In The Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930’s @ Royal Academy of Arts, London
Perfectly formed, this exhibition explores Ukrainian culture’s responses to Modernism during the early to mid-20th century. Though you’d never guess it from the posters, this is a perfectly formed and curated exhibition. It will both wow you — and make you cry.
The fact that the art still exists is a testament to the power and strength of Ukrainian cultural identity. The exhibition is about how Ukraine fought against successive invasive, worked with and against Modernist (i.e. Soviet) influences, and how the art works themselves survived. Many were destroyed during a Soviet cultural purge. The fact that they’re still here now against celebrates resistance against war now.
The ‘eye of the storm’ is the stormy events the artists operated in and their art was created in — the 1905 Revolution, which led to modest liberalisation across the Russian Empire; the First World War; the two Revolutions of 1917 (February and October); the collapse of the Tsarist Russian Empire; the proclamation of the Ukrainian People’s Republic and much hoped for political, cultural and artistic independence; the demise of the Republic after defeat in the Ukrainian War of Independence; and the establishment in 1922, by the Bolsheviks in Moscow, of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, shown by growing Soviet influences in artistic works.
I couldn’t get enough of Ukrainian Peasant Women by Volodymyr Burliuk . Perhaps what (as a Western European) I’d think of when I think of Ukraine, it was also incredibly human, real and vivid. It’s also almost Pointillistic in its patterns on the dress and background.
Women Under the Apple Tree is beautiful in its Fauve popping colours, but also very similar to the celebratory working class Soviet art of the time. Women, particularly rural women, are working — and this work celebrates their achievement of industry. It’s also a bit fairytale at the same time — one looks up, reaching to grasp an apple on the branch, the other looks down, protecting her basket of apples. Perhaps she doesn’t want to be overloaded in this hard manual labour, perhaps she’s afraid of being cascaded with apples when her workmate pulls too hard. Is this perhaps a case of one bad apple?
It’s also a bit pastoral idyll as in this workers Eden, one of the women wears no shoes on her feet and her only working tool is her apple-loaded apron. Maybe she’s more symbolic as she wears the traditional multiple layered beaded Ukrainian necklace and full-sleeved blouse, with her hair practically tied up under a scarf. Both women wear practical simple clothing with aprons, headscarves (one with a jaunty red headscarf) and overskirts. I love the slight impracticality of the dainty heeled boots of one of the women. Is this about women workers or more of a watch out Russia, Ukraine is coming?! Enjoy too their healthy rosy glows as the tree produces abundance and the river curls down to the sea, the sky is blue and all is good.
Mykola Kasperovych’s Portrait of a Girl is absolutely charming, and although stylised, very very real. A small blonde girl regards us from the canvas, with whirling curling long hair against a sunny orange background. Against which her pink clothing pops. I love how the artist has captured the reality of childhood here, of being a child — this is no symbolic mini adult (as in an 18th century portrait) looking out at us, nor is this idealised, but just very grounded, very true to life, captured just before she starts moving or speaking again.
Mykola Kasperovych’s picture of ducks was also equally joyful, but for more comical reasons.
This is one of many ‘wow’ moments — Oleksandr Bohomazov’s Sharpening the Saws. The colours, the geometry, the light, the scale (the canvas is vast!) the coloured saws themselves, the contrasts. A bit Dali, and yet a celebration of quiet contemplative hard work.
Apply Jeeves and Wooster soundtrack and there you have it! Marko Epshtein The Tailor’s Family. I love the jauntiness of the characters, the shop/workshop becoming like an Escher or Durer drawing where the stairs and levels never end. At the same time, the samovar boils away happily in the background and we can see the tailor’s tools of their trade around and about. His wife (perhaps) ready, poised to greet us and help us with our orders. Such a cheerful piece.
Davyd Burliuk’s Carousel made me think of the Master and Margarita or flying in the sky with a cello playing goat. The carousel whirls and fizzes away, one of the horses looks ready to spring away into the distance, eyed warily by the operator. Perhaps the horses come alive as they move round and around. Who knows what the one in the background is going to do or become?
Alexandra Exter’s Three Female Figures mixes Cubism and Futurism to create something wonderful. It feels a bit My Fair Lady goes to the races to me, although it could also be compared with rainy Impressionist street scenes. The lady in the round red picture hat is wonderfully picturesque (and confidently going about her business, walking with purposeful strides). Her red skirts gloriously fly out around her. At the same time, women in smaller, neater hats and white suits/skirts, though they look a bit like businessmen, are also about their business. Maybe sat at a cafe table on the street? A wonderful celebration of women in the world.
Kazymyr Malevych invented Suprematism, abstract depictions of spirituality and feelings, and annoyed Stalin, who bizarrely given their behaviour everywhere else preferred literal, naturalistic interpretations of art and culture. This industrial scape setting reminds me of Lowry, but are the trees ‘trees’ or smoking chimneys? Is this rural or industrial? The rural setting looks like a factory. A worker skitters along in the distance busily walking, very alone — maybe even in a snowy scene. We can feel them shivering with cold as they walk briskly. The colours and shades are very Impressionistic and the shapes and forms wonderfully tactile.
The cafe sign was gloriously chic, most definitely insert cool Jazz music here. Anatol Petryski’s Portrait of Mykhailo Semenko, caught through the windows of a smokey cafe, with a stylish woman in a cloche hat and waving bobbed hair in profile opposite him at the table. Coffee, cigarettes and deep thoughts all round. Vivid Roman lettering gives us the cafe name, the blue of the coffee cups matching the woman’s hat and shockingly sleeveless dress, and Semenko’s relaxed leisure suit. Yet this is as much about the lettering as it is about the portrait.
I adored this work — I can only describe it as flat-packed Van Gogh street scene. It’s also capturing a scene before it vanishes, before it modernises, changes, grows or shrinks. I just kept looking at it and seeing Van Gogh’s Cafe scene at night in Arles. The arched bridge, the river zig-zagging through it, the buildings progressing into the distance, the washing kicking up its legs in the wind!
Again, the beauty of the shtetl, before it goes — with the village and its many crossed domes in the distance. It’s sort of a drone’s eye view — we swoop over and cross and keep looking, looking into the distance.
It was ‘Jewish Pogrom’ that had we weeping next to the pictures of some ‘Invalids’. Posed like a Christ on the cross work, at first the characters seem to be weeping at the foot of the cross — until you see the heaped up bodies in a mass grave behind them. You realise that rather than looking at a Christian murder scene, we’re looking at a murder scene perhaps perpetrated by people who claim to be Christians or modernist/Communists — or all of these. The emaciated body is not Christ taken down from the cross (pre-resurrection), but maybe their son, their child, their neighbour or friend. The fragility and vulnerability of the weeping old man touched me to the heart. Despite their being paint, we just get a huge rush to run forward and comfort these wounded, grieving people. We feel the full force of the unreasonableness, the murderous spite of antisemitism unleashed against a community, pushed out of their homes and relationships destroyed by hate. Lest we think this is just a ‘Jewish problem’, the painting confronts us face on to get us to think differently. For between 1918 and 1921 an estimated 100,000 Jewish people in Ukraine were attacked and killed in the war-torn, starving country.
Kostiantyn Yeleva’s Portrait — a huge moving canvas. Quite unique and with its war-time setting. We can follow the man’s upward gaze, get lost in the reflections in his eyes and the blue of the sky behind him,
Anatol Petrytskyi’s Futurist and avant-garde theatre and dance costumes, included a charming Cossack looking knight and very beetle-like stylised Japanese influences for Turandot. Then there were very Ukrainian traditionally inspired floral stage curtains.
And my favourite, this dapper and dashing Cossack stagey soldier, swaggering his great coat and deep red sash about his waist.
But it was Anatol Petrytskyi’s The Invalids which again had me weeping, just such a moving scene. Juxtaposed with the Jewish Pogrom painting mentioned before. The tender humanity of the figures, and the more you look the more ableist you realise that you may be. Yet these are people of compassion not pity — in the hands, the postures, the faces, in their solidarity. We’ve interrupted a conversation — we’re the intruders, the outsiders, the other, not these people. And yet we see also the hardness of their lives — that life is made hard for them, their clothes are worn, grubby even and their feet are bare. And yet in the ways they lean into and against each other, the way that the senior lady embraces the young boy, the way they’ve dressed themselves with care, they are not beaten down — nor are they alone or isolated.
Like a glossy box of chocolates. ..I can’t remember what this represents but the glossy canvas, the glowing colours and its sculptural dissected forms dazzled me.
Whereas this made me gasp — like three ages of man triptych (with a skull-like head in the middle), but also for the Hitler-like character in the background. (Though at the same time I appreciate that this was the facial hair style of the time). Remarkable — a kind of blue pill/red pill moment — will you choose alluring jazz or despotic political extremism?
Unlike other celebratory worker paintings, here you can feel the rural workers bone weariness and need for rest rushing out of the painting at you. We feel their tiredness, the effort of their manual labour, and enjoy their much needed rest with them. It’s also touching to see how people choose to enjoy their rest — one man can’t stop working, others close their eyes — to dream, escape or enjoy the sun. Perhaps this is an enforced rest as a tool needs fixing before they begin again?
The metal sculptural face! Vasyl Yermilov’s Self-portrait. Again, add screaming jazz!
And this extraordinary landscape! It’s revolutionary and yet there’s a whimsical Surrealist vibe too. A charming butterfly, a windmill! A man with a red flag and yet women are front and centre, a bicycle! Ukrainian swallows/swifts. People, ordinary people, can atlast have full lives — time for work..and leisure, to live at peace, enjoy their families and homes.
Or the pride of women on the shooting range! A literal ‘see what I did there’.
I comprehed the different schools and influences within the exhibition at the time of viewing — the Royal Academy of Arts has some really excellent guides and essays around the themes and artists featured — https://www.royalacademy.org.uk/article/start-here-modernism-in-ukraine
- Images are not the author’s own and used purely to illustrate the exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts: In the Eye of the Storm: Modernism in Ukraine, 1900–1930s @ October 2024.*
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