Фильм Любови Аркус “Кто Тебя Победит Никто” ( 2021)
Инна Рогачий (С)
Просмотр фильма Любови Аркус “Кто Тебя Победил Никто” на Первом канале Российского Телевидения. Октябрь 2021. Фото (С) Первый Канал.
Любовь Аркус и ее замечательная команда работали над этим фильмом шесть лет. Слава Богу, что создателям, и прежде всего Любови Аркус, хватило силы воли и присутствия духа, чтобы завершить этот очень трудный, подчас почти невозможный проект, который сразу же стал явлением. Явлением памяти. Чутким, нежным, проникновенным, умным, взыскательным, не карамельным. Живым.
Память, чтобы она была и осталась живой, воссоздать необыкновенно трудно. Для этого нужны не только знания и понимание, чувство меры и вкус, деликатность и посвященность . Такие свершения требуют прежде всего проживания, отдачи автора. Это всегда кусок собственной жизни и часть собственной души, отношение к людям и явлениям, которые делают воссоздаваемую память живой. Любови Аркус удалось именно это, и это главный результат ее тяжелого шестилетнего труда.
Премьера фильма “Кто Тебя Победил Никто” в Москве. Любовь Аркус со съемочной труппой. Фото (С) Светлана Колосова.
В профессиональном смысле, кинопроизведение Аркус достигает подлинных высот в своем начале и конце, когда камера и монтаж начальных и финальных эпизодов документальной драмы об Алле Демидовой, но на самом деле, о ткани времени, в котором она и мы жили, являются художественным откровением. Начало и конец элегии Аркус нашему времени, второй половине 20-го века – это прекрасно сделанное кино, художественное, тонкое, изобретательное и мастерское.
Кинорежиссер, кинокритик Любовь Аркус.
Но документалистика, мой любимый жанр, потому что оставляет людей, не может состояться без конкретных персонажей – хотя кадры хроники толпы на похоронах Сталина, включенные в этот фильм, стали одним из самых сильных его впечатлений.
В своем фильме Любовь Аркус подарила нам прекрасные эпизоды с прекрасными, редкими людьми, выдающими театроведами, ее Учителем Майей Туровской и знаменитым Вадимом Гаевским, прекрасным кинорежиссером Кирой Муратовой, и гигантом сцены, театральным режиссером Анатолием Васильевым. Дело даже не в том, что в трех случаях, кроме Васильева, эти съемки стали последними снятыми интервью колоссов истории театра и выдающейся женщины-режиссера, что само по себе является очень ценным материалом документального фильма.
Майя Туровская.
Но то, как сняты и смонтированы все эпизоды с Туровской, Гаевским и Муратовой ( оператор этих эпизодов Ирина Штрих, ведущий оператор Алишер Хамидходжаев, монтаж Дмитрия Новосельцева), вызывает радость, тепло и любовь. Потому что это сделано не только совершенно профессионально – а именно, что с потрясающим, редким приближением, проникновением и любовью. Господи, как нам не хватает этой теплой, внимательной человечности, да еще так хорошо сделанной, сегодня, в наше нервное, неровное, какое-то синкопическое время. Спасибо, ребята, спасибо, Люба, за то, что привнесли это в нашу жизнь. Очень хороший монтаж фильма стал дебютом Дмитрия Новосельцева – это очень обращающий на себя внимание дебют.
Вадим Гаевский.
Для меня лично присутствие этих выдающихся людей в фильме стало самым большим подарком. Умные, светлые лица Гаевского и Туровской, такие знакомые многим театральным людям ( и мы с мужем в их числе), их неординарное видение, которым они с нами поделились на экране, как оказалось, в последний раз, просто стоят перед глазами долгое время после окончания просмотра, и никуда не уходят, а даже наоборот. Смотрела бы и слушала бы еще, и еще. Света, ума и доброты в мире стало бы еще больше, даже после их ухода из земной жизни.
Кира Муратова
Кира Муратова – умница, с ее тонким видением в большом и малом – из той же группы самых замечательных людей российской культуры, жемчужина, такая самодостаточная, такая скромная, такая интересная, и такая милая. И ее хочется и видеть, и слышать, и ощущать как можно дольше и больше после фильма Аркус. Такие люди обогащают наше существование во все времена и на все времена. И эти жемчужины посылают свои нежные блики, какие и есть у настоящего, не искусственного, жемчуга, в элегантном и точно выверенном визуальном измерении фильма.
Анатолий Васильев – он всегда интересен, потому что он всегда глубок и всегда является самим собой, человек-океан, вся красота и притягательность которого – на глубине. Но добраться до этой глубины, разглядеть ее и показать другим могут немногие. Любови Аркус это удалось. Я никогда не видела Васильева, этого гиганта российского и мирового театра, таким незащищенным, таким откровенным, таким щемящим. Если бы Люба Аркус сделала фильм о Васильеве, это было бы прекрасно. В ее фильме о Демидовой мы увидели проблески прекрасного, волнующего, интереснейшего явления Васильева.
Анатолий Васильев
Отдельное спасибо Любе за линию об Анатолии Эфросе. Историю и драму этого большого режиссера и замечательного, доброго человека, знают многие театральные люди. Но рассказать ее так точно и честно с большого экрана, в фильме, который останется навсегда, потому что стал документом эпохи ( именно ввиду честности замысла и смелости его исполнения) – это поступок. И этот поступок стал важной частью создания Аркус и ее командой именно живой, живущей памяти, самого благородного и самого трудного вида документалистики.
В этом фильме – много удивительных моментов. Я не стану их пересказывать, их нужно видеть. В этом своем впечатлении я рассказала о том, что тронуло больше всего лично меня.
Требовательность автора к самой себе в этом фильме на очень высоком уровне, и профессионально, и морально, и эстетически. Такой уровень требовательности вызывает большое коллегиальное уважение к Любе. Она создала мастерское произведение. На этом уровне требовательности, избрание камертоном длинного двухчасового фильма Бродского – как явления – не стало удивительным. Это стало очень точным, в десятку, решением автора. Бродский и был нашим камертоном в те годы, о которых рассказывает Аркус через судьбу Демидовой. Бродский – и никто иной.
Иосиф Бродский
Финал фильма, с наложением голоса Бродского с замечательным чтением своего “Осеннего Крика Ястреба” 1975 года, вскоре после его выдворения, а по сути, жестокой, неоправданной вышвырнутости из жизни как он ее понимал и ощущал, вообще, стихотворения, полного отчаяния, тоски и некоей толики уникальной ироничной бравурности Бродского, на разбирание этого стихотворения вслух Аллой Демидовой почти полвека спустя, слияние их голосов, разделение их голосов, преобладание голоса то Демидовой, то Бродского, и наоборот, на фоне крупного плана из вечного немого кино, стало лучшим из того, что я видела не только в богатой тематически и высокопрофессиональной российской кинодокументалистике, но и в жанре документального биографического кино вообще. Финал фильма “Кто тебя победил никто” стал опытом погружения, внесения зрителя во время Демидовой, Бродского, Валуцкого, Любимого, Высоцкого, Эфроса, Васильева, Таганки, которая была нашим всем на театре и в жизни в течение многих лет асфиксии и мечтаний – у тех, кто был способен – о полете ястреба без отчаяния, просто о возможности долететь до Коннектикута, посмотреть на него, побывать, сделать, помечтать, совершить, воплотить – то, что хочется, а не то, что разрешат.
Поймут ли зрители новых поколений, о чем это мы? О чем это Люба Аркус в двухчасовом портрете нашего времени на фоне 80-летней Аллы Демидовой? Я думаю, что да. Ведь делали этот фильм под руководством Любы Аркус молодые люди, что ей и им особое спасибо.
Когда наши друзья, которые посмотрели фильм чуть раньше нас, грустили, и печалились, что этот прекрасный фильм есть прощание – со многим и многими, я немного переживала. Грустно, все-таки. Вокзалы – места нервические. Но когда я увидела фильм и ту молодую команду, которая так точно профессионально и с такой человеческой любовью и пониманием помогла Любе воплотить ее большой, важный, неординарный и смелый замысел, то обрадовалась и успокоилась.
Этот фильм стал объемным, глубоким отпечатком нашей жизни второй половины 20го века в грядущем времени. Фильм будет жить и сохранит наше время, и людей нашего времени, в честной, проникновенной, изящной и теплой элегии Любы Аркус, честь ей и хвала.
Инна Рогачий (С). Посвящение Бродскому. 2014. Частное собрание, Москва, Россия.
Иосиф Бродский рассказывал в минуту редкой откровенности, похожей на задумчивую откровенность Анатолия Васильева в фильме Аркус, что первой для себя задачей, творческой и человеческой, он сокровенно хотел “сохранить родных. Чтобы они не исчезли. Чтобы ( их) помнили. Чтобы они были”. Бродский был очень хорошим – и очень несчастным – сыном.
Любовь Аркус совсем недаром избрала Бродского камертоном своего документального повествования. Она тоже сохранила. Мы и те, кто пришли и придут после нас, будем и будут помнить. Явления памяти состоялось. Спасибо, Люба. Большое спасибо.
Exclusive conversation with professor Rainer Mahlamäki
Publication is in Russian. First published at The Art Newspaper Russia – http://www.theartnewspaper.ru/posts/8908/
С возведением небоскребов в Дании, Норвегии, Швеции ландшафт изменится радикально. Новые высотки Trigoni в Хельсинки будут видны через Финский залив даже из Таллина
Самая высокая в мире башня из дерева Mjosa Tower. Норвегия, 2019.Фото: Metsä Wood/Voll Architect
Северная Европа не привыкла к небоскребам. В то время как в Центральной Европе и Британии со второй половины 1990-х нашествие высоток начало диктовать новые стандарты городского ландшафта, скандинавские страны не пытались устремиться в небеса. Близость к природе играет огромную роль в мироощущении человека по всей Скандинавии. Поэтому так подчеркнуто здесь ухаживают за здоровьем деревьев и чистотой воды. При таком отношении к природе небоскребы, которые радикально меняют рельеф местности, не были востребованы на севере. Из всех скандинавских стран только в Швеции построили несколько сверхвысоких зданий, но это были буквально единичные случаи. Теперь же небоскребы пришли в Скандинавию практически одновременно.
В 2019 году в Норвегии, в городке Брумунндаль на берегу крупнейшего в стране озера был построен небоскреб-плайскапер (plyscaper, от англ. «фанера» — plywood), самое высокое в мире здание почти полностью из дерева, высотой 85 м. Сейчас в стране намечается строительство еще как минимум трех гигантских объектов: 200-метрового комплекса в Беруме, где должна разместиться штаб-квартира некоммерческой организации REV Ocean, многофункционального комплекса Urban Mountain в Осло и офисной башни Breiavatnet Lanterna в Ставангере.
В Дании, в маленьком городке Бранде, где живет 7 тыс. человек, возводится крупнейший в Европе небоскреб высотой 325 м как центральная часть проекта Tower & Village, который совершенно преобразит низменные виды Ютландии. Одновременно в Орхусе, втором по величине городе Дании, идет строительство 146-метровой жилой башни под названием Lighthouse («Маяк»), которая будет самой высокой постройкой в стране.
Небоскребы Norra Tornen. Стокгольм, 2013–2020.Фото: Laurian Ghinitoiu/OMA
В Швеции, в Стокгольме колоссальная вертикаль нагроможденных друг на друга кубов — Norra Tornen («Северные башни») — в 2020 году была отмечена архитектурной премией The International Highrise Award как «лучший в мире небоскреб». Впервые в истории эту престижную международную награду присудили скандинавской стране.
В Финляндии вопросом строительства целого комплекса небоскребов администрация Хельсинки заинтересовалась еще в 2010–2011 годах. В объявленном конкурсе победило архитектурное бюро LMA Architects, предложившее новаторский проект Trigoni. Его автор, знаменитый финский архитектор Райнер Махламяки подходит к своей работе как к художественному процессу и считает важнейшим фактором создание комфортной среды в районе высоток. Возведение группы треугольных высотных зданий начнется на окраине Хельсинки, в Пасиле, в конце 2021 года (его ведет компания YIT). Когда они будут закончены, архитектурный профиль столицы изменится навсегда: небоскребы будут видны через Финский залив из Таллина. Сейчас также обсуждается возможность строительства «мини-Манхэттена» в центре Хельсинки, на берегу моря, где собираются создать искусственный, насыпной полуостров.
РАЙНЕР МАХЛАМЯКИ: «С ВЫСОТЫ 200-МЕТРОВОЙ БАШНИ Я ДОЛЖЕН СПУСТИТЬСЯ НА УРОВЕНЬ ОЩУЩЕНИЙ ЧЕЛОВЕКА»
Архитектор, совладелец бюро LMA Architects Райнер Махламяки.Фото: Jukka-Savolaine
Райнер Махламяки — один из самых востребованных финских архитекторов, совладелец бюро LMA Architects. Он автор здания Музея истории польских евреев «Полин» в Варшаве, а также строящегося мемориального комплекса «Потерянный штетл» в Литве (будет открыт в 2023 году). Проект Махламяки «Реквием» для Музея обороны и блокады Ленинграда в Санкт-Петербурге занял третье место в конкурсе в 2018–2019 годах. На счету этого крупного мастера — проекты мемориалов и музеев в Лондоне и Мюнхене, проект музея современного искусства в Риге, осуществленные здания концертных залов и музеев разных направлений в Финляндии, университеты и библиотеки. Архитектор рассказал нам о Trigoni, первом в Финляндии комплексе небоскребов.
В чем новизна вашего отношения к возведению высотных зданий?
Думаю, что в принципиальном подходе. Я размышлял прежде всего об ощущениях человека, который будет находиться не только внутри башни, но и около нее, в пространстве, которое она формирует.
Я много ездил и изучал среду в тех странах, где небоскребы являются неотъемлемой частью пространства города: в Америке, Канаде, Мексике, Австралии. Очень часто среда, созданная небоскребами, остается неуютной, странной и неприветливой.
Если обратить внимание, например, на район высоток, кардинально изменивший облик Лондона, — что мы прежде всего чувствуем? Там неуютно и холодно — в первую очередь в метафорическом смысле, но и в буквальном, кстати, тоже, из-за очень сильных ветров, дующих теперь в этом районе. Всего этого мы стремились избежать в нашем проекте Trigoni. Если вы создаете такое ультрапространство, то прежде всего должны задуматься над тем, как сделать, чтобы в этом районе человеку было тепло, уютно и комфортно.
Предварительный набросок идеи проекта Trigoni.Фото: LMA Architects/YIT
Как же сделать ультраурбанистическое вертикальное пространство уютным?
Избегать прямых линий, давящих прямоугольников, думать о том, как замкнуть пространство между башнями. Как архитектор, я должен размышлять не только над формой, уходящей ввысь от уровня нормального человеческого взгляда, но и над тем, что человек видит и ощущает вокруг себя. С высоты 200-метровой башни я должен спуститься на уровень ощущений человека и создать для него защищенную среду.
Расскажите подробнее о своем подходе к форме.
В архитектуре, как и в искусстве вообще, существуют две школы мышления — декоративный подход и подход чистой формы. В отношении небоскребов декоративный подход характерен для восточной школы, которая нагружает здания дополнительными элементами, делая их, на мой взгляд, тяжелыми, иногда неуклюжими, иногда фантасмагорическими. Подход чистой формы, которого придерживаюсь я, является залогом элегантности, а это для меня главный критерий и в жизни, и в искусстве, и в работе. Чистота формы не есть ее простота. Чистота рождается из понимания искусства и линии, которое было у скульпторов Древней Греции и которое развил Роден. Форма не должна быть обычной, она должна быть интересной. Но при этом чистой, элегантной. В архитектуре работа над формой является определяющей: мы создаем пространство на долгие годы. Самая большая награда для архитектора — осознание, что люди полюбили твое здание, что они ощущают себя хорошо и внутри, и рядом с ним. Поэтому, например, я настоял на том, чтобы в группе небоскребов Trigoni, которые возводятся на очень небольшом участке, все башни были разной высоты, от 100 до 200 м.
Визуализация проекта Trigoni.Фото: LMA Architects/YIT
Ваши небоскребы будут треугольными и из довольно небанальных материалов. Почему?
Идея треугольного плана была навеяна выдающимся мексиканским архитектором Луисом Барраганом (1902–1988). Я пришел в восторг от его цветных треугольных башен в Мехико. Но, конечно, я работал самостоятельно и создал нечто новое, я надеюсь. Используя треугольную форму, я думал о солнце — чтобы люди, находящиеся внутри башен, могли видеть солнце, когда оно к нам возвращается начиная с весны, и воспринимать свет со всех сторон.
Материал — это еще один принципиальный вопрос в работе архитектора, и я отказался от стекла для проекта Trigoni. Мне представляется, что небоскребы, фасады которых сделаны из стекла, холодны. Из-за больших размеров и площадей фасадов стекло создает дополнительное чувство холода. То, что хорошо работает в Австралии, не будет столь же удачным на севере Европы. И потом, это шаблонно. Шаблонно до такой степени, что у многих людей при слове «небоскреб» мгновенно возникает в воображении здание со стеклянным фасадом. Мы хотели показать, что можно создать запоминающееся высотное здание с использованием других материалов для фасада. И достичь художественного эффекта, например, цветом и его вариациями. Я не думаю, что наши башни будут решены в контрастных тонах. Напротив, мы хотим получить гармоничную композицию близких, но разных цветов наших небоскребов, создав мягкое цветовое пятно в архитектурной линии Большого Хельсинки.
January 15th, 2020 has marked one of the most special commemoration dates in this year’s cultural calendar, the 130th birth anniversary of Osip Mandelstam, Russian poet of Jewish origin, vulnerable and hunted man who has created a cosmic, unparalleled quality of poetry that has become a distinctive mark of literature of the XX century in general.
This anniversary could well be his 300th or 30th one. He is from the category of eternal lights, and there are so very few of them.Michael Rogatchi (C). OSIP. Portrait of Osip Mandelstam. Oil on canvas. 70 x 50 cm. 1993. The Rogatchi Art collection.
Mandelstam is one of the most brilliant and ever-lasting ‘contributions’ of Russia in world culture. In my lectures, I often call him ‘Mozart of Russian poetry’, to give my students a glimpse of understanding of whom I am talking about. Because to translate his poetry is just impossible, as it is impossible to translate any really good poetry. Even when another genius poet Paul Celan who loved Mandelstam tried to do it, the result was not close to the original. If Celan could not do it, nobody else could.
There are people who are as if present in our life effortlessly, by definition. Osip, who was actually Joseph, definitely is one of them. It is just impossible to use ‘was’ with regard to Mandelstam because he is always there. His unique talent has formed so many people in a huge country, and many of the others world-wide, bringing us to incredible heights which we would never imagine existing, without being immersed into his smashing, ultimate, dizzy talent. With years passing on, one can only be amazed at how really few of such people exist in world culture – and how much did they give to enrich it.
Mandelstam was like a golden equivalent to the foremost of the Russian poets who lived and created after him, from his close friend and contemporary Anna Akhmatova to his partial ‘re-incarnation’ Nobel laureate Joseph Brodsky who was known in their close circle around Akhmatova as ‘Osja ( shortened from Osip) Jr’.
I wish Mandelstam would know a bit, smallest bit of his posthumous fame and his meaning for Russian literature, Russian culture and so many people before he met his awful death that occurred in the nasty corner of Gulag in December 1938 when the pride of Russian literature died of typhus and cold and hunger, as so many other prisoners of Gulag, being just 47. Till this day, the place of his burial is unidentified and would not be identified. We only know about a huge ravine in which his body along with thousands of decayed corpses was thrown down seven months after his death. The climate conditions in that part of the Gulag were such, you see, that it was impossible to dig before short summer when earth would give up a bit of its closeness to the eternal freeze. Many decades later, a bit of the soil from that ravine was brought to be entered next to the grave of his heroic wife and widow Nadezhda Mandelstam who died in Moscow in the end of 1980. Michael Rogatchi (C). Kolyma. Indian ink and oil on paper on board. 30 x 20 cm. 1993. The Rogatchi Art Collection. Published for the first time.
NADJA
And Nadja, Osip’s heroic wife. Without her, we would not know his eternal poetry and prose. We simply would not. That’s why Akhmatova, Brodsky and many other giants of spirit never separated them. In our common perception, Osip means “known because of Nadja”. And Nadja means Osip, for all of us, in generations. Our debt to Nadezhda Mandelshtam has not even started to be appreciated any close to what it should be, really.Nadezhda Mandelstam. Ca 1920s. Courtesy: Maija Mailis – Inna Rogatchi archive (C).
That vivid Jewish girl whose family lived in Kiev in the beginning of the XX century and who studied art at the Alexandra Ekster studio, bumped into an already well-known poet, eight years her senior, at one of the popular and crowded cafes when she was 20, in 1919. It was the love from the first sight. But it was more: what happened to Nadja Khazin and Osip Mandelstam, two extraordinary Jewish people, was what is known in the Talmud as ‘the rule of three minutes’: when Jewish man and Jewish woman are destined to each other, they feel love towards each other within first three minutes of their first encounter.
From a Kabbalist perspective, according to Rabbi Luriah, it can be pondered that in the Jewish world, the souls of its men and women are destined each to another, and often those souls are, in fact, halves of one common soul. When those halves are finding each other, we, mortals, having a sensation of love, that mightiest in the world magnet which we are unable to explain often. It is exactly what happened to Nadja Khazin and Osip Mandelstam in the evening in that cafe in Kiev back in 1919. Their souls found each other, understood each other and were amalgamated into each other to a rare degree.
Nadja Mandelstam has proven it during her long life which was lived for only purpose: to make Osip’s legacy remembered and lived on. She over-lived her murdered husband for 42 years, with only the last fifteen years of which she had a home of her own, a tiny apartment far off Moscow down-town. Before that, after her trials with Osip to their common first exile in 1934, after his arrest and perishing in 1937-1938, throughout the Second World War and years after that, that small woman was a wanderer, literally. Nadia was moving from city to city – mid-Russia – Uzbekistan – Ural region – mid-Russia, very often, avoiding authorities, trying to survive, having no possessions of her own ever, and – memorising the poetry and prose of Osip daily and nightly. Waiting for the time and opportunity to put it on paper and to publish it, somehow, somewhere, anyhow, anywhere. A person has to be made of steel to lead such a life for so many years and decades. But she did it.
During the political ‘thaw’ in the mid-1960s, friends helped her to return to Moscow, to get that small apartment, and to send the Osip priceless archive to Princeton, for free, obviously. She also wrote her legendary memoir which was published in the USA in Russian in the 1970s, with two followed volumed later on. This memoir is one of the most important books on the history of the USSR in a period between the 1930s and 1960s.
Nadja was not an angel, far from it – and who would be under the circumstances of her life? Just one detail: her only dream – people with a disciplined brain were not much of dreamers in that country – was ‘to die in my own bed’. Which she did, with my friend Vera Lashkova being next to her. Vera is a well-known Soviet dissident, very special and devoted person who did help the others completely selflessly all her life. She was very close with Nadja, and spent days and nights next to her during the last period of her life. Not only Nadja slept away in her own bed, she was taken loving care of, and was looked after by a real friend. Luxury, in her understanding.
I always felt a special attachment to that tragic and unique couple of two Jewish people, two halves of evidently one Jewish soul who has become the pride and the heroes of Russian literature and culture. What was and still be amazing about them is that both Osip and Nadja Mandelstam, despite all the persecutions, hunting and crushing of them, were always strong and free. This message of their extraordinary characters and lives is not less important than Osip’s genius poetry and Nadja’s great prose. Not for a bit.
One Teacher, One Book
These days, I am commemorating my own Mandelstam connected anniversary, as well. It is half of a century this year while I am living with his presence in my life. Some things in one’s life are remembered surprisingly graphically, and this one, with Mandelstam entering my life, is one of them.
I was a 13-year old bookish Jewish girl who loved literature and poetry greatly being raised this way by my mom who was a legendary teacher of it, and who treated great writers and poets with trepidation. My appetite for reading was both selective and insatiable. I was not interested in reading ‘all of it’, but only the best of it, and all of the best, naturally. After I completed reading through our big home library, my mom realised that I needed to extend beyond it. Public libraries were not an option for me at the time. I was not the type. My mom was also a brave person who could allow herself a bold move every now and then. Especially in the name of culture, the sacred name for her.
The one of such moves was to send me on my own, as an under-aged cultural apprentice, so to say, to one of her close friends, also famous teacher of literature Maija Mailis, a legend in our large enough Soviet Ukrainian intelligenzia circles. Maija was a legend because she was a very brave political dissident who was a close associate of the widow of famous Russian poet Maximilian Voloshin Maria and belonged to the inner Voloshin circle of Russian intelligentsia – this meaning families of the most important writers and poets, including Tsvetajev sisters, and many others, all with utterly tragic destinies.
Maija gave me a quick look during my first visit to her small apartment which was all in books, magazines and manuscripts from ceiling to floor, on tables, chairs, floor, anywhere, and immediately started to teach me the real history, culture, literature and poetry, most of which had been forbidden in the USSR. I was a very grateful sponge, and visited Maija several times a week. Very soon, I have become her willing and enthusiastic assistant who was helping her to produce those small and priceless home-made samizdat books of genius poetry which I was only over-happy to print on my mom’s type-writer at home, bringing all five exemplars of tiny paper to Maija, who would show me how to produce ‘almost a real book’ from my sheets. All that was done at her kitchen during the long hours every day. She always knew whom she would give those precious gifts of real, beautiful, great – and heavily forbidden – poetry, from hand to hand. Precious as they were, the only window to the world of real culture and literature for us, they posed the certain danger, too, to everybody participating, but most of all, to the initiator and informal head of the circle of people who dared to read what they would like to, not what has been prescribed.
Remarkably, not anyone from hundreds of people, her pupils and their friends whom she gifted with those pearls of the best of Russian literature, ever gave her in to the KGB authorities. She was regularly summoned to ‘the conversations’ there after her returns from Voloshin house where she would be going as often as she could, several times a year, but as she claimed her absolute innocence and total immersion in literature matters only, and there was no hard evidence on political activities against her, she managed to teach for years.
There were several searches in her small apartments in my memory, with tens of newly produced small volumes of poetry confiscated. As there were no political manifestos, but literature creations, she was allowed to continue to work for a while, after which she was sacked, eventually. My family and some of her friends were supporting her to the end, with my mom employing Maija on her first opportunity to do it, during the rest of Maija’s life. Those people never went to retirement, all of them, they regarded it as a drama, failure, and pitifulness, to put it mildly. They all did strive to work to the end. Such was their understanding of usefulness of life.
Maija was my teacher not only in literature and poetry, but in freedom of thinking and dictated by that attitude to life, from quite an early age. She provided me with knowledge and books from which I learned not to follow the mass. She widened my horizon of knowledge from its outset, for which I am still grateful to that extremely knowledgeable and freely spirited Jewish teacher all my life.
Maija noticed very early that of many Russian poets about whom she did teach me, Osip Mandelstam was my favourite, indisputably. It was a love from a first glance, indeed. That’s why I was given a special task to type, namely Mandelstam’s poetry on my mom’s personal type-writer that I did so diligently and so happily for a few years.
One day, Maija showed me a huge foliant. She took it from her shelf, not from its front row, but from some hiding place behind it, and put it on the table in front of me ceremonially, with a special expression on her face.
–What’s that? – I asked. I was spoiled by Maija by the endless gems of her treasury by now. Maja was smiling as if expecting something really delicious to share. – Well, this is such a kind of book that you have never seen before – she said, at last. – What do you mean, dear Maija? But you are providing me with so many wonderful books – which was true, every time I visited my teacher, I left with several volumes to read at home. – No, my dear girl, I can guarantee you that this kind of book you never hold in your hands – Maija was smiling wider and wider.
The exceedingly heavy foliant of 740 pages was the Anthology of the Russian poetry of XX century published in Moscow in 1925, with all important poets of the first quarter of that tumultuous century presented by their best poems, their biographies, bibliography of their published works, everything. Cover of the rare Anthology of Russian Poetry of the XX century. Moscow, 1925. Inna Rogatchi archive.
The book was a huge liability. From the early 1930s until mid-1980s, it was listed among the books which had to be hidden in what was known in the Soviet reality as spetzhran, heavily controlled books and other printed materials and manuscripts depositories sealing those materials off Soviet public. The book was also the only Anthology of the Russian poetry of the XX century ever published in the USSR until the end of it. Today, the original edition of it has become a gem at the rare books auctions.
Forty eight year ago, I brought it home being absolutely happy. I can physically remember that happiness still now. That blossom of poetry has become my favourite book ever. I knew that I should return it to Maija who did treasure it extremely highly, as I was doing with all the books and magazine borrowed from her, and as it my habit ever. There are people who return books and there are those who don’t. I belong to the first category emphatically.
But that book was an exception, the only one in my life, as it happened. Every now and then, I would ask her:
-Maja dear, can I please still have Anthology for a while? She always smiled and always said: – Yes, my dear, you can.
That dialogue was going for years. I felt guilty, but I just could not depart with that very book. I finished school, started to study at the university, and it was still the same. When I was going away from home for a substantial period of time, to the student camp, and alike, and was unable to take such a heavy volume with me, I was missing it distinctly.
Then I got married to a young man whom I knew – without any other elaboration , but with that firm inner knowledge – that I would marry very soon after we met.
Maija decided that as a part of her present to me for my wedding, I should not return Anthology to her. I was absolutely happy and so very grateful. That heavy volume travelled with us to St Petersburg where we moved soon, but because of its rarity, it was impossible to take it with us across the border in our further journeys. We left my treasure with good friends. At least I know that it is at the family-like home. I still miss it, tell you the truth.
Portraying Memory
The young man who has got that rare wedding present from Maija together with me, has become a very able artist. At the beginning of his artistic journey, Michael was deeply connected to the literature with which we grew up and to his preceding work at theatre. He was very sensitive to the historical storms which have formed us, our families, the writers whom we read and the poets whom we loved. Michael also knew that I am missing that Anthology volume which always crowned my working table at our previous homes.
Without discussion or hinting on what he was working, he created a very special artwork, his early portrait of Osip Mandelstam, as the present for my birthday. Almost thirty years have passed since that moment of that total and overwhelming surprise to me, but I can tell that this is one of the most dear to me presents, and one of the most dear and special of my possessions. For many years, ‘my Osip’ painted by my Michael was hanging on the wall in all my studies being a reflection and source of empathy to me.
Later on, I have created a few works to commemorate Mandelstam’s huge talent and his absolutely tragic destiny in my projects on Jewish heritage and our living memory which is not only paying a bit of our debts to the people who has formed us by their talent, but also continuation of some of their ideas, having them as ‘a golden equivalent’ of the level and the quality of what we do while we creating ourselves.
It is also about keeping their spirit alive. The most important – and actually, the only thing – that we could do for them, for their memory. The one of the musical video-essay presenting such project, Horizon Beyond Horizon:Celebration of Jewish Talent , can be watched here. Inna Rogatchi (C). Osip Winds. Homage to Osip Mandelstam. Horizon Beyond Horizon project. Authored original print of pearl paper. 50 x 70 cm. 2011-2012.
Osip Mandelstam has become much better known and much more justly appreciated in his country after his death than during his short life. It happened so very often in the XX century, due to the demons which were unleashed from the beginning of it and through three quarters of it.
In commemoration of his 130th birth anniversary, a truly special memorial plaque was unveiled in Ekaterinburg, Russia’s main city in the Urals. On the plaque created by Russian artist Nikolay Peredein, and crowd-funded by people from all over Russia, Osip and Nadja are depicted together, as two birds, hunted but strong and determined, living by the huge resources of their both’ extraordinary souls.Nikolay Peredein. Memorial plaque to Osip and Nadezhda Mandelshtam. Ekaterinburg, Russia. Unveiled on January 14, 2021, in commemoration of Osip Mandelstam 130th birthday. Credits: Roman Liberov, with kind permission.
Or that one soul which I believe was in the case of Mandelstams, Osip and Nadja, Jewish heroes of Russian culture.
Part of VINCENT: Etudes on Van Gogh special project, Outreach to Humanity series of projects.
Shortened version of the essay is published in The Jerusalem Report magazine, Iss. 1, January 11, 2021. It can be read here.
Fanny and That Painting
On March 8, 1903, Fanny Flodin heard the news that her long effort to sell that painting to the museum had been approved, finally. Fanny sighed with relief. It was quite an effort for her to sell that painting which she brought with her to Helsinki from Paris when she returned to her family after the death of her husband.
Everything in this passage hints to things special and unique in history of art and civilisation: Fanny Flodin, notable pianist whose teacher was the last pupil of Franz Liszt, was the daughter of an important Finnish statesman of Swedish origin and sister of sculptor Hilda Flodin who worked with Auguste Rodin. Fanny’s husband, recently deceased in Paris, was no one else, but Julien Leclercq, well-known in France as a poet, art critic and cultural figure. The museum in question was Ateneum, the National Art Gallery of Finland, the country’s principal art museum. That painting was Van Gogh’s.
Leclercq who was a close friend of Van Gogh, have had several of his works by the artist that he bought from Theo Van Gogh’s widow, and which he also obtained in the process of that vivid non-stopping exchanges of ‘trophies’ within the artist circle in France.
Emile Schuffenecker (C). Portrait of Fanny and Lucien Leclercq. Pastel on paper. 47 x 61 cm. ca 1898. The Johnson Museum of Art. Cornell University, the USA. Gift of Mrs Carol Meyer in memory of Seymour Meyer. 1936.
In 1901, just Lecreque got ill suddenly and died very quickly from tuberculosis to complete shock of his wife and everyone else. He was just 35. Fanny inherited 5 or 6 of Van Gogh’s paintings from her husband. She sold all but one of them in Paris before her return to Finland. But that one painting she just could not sell. So she brought it with her when she did return to Helsinki to live there with her young daughter after her recent trauma caused by the sudden death of her husband.
The family has put quite an effort to convince the board of Ateneum Museum to acquire Van Gogh’s work. They used their powerful connections to influence the decision, including securing the learned opinion of leading Finnish Swedish artist Albert Edelfelt who was the member of the board of Ateneum and who lived and worked in Paris and understood the quality and meaning of Van Gogh art far better than many others in the artistic world which largely regarded Van Gogh as ‘an obscure mad Dutchman’. According to the Ateneum documentation and thorough historical study work by prominent Finnish journalist Antti Virolanen, apart from Edelfelt, no one among the members of the Board of Ateneum have not heard Van Gogh’s name, which was completely normal in 1903. It looks like it was Edelfelt insisting and his repeated opinion that have decided the matter positively for Fanny Flodin.
Even after the positive final decision of the Ateneum Board to acquire that painting of Van Gogh, they were bargaining with Fanny about the price back and force. Finally, the sides agreed on the sum of 2 500 marks. The equivalent of it today is Eur 11.300 . Such was the price that Ateneum Museum has paid for great Van Gogh’s Street in Auvers-sur-Oise work ( 1890) which was initially known as Rue de Village. This very work is especially valued for two reasons: it was the one of the last works that Van Gogh painted in Auvers-sur-Oise just two months before his death; and this work has its distinct mark: the part of sky there seems to be unfinished. For a long time, art critics were discussing: was the spot with unfinished sky left by Van Gogh intentionally, or he simply did not finish the painting? This discussion is still ongoing.
Vincent Van Gogh (C). Street in Auvers-sur-Oise. Oil on canvas. 1890. Ateneum, the National Art Gallery of Finland, the Antell Collection.
Street in Auvers-sur-Oise has become the only Van Gogh work existing in Finland. For Ateneum it is simply priceless, and it is regarded as a special treasure among their very solid collection of 650 works by many great artists.
Ateneum was very kind to loan this bright, wonderful work to the ongoing Becoming Van Gogh exhibition ( 5.09.2020 – 31.10.2021) which has been organised, despite all covid pandemic obstacles, at The Didrichsen Art Museum in Helsinki to celebrate the 55th anniversary of this special art institution.
The Didrichsen Art Museum is based on the unique collection of modern art assembled by legendary patrons of art Gunnar and Marie-Louise Didrichsens. Their son Peter led the museum for many years. Currently his wife Maria is leading it. The Didrichsen family is also known as dedicated supporters of the State of Israel, and they contributed into the worthy humanitarian causes in and for Israel for many years.
The Long Road Towards the Appreciation
Why was it so difficult to convince the members of the Board of Ateneum to acquire a big and expressive canvas by Van Gogh? Because at the time, just 13 years after Van Gogh’s death at the age of 37, his name was not that well known beyond France and partially Belgium, and he certainly was not understood as an artist at all even there.
The situation was not helped much by the fact that Theo Van Gogh who was supporting and promoting his genius brother died just six months after Vincent being shocked beyond anything by his beloved brother’s death. 23 years later his burial, and at the same time of publishing substantial selection of Vincent’s famous letters, in 1914 devoted Theo’s widow Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, to whom we owe the preservation of Van Gogh’s works and legacy, re-buried her husband next to his brother at truly beautiful spot on the cemetery in Auvers-sur-Oise which is covered all over by ivy, the brothers’ favourite plant.
Burial site of Vincent and Theo van Goghs. Cemetery at Auvers-sur-Oise. Open Internet Archive.
The first ever positive – and quite providential – critic opinion on his art Van Gogh received from a colleague and acquaintance, the Dutch artist of Jewish origin Joseph Jacob Isaacson ( 1859 -1942) nine months prior to his death. Visiting Paris, Isaacson got to know Theo, and via Theo, he befriended Vincent. Isaacson, who was a deep and well educated person who specialised in Jewish mysticism, realised the merits of Vincent’s art and wrote about it in “The Portfolio” art magazine. “Who is there that conveys, in form and colour, the magnificent, dynamic energy the 19th century is against becoming aware of? I know one man, a lone pioneer, struggling on his own in the depths of darkest night. His name, Vincent, will go down to posterity. There will be more to be said about this heroic Dutchman in the future” – Jewish artist have written. It is the very first positive art critical mentioning of van Gogh’s art, and a very rare one made during his life-time.
Joseph Isaacson over-lived once briefly be-friended Vincent for over a half of a century, during which he changed his opinion on Van Gogh’s works, at least publicly so. After Van Gogh’s large exhibition 16 years after his death, and 17 years after his first first so positive and providential critique, Isaacson was not that impressed any longer. Or so he said in his 60-pages “A new point of view on art’ critic work in which he concludes that although Vincent’s work ‘is impressive, it does not move’ him any longer. It is quite possible that posthumous exploding fame of Van Gogh was somewhat irritating for Isaacson who was the first one to see that Vincent belongs to posterity.
Joseph Isaacson’s own destiny was as terrible as the destiny of all Jews of Europe who were unfortunate to live to see humanity’s surrender to Nazism. Old artist and his not that old wife were murdered in Auschiwtz in 1942, upon their arrival. Joseph Isaacson was 82 years old at the moment.
* * *
Coming back to Fanny Flodin and her husband Juliene Lecrercq whose first name was Joseph, he did for Van Gogh more than any other person except Theo and Johanna Van Goghs.
Van Gogh’s obituary is the one written by Joseph Juliene Leclercq.
With the help of his wife Fanny and her family’s connections in Scandinavia, Lecrercq organised an important travelling exhibition of Post-Impressionists to Scandinavia, bringing their works, including Van Gogh ones, to Helsinki, Stockholm, Copenhagen and Oslo as early as in 1898. A rare and charming portrait of the couple done by Emile Schuffenecker which now is at the collection of The Johnson Museum of Art at the Cornwell University, was done by the artist in appreciation of Fanny and Julien’s efforts to bring his and his fellow artists work to Scandinavia. Schffenecker who was a close friend of Gaugin, knew Van Gogh well.
Leclecrq was the person who organised Van Gogh’s first important exhibition ever, the artist’s first retrospective in Paris which consisted of 65 of Van Gogh’s oil paintings and six of his drawings. It was one of the fundamentally important exhibitions in the history of modern art, not only because it brought a sizeable collection of Van Gogh works to wide public for the first time, but also because solely due to that exhibition, several important groups of French artists that developed into the main-stream art of the XX century, such as Fauvists who did include the most important artists of the XX century such as Matisse, Derain, Braque and many others, were inspired by Van Gogh deeply right there and then.
It was Van Gogh who, eleven years after his death, did influence and actually defined the development of the important and rich direction of modern art, and that’s why he is known as the father of modernism. That crucial development was originated thanks to the exhibition organised by Julien Lecrecq at the Bernheim-Jeune galleries.
Juliene Lecrecrq died within a half of a year after that legendary exhibition. But before that, he has bought several Van Gogh’s works from Johanna Van Gogh-Bonger, among those was the work which was acquired by Ateneum two years later. Very importantly, it was the very first acquisition of Van Gogh for public collection world-wide. It has to be stated clearly, to clarify the established fact of the first ever display of Van Gogh’s work which had happened in 1908 for Städel Museum in Frankfurt.
But display and acquisition are two quite different things. The first ever museum acquisition of Van Gogh in the world had happened for the Finnish Ateneum in March 1903. Ironically enough, in the Ateneum documentation there is a note regarding new acquisitions in which Van Gogh’s work is mentioned as ‘that peculiar Dutch impressionist Van Gogh’ ‘Village Street’ work”.
Van Gogh’s German Jewish Connection
It was at that very exhibition in Paris in March 1901, without which the world simply would not know any Vincent Van Gogh, that a wealthy German Jewish art dealer walked in the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries. The Bernheim-Jeune family was of Jewish origin, their input into the development of modern art is quite substantial, and the history of the family and its business under the Nazi occupation during the WWII is painful and tragic. Their role in laying ground for initial understanding and appreciation of Van Gogh as the major artistic genius is crucial.
The man who was coming from Berlin in 1901 to see that largely unknown artist with a strangely sounding name at the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries in Paris was Paul Cassirer, the person who basically has made Van Gogh famous and desirable artist first in Europe and then in the USA. Cassirer would be never able to do it unless two factors: the article that he read about Van Gogh and which was the sole reason for him to travel to Paris to seeing that exhibition, and the exhibition itself where Cassirer was smitten by Van Gogh to the depth of his innermost.
Leopold von Kalckreuth . Portrait of Paul Cassier. 1912. Markisches Museum, Berlin.
The article that has prompted Paul Cassirer’s initial interest in Van Gogh was published in 1900, shortly before the exhibition in Paris although independently from it. It was written by Julius Meier-Graefe, great German Jewish art historian who lived most of the time in Paris. Meier-Graefe has noted and understood Van Gogh as no one else has done before him, and it is largely thanks to him that reading public in Germany received his deep and brilliant appreciation that has really made Van Gogh known in Europe.
Lovis Corinth. Portrait of Julius Meyer-Graefe. Musee d’Orsay, Paris.
After publishing his first large essay on why Van Gogh is a great artist, the one which has been read by Paul Cassirer, Meier-Graefe expanded it first into a tiny book, then worked on it more and more, until his books on Van Gogh published in between 1910 and 1929 became the world’s classic.
It is worth noting that Meier-Graefe who lived until 1935 and who escaped Germany in time, was instrumental with his wife in establishing the art community of German Jewish refugees there and providing hospitality to many of them.
Paul Cassirer did not live to see the Nazis seizing power in Germany. He died a decade earlier than Meier-Graefe, in 1926, and his death, in a weird way, was quite similar to that of his beloved artist, Van Gogh. Paul Cassirer took his own life , on the emotional grounds, as the result of tormented relations with his wife, and quite like Van Gogh, did not die immediately, but was suffering for two days, just like Van Gogh, before succumbing to his wound. There was quite a parallel in Cassirer’s ending of his own life – in the way Van Gogh did. If to believe that Van Gogh committed suicide, the fact which has quite substantial reasons to be questioned.
Paul Cassirer was under a total spell of Van Gogh from the moment he stepped into the Bernheim-Jeune Galleries in Paris in March 1901 at the first retrospective of the artist organised by Josef Julien Lecrercq. His first purchase of five Van Goghs were actually borrowings. These were the first Van Gogh paintings brought by Cassirer to Germany soon after the exhibition he saw in Paris. Very soon after, towards the end of 1901, Paul Cassirer pursued, thanks to his good relations with Johanna Van Vogh-Bonger, about twenty first Van-Gogh paintings from many he would acquire during his 25 years of very energetic efforts of building Van Gogh’s appreciation and fame. Until the moment when WWI had started, Cassier was organising annual Van Gogh exhibitions in his gallery in Berlin, coming to 14 of them. Thanks to his leading and some other people’s efforts, it was Germany, where Van Gogh’s fame had actually evolved, first in Europe and then world-wide. By the start of WWI, German collectors, largely, and some museums, as well, owned as many as 120 oil paintings and 36 drawings of Van Gogh, the master about whom nobody heard a bit over decade back. It was an extraordinary boom which has no precedent in the history of art.
One has to remember that it all had happened against the background in which the criteria of ‘a good art’ were traditional and imperial ones. The Van Gogh boom in conservative Germany in the first and second decade of the XX century was a truly revolutionary change of a public taste not just in art, but also in further and wider aesthetic context.
Another twist of irony is not that widely known fact that in the early period of Nazism, from 1933 to 1937, some modernist German artists and the functioners of arts and propaganda at the period who were trying hard to adjust to the Nazi regime in hope to be able to continue their career in Judenfrei Germany, and who identified with anti-Semitic nature of the regime, tried to hijack van Gogh for a short period of time. There were some articles in the pro-modernist art and propaganda publications still allowed by the Hitler regime until 1937, in which their authors were writing that ‘misunderstood and unappreciated by decadent impressionists and post-impressionists in France, van Gogh with his Dutch, and close to German one, upbringing and background, belongs to us, he is German’ ( Kunst der Nation publication, March 1934, cited in Artists Under Hitler by Jonathan Petropoulos, 2014).
Soon after, of course, that inclination was shut down by two factors: in the eyes of pro-Nazi German art circles, French impressionists and post-impressionists were awful and unacceptable due to the fact that they all were dealt and appreciated by the Jews, Jewish art dealers, Jewish art critics, Jewish writers, and Jewish connoisseurs of arts. The second fact of life in Nazi Germany was that from 1937 onward, all pro-modernist tendencies in art, culture and propaganda were shut down completely. It did not prevent a big art consumer, or rather shark Göring to grab the one of the best van Gogh’s works, the one of the two portraits of Dr Gachet, from the piles of the Nazi-stolen art. That particular work has a very dramatic history and is believed to be the one of the five van Gogh’s major works to be destroyed or disappeared during and in connection with the Second World War.
The combination of brilliant writings by Julius Meier-Graefe which were captivating mind of German public widely, with actual top-class elegant and assured, understanding and energetic art dealership by Paul Cassirer has prompted the name of Van Gogh to become famous and his works to be sought after by growing number of art collectors.
Vincent Van Gogh. Self-Portrait. 1887. Collection Kroller-Muller Museum, Otterlo, the Netherlands.
The one of such prominent collectors was Helene Muller, who started to collect Van Gogh being introduced to the artist by Paul Cassirer as early as in 1907. Helene Muller was married to prominent Dutch industrialist Anton Kroller, and was guided in further amassing her collection by well-known Dutch art historian and artist Henk Bremmer whom she authorised to buy for her collection practically without restrictions. Bremmer admired Van Gogh, so Muller was lucky to have, as the result, the second largest Van Gogh collection in the world. This outstanding collection known nowadays as Kroller-Muller Museum in Otterlo, the Netherlands, has 91 Van Gogh’s oil paintings and 180 of his drawings.
Another Circle in Never Ending Spiral
In a remarkable meeting of echoes of historical events and deeds of people who lived somewhat a hundred and more years ago, some of the heroes of our story have met again recently, in Helsinki, at the Becoming Van Gogh exhibition at The Didrichsen Art Museum. The only Van Gogh’s painting in Finland has met at this exhibition with 40 works from the Kroller-Muller Museum in a celebration of the 55th anniversary of the special Finnish art institution. What is more, this exhibition has created the possibility for many people visiting the exhibition during the five months of its display, to resist and to beat the growing pressure of corona realities in our all’ life.
Art always matters. But in the time of tough pressure and its growing effect, it is art that enlightens our life. Not to speak of such a catalyst of emotions as the art of Van Gogh.
The only Van Gogh in Finland has landed there thanks to the widow of the man who first did realise who Van Gogh was in art. The Didrichsen Museum partner in this important exhibition is the museum that has a stunning collection of Van Gogh that had originated and was prompted as the results of the Berlin Jewish art-dealer’s visit to Paris in March 1901 to see the exhibition which had been organised by the same man whose widow had returned to Finland after his death a half of year after the exhibition in Paris.
Maria Didrichsen (C). Becoming Van Gogh exhibition at The Didrichsen Museum of Art. September 2020. Helsinki, Finland.
71 years after the death of Van Gogh, in 1961, a rather special statue of his was unveiled in Auvers-des-Oise, the first one of several memorials to Van Gogh in France. It was also special because of its author, famous Jewish sculptor Ossip Zadkine ( 1988-1967) who, being born in Vitebsk, lived and worked in Paris most of his life, from 1910 onward.
Ossip Zadkine. Vincent Van Gogh. 1961. The first Van Gogh memorial in France. Auvers-sur-Oise.
Zadkine was fascinated by Van Gogh a big deal. He created at least five Van Gogh’s sculptures, including the one dramatic sculptural double-monument to both Van Gogh brothers in the Dutch town of Zundert, next to the small church which had been memorable and quite important for both brothers, next to the place where they both were born. That special monument was unveiled in May 1964 by the Queen of the Netherlands Juliana.
Ossip Zadkine. Monument to Vincent and Theo Van Gogh. Zundert, the Netherlands, 1964.
Zadkine dedicated a decade of his life to Van Goghs, from 1955 through 1964. The sculptor has produced so much various creative material during that decade that he was preoccupied with Van Gogh brothers that at the large Zadkine retrospective in early 2010s, the one room was specifically dedicated to display it.
Ossip Zadkine with a model of his first statue of Van Gogh.
During the years and decades, there were some more Jewish people who did contribute to Van Gogh’s world-wide fame: some collectors, writers, film-makers, art historians. Among them, were notably, writer Irwing Stone ( Tannebaum) who authored ever popular Lust for Life novel in mid-1930s, followed by yet more popular film biopic with the same name produced in Hollywood twenty years later, by semi-Jewish great producer John Houseman, and Izzy Danilovich from Belarus shtetl who world knows as Kirk Douglas playing Vincent.
Very important contribution in what we nowadays know and how we are perceiving Van Gogh was made by great American Jewish art historian Meyer Shapiro from Columbia University who from the 1950s onward was the first one to introduce into the art history the method that is known nowadays as interdisciplinary studies. That pioneering approach that was practised by Shapiro widely has started and had Van Gogh as the main subject of this multifaceted studies. It was also the first time when psychology has become a valid part of art history and art studies. Today, we cannot imagine any qualified art study without this vital component. Meyer Shapiro’s thinking and understanding of Van Gogh has brought it to modern culture in the first place.
Of course, there are many more people, most of them not Jewish, from different walks of life and occupations who with their fundamentally important contributions have built the understanding of Van Gogh as the established phenomenon of culture. Actually, understanding is a wrong word. One cannot really understand Van Gogh. Van Gogh is a kind of artist who could be loved, unconditionally and overwhelmingly, or the opposite.
Theo and Johanna Van Goghs did preserve Vincent’s art and his letters, in their fundamental service to humanity in the XX century.
But the initial, principal boost that led to Van Gogh’s professional and public appreciation followed by his unparalleled world’s fame, had been created due to the efforts of three Jewish men: Jewish gallerist ( Alexandre Bernheim-Neuve) , Jewish art historian ( Julius Meier-Graefe) , and Jewish art dealer ( Paul Cassirer).
All of them were not just liking, or appreciating Van Gogh among the other artists, but loving him deeply in a unique, all-consuming way, the only way to love Van Gogh, thus being motivated and energized by their encompassing love to work for his sake with all their devotion and success, establishing his world-wide fame and appreciation.
Why did that happen? What is the answer behind this distinct and not cracked yet phenomenon? Yes, all three of them were extremely well educated, and mastered the heights of their professions, with Julius Meier-Greafe being the grandson of Germany’s principal expert on Latin and Greek literature and history, the man who basically laid ground for famed German education in these fields. Broad education and erudition can help to place Van Gogh in the context of culture, but it would not do a trick of understanding him as an artist. Besides, there is no context for Van Gogh in the history of art. I think that Van Gogh could appear at any time and be exactly his own self at any period of art.
I think it is the paradoxicality of these great Jewish men’s brilliant minds that allowed them to grasp the genius of Van Gogh. They were so right. There was not and will be no the same artist as Vincent Van Gogh. And our deep Thank You should go to all three of them and to Josef Julien Leclercq who did see and realise the magnetism of the unsolved Van Gogh’s mysteries so early for the sake of us all.
October – December 2020
(C) Inna Rogatchi. VINCENT: Etudes on Van Gogh special project, Outreach to Humanity series of projects.
On July 6th, 2020 morning, I woke up at 5.21 am, almost three hours before my usual awakening. There was no reason for that, I thought at the moment. We still have a white nights at this time in Finland, so the sun was up for an hour or so. The air was completely clear, but without that special morning serenity. I heard noisy and persistent rustling of branches all around our house, non-stop rustling. The wind was mighty, the weather was stormy. Strange morning, I thought, not quite July-like. I felt like the wind was as if saying something. Not trying to say, but saying in articulated way. I could not sleep back at all.
Some music was still whirling in my head from the previous night when my husband and I were listening to our usual pre-bed concert. Yesterday, we opted for the record of a great concert given back in 2006 by two outstanding Italian musicians, trumpet player Paolo Fresu and pianist Danilo Rea at Auditorium di Santa Cecilia in Rome. Fresu and Rea were improvising playing some of our favourite music by great Ennio Morricone, a very special person for us both.
We started to speak about Maestro Ennio, how is he doing, hopefully now everything is fine, after our all’ fears for him and his wife because of severe epidemic of Covid-19 in Italy recently, how much we are waiting for his book sent to us by his family, what a great music that great man have created, and so on. Our evening of July 5th 2020 was ending with our thoughts on Ennio Morricone.
In a couple of hours after my unusual awakening next morning, my Inbox did show the terrible news: Maestro Morricone passed away this morning, at the dawn in Rome ( 5.42 am), at hospital there. The same time when I awoke that morning, under noisy rustlings of the trees in our garden.
Maestro Ennio Morricone. With thank you to Morricone family. Courtesy: Morricone Foundation.
Just four months ago, in mid-February 2020, we were seeing Maestro’s son Marco, the one of his four children, and his wife Monica in Rome where we all were participating together at the Il Volo di Pegaso Italian National Arts, Literature and Music Award ceremony in which the Maestro Morricone’s Armonica Onlus Academy was taking a prominent part, and our The Rogatchi Foundation is traditionally participating as well. When Marco Morricone was invited to the stage to speak before awarding some of the laureates, we were stunned by his goodness, his modesty and his sensitivity. We should not be stunned, actually: Marco is so much the son of his great father in that great modesty, that rare and organic attitude towards people, that fineness of sublime soul.
Sea of Light
I saw Maestro Morricone in person for the first time in the end of August of 2009 in Rimini, during the important Meeting di Rimini high-end cultural and humanitarian festival. Maestro was giving a special concert in an unusual concert-conversation format. I was invited as a special guest, as well as another dear friend, the great public figure, late Harry Wu. We all were staying at the same historical Rimini Grand Hotel, famous largely thanks to Fellini who had a special bond to the place, who immortalised it in his films and who actually died there.
Both Maestro Morricone and his wife were gracious, elegant, organically polite and friendly disposed toward people they were meeting at Rimini Festival, but not only. To talk with them, to be near them was like one was entering the sea of light. Very calm, serene sea which is organically generous with you – and you, and you, everyone – in sharing its light, in wrapping it around you absolutely effortlessly.
Luckily, I have met many special people in my life. And many very special ones among them. But I never met anyone quite like Ennio Morricone. That man had such extraordinary substance which he consciously and very graciously kept very much inside himself that his presence was a quiet but very deep celebration and a gift. Never in my life did I have that sensation when a brief friendly encounter lasts over many years and is present in one’s life in a sustaining and tangible way as if it had happened just yesterday.
I remember the Maestro’s face, his smile, his attentive eyes, very sharp eyes but without any edge in his outlook, his wise and elegant words very vividly during all twelve years that have passed since our personal meeting. I cannot explain it, but it is with me on a daily basis. I treat it as a very special personal gift in my life. I always will.
Inna Rogatchi with Michael Rogatchi (C). Rome Blues. Homage to Ennio Morricone. Amarcord Forever original series. 2012.
As a culture figure, Ennio Morricone was a gift to mankind: his enormous productivity and fortunately long life ensured his music to over 500 films, many of them mile-stones of cinematography, and much more great music by that brilliant composer. I do not know any other cultural figure whose impact was so mighty, unexpected, wide and universal. Not only Morricone’s music is great, but to very large extent, it did made the films for which he was composing, unforgettable and distinct ones, from all eight classical Westerns by Sergio Leone to Once Upon the Time in America, Sicilian Clan, Cinema Paradiso, and so many others.
Morricone’s scores for all those exceptional films always was much more than a score, even the best one. It was a vision laid not in words, not in pictures, but in music, in melodies. Because of philosophical depth and the beauty of Morricone’s music, this vision has been perceived universally, by millions. Because of its pure harmony and depth, that vision has enriched our individual perception of the world and it has enriched our own lives. Morricone’s music is an unique phenomenon in the history of culture, and palpably so in modern cultural history. This music is more than words. It is deeper than words. And it stays longer than images on the screen although they all are engraved in our memory very much because and thanks to that so unique, so special and so original music.
Ennio Morricone was a gift to mankind.
Not only was his productivity simply phenomenal, but his artistic responsibility was exemplary one. Maestro Morricone started to conduct his own music quite late, in the mid-1980s when he was 56 year old. His concerts were always a great success. During those concerts, the sea of light that he did emanate was transformed into the ocean of it. The waves of goodness were embarrassing Morricone’s huge audiences at every concert he ever gave, and those were many in major places and different corners of the world. He was very generous towards the people in anything he did. It was his principle of life conduct. Amazingly, he gave fantastic concerts conducting brilliantly as recently, as just two years ago, in 2018, being 89.
True Renaissance Man
In the best of Italian modes, Maestro Morricone was a true Renaissance man. Additionally to his inherited and developed musical supreme talent, he had a brilliant mind and great intellect. After learning about Morricone in more detail, I realised why his music is so unique and so universal. It is because it was also a product of his might intellect and outcome of his deep spirituality.
Maestro Morricone was an exceedingly modest person, he never bragged on his brilliance and depth. But it all is in his book, Ennio Morricone: In His Own Words, which is a sheer intellectual pleasure to read. It is the one of the best books ever.
Inna Rogatchi with Michael Rogatchi (C). Don Quixote’s Echo. Homage to Ettore Scola and Ennio Morricone. Amarcord Forever. Original art series. 2012.
When I was reading the parts of it, I was having an impression that Leonardo had returned to our midst, this time as a composer. “Music is mysterious, – wrote Maestro in his incredibly engaging book, – it does not offer many answers”. Indeed, Ennio Morricone’s music did originate much more lasting questions for millions of people than all those great films itself. And questions are the salt and beauty of a life landscape, the more, the better.
As a person, Maestro Morricone was simply amazing in his modesty, his friendliness, his kind attitude towards the people. I wish we would have much more people like him, but the reality is that he was a rare sapphire of a man.
His deep faith was never shaken and for those who knew him and the family, it was evident that this kind of faith was a very firm ground for his outstanding and far reaching humanity.
His and his family’s generosity and philanthropy maybe not that well-known widely – precisely because of supreme modesty of Morricones – but there was, is and will be steady stream of it in many directions of life, including their help to children, families in need, musical education, science, medicine, you name it.
When we at our The Rogatchi Foundation have started the Culture for Humanity global initiative facilitating cultural support to people world-wide at the smashing time of Covid-19 pandemic, it was Maestro Morricone and his wonderful family who did respond the first ones to join and to lead the effort. We were touched and grateful to those wonderful people who always share their talent and their heart with this simplicity and understatement, in the way the real giants do.
As we all know, because of a number of reasons, some of great masters of arts can be quite complicated characters. Ennio Morricone, additionally to all his extraordinary professional qualities, was simply a wonderful man. True humanitarian whose humanism was an organic part of his nature. He is a giant in all and every sense.
It would take time for me to write about Maestro Ennio in the past term. Such light like his never dims.
Addio, Maestro, e senza fondo grazie, bottomless thank you.
Michael Rogatchi (C). OSIP. Portrait of Osip Mandelstam. Oil on canvas. 70 x 50 cm. 1993. The Rogatchi Art collection.
Michael Rogatchi (C). Kolyma. Indian ink and oil on paper on board. 30 x 20 cm. 1993. The Rogatchi Art Collection. Published for the first time. 
Nadezhda Mandelstam. Ca 1920s. Courtesy: Maija Mailis – Inna Rogatchi archive (C).
Cover of the rare Anthology of Russian Poetry of the XX century. Moscow, 1925. Inna Rogatchi archive.
Inna Rogatchi (C). Osip Winds. Homage to Osip Mandelstam. Horizon Beyond Horizon project. Authored original print of pearl paper. 50 x 70 cm. 2011-2012.
Nikolay Peredein. Memorial plaque to Osip and Nadezhda Mandelshtam. Ekaterinburg, Russia. Unveiled on January 14, 2021, in commemoration of Osip Mandelstam 130th birthday. Credits: Roman Liberov, with kind permission.
