviet life just as it is, without expressing any attitude towards it. There was no obvious protest in my painting, I had no desire to convince the viewer of anything: look how terrible it is! I was not a hero of social struggle like Oscar Rabin. My task was fundamentally different: I wanted the viewer to see his life as it is, but to see it as if from the outside.”

« I wanted to create a distance between this reality and the viewer's consciousness. This is what the painting served, working as a distance, as an instance of a detached gaze. I built a work of art as an instance between reality and consciousness. That's what was important to me. So that the viewer thinks: this is what my life is like... So that he perceives my paintings not as a lesson, but also makes a discovery himself.”

Eric Bulatov. I wanted to do it before dark, but I didn’t have time. 2002

Eric Bulatov. All this spring. 1998

Eric Bulatov. Photo for memory

Russian 20th century

Glory to the CPSU

Characteristic and recognizable creative method Bulatov is a collision of poster text, taken from the context of Soviet reality, with a figurative (most often landscape, borrowed from the mass press) component. As a result the artist succeeds extremely in an accessible way illustrate the absurdity of reality, oversaturated with the symbolism of Soviet propaganda.

In addition to works of social art themes, even in their early works ah Bulatov developed a theory of interaction between painting and space. In these works of his, the influence of Falk is noticeable. A strong, unique stage of his work, unappreciated in the context of art history.

E. Bulatov. SUNSET. 1989

Eric Bulatov “Liberte” 1992 - this painting appeared on the poster of the exhibition “Counterpoint”

On October 14, 2010, the exhibition “Counterpoint: Russian modern Art" The exhibition features works by more than twenty artists. These are Eric Bulatov, Emilia and Ilya Kabakov, Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, Valery Koshlyakov, Alexey Kallima, Vladimir Dubosarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, Andrey Monastyrsky, Vadim Zakharov, Yuri Leiderman, Yuri Albert, Avdey Ter-Oganyan, the Blue Noses group and AES+F and others. On the eve of the vernissage, Izvestia correspondent in France Yuri Kovalenko met with academician Erik Bulatov in his Paris workshop.

Excerpts from an interview in 2010

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news: None of the Russian artists exhibited at the Louvre during their lifetime. And the number of Western masters who have received such an honor is few and far between. In a word, going to the Louvre is cool!

Eric Bulatov: Indeed, the Louvre seems to all of us as something unattainable. But our exhibition will take place, as it were, in the basements - in the medieval Louvre, where the foundations of the walls and towers of the palace have been excavated. This place for an exhibition is absolutely unsuitable. There you can only make installations or show videos. A truly exhibition that would talk about current state of our art - especially during the Year of Russia in France - should have been held elsewhere. For example, in National Center art and culture named after Georges Pompidou.

and: So, are you offended?

Bulatov: I’m not offended, but I just don’t want there to be euphoria, immoderate delight: “Oh, the Louvre, the Louvre!” But be that as it may, for us Russians, the Louvre is Holy place, to which we are joining. Maybe somewhere in a corner, in a crevice...

…………………………….

and: Surprises await the public. On the day of the opening day at the Louvre, artist Yuri Leiderman organizes his performance: two women in Russian national costumes chop a hundred heads of cabbage in front of the audience. For his part, his colleague Yuri Albert will guide viewers through the Louvre blindfolded...

Bulatov: This is our conceptualism.

and: On the exhibition poster, your painting “Liberte” (“Freedom”) is reproduced - a echo of Delacroix’s famous painting “Liberty on the Barricades”.

Bulatov: There are two of my works on display. In addition to this, there is also the painting “Black Evening - White snow».

And: “Liberte” is a textbook picture in every sense. Together with your other work - “Soviet Space” - it was even included in French textbooks.

Bulatov: I received this order in 1989, when a big holiday was being prepared in France to mark the 200th anniversary of the revolution. They were going to lift into the air an airship, which was to be painted by a Russian artist on one side and an American one on the other. And I had an idea related to our revolutionary situation 1980s There were a lot of freedom-loving illusions back then.

and: How does the Western audience today perceive Russian art?

Bulatov: Always with interest. I was convinced of this at the exhibition “Russian Landscape” at the National Gallery in London. The museum is free, but the exhibition is paid. And people stood to get to it. The same attention is paid to Russian exhibitions in Paris. The problem arises with criticism - it is not interested.

and: And whose side is the truth on?

Bulatov: The truth cannot be on the side of those who are trying to direct art. It is also wrong to assume that she is on the side of the audience. The masses, for example, go to Glazunov or Shilov. Anyway one cannot ignore the audience, or at least those who want to understand the painting. They need to be educated, they need to be worked with. It’s not easy to declare one artist good and another bad, but to explain things concerning the fundamental principles of art.

and: There is a French expression “to train the eye.”

Bulatov: Not only the eyes, but also the head. The eye, as my teacher Vladimir Andreevich Favorsky said, can be deceived. Consciousness is more difficult to deceive.

and: Favorsky was not only an artist, but also a philosopher.

Bulatov: He was a philosopher of art. He was associated with Florensky and with our other religious philosophers. I'm not a philosopher, just an artist. I just try to understand why and why I do it this way and not otherwise.

and: Haven’t the curators, who are called commissars here, taken too much power into their hands? Do the artists have in their hands, in your words, like auxiliary materials - paints and brushes?

Bulatov: I have the impression that the general situation is now changing. Maybe because there is a generational change among curators.

and: Hasn’t art lost much of its moral functions and become part of the entertainment industry?

Bulatov: We cannot objectively judge today’s art, because we judge precisely by what is shown to us. I don't know how much this corresponds to what is happening in art. Moreover, I hope that this is not the case at all. A We will find out about what art is today, maybe in fifty years.

and: The coming victory in the West of mass bourgeois culture was predicted by Herzen. Now it seems to have finally gained the upper hand in Russia.

Bulatov: She cannot win completely. We, of course, do not live in the Renaissance, but art cannot perish. If this happens, human existence will become meaningless. Art asks a question that no one else asks: “What is man for?”

and: You still go to the Louvre to study with the classics. What can a well-established, well-known artist learn?

Bulatov: Actually, I can do very little. I can't do a lot of things.

and: Humiliation rather than pride?

Bulatov: No, it's true. Every artist has a path that he follows. And if you stumble a little, you immediately find yourself in a quagmire in which you cannot navigate at all. And every time new job you have to start from scratch, decide again, because in art all decisions are one-time.

and: Are you still tormented by creative pangs?

Bulatov: Along with Favorsky, Falk was my teacher. As a student I came to show him my work. And he asked me: “What do you think about them?” Then I was in complete despair at my own mediocrity and told him about it. Falk answered me: “So you are now in a very good creative state. I will tell you something that will not be a consolation for you, but which will be useful in the future. This condition will continue throughout your life. And if it passes, it means that you as an artist are finished.” I have never felt so helpless as I do now, in my old age, when I start a new still life.

and: Next to the works of which great artists in the Tretyakov Gallery or the Louvre would you like to exhibit your painting?

Bulatov: In the Louvre - it’s scary to say - with “The Coronation of Our Lady” by Fra Angelico and with Titian’s “Rural Concert”. In the Tretyakov Gallery - with Alexander Ivanov or Levitan. My favorite Levitan painting is “Lake”, which is in the Russian Museum. It was supposed to be called “Rus”, but Levitan was embarrassed to give this name, considering the picture unsuccessful.

and: Why is there a reproduction of La Gioconda hanging in your Moscow studio?

Bulatov: I wrote an article about La Gioconda. It is important to me how this picture is arranged, how it is shown the problem of the boundary between art and life. This is what Leonardo worked on more than anyone else.

and: But life is still more important than art?

Bulatov: I really don’t know. On the one hand, this is true, but on the other, life is material for art.

and: Having lived for about two decades in France, do you consider yourself a Russian or a European artist?

Bulatov: I am a Russian artist by education and training. Therefore, I am a European artist, like all artists living in France, Germany or Italy.

…………………………………..

and: Could a new landscape painter of Levitan’s level appear today?

Bulatov: There is such a landscape painter. This is Oleg Vasiliev (Bulatov’s friend and ally, with whom they worked together for many years book graphics. - “Izvestia”). He has been noticed, but is still underestimated.

and: Brazilian Gil Vicente painted a dozen canvases depicting the imaginary murders of George Bush, Brazilian President Lula da Silva, and the current Pope Benedict XVI. Is everything allowed for artists? Is some kind of censorship acceptable in art?

Bulatov: External censorship is, of course, fatal for art. There must be internal censorship. What it is? Kant said it best: “The starry sky is above us and the moral law is within us.” And we are all obliged to comply with this law.

………………………………………………………….— Lately, it seems to me that the social origin, although it played before big role. Many even called you the founder of Sots Art.

— I have never been a Sots Art artist. Of course, my paintings, such as “Horizon,” played a big role in shaping this direction, that’s true. But Sots Art artists have fundamental differences from me. The meaning is completely different. My paintings are a confrontation between ideological reality and natural reality. Two realities confront each other, and our consciousness is completely blocked by this ideological space. That's the point. And no one but me dealt with this conflict. Then they started studying when Soviet Union has already collapsed.

……………………………………………..

— Are people in the West, in Paris, for example, interested in contemporary Russian art?

- Not really. It’s just that in the West they firmly know that he doesn’t exist, so there’s nothing to be interested in here. There is Russian music, there is Russian literature, maybe Russian theater, but there was and is not Russian art.

…………………………………….

— What about the Russian avant-garde?

— You know, in Paris the Russian avant-garde is perceived as a landing force French art to Russian. Our 19th century is considered a provincial branch German art, and then the French landing, which gave an unexpected result. Then the paratroopers were shot, and it was all over. Although this is in highest degree not fair. I believe that the 19th century is also worth special attention - this is definitely not a provincial branch, although there were certainly German influences.

You see, it is important that our Russian theorists and art historians finally begin to seriously address these issues. Look, in our art history Russian art XIX century found itself between two poles: either it’s the devil knows what (as some of our leading figures, such as Katya Degot, believe in the West), or it’s something extraordinary, the most beautiful and greatest ever created, better than anyone in the world. In fact, both of these positions are harmful. Not just wrong, but harmful. You need to carefully look at how it differs from the art of other countries and schools, what its essence is, what its shortcomings and advantages are. Simply branding or extolling is the road to nowhere.

Again, if we talk about Russian art as such, then we need to understand what the connection between different eras and genres is. Are the Russian 19th century and the Russian avant-garde really two opposite things that exclude each other? If both are Russian art, then there is some kind of general basis, something united. But no one analyzes these phenomena. Why then do we want others to think that we have art? After all, we ourselves cannot really say anything about him.

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The material was prepared by Elena Ishchenko.

Publication - http://www.liveinternet.ru/community/camelot_club/post323364700/

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Childhood and first experiences of drawing

Erik Bulatov was born in Sverdlovsk in 1933. His parents lived in Moscow, but just before the birth of his son, his father, Vladimir Borisovich, went on a business trip, and his pregnant mother, Raisa Pavlovna, followed her husband. The artist’s father was, in Bulatov’s own words, a “professional party worker” until 1937, then he was expelled from the party and almost arrested. Vladimir Borisovich was saved by the ingenuity of Raisa Pavlovna - she rented a dacha for her husband in the Moscow region and he lived there until the attention of the Soviet secret services to him waned. Erik Bulatov's father went to the front in 1941, when the future artist was 8 years old, and died in 1944.

The artist's mother was born in the city of Bialystok in Poland. When she first came to the USSR, she did not know Russian - she spoke only Yiddish and Polish - three years later the young woman learned Russian so well that she was able to work as a stenographer. In addition to her main work, the artist’s mother participated in samizdat. She also reprinted Doctor Zhivago.

Bulatov recalled that he had been drawing for as long as he could remember. His first drawing lessons were given to him by his dacha neighbor Zinaida Lenskaya. The father of the future artist was delighted with his son’s first experiments and even then decided that his son should become an artist. As a child, when he came to visit somewhere with his parents, he brought with him an album and colored pencils and sat down to draw. After the death of his father, his faith in his first artistic experiments determined the fate of Erik Bulatov.

Young Eric Bulatov entered the Moscow Secondary Art School (MSHS) the second time, after two years of studying in the drawing circle at the Palace of Pioneers. True, I got it young artist straight into the third grade of art school, which corresponded to the seventh grade secondary school. Bulatov studied at the Moscow Art School from 1947 to 1952, in the midst of the “struggle against formalism and cosmopolitanism” and repression, but for Erik Bulatov this time is associated with memories of diligent drawing and friendship with classmates. During this period, he met Oleg Vasiliev, with whom they studied in parallel classes. The future artists became friends already at the institute and remain friends to this day. In one of the interviews, the artist said that he still focuses on the opinion of Oleg Vasiliev when he paints pictures.

Oleg Vasiliev. Rotation (Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, Oleg Vasiliev and his wife Kira). 1998. Oil on canvas.

In 1952, Bulatov entered the painting department of the Moscow Surikov Art Institute. “The culture was in a state of paralysis. What was being done that was interesting at that time was done by people of the pre-Soviet era,” the artist recalled. At that time, the artist felt it was impossible to capture the “living nerve of life”; for him this was the first awareness of the inadequacy of academic means for conveying reality.

Erik Bulatov graduated from the Surikov Institute in 1958. Two years before graduation, he led a student revolt. According to the artist’s recollections, this was the only moment when he took an active part in public life. The fact is that during Stalin’s time, many professors were dismissed, and new ones came in their place. The rioting students, inspired by the news of the 20th Congress and the general expectation of change, demanded at an open Komsomol meeting organized by Bulatov the resignation of conservative professors who came to the institute during Stalin's time, and the return of those who were fired during the years of repression. True, only Alexander Daineka was able to return, but many professors were deprived of their positions.

For many of Bulatov's classmates and teachers, the fact that he led the student protest was surprising. After 1954, his position at the institute improved greatly compared to previous years: his work was bought by the Tretyakov Gallery, he received a Lenin scholarship, and he was named a laureate of the youth festival. Many teachers saw ingratitude in Bulatov's actions, but he had nothing against those whom he criticized, he simply believed that his teachers were not competent enough. After the student protest, according to the artist’s recollections, “the illusions were over,” he no longer participated in any political actions and realized that he should pay as little attention as possible to the authorities.

Abstraction

Eric Bulatov. Incision. 1965-1966. Canvas, oil. State Tretyakov Gallery

According to the artist, Robert Falk and Vladimir Favorsky most influenced his formation. Bulatov met Robert Falk in the winter of 1953. The artist showed his works on certain days; a mutual friend of Falk and Bulatov, Lydia Brodskaya, brought Bulatov to Falk on one of these days of showings. Then Bulatov began going to the studio of the modernist classic regularly and even showed his works. After Stalin's death, a large amount of information began to appear about European art. The exhibition of impressionists was reopened at the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin, thanks to Falk, young Bulatov was able to understand that new information that he encountered. However, what was much more important for Bulatov, Falk became for him “a model of the artist’s behavior in social space.” Despite ignoring criticism and official institutions, he continued to work hard and focused.

Bulatov met Vladimir Favorsky in 1956. They simply came without an invitation, together with Oleg Vasiliev, to the famous artist and art critic. Despite the surprise of the visit, Favorsky received the young artists and treated them very carefully. Oleg Vasiliev and Erik Bulatov asked questions, and Vladimir Favorsky answered them. It was Favorsky who then helped the young artist outline the circle of “spatial problems” that Bulatov is developing, in his own words, to this day, he taught Bulatov “to think, to understand his business.” According to Bulatov’s memoirs, Favorsky taught him to understand that in his hands “there is a painting and that is more than enough.” He realized that a painting has both the properties of an object and the properties of space, and a flat surface easily turns into space, and at each of the points of the painting there is “a certain character of energy.”

According to Bulatov’s memoirs, he truly realized himself as an artist in 1963. He realized the world around him as “a world of continuous surface.” He noticed that under one surface there was always another, and even the sky was perceived by people as a surface. During this period, Eric Bulatov painted abstractions, based on the creative principles that Vladimir Favorsky conveyed to him. One of these principles was that any composition has its own structure, which the artist needs to identify. Another important principle was that any image is conditional. In the mid-1960s, Bulatov's important task was to find an adequate plastic equivalent of Favorsky's theory. This is how abstractions with cuts arose.

Conceptualism

From the late 1960s to early 1970s, artists began to gather in the attic of a house on Sretensky Boulevard in the studio of Ilya Kabakov - Oleg Vasiliev, Erik Bulatov, Eduard Steinberg, Vladimir Yankilevsky and others. Czech art critic Jindrich Chalupecky, in an article that appeared in the magazine Studio International, called all artists with the general term “Sretensky Boulevard Group”, but no group existed. According to the memoirs of Erik Bulatov, rather simply different people they came to Ilya Kabakov’s studio and talked about art and showed each other works, but personally he was close only with Kabakov himself and Oleg Vasiliev.

The first exhibition of Eric Bulatov in Russia took place in 1965 at the Institute. Kurchatov, but it was closed an hour later. The next exhibition, which lasted one evening, took place in 1968 at the Blue Bird cafe. True, the artist himself does not even consider these events to be exhibitions. In 1975, Oleg Vasiliev and Erik Bulatov did not participate in the first legal exhibition of unofficial artists in the “Beekeeping” pavilion at VDNKh because they decided not to take the places of those who took part in the “Bulldozer” exhibition. Subsequently, what was exhibited in “Beekeeping” seemed to Bulatov to be so kitsch that he did not want his works to be in this space. Erik Bulatov did not take part in the “Bulldozer” exhibition, because he believed that his work, not social activity, must report what he thinks.

In 1971, the first foreign exhibition took place in Paris, in which Eric Bulatov took part. Then his self-portrait, placed on the cover of the catalog, was bought by Diana Verni. Foreigners came to Bulatov’s studio before the Paris exhibition and bought his works. At first, the artist was afraid “that something might not work out,” but over time Soviet authority became weaker and gave the artist everything less problems.

Eric Bulatov's workshop was located on Chistye Prudy; later the view from this workshop will appear in the painting “I Live and See.” Bulatov, like his friend Oleg Vasiliev, built it himself. The artists managed to obtain permission from the Union of Artists to build workshops at their own expense. The artists worked for six months as illustrators of children's books, and for six months they built workshops (1969 - 1971) and were engaged in their own creativity. Thanks to Ilya Kabakov, who studied at book illustrator from the main artist of “Detgiz” Boris Degtyarev, Oleg Vasiliev and Erik Bulatov ended up in the “Malysh” publishing house, which published books for the little ones. Eric Bulatov recalled that he needed to make the illustrations for the books “truly fabulous,” that is, remember the child’s perception and try to follow the child’s imagination.

Eric Bulatov. I live - I see. 1999. Oil on canvas. Museum of Avant-Garde Art - MAGMA

Despite new knowledge about the nature of the painting, Bulatov still felt that reality was “slipping between his fingers.” During that period, he, Oleg Vasiliev and Ilya Kabakov drew attention to Soviet kitsch. At that time, railway posters were especially interesting for Bulatov. Oleg Vasiliev, Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov saw pop art as their “ally” because, as Bulatov put it, it dealt with “the second reality around man.” At the same time, for Bulatov, pop art was also a “natural enemy,” because he asserted the reality of kitsch as the only reality, and the artist did not agree with this, since he wanted to “free himself from this reality and express its limitations, jump out beyond it.” aisles." According to Bulatov, all his paintings in one way or another address the theme of the possibility or impossibility of “jumping beyond the limits.”

During the same period, the artist moved away from abstraction to images reflecting Soviet reality and referring to it. They often contain a motif of bars, from behind which a human figure is trying to escape. Based on this principle, one of the most famous works Bulatov "Horizon". The idea of ​​the work appeared when the artist went with Oleg Vasiliev to Crimea to the House of Creativity to work on illustrations for the next book, but also to study own works, and caught a cold on my back while swimming in the sea. As a result, Bulatov was forced to spend the rare time free from working on illustrations lying on the couch in the office, where he was given warming procedures. Before his eyes was a window, from which the view of the sea was blocked by a red beam. At first the artist was annoyed by this, but then he felt that this view was a metaphor for his life. A year later, he and Vasiliev went to another House of Creativity, but this time in the Baltic States. There, in one of the stalls with Bulatov, I saw a postcard with “correct Soviet” people. Thus, a painting was assembled from various elements found in the Houses of Creativity.

Eric Bulatov, Horizon. 1971/1972. Canvas, oil.

Bulatov strove to open up the space of the painting towards the space of the viewer. In particular, in “Horizon” the red stripe was supposed to evoke associations with Soviet everyday life. Later, words and texts began to appear in Erik Bulatov’s paintings. At that time they were usually taken from those inscriptions that surrounded Soviet man every day. For example, “dangerous”, “no entry”, “don’t lean” and others. Sometimes the artist used the language of photorealistic painting to depict a space that contrasted with what the words said. This was the case, for example, in the film “Danger,” in which, framed by warnings, there was an idyllic picture of a lawn.

Paintings with words allowed the artist to think about political problems as spatial problems. Freedom, in his opinion, is open space. The work “Entrance – No Entry” from 1975 collided with the prohibitory words “No Entry” written in red and the words “Entrance” written in blue, stretching into the distance. What happened to the painting “Glory to the CPSU” interesting story. When the critic and philosopher Evgeniy Schiffers saw her, he began to cross himself and say that Erik Bulatov wrote the slogan “Across our Russian sky!” To the artist, such words seemed blatant stupidity, since the task of the painting was, first of all, to convey how total the presence of the Soviet way of thinking was in people’s minds.

For his works, Bulatov uses the most primitive font used to write political posters in the USSR. For the artist this is important, because in this way he showed a word that has not yet been embodied, which is still only being thought of. Such an “uncombed word.”
Gradually, Bulatov moves from Soviet slogans to the texts of his old friend and one of his favorite poets, Vsevolod Nekrasov. In his works, the poet’s works acquired a spatial dimension. In addition to the works of Vsevolod Nekrasov, Alexander Blok’s line “Black Evening” appeared in Bulatov’s paintings. White snow". The artist recalled that the phrase, which seemed so simple, was quite difficult to visualize.

Unlike many colleagues, Bulatov never perceived his own departure abroad as a severance of all ties with his homeland. In many interviews, he said that he rather went on a business trip, because after Perestroika he had the opportunity to find a foreign gallery and earn money not by illustrating children's books, but directly by art. At first, Bulatov moved to New York with his wife Natalya, but the artist’s wife didn’t like it in America, so the couple left for Paris, where they still live.
According to the artist, the understanding that his thinking is a product of Russian culture does not in the least prevent him from feeling comfortable in Europe.

Eric Bulatov, Mozart, 1991, oil on canvas. Collection of the ART4 Museum

After leaving, the artist did not disappear from the Russian artistic context. His “final” personal exhibition took place in 2014 at the Manege. In addition to old works, it showed works written in Paris. After leaving Russia, the artist became interested in social consciousness in itself. The way some authors managed to create their characters so “alive” that they seemed “real”. He moved away from the reflection of Soviet ideology and focused on how to make the space of the painting as open as possible. In Moscow, in addition to exhibition activities, the artist also participates in city projects. For example, he created a logo for the “Best City on Earth” festival.

The artist Erik Bulatov is considered the founder of several new styles in world art. From his brush came the works that gave rise to the genres of Russian pop art, photorealism, socialist art and Moscow conceptualism. The master's works are among the most expensive paintings in the world. Bulatov, although he lives in two houses - Russian and French, often admits that he is happy to return to his homeland to be charged with inspiration and new ideas.

Childhood and youth

The future artist was born on September 5, 1933 in Sverdlovsk (now the city of Yekaterinburg). Little Eric was left without a father early on - he died at the front in 1944. The boy's mother was an emigrant from Poland and worked as a stenographer. In an interview, Bulatov later admitted: his father had no doubt that his son would become an artist. And, as it turned out later, he was right.

Erik Bulatov had no doubt about his choice of profession and, after graduating from school, entered the Art Institute named after. Graduated in 1958 educational institution. His favorite artists at that moment were and - it was their work that largely influenced the style of Bulatov’s early works.

In 1959, the aspiring brush master got a job at the publishing house of children's literature "Detgiz", where Oleg Vasiliev became his fellow illustrators, who later, like Bulatov himself, left the country.

Their designs for The Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty and Cinderella continue to delight children and adults alike. Since 1957, Eric Vladimirovich began organizing his first personal exhibitions. It is customary to count his professional works from this same period.

Painting

A distinctive feature of the artist’s author’s style is the harmonious combination of the poster genre, popular in Soviet time, and the picturesque component. Slogans in Eric Vladimirovich’s paintings coexist with landscapes and portraits. With this technique, according to critics, Bulatov emphasized the absurdity of the surrounding reality, its oversaturation with pretentious speeches and propaganda.

Similar social art in the work of Erik Bulatov was adjacent to paintings in which the influence of the style of Robert Falk can be clearly seen. Unfortunately, this period in Bulatov’s artistic career did not gain much popularity among critics and art critics. The artist himself admits that Falk really influenced his professional development in many ways.

In the mid-1960s, Bulatov experimented with styles, combining illustration techniques in one canvas, watercolor painting, as well as graphics. Special attention the artist paid attention to ways of transmitting light and space.

Unfortunately, Erik Vladimirovich’s works in the USSR were subject to censorship, and he could only dream of full-fledged exhibitions. Only in 1965 and 1968 did Eric Bulatov manage to achieve short-term exhibitions of his paintings at the Igor Kurchatov Institute and in a Moscow cafe called “Blue Bird”.

Since the 1970s, Bulatov’s work began to dominate large-scale canvases, in which the author addressed social themes and images that filled the mass media of that time. In 1972, the artist painted “Horizon” - one of the most famous paintings. At that moment, the work was perceived as a parody.

The same period in Eric Vladimirovich’s career was marked by numerous foreign exhibitions, which brought the master international recognition: Bulatov’s paintings visited Zurich, Paris, Venice and other European cities, everywhere meeting the favor of art lovers.

Gradually, Erik Vladimirovich gained a reputation as an “artist of perestroika,” and in 1988 he was even recognized as master of the year by the Venice Biennale. A year after this, Bulatov and his family moved to New York, and then, in 1992, he went to Paris, which became his second home.

In the early 1990s, the artist gradually moved away from political themes: Bulatova’s work opened up new page abstract images and graphic images. And after some time, the master became interested in ceramics, giving the world a number of talented paintings on dishes.

In 2003, Erik Vladimirovich organized an exhibition in Moscow - for the first time after moving. The exhibition presented in the capital Tretyakov Gallery, received enthusiastic responses in the master’s homeland.

Another large-scale exhibition took place ten years later, when the artist’s works gave him the title of laureate of the Innovation competition. And in 2015, Bulatov was invited to the opening of the Garage museum, as well as the museum named after. Especially for this event, Eric Vladimirovich created the canvas “Freedom”.

Bulatov's paintings gradually brought the master the fame of one of the most expensive and sought-after artists of our time. Canvas “Brezhnev. Soviet Space” was sold at auction for $1.6 million, and a number of Soviet-themed paintings cost the new owners $1 million each. On this moment the most famous works The masters, in addition to those listed, can be called the canvases “Don’t lean”, “Glory to the CPSU”, “Sky - ciel”.

Personal life

Details personal life Erik Bulatov prefers not to share. It is known that the artist has a wife. The master's wife's name is Natalya.

According to Eric Vladimirovich, she supported him and helped him create. Bulatova’s beloved surrounded her husband with care and largely relieved him of thoughts about everyday chores that could take time away from creativity.

Eric Bulatov now

Now Erik Bulatov lives in two houses - the artist, by his own admission, feels good in native Russia, and in France. In 2018, Anatoly Malkin prepared the documentary film “I Live and See,” in which, in the form of an interview, he revealed interesting details of the biography of Eric Vladimirovich. In this film, Bulatov admitted that, due to his age, he is no longer able to devote as much time to creativity as before, but is still devoted to his favorite work.

In addition, books by Russian and foreign art historians are devoted to the artist’s work and biography. Bulatov’s works can be seen in the Georges Pompidou Museum in Paris, as well as in galleries in New Jersey, Cologne, and Basel. In Russia, Eric Vladimirovich’s paintings are presented in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Russian Museum.

Works

• 1972 - “Horizon”
• 1975 - “Glory to the CPSU”
• 1977 - “Brezhnev. Soviet space"
• 1987 - “Don’t Lean”
• 1989 - “Perestroika”
• 2010 - “Sky - ciel”
• 2011 - “Up - Down”
• 2015 - “Freedom”

Erik Bulatov's retrospective "I LIVE - I SEE" opened at the Manege Central Exhibition Hall. The scale of the exhibition is impressive: more than 100 works have been collected. We decided to tell about the exhibition with the help of five paintings famous artist

Self-portrait. 1968

Self-portraits are the perfect way to get to know an artist. The scale of Frida Kahlo in terms of this genre cannot be surpassed by anyone, but one way or another the self-portrait occupies important place in the works of painters of all times and peoples - from Titian to Salvador Dali. Eric Bulatov for long years works created several self-portraits. The 1973 piece demonstrates young artist against the background of the “creeping line” - “No entry”. The 2011 self-portrait resembles a religious image: the painter’s figure seems to glow from within. Self-portrait from 1968 is one of Bulatov’s early works. Only the lazy would not recognize the “hello” from Rene Magritte on the canvas - the artist’s repeated faces are inscribed in the black silhouette of a man in a bowler hat. Surrealism did not take root in Bulatov’s work, but the concept of a “picture within a picture” did.

"Russian XX century I"

Eric Bulatov brings together extreme opposites in the space of one picture: serenity and anxiety, complete freedom and prison bars, realistic painting and soviet poster. The paintings from the “Russian 20th Century” series depict an idyllic Russian landscape, over which the graphic Roman numeral XX looms menacingly. The landscape is the embodiment of the tranquility of Russian life, crossed out by the 20th century: it rises old church, there are low houses and huts around, a river meanders in the background. The twentieth century invades unceremoniously and symbolically. In the painting number I, the numbers resemble the rays of a spotlight from the 20th Century FOX company against the backdrop of a terrible red sky. The water in the river is also bloody in color - the idiom to which the image corresponds requires no explanation. In work No. II, Bulatov acts more laconically and schematically: huge red numbers cross out the patriarchal landscape.

"Glory to the CPSU"

Bulatov’s belonging to any movement is difficult to diagnose: in the 60s, the artist was engaged in abstraction, his iconic works are classified as social art, some paintings are akin to American realism in the spirit of Edward Hopper. Business card the artist - laconic inscriptions running across most of his most famous works. The textbook “Glory to the CPSU” is a clear example. The corresponding red phrase was stamped on the blue sky with fluffy clouds. The sky is a symbol of human natural freedom. The Soviet slogan, obviously, symbolizes the firm hand of totalitarian power. The sky lives and changes: clouds can appear and disappear, while “Glory to the CPSU” is meaninglessly eternal, at least until rust eats away the numerous propaganda billboards across the country, which are filled with Soviet slogans. The artist’s cunning plan, embodied in a seemingly patriotic format, was so obvious that even the Soviet authorities, inexperienced with the delights of the avant-garde, considered it a “cultural code” and banned Bulatov’s paintings.

"Louvre. Mona Lisa"

Naturally, the problems of Bulatov’s paintings are not exhausted by politics and protest, which a decent artist in the Land of the Soviets could not do without. "Louvre. La Gioconda" is a visual reflection on the dialogue between art and spectators. The main thing that interests the artist in da Vinci’s canvas is the painting’s appeal to the viewer. Hypothetical visitors to the Louvre in Bulatov's work invade the halls of the museum like a purple mass and obscure everything and everyone - only the mysterious, slightly sarcastic smile of Mona Lisa remains visible. The crowd resembles a photograph from an old Soviet newspaper, for some reason printed in scarlet ink, while the museum halls are realism unshakable in its eternity. Is it possible to perceive art in conditions of noisy, aggressive, like the color red, media chaos? The question is rhetorical.

“The Painting and the Spectators” is another work on this topic. The canvas reproduces the famous “Appearance of Christ to the People” by Alexander Ivanov, around which visitors crowd with a guide (by the way, Bulatov’s wife) at the head. You can truly appreciate the work by looking at it from behind the backs of other visitors - then your fellow crowd members become part of the work, and the painting magically turns into an installation.

"How do I know where"

“My tram is leaving”, “Black evening, white snow”, “As the clouds go”, “That’s it” - the set of phrases used by Bulatov is diverse and hardly countable. Some words run across the image: “Freedom” across the blue sky, “Train” across the rails. “My tram is leaving” rushes after a late man - it’s amazing how the inclination and placement of the letters can convey rapid movement. The “Here” series is perhaps the most laconic in Bulatov’s work. The works are flesh and blood of the earlier “Glory to the CPSU” and “I Live, I See.” The “heroes” of the paintings are only words, without which the paintings would turn into an ascetic black and white abstraction. When you ask yourself existential questions, decorations are unnecessary. "How do I know where" - life scenario many modern people. All that remains is to admit it.

Where: Central Exhibition Hall "Manege", Manezhnaya Square, 1