Maria Santi:
Ugly Artists Automatic translate

Maria, you have your own vision and approach to the promotion of fine art. In many television and radio programs and in your publications, you force people to look at the work of the greats on the other hand. It creates the feeling of your presence in that era at that time. How do you achieve this?

I am asked this question by 10% of students. I smile and, of course, I don’t know what to say. When I was working on my dissertation at the Lenin Library, I always lacked answers to simple questions: what the artist lived for, spent his free time, and what compromises he had to make. He had to look for answers in letters and books about the rulers he worked for. And I was always twisted from pathos. For example, when a monograph begins with the statement that the great genius talentedly foresaw his fate. How is this possible? Why then the confusion in letters, fawning before customers, experimental and unsuccessful work? Or they write about a successful secular artist as a sick child. Like, the spiritual man was forced to spend time on beauties and intrigues. Who are you writing this for? Do you believe that a person of such acts could be sentimental? I think if Caravaggio watched a BBC film about himself, he would find the authors and drove a knife in the groin of each. As he did during his lifetime with his ball partner.

The cause of lies is blindness. And the cause of blindness is fear. Those people who are afraid to recognize the need to have money and have a neat relationship with customers and those in power have strangely extorted these factors from the biographies of artists. Alas, from these spells the iron necessities of life do not disappear.

What is the language of art? I’ll try to clarify. Now the works are in many ways accessible to the mass audience. But he reads those symbols and codes, does the viewer understand in many ways the meanings laid down by the author of his works?

Most of the philosophical reflection on art is connected with the desire to explain the meaning of art to people who do not need it. Fortunately, this idea does not have many centuries. And the complete ecstasy is that today almost all information is in the public domain. So those who want to make an effort - there is no other way of knowing yet - can choose a source and study it. And the rest will remain in the category “sort of sorted out”, who know that "the main thing is spirituality ".

Michelangelo Buonarroti - The Last Judgment (fragment, Sistine Chapel)

The paintings of the masters of the Renaissance have much more subtext and humor than in most modern videos and films. For example, Michelangelo was annoyed by one manager, a fool and a hypocrite. The artist depicted him in the image of King Minos. With donkey ears. Well, so that life doesn’t seem like honey, he drew a snake biting his penis.

The modern viewer looks at this part of the fresco in the Sistine Chapel with aspiration: a great artist, a great monument, a great time. And the pope laughed.

In the age of numbers and the Internet, all work will remain forever. Now at the junction of tectonic changes in our society and around the world, new names are emerging. In the near future they will be discussed. Your wishes to contemporary artists. Thank.

It is difficult for a modern artist, like any other person, to do what he really wants. Be enthusiastic, see your vulnerability, cope with aggressive criticism. Do you think eight hundred years ago it was harder to sleep? Or did the competition please? Maybe generous patrons and loyal fans were waiting for a genius at the cradle? No.

Life is still ugly and boring. And a person in the field of social realization is still dependent on those involved.

Therefore, like myself, I wish contemporary artists to polish the "art of small steps."

Questions asked by Sergey Fateev © Gallerix.ru