"Nothing Reproduces Time às Clearly às Paint"
By Serhij Marchenko
Film Director
Õ-ÕVIII century: discussions of colour.
ÕÕ-ÕÕI century: the question of appropriated masterpieces.
"Ukrainian Painting of Õ-ÕVIII Centuries; Controversies about Colour", is a new book by the L'viv professor, Volodymyr Antonovych Ovsiychuk. It has 480 pages, over 300 colour illustrations and beautiful printing. In a word, it is a main event in the artistic life of recent years.
Together with the author, it was my good fortune to make most of the colour slides for this book. We took photographs in villages, small towns, churches and museum depositories in L'viv, Kyiv, Ostroh, Luts'k, Rivne, Zhovkva, Velyki Sorochyntsi, in Slovakian Berdijev and Krasnyj Brid - the professor has remembered very well the places, where, miraculously, the masterpieces survived.
I didn't then know the book's "scenario" as a monograph and with impatience I waited for its appearance. Finally, when, one July evening, while visiting the professor, I went through the author's manuscript for the first time and realised that it was worth making a wonderful cognitive film based on it. I asked Mr Ovsiychuk to explain about the practice of presenting Ukrainian masterpieces (such as those mentioned in this book) as being not Ukrainian.
Nothing so distinctly reproduces time, as paint. A colour is a thin tuning fork of time. It is seen even in the paintings of Kyivan Rus' where every century has its own colour. The icons of those times are the greatest witnesses to this fact. However, Ukraine does not have those masterpieces. It is as if they did not exist.
Inevitably, and even before Mongolian times, Kyiv was robbed often enough but the attack of 1169 was unlike anything that had happened before. Andrij Boholjubs'kyj, the grandson of Volodymyr Monomah, arranged for the ancient capital to be looted. For three days churches were stripped of icons and valuable sacred vessels and the booty taken to his country in the north.
The Vyzhgorods'ka Blessed Mother was stolen either then or a little earlier and became the Volodymyrs'ka. The well known Annunciation became Our Lady of Ustiug, Our Lady Oranta became "of Jaroslavl'", Our Saviour's Golden Hair and St George the Conqueror (from the waist upwards) became "masterpieces of the Kremlin's Dormition cathedral". Quite a lot of icons were taken to Novhorod, Suzdal', Tvjer' and other cities. Taken out of the everyday life of the then Ukraine, these works served as the foundation for the myth of the high culture of those ages while in fact they were in the sunrise of their development.
It was advantageous for the whole body of Russian researchers to attribute these icons to the Muscovite towns as though they were created in them, but even in Novhorod such culture and spirituality in those times did not yet exist. Therefore it is not surprising that in the works of the great Russian experts illogical conclusions appeared. For example, the well-known researcher Lazariev both underlines the spiritlessness and the mercenary nature of Muscovite cities and then, suddenly, if the speech is about foreign and considerably older works that have appeared there, he speaks about the highest culture ever. These positions of Lazarjev, in spite of their nationalism, were not supported by his Russian colleagues such as Antonova and Mnjeva. The catalogue of Old Russian painting in the Tretyakovs'ka gallery includes the expression "icon of Kyiv" many times, and it is right to do so because it underlines the fact that Kyiv, in the ÕI - ÕII, centuries was a highly educated and highly cultured city; after Constantinople the largest and most developed city of Europe.
The excessive russianising of works of art continued in later times. The Metropolitan of Kyiv, Peter Ratens'kyj, (who reigned in Moscow at the beginning of ÕIV century) brought together icons from Ukrainian lands, above all from Halychyna. There are people who even want to include them in the Moscow school.
Defending their interests, Russian researchers seem to ignore the ordinary historical development of art. These icons are insufficiently researched and not understood nor accepted for what they really are. The details have been examined but not the style nor the spiritual sources, as would be possible in the environment from where they had originated.
Therefore Lazariev produced a lot of unscientific conclusions, especially in examining icons of the Kyivan time, even though he was a specialist of great standing and one of the best connoisseurs of Byzantine art. Almost every icon was dated a century or a century and a half later, in order to prove that they would be of Jaroslavl' or of Novhorod.
In the book, I have succeeded in doing a comparative analysis of Ukrainian icons with Byzantine icons, later Russian icons, book miniatures and also with the irrefutable standard of the frescos and mosaics of the Santa Sofia cathedral in Kyiv. Russia never had material such as this and we would not have it either, if the Soviets had done the same with the Kyivan Sophia as they did with the Mykhajlivs'kyj Zolotoverkhyj monastery and the Dormition church in Lavra. The cathedral was intended for destruction but, thanks be to God, this did not happen. Not only are we breaking the secrets of vicious research but above all Santa Sophia breaks them most; and nobody jokes with Holy Wisdom.
It turns out that spirituality can also be taken away by removing its material fruits for long periods. The interior impoverishment of people in the soviet time is confirmation of this. However, it is possible to recover these masterpieces without using thievish methods. We need to know only their true origin. Let the colours of icons, written under the palate of Ukraine, pour the light of our spirituality on those lands where they have appeared .
