ARTIST's STATEMENT

I first began painting in the late ’50s of the last century. This was during the period of nonconformist art in Soviet Russia. I think perhaps the starting point of this movement was the VI World Festival of Youth and Students, which took place in Moscow in the summer of 1957. It was held under the slogan “For peace and friendship” and obviously had a propagandistic character, which met the objectives of the communist regime. Still, it had many positive moments. Soviet executive bodies, confused and distracted by conflicting movements in the upper echelons of power, failed to monitor events to the usual degree. So during two weeks of that summer, Moscow was full of unusual excitement. Things that had seemed absolutely impossible only a couple of months earlier became reality in the Moscow streets. Ordinary Soviet people were able to meet foreigners and talk with them freely. And none of them were pursued for it. Well, of course they could only talk by gesturing and gesticulating rather than actually speaking. Because in those days, no one in Moscow spoke any language other than Russian. Moscow girls actually felt no handicap on that count and went for it full-throttle. The guys also managed not to get too hung up on linguistics, primarily because all they were interested in were badges. A young man whose entire chest was covered in badges was quite a common occurrence at the time.

Picasso’s “Dove of Peace,” although invented for another occasion, became the symbol of the festival, and Picasso’s name thus became known to a wider audience. During the festival, there were many exhibitions by international artists. At these exhibitions, Muscovites were able to see abstract paintings. That exposure was the impetus for creating their own nonfigurative works, the style of which was strikingly different from the socialist realism style prevalent at the time.

I was living in Moscow and happened to be spending the summer break of 1957 in the city. The struggle for peace, as the theme was deemed by the communists, was the key point of the festival. But the people of Moscow, it seemed to me, did not pay much attention to it, especially because the hysteria of that struggle was, in truth, not particularly intense at that point. All this struggling for peace was not pushed by the Soviets to full capacity. They were capable of much more. But at that moment, they were a little more relaxed. For this reason, the festival, with all its exhibitions and its spirit of relative freedom, had a positive impact on me and on many others as well.

Was I one of the nonconformists when I started painting? Well, if I were to answer this question considering only the style of painting, then I could be counted among the nonconformists of the period. However, I think it is not enough to consider the painting style alone. The important characteristics of nonconformism at the time were, first and foremost, the artist’s lifestyle, and secondly, the nature of his relationship with the Soviet authorities.

In other words, to be called a nonconformist, it was, first, necessary to be part of the local bohemia or, at a minimum, to lead a lifestyle close to bohemian. In addition, painting had to be the most important thing in life or at least one of the most important things. Furthermore, it was necessary to be in a state of minor but permanent, and perhaps most importantly, intentionally open conflict with the authorities.

None of that applied to me at the time. From the mid-50s, I had become more and more interested in mathematics. During my last four years in high school, I was taking advanced math classes at Moscow University. At this point, I was thinking long and hard about what I wanted to become. My father advised me to get into math. He said it would be especially useful if I ever ended up moving to America.

It was obvious that humanities were not my cup of tea. Choosing to study history or literature in a totalitarian country did not seem like the right thing to do. I did feel a kind of attraction towards music and visual arts. But I already knew that the standard of living of, say, an ordinary musician was not comparable to the standard of living of an ordinary engineer, either in my country or, as rumor had it, in America.

All this made me lean in favor of pursuing exact sciences. Even though, I understood that the Soviets could easily politicize exact sciences just as well. One time our physics teacher, whom we had nick-named “Pike,” announced that they had decided not to use the metric system in America. “How come?” asked one of the guys. “In order to help the rich confuse the ordinary people and make their life more difficult,” replied Pike.

Nevertheless, the choice of exact sciences was an obvious one to me. Of all of them, only mathematics was not related to any kind of a material base. Given the rotten state of the Soviet economy, this was quite a significant point. And so that’s how I ended up choosing mathematics.

My life in Russia could have gone in various directions. But in 1959, when I was graduating from high school, the Soviets experienced some sort of a glitch and for some reason, the strict university admission quotas ceased to apply. As a result, I, along with the other advanced math class members who had Jewish surnames, became students at the Mechanics and Mathematics Department of Moscow University. So nothing disorderly was expected to occur in my life from this point forward. On the contrary, I already had a pretty accurate idea of what I wanted to do in the future and how I would go about it. And other than a standard scientific career, I didn’t spare many thoughts for anything else. Therefore, without a doubt, I did not belong to the local bohemia.

Was I in conflict with the Soviet authorities? Of course, I was. To a large extent, this was the result of my father’s not hiding his attitude towards the Soviets from me. Once he told me he had no doubt that one day I would get the offer to join the Communist Party. And that he knew many people who, without believing in any commie rubbish, still became party members. They did it purely out of careerist considerations. “So here’s the thing, my dear son,” said my father. “I implore you, never, ever have anything to do with those bandits.”

At some point, my father was fired from his job and was on the verge of becoming the victim of physical retribution. What saved him and consequently our entire family was March 1953. However, the Soviets did not deal the first blow to me personally until the summer of ‘59. Based on the results of the main national math competition – The Moscow State University Mathematics Olympiad – I was recommended for inclusion in the Soviet team as a participant in the first international math Olympiad for high school students, which was to be held in Romania that year. However, that’s where the KGB got involved in the event. As a result, neither I nor any of the team’s members with Jewish surnames were allowed to attend the international contest. And the national Soviet team was only half-manned: instead of eight participants, only four ended up going to Romania. Was I traumatized by this turn of events? Certainly. But not very. After all, I had been accepted to a university and in five years would be the holder of a degree in mathematics. This helped me to forget the upsetting events that had just transpired.

Of course, I was in permanent disagreement with the existing regime of the country. But only people close to me were aware of this. None of us had either the ability or the desire to fight actively against the political establishment. That struggle seemed to us to be very dangerous, completely futile, and certainly not likely to lead to any attainable goal in the foreseeable future. To be willing to engage in such struggle, one needed to have special courage, which neither I nor any of my close friends possessed. Besides, it seemed the existing social order, maybe with a few corrections, was sufficiently suitable to the majority of the population. For this reason, all I could think about was how to escape from the country.

My only open conflict with the Soviet system was linked to my tendency to always keep smiling. This was despite an unwritten rule in Soviet Russia: “Nobody smiles.” If you smiled, you perplexed ordinary Soviet citizens and caused open irritation among those who stood above you on the ladder of Soviet society. In high school, I was constantly scolded for smiling. The phrase “What's so funny?” was perpetually hurled in my direction. The school principal once went as far as to say, looking straight at me, “Some people have ceased to look human because things are always funny to them.” Similar scenarios pursued me at the university and elsewhere throughout my life in Soviet Russia.

Once, back in high school, things took quite a nasty turn. I got on a tram with a group of my friends, and of course, I was smiling. The tram conductor became very upset. She probably assumed that if I was smiling, I was not intending to buy a ticket. Although I always bought a ticket on trams. As soon as I ascended a couple of stairs, she hit me on the head with a broom. In those days, tram doors were always open, and the blow caused my school cap to fall off my head and roll down the stairs, out the door, and away on the pavement.

At the next stop, I got out of the tram and wandered back to look for my cap. That’s when I saw a policeman walking toward me with my cap in hand. I told the policeman what happened to me on the tram. And he replied that for my hooligan behavior, he would take me to school and ask the staff to punish me. He really did bring me to school. As it turned out, only teachers who did not tolerate smiles were around that day, and they were very pleased by this turn of events. They warned me that I would soon sink so low, it would be necessary to send me to a colony for juvenile delinquents.

Of course, the fact that a smile rarely left my lips was not all that serious a crime against the society in which I lived at the time. What’s more, perhaps most importantly, it was not a deliberate act on my part. It’s just that my face seemed somehow especially adapted to smile.

In short, I was not a nonconformist in the true sense of the word, although I definitely possessed some nonconformist traits. So, looking back, I would say I was about one-third-nonconformist.

*       *       *

In December of ’62, a major disaster befell Moscow avant-garde artists. Their exhibition at one of the main Moscow venues, the Manege, fell through. The whole thing was connected to the name of Ely Bielutin. He was the head of the studio that united a large group of Moscow artists whose work went against the official narrative supported by the communist regime. Ironically, Bielutin’s studio was located on a street, the name of which, translated from Russian, was the Big Street of Communism.

At the end of November ’62, Ely Bielutin’s studio organized an exhibition, which received an enormously favorable response and was known as the Taganskaya Exhibition. At that time, the Manege was hosting an exhibition dedicated to the 30^th anniversary of the Moscow Branch of the Union of Artists (MOSCH). And Soviet officials ordered Bielutin to fill the halls of the Manege with a display of avant-garde paintings.

When the main Soviet Party boss of that time – the Corn Man – came to see this display, he was extremely annoyed by what he observed. He shouted at the artists and threatened to deport them from the country. “The Soviet people don’t need any of this!” was the mildest phrase he directed at Bielutin. In the end, he gave instructions to ban avant-garde art in all its manifestations.

What then appeared to be a major disaster, ultimately turned out to be a great success, but nobody realized this at the time. And all avant-garde artists struggled during this difficult period. But despite all the problems, they decided not to give up. Instead, they began to exhibit paintings in their own homes. They invited everybody to come to their apartments on weekends while still dreaming of organizing broader and more open exhibitions.

Soon after the Manege exhibition in December ’62, Ekaterina Pomanskaya, the mother of my university friend Lesha Pomansky, invited my friends and me to a party at Bielutin’s residence. Pomanskaya was a member of the MOSCH, although in some sense, she opposed the organization, and for this reason, always suffered. She knew all of the Moscow avant-garde. She also knew Bielutin well. That’s how we ended up at his party. It was, if I am not mistaken, somewhere near Mayakovsky Square.

The party was a lot of fun. There were, of course, many eyewitness stories told about how the Soviet corn-leader bellowed in the Manege Gallery. It was at this party that I first heard the word “faggot,” pronounced the same way the Corn Man did when referring to avant-garde artists. It was also here that I first heard many jokes that I was to hear again countless times. One such joke went “All the members of the MOSCH don't measure up to the single member of Bosch.” Shortly before that, an art book by Hieronymus Bosch came into our possession, and we first “discovered” him for ourselves, becoming huge admirers of his artworks. So I found this joke very funny and right on target. Even now, when I recall it, I tend to smile.

Bielutin himself talked a lot about what happened at the Manege Gallery. One story he shared was about Lesha Pomansky’s mother. At some point, as the Corn Man was becoming increasingly furious, Dmitry Polyansky, a big shot in Soviet governance, poured oil onto the Corn Man’s flaming temper. Polyansky said his daughter had recently been presented with a picture of Ekaterina Pomanskaya called “Lemons.” But actually, he said, what was depicted was not lemons but just some sort of turds. Naturally, Polyansky’s remark had a powerful impact on Pomanskaya and her reputation. She later had big problems with the management of the MOSCH.

Bielutin also mentioned that when the Corn Man’s fury at the Manege peaked, he began hurling insults starting with all the indecent letters of the alphabet at everyone and their mother. At that moment, someone from his entourage noted that there were ladies among those present. To which the Corn Man replied that the ladies can also take a hike to places starting with those same letters of the alphabet.

No one felt dejected at Bielutin’s party. Everyone was in great spirits due to the pleasant company and the great ambience. Then, towards the end of the gathering, Bielutin raised a clenched fist and shouted, “We’ll stage them a Benz one day!”

For whom Bielutin was intending to stage a “Benz” was more or less clear. The unclear part was what the word “Benz” actually meant. Personally, I had never encountered it in such a context. But probably because it sounded like a certain obscene Russian word, I guessed that it could not mean anything good for the “them.” I doubt anyone was in the know at the time as to what exactly that “Benz” entailed. I am not sure even Bielutin himself knew. The Soviet authorities, however, had a much clearer understanding of what kind of “Benzes” they would be doling out and to whom, and they inflicted them quite generously.

It turned out, however, that Bielutin was right. The Soviet avant-garde did stage everyone a “Benz,” one that proved more intense and impactful than Bielutin or anyone else at that time ever could have dreamed. Artworks created by the leaders of the Soviet avant-garde have now reached museums all over the world, and the prices they command are astronomical.

*       *       *

In the mid-summer of ’66, my friends and I spent a few weeks in Ukraine, in Crimea. We lived in Gurzuf, in the State House of Artists.

Such houses were part of the grand plan of the Soviet authorities. The first people to be targeted by them were writers. Because literature was technically the simplest and easiest way to maintain and develop Soviet ideology. Later, the writers were joined by members of other layers of society – those who were in the public eye the most. This included cinematographers, journalists, composers. And it also included artists. As a reward for obedience and as an advance for future services to the Soviets, they were pampered in various ways. They received special medical care, were allotted special feedings, and had apartments and summer houses – dachas – built for them. However, even the upper echelons of all these writers, composers, and artists overall lived in poverty (in the normal sense of the word). Nonetheless, they did not at all perceive this, since compared to the rest of the population, they were undoubtedly in a position of privilege. And clearly, it was assumed that they all understood perfectly that they could lose these privileges one day if they were not sufficiently obedient.

The apartments and dachas built for them were concentrated in specific locales. That way, monitoring them was considerably easier. Soviet authorities built apartment complexes in Moscow for writers and composers. They also constructed an artists’ village in the Upper Maslovka district of Moscow.

In addition to all that and for the same purpose, recreational hotels were also built for these folks. They could live there for long periods for free (or almost free) and were supposed to carry out their creative work there, although the latter was not at all necessary. And that is what the State House of Artists in Gurzuf was.

It was Lesha Pomansky’s stepfather, Grisha Zeitlin, who arranged for us to live in this house. He too was an artist and a member of MOSCH. But unlike Ekaterina Pomanskaya, he was an “obedient” member and therefore successful. At the time, there happened to be available vouchers that the artists had not wished to book and which were therefore going to go to waste. So Grisha took advantage of this. That’s how we ended up there.

I saw Grisha in passing only once or twice. I met Lesha’s mother more frequently. She was a wonderful artist and an extraordinary woman.

I am obliged to Lesha and his mother for my entire art education. Lesha, apparently, never created any artwork himself, but I received a great number of technical tips from him. I learned about different painting techniques. I found out where to get canvas, how it should be primed, and how it needed to be mounted on a stretcher. I learned how to build the stretcher and strengthen it with cross braces to prevent warping. Lesha also pointed out that paints should not be mixed without paying attention to their components. Otherwise, they may fade.

I learned many other useful things from Lesha as well. In particular, he told me there were two extremely different groups of Moscow artists. His mother belonged to one, while his stepfather belonged to the other. On completing their daily projects, members of one group cleaned their brushes with newspaper. By contrast, members of the other group cleaned their brushes with soap and hot water.

I internalized all the very best offered by the Moscow school of fine arts. I cleaned my brushes with newspaper and then washed them with soap and hot water. Half a century down the line, I have improved upon this technology and replaced the newspaper with the paper towel.

The roof of the House of Artists was under a canopy, and in the middle of the day, the artists settled there with their easels. When I arrived there for the first time, I wanted to join them. But the only thing I had brought to Crimea other than clothing was snorkeling equipment. That was a problem. Fortunately, there was a small art shop at the House of Artists. It held the solution to my problem. I bought primed and unprimed cardboard, paints, paint thinner, and even Chinese kolinsky brushes.

These brushes are made of hair obtained from the tail of the Siberian weasel, or kolonok. Their quality is much higher than that of other brushes made of natural or artificial hair. Now, such brushes are extremely expensive. But at the House of Artists art shop, their price, naturally, was quite low. Sadly, that was the only time in my entire life in Soviet Russia that I was lucky enough to buy them.

So, I too settled on the roof, near the artists, who painted en plein air. Really, it was peinture sur le motif. They painted what their eyes actually saw. Their paintings depicted the sea, cliffs, and boats. In short, these were real artists. There was never even a trace of avant-gardists in that house.

I built an improvised easel and also began to paint en plein air. Well, naturally, the way my eyes saw the objects. My paintings were largely abstract. At any rate, they contained nothing even remotely resembling the sea or cliffs.

From time to time, when I knew I was being observed by one of the artists, I would have a bit of fun: I would look at the sea, then at my painting, then back at the sea again, and then touch up the canvas with my brush. That shocked my artists to no end.

I returned to Moscow with all the trophies I had acquired at the art shop and continued to work on my painting. I also tried getting to know more artists of the Moscow underground. On weekends, on the advice of Lesha’s mother, I visited Moscow artists’ apartments. From then on, it was all pretty straightforward. Once I learned about a painting exhibition at one apartment, I always found an ad there with the address of the next apartment to exhibit work. That’s how I ended up attending possibly every single apartment exhibition in Moscow. Naturally, Oskar Rabin’s one was among them. Lesha’s mother was the one who took us to visit him in Lianozovo. And it was there that I saw all his paintings for the first time. His Madonna against the background of local barracks really appealed to me. I recall Lesha’s mother noticing this, and we stood before that painting together for some time. We ended up spending about half a day at Rabin’s.

As I continued to meet Moscow artists, I closely tracked how Ekaterina Pomanskaya worked. At some point, I learned that she produced linocuts. Quite possibly, Picasso’s linocuts had influenced her. “Lemons,” the work criticized by Soviet authorities at the Manege Gallery, was actually a linocut as well. I really liked Pomanskaya’s artworks. So when Lesha taught me how to make a linocut, I decided to try the technique myself. I got linoleum and wood carving tools – chisels and gouges. Then I made a very simple printing press. Other necessary tools included a special paint for the press, which Lesha found somewhere for me, and a rubber roller, which all of us normally used for glossing photos. Lesha, however, warned me that his mother did not trust that roller much and instead used a plain tablespoon when working on the details of her linocuts.

So, I made a couple of linocuts. Then Lesha guided me in making a couple of monotypes, again using techniques he had learned from his mother. She used regular glass instead of a copper etching plate as the matrix for her monotype images. So did I. Unfortunately, neither my linocuts nor my monotypes survived. All of them were lost somewhere during my pilgrimage from Russia to America.

Somewhere in the late nineties, Lesha Pomansky gave me two of his mother’s original linocuts as a present. To this day, I have them in my Millburn home in New Jersey. One of them, “The Pomegranate,” was always a particular favorite of mine.

*       *       *

Four years after the Manege exhibition, one of the milestone exhibitions of paintings by the Moscow nonconformists finally took place. Twelve artists took part in this event. Eight of them belonged to the so-called Lianozovo group: Evgeny Kropivnitsky (the guru of the group), Oscar Rabin, Vladimir Nemukhin, Lidiya Masterkova, Nikolai Vechtomov, Olga Potapova (wife of Evgeny Kropivnitsky), Lev Kropivnitsky (son of Evgeny Kropivnitsky and Olga Potapova), and Valentina Kropivnitskaya (Oscar Rabin’s wife, and daughter of Evgeny Kropivnitsky and Olga Potapova). The other four participants in this event, who did not belong to the Lianozovo group, were Dmitri Plavinsky, Anatoly Zverev, Eduard Steinberg, and Valentin Vorobiev.

The exhibition was hosted by the “Friendship” club, which belonged to an organization where I worked at the time. The organization was called P.O.Box 702. This unusual name meant that the institution was considered secret. At the time, secret organizations were common throughout the country, although I seriously doubt any actual technological secrets could be found there. What the Soviets were trying to keep secret were things like the exact nature of the work being carried out at a specific organization, how low the quality of its overall activity was, or which technological secrets were being “borrowed” from the West. Our P.O.Box met the criteria for all three such types of secrets.

On the part of our P.O.Box, young people and technical personnel from the club worked together to arrange the exhibition. On the artists’ end, the organizer was Oscar Rabin. Liaising between the P.O.Box and the artists was Alexander Glezer. He was well-acquainted with those of our young people slightly older than me. I no longer remember how Glezer got to know them, but they knew each other very well. It is possible that at some point, Glezer worked at our P.O.Box or at a related institution. And he was actually the one who organized the “Exhibition of Twelve.”

Glezer came across an old acquaintance of his, who knew absolutely nothing about avant-gardists. They came to me. In our organization, I was the indisputable authority on fine arts. When I learned they were talking about Rabin and his friends, I gave my immediate go ahead for the exhibit. The only thing I did not mention was how risky it was to get involved in such affairs. And they were completely naïve in that respect. So what happened next seemed like thunder out of clear skies.

The exhibition opened on Sunday, January 22, 1967. It was assumed that it would last for some time. I, however, was not at all certain about that. I suspected it might be shut down the day it opened. So I decided to go there on that Sunday. The head of our local branch of the Communist Party, Zlata Preobrazhenskaya, announced that she was planning to check whether everything was in order prior to the opening of the exhibition, and then would have to leave. And I volunteered to represent our P.O.Box at the opening and turned out to be alone on that count. Everyone else from our P.O.Box who wanted to attend the exhibition had decided that it wasn’t worth wasting half of their weekend on it. They assumed it would be better to peruse the exhibition halls without rushing in the days that followed, during working hours.

On opening day, I was one hundred percent certain the exhibition would be shut down immediately and accompanied by a considerable scandal. My certainty stemmed from seeing a multitude of cars with quaint foreign outlines conveniently parked around our super-secret organization. I expected the KGB to take harsh, decisive measures.

My predictions proved correct. The exhibition lasted only a couple of hours before being shut down by the KGB. I had left the building shortly before the fateful moment and learned about it only the following morning, on Monday. I went to the “Friendship” club before the start of my work shift and encountered completely empty halls, with ends of cut rope drooping desolately along the walls.

Our P. O. Box then ended up under heavy fire from the KGB and Moscow branches of the Communist Party. For some reason, the KGB forgot about our youth. However, the one to come under fire was our Zlata. In his book “Contemporary Russian Art,” Alexander Glezer wrote in detail about all aspects of the exhibition, including his negative impression of Zlata. If his words about her were painted, they would all be in tones of gray. I would hesitate to doubt the veracity of the exhibition’s twists and turns as portrayed by Glazer. His descriptions are very plausible. But in my opinion, Zlata deserves lighter tones.

Why do I think so? Well, for one thing, right after the closing of the Exhibition of Twelve, I expected at least some criticism from Zlata regarding my role in the exhibition, but none came. On the contrary, it seemed to me that during our chance encounters, Zlata began to greet me with obvious affection. Once, we had a brief conversation on a subject of no particular relevance here. At some point, in disagreeing with her, I pushed my counter-argument a bit further than she liked. When she thought I was about to say something inadmissible (in her understanding), she looked me in the eye and with a faint smile said “Stop! I know you. It seems to me you are bound to say something inappropriate. I don’t wish to hear it.” That was the end of our conversation.

For anyone unfamiliar with those times, I have to say that given Zlata’s position, it would have been normal, or rather mandatory, for her to hear me out and convey the content of our conversation to the authorities – straight to the KGB.

Although both Glezer and I were at the Exhibition of Twelve, we did not chance to meet. In fact, I never met him, even after he moved his Museum of Modern Russian Art from France to New Jersey. I got to meet those who headed the Jersey City museum only after Glezer had left it.

After the Exhibition of Twelve was dismantled, the Moscow nonconformist artists became discouraged but did not give up. They worked underground, continuing to paint and even sell their works from time to time. Many of them even managed to make a living through their art. Even though they sold their paintings for next to nothing.

In those days, even paintings by recognized Russian masters could not be sold for a lot. I am referring to paintings from private collections. Everyone lived like a pauper. No one in the country had any money to spare. And those rare individuals who did have a bit of money, had to hide the fact. For these reasons, the art market was not very liquid.

Once, I was involuntarily drawn into selling such paintings. One of my friends, Kira, had unexpectedly received a sizable inheritance when her uncle died. He was a good doctor, and what’s more, he had access to the limited State medical resources. Such doctors were quite wealthy at that time. Their activities were, to a large extent, illegal, but they were privately protected by certain high-ranking officials. This uncle left Kira his entire fortune: money, jewelry, and paintings by Russian masters.

At the time, I lived in Neopalimovsky Lane. Kira lived in an old building one street over. She told me the walls of her apartment had such big holes that she could see everything outside. To keep diamonds, sapphires, and paintings in such a home would be insane, so she brought all her treasures to our apartment. I hung all her paintings on the walls. There were works by Repin, Kustodiev, Nickolas Roerich, Manevich, Petrov-Vodkin, and Korovin.

At the time, Kira was living on her own, quietly and discreetly. Then suddenly, everything changed dramatically. Men of means became attracted to her. Our home started being frequented by respectable people. They engaged in intellectual conversations and made it clear that they were not merely respectable people but very respectable people. At times they would bring quite outlandish items. I recall when one of the respectables brought half a bottle of Calvados. And he went on at length, explaining what it was. He obviously did not expect to find proper glasses at our place, so he brought along his own. And then went on explaining the correct temperature and proper glasses for drinking Calvados in order to properly preserve its aroma, and while at it, pricing the diamonds and the paintings.

It was not long before a small work by Repin was sold for 500 rubles. A large work of Kustodiev’s titled “Flowers,” was eventually sold for 800 rubles. Kira was told not to sell the Roerich for less than 5,000, but that price attracted no buyers. The best offer for the Roerich was 2,000, which was why that painting remained at our home longer than the others.

Those were the post-reform days. I was earning a hundred rubles a month. The salary of a PhD was anywhere between 300 and 400 rubles. Butter, cheese, and sausages cost about 3 rubles per kilo. A bottle of vodka was sold for 2 rubles and 87 kopecks.

Kira was introduced to people from galleries. She was invited to the Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val, which was right near our apartment, to see their “foundation,” or what was hidden behind the walls of their depository and unavailable to a wide audience. Kira took me with her. There were several big rooms that smelled of dust and contained nothing but shelves with small gaps between them. The shelves housed paintings by those Russian artists who, in the opinion of the country’s leaders, “were not needed by the Soviet people.” The paintings were stacked tightly and haphazardly. Some were in frames, others just on canvas stretchers. The smell of dust permeated everything. It was possible to look at a painting only by picking it up from a rack and leaning it on the floor against a nearby wall.

At some point, I began to pull a huge painting from one of the top shelves. Its diameter alone was about one and a half meters. So it was difficult for me to drag it by the frame without touching the canvas with my hands. And when it started to fall on me, I was forced to hold it by the canvas. I set the painting on the floor and leaned it against the wall. The artist and his wife were flying above their native Vitebsk.

I had been fortunate enough to leaf through an album of Marc Chagall’s work shortly before my trip to the Tretyakov Gallery. I guessed it was possible for some of his works to be in Russia. But it was hard for me to believe that his “Over the Town” painting was just a 10-minute walk from where I happened to live then.

*       *       *

I had always been surprised by the extreme inconsistency in all the banditry of the Soviet authorities. (Now I understand that I should not have been surprised.) They considered the work of the Russian avant-gardists to be garbage. But for those who wanted to export this “garbage” and take these paintings abroad, things became difficult. Avant-garde paintings were starting to be considered the equals of other artworks. And obtaining a permit to export the paintings turned into a very complicated process. Most of the time, it was necessary for the owner of the “garbage” to proffer a bribe. He had to find the right people, so the bribe offered at one end of the transaction would be safely accepted at the other end. As a rule, the offeror of a bribe extended deep (and sincere!) gratitude toward the offeree, who felt profound satisfaction due to both the financial output of the deal and the feeling that a good deed had been done.

In 1989, a colleague and close friend of those years, Gena Ioffe, was leaving Russia for what was presumed to be forever. He was married to Anna Plavinskaya, the daughter of Dmitri Plavinsky. Gena and Anna were bringing with them works by Russian artists. Needless to say, they had obtained all the necessary permits for their export. Among these works, Gena had a present I had given him – a collage I had created, entitled “Baba with Earrings.” I accompanied Gena to the airport and watched as the customs officer checked all the artworks and export documents. Everything was fine until he got to my piece. The customs officer asked to see the relevant export permit. Gena replied that a permit for this work was not required, because it was created by his friend. And he nodded in my direction. The customs officer looked me up and down and eventually concurred that indeed my work did not require a permit.

“Baba” was one of my last creations before departing Russia. It was my attempt to create something using a technique other than painting.

*       *       *

I don’t know why, but the entire time I lived in Russia, I wanted to make something out of clay. I just didn’t know how to go about it. And then one day I was returning home from somewhere in the rain. I was splashing through puddles, my shoes sinking in dirty muck. And in all that muck I noticed a few white patches. I marked the place, and when the rain had stopped and everything had dried out, I returned and managed to dig up something that looked like white clay. Of course, this clay was very muddy, but I knew how to deal with that. I started tapping my lump of clay against the concrete steps of the porch – a trick I’d learned from the boys in the building where I lived the first 17 years of my life. The dirt gradually began disappearing, and soon I had a decent-size piece of fairly clean clay in my hand.

Out of this clay, I made a plate and left it to dry for a couple of weeks. Then I put it in a regular gas oven to bake. Fortunately, my plate did not crack, although it would have remained very fragile. While I do not believe any structural changes had occurred during this firing, the plate was somewhat better than just greenware. Quite pleased, I “glazed” the plate with oil paint. It turned out pretty crappy.

Later I decided to approach the problem from the other side. I took a regular ceramic saucer and painted an image on it. This time, I used oil paint mixed with epoxy glue. I liked the outcome of these efforts somewhat more than the previous one. The photo from the end of 1970 shows me examining that saucer. I don’t look particularly respectable there – I am, after all, merely 28 years old. But in those days, I had three children. And I had already managed to achieve a few successes, which pleased me immensely and seemed very important at the time, in 1970.

Ten years later, I made my third, more serious, attempt to work with ceramics. By this time in my life, my friends and I had established a beekeeping partnership. None of us had any experience in this matter. Nor did we have any funds necessary to launch our enterprise. Not to mention that we came up with this idea in a country where private entrepreneurship was considered the greatest sin. Nonetheless, this venture, guaranteed to be fraught with risk, was something we committed to pursuing.

When not busy with our bees, we intended to do something “for the soul.” One such venture was going to be ceramics. We had a plan. We were going to buy a house in a village, bring our bees there, and then, in our spare time, dig a big pit in our yard and line its walls, floor, and ceiling with bricks. That was going to be our kiln for firing ceramics. Then we were going to find some open-pit mine from which to dig up clay. And out of this clay we intended to craft and fire Japanese ceramics.

My friends and I did buy a house in a village (in the Voronezh Region). Our village was called Bogana. There, in the backyard of our house, we intended to launch our ceramics project. However, its fine points were not quite clear to me nor, I would imagine, to the others. Why and how would we manage to fire Japanese ceramics in a small village in the middle of nowhere, using a simple pit lined with ordinary Soviet bricks and heated with Russian birch firewood? How were we going to glaze our Japanese ceramics? In what open-pit mine were we going to dig up the glaze components? I do not think we even knew what glaze was, because the word, to my recollection, never even crossed our lips.

One of the problems with the implementation of our project was that our house in Bogana was our base. We kept the bees there only during the off seasons: in the fall, winter, and early spring, during which time we went to the base only rarely. In the middle of spring, we moved our bees more than 100 kilometers and stayed there until the end of the largest honey flow. During that period, none of us ever went to Bogana.

Another problem with our ceramics project was that there were too many people involved. Each had his own ideas about what things needed to be done and how. As a result, the project proceeded slowly and irrationally.

Digging the big pit in the backyard of our house was not difficult, and that part of the plan was accomplished by the end of our second year. Soon after, we bought bricks, but we didn’t do anything with them until a couple of years later. By that time, it was clear we would never finish our ceramics project. However, nobody was upset, because from the very beginning, it had a low priority in the scheme of things. Some time later, we did finally line the pit with the bricks and put our “kiln” to good use. We used it as the foundation for a good shed for overwintering our bees. We ended up producing almost 20 tons of honey per season. So no one had any regrets about the unsuccessful attempt at Japanese ceramics.

So I never got the chance to work with clay in Russia, although I thought about it for as long as I can remember. But in Russia, it was difficult to make my dreams come true. And my next attempt to develop ceramics skills was made significantly later, after my departure from that country.

*       *       *

I arrived in America in the fall of ’91. At first, I couldn’t think of anything other than finding at least some kind of work. It turned out not to be all that easy. I was trying to find a job in the field of mathematical statistics, in which I was quite fluent and had already published several monographs. My area of specialization was very narrow. Nonetheless, I found a company where a large team of mathematicians and programmers was working on precisely what I considered myself to be the top specialist. They invited me to an interview and started describing what type of work they did. At the time, I didn’t have a very clear idea of how to behave in that type of a situation. And rather carelessly, I told my interviewers that they were on the wrong track, which would fail to lead them to their goal. And that what they had set out to accomplish, I could achieve singlehandedly within a few months. They thanked me for an interesting discussion, said goodbye, and promised to call. But they never called. And I never did find out why. Either I had really scared them or they simply thought I was insane.

I kept looking for a job. And although I kept telling myself that I should not distract myself with anything else, I managed to create several collages during that period. Using this technique was obviously not all that costly (in terms of the time spent). I also made something akin to a self-portrait. I simply placed my head on the scanner and got a printout. Then I used the same scanner to make several enlarged and reduced versions. What I got in the end was a composition which I titled “The Infinitely Large and the Infinitely Small.”

Not long after, I learned from a local newspaper that the National Institute of Standards and Technology was offering a research program (ASA/NSF/NIST Senior Research Fellow Program) in 1992–1993. One of their topics was again in that same area in which I considered myself to be the most proficient in the world. The contract was for less than a year. But the salary they were offering seemed to me to be completely astronomical.

I submitted my proposal. Then sent additional materials at the request of the institute. At some point I was asked what kind of assistants I would need and in what numbers. To which I obviously replied that I didn’t need any assistants at all and that I would complete the work by myself. Although this time I had the common sense to keep my mouth shut about being able to finish everything in a couple of months. After some time, I was notified that my proposal had been pre-approved and that I had to go through a final telephone interview with a representative of the institute.

The interviewer asked me some questions and I answered. Naturally, I had no problems with the substance of those questions. To be more precise, I shouldn’t have had any problems with those questions. But I had only been in the country for a few months and did not have a good grasp of American English (especially over the phone). At one point, my interviewer asked whether I was familiar with the work of Addelman. Of course, I was well-versed in all his work, and I even expanded one of his results into a more complex case. But the pronunciation of the surname Addelman by my interviewer did not sound to me quite as I then assumed it should have sounded, and the stress on the first syllable threw me off completely. And I replied, “I don’t know him!” Although this had a rather biblical ring to it, apparently it turned out to be the final straw in our already tense (through my fault, of course) conversation. As a result, the National Institute of Standards and Technology rejected my proposal.

I think it was a big mistake on the part of the National Institute of Standards. But ultimately, it ended up being a great stroke of luck for me. Because at that moment I had finally made the right decision. I decided to forget everything I had done in Russia. And I started reading book after book on financial mathematics. Soon, and with the help of Gena Ioffe (who had dragged my “Baba” collage through Soviet customs three years earlier), I got a project at a small firm developing software for Wall Street companies. The project was linked to financial mathematics. And a couple of months after I successfully completed it, I was offered a permanent position at this firm.

By '94, I was already working at Chase, the largest bank in America at the time. With my financial situation secure, by 1996, I realized I could think about more than just making money. At the time, I was living in Millburn (New Jersey). I decided to take a ceramics class offered at the Visual Arts Center of New Jersey in the neighboring town of Summit. I liked it so much that I took more classes over the next several years, studying and working under the guidance of the only ceramics teacher I have ever had, Carole Chesek.

I found learning at the Visual Arts Center wonderful in every respect. The only problem was that I made my ceramic plates too fast. I sent them for firing one after another, and the people responsible for the firing began to grumble a bit. They complained that my work constituted a significant portion of the items from the entire ceramics class and began to introduce various restrictions that they’d never had before. Carole took my side in a small confrontation with the kiln people, and the issue seemed to be resolved.

Then something difficult to explain took place. One day, after a firing, none of my plates were returned to me from the kiln. I complained about it to Carole, and she suggested that perhaps they had been assigned to the next kiln loading. She advised me to wait several days. I followed her suggestion, but my plates never did turn up. Carole said she could not imagine how such a thing might happen. And that although anyone could enter the building, never in the history of the studio had ceramic works been “borrowed.” And if that’s what had happened to my art, she said I should be proud.

At some point, when Carole realized the new firing restrictions were bothering me more and more, she advised me to set up a ceramics workshop in my own house. Recalling my Bogana experience, I was not very enthusiastic about the suggestion at first. But then I realized I didn’t need to dig a big pit in my Millburn backyard or line its walls, floor, and ceiling with bricks. Nor did I need access to an open-pit mine to dig up clay. I could buy everything in a ceramics shop that was a 20-minute drive from my home.

Furthermore, I hoped that if I did everything myself, there would be no confusion or irrationality involved. I entertained this hope for the following reason. Back in Russia, I had been fortunate to read Fred Brooks’ book on software engineering and project management. The central idea of the book was that “adding manpower to a late software project makes it later.” This idea is known as Brooks’ law. As I reflected upon that maxim, along with my experiences in the beekeeping partnership and in American financial industry, I formulated a new law: When working on a project, if you can do everything yourself, it is better to work alone and without any help, from start to finish.

Although this approach was not particularly popular in the large financial companies where I got to work, I completed my projects there almost exclusively by myself. And in all my long years of employment, I never had anyone work under my direct supervision. I would not be surprised if, given the positions I held there, it turned out that I was the only such person in the financial industry.

When someone is helping you with a project, you can certainly distribute all the work and thereby try to save time. Unfortunately, however, some team members may work many times more slowly than others. And most importantly, the team spends enormous amounts of time and resources on endless discussions about the choice of strategies, on keeping all participants up to date, on coordinating tasks, and simply on maintaining their livelihood.

So, when I realized I could do everything related to my ceramics projects myself, I decided to do just that. Even though, I knew that no self-respecting artist would act the same. Miro did not cast his bronze figures himself. His sculptures were cast in bronze at foundries in Barcelona and Paris. Picasso got important technical help from professional ceramists working at the Madoura Pottery workshop in Vallauris in the south of France.

A good friend of mine (I will call him Jake here) once described to me the creative process of working with one particular internationally-renowned sculptor. The sculptor supplied Jake with only very general ideas about how the sculpture should look. Then Jake would start the work by creating an initial model in plasticine. The famous sculptor and his wife would then visit Jake, whereupon Jake received more instructions, this time on how and what to change. He might be told, “Here, the hand should be raised a little,” or “The girdle should be a little wider here.” The funny thing was that the sculptor himself did not ask Jake to change anything. He was quite happy with what Jake was doing. The tips and changes came from the sculptor’s wife.

Once the plasticine figures were in finished form, they were sent away for further standard processing to which neither the sculptor nor Jake had any connection. The end result was nice bronze figures, which I later saw in galleries – under the name of the famous sculptor, of course.

*       *       *

So, I decided that I would do everything myself. Naturally, the setting up of a ceramics studio in my house in Millburn started with a kiln, which I acquired from someone Carole had recommended. I allocated about 500 square feet in the basement of the house and about 300 square feet in the garage for my workspace. Gradually, I filled both with numerous open shelves and tables.

I fire my ceramics in the garage. It contains two kilns, all the necessary kiln furniture, and other equipment and tools needed for firing. My garage is not attached to the house, which would have been inconvenient if I had wanted to keep my cars there. But for my purposes, a detached garage turned out to be of great advantage. During firing, carbon monoxide emissions can exceed threshold limits. This and other chemical emissions are not good for the health, which is why firing areas should always have adequate ventilation. And the fact that the garage is not attached to the house effectively removes the ventilation problem. As for my cars, none of them ever made it into the garage.

Other than firing, I do all of my work in the basement, which is primarily dedicated to my ceramics workshop. One room ended up serving as an exhibition facility for much of my work. However, I cannot say I keep my best work there. The best pieces are either scattered around the walls of the main rooms of my houses or in the possession of those to whom I gifted my ceramics.

On Sunday, August 18, 2002, we gathered at my Millburn home for a barbecue to celebrate the official opening of my garage workshop. The occasion was very festive and included a ribbon-cutting ceremony. The mistress of the house, my wife Natasha, cut the red ribbon. Then we took our time inspecting the garage exhibition, drinking copious amounts of champagne, and eating a great deal of food. So the opening of the workshop ended up being a great success.

*       *       *

I never intended to throw many pots. Nevertheless, I have a pottery wheel, and I often use it in my work. There is, however, one additional reason why keeping a pottery wheel is indispensable. The thing is, I often have visitors who want to see my workshop. The first thing people ask about when they go down to the basement is the pottery wheel. Actually, people usually do not use those specific words because they do not know them. Instead they start wrinkling their brow and gesturing with their hands until I help them with the relevant ceramics terminology. It seems to me that not having a pottery wheel in such situations would be tactically incorrect.

I fire everything in electric kilns. These have no open flame. For that reason, the atmosphere is very rich in oxygen. And it is therefore not possible to get certain types of visual effects, which would be easily obtainable when using kilns that run on liquid, solid, or gaseous fuels. I found such effects quite appealing but realized that I would not be able to find the extra time necessary for such experiments. The only thing I once ventured to try was firing my ceramics in a raku kiln. Technically, this type of firing is quite straighforward since the raku kiln is a low-temperature one. It is used for rapid firing. Only it is necessary to take the piece out while it is still red-hot and to transfer it from the kiln to some easily-flammable combustible material. Upon going through all the steps and analyzing the result, I realized that such a technique would not add anything positive to my style. That is why ultimately, I ended up using an electric kiln.

So far, I have been fortunate and have never experienced a kiln disaster or suffered other serious kiln problems. I have not even had any of my greenware explode in the kiln. I have been spared such losses for several reasons. First, I do not make thick-walled pieces. Second, I make sure there are no air bubbles inside the clay. And third, I dry my greenware over a period of about two to three weeks. The lengthy drying period results in greenware that is bone-dry before it goes through its first firing.

I have never thought about an overnight warm up. I consider it an unnecessary precaution. Instead, before the bisque firing, I keep the kiln temperature low for a couple of hours with the lid slightly open. I intend to continue employing this strategy until the first explosion in my kiln, which, I hope, will never occur.

I fire all my ceramics twice. I bisque fire my items to cone 06, and most of the time, I glaze fire them to cone 6. Therefore, almost all of my ceramics are stoneware.

I do not make my own clay. Instead, I buy it ready-made in ceramics shops. First, I started using plastic clay, which has a smooth throwing body. It is fit for many purposes, and ideal on a pottery wheel. The only problem is that flat items (in my case, plates) made of plastic clay can warp. At first, I did not pay much attention to warpage. But later, I began battling the problem. For several years, I tried to solve it by myself. First, I tried making my plates thinner. They continued warping. Then I tried making them thicker, and then thicker still. None of these strategies led to success. Then I complained about my problem at the Summit studio and was advised to craft each plate from a single, whole piece of clay. It turns out that adding extra pieces to clay generates heterogeneity, which causes warping. That obvious consideration had not occurred to me on my own.

After that, I began to use only whole pieces of clay. I experimented with them for a couple of years but realized that items made of homogeneous clay were still warping. Then someone advised me to use clay with grog. My plates stopped warping but began to crack frequently, especially those of bigger sizes. When I complained to someone about that problem, I was advised to use plastic clay. The problem-solving suggestions had come full circle. However, I eventually solved the problem on my own, and my plates stopped warping or cracking.

I make about half of my glazes myself, using raw ingredients I buy in ceramics stores. The recipes I follow are based on ideas I got in classes at the Summit studio. It would be inconvenient to go to the shop each time I needed a particular glaze component. On the other hand, there is an enormous number of potential ingredients. Therefore, I started keeping a set of only the most useful chemicals at home. With that in mind, I only buy as many chemicals as can fit into the basement cabinet. The “most useful chemicals” have added up to around 70. These 70 compounds enable me to make approximately 50 different glazes.

In addition to homemade glazes, I use about an equal number of commercial ones. Sometimes I add chemicals to the commercial glazes to change them a little and adapt them to my needs.

When preparing homemade glazes or modifying commercial ones, I run into one problem. From time to time, I discover that the ceramics stores don’t stock a product I need for a specific recipe. Although sometimes it turns out that a store does sell it but under an alternative name. At other times, it simply turns out that the product I need is no longer produced. Glazing ingredients may be discontinued as a result of a fire at the mine where they are procured, or because the extraction process becomes unprofitable due to the depletion of necessary resources, or for a multitude of other reasons.

When glazing chemicals become unavailable, ceramics stores sell substitutes. However, I am unable to distinguish between an alternative name and a substitution. Furthermore, when it comes to substitutions, I am far from being sufficiently educated to understand how small variations in chemicals will end up influencing the resulting glaze and how undesirable outcomes can be avoided or minimized.

For example, F4 Feldspar is considered to be the same as Sodium Feldspar, Kona Feldspar, Kona F4, F4 Spar, NC-4 Feldspar, NC-4 Soda Feldspar, and Minspar 200. Perhaps that is the case, at least in the practical sense. But I know there are differences in almost all eight of the components that make up NC-4 Feldspar and F4 Feldspar. And although at one point, I had both F4 Feldspar and NC-4 Feldspar, I was far from eager to start testing them. I have never had time for such experiments. I simply switched from one to the other. And when I realized I could not discern any significant differences between them, stopped worrying about the whole thing.

I can say the same about such names as Zircopax, Zirconium Silicate, Zircon, Zircopax Plus, Superpax, Zircosil, Excelopax, and Ultrox. At some point, I stopped fretting and trying to distinguish between alternative names and substitutions. Instead, I decided that they all suited me fine.

Once a person overcomes concerns with the problem of using alternative products, glaze preparation becomes a fairly straightforward operation. But making glazes does require very accurate scales, because even a very small error in the weighing of the ingredients can lead to disappointing results.

I often employ the slip-casting technique. Mostly, I use it to create specific parts of my ceramic works. I usually make molds for slip-casting myself. Creating molds is a time-consuming process, especially if their design is complex. To produce such molds, one needs to possess a good stereometric imagination.

Many who need molds for their work reject the idea of making their own, mostly because they lack a stereometric imagination. I once heard about a young man who had no stereometric imagination and who decided to order customized molds. However, customized molds are very expensive. And the young man decided to take on additional jobs to be able to afford such a luxury. He began to teach mathematics at a college. One concept he needed to teach was stereometry. However, that did not bother him at all. And he was probably right. After all, teaching something is completely different from using that knowledge. A friend of mine, Genrikh Granovsky, who was a professional teacher and who happened to be very bright but perhaps excessively self-critical, once told me, “I don’t know how to do anything in this life, so there is nothing left for me but to teach others.”

My molds don’t look particularly elegant, but they fulfill their functional purpose. One disadvantage of using handmade molds is that they are often quite cumbersome. When they are filled with liquid clay, they become very heavy and difficult to lift, turn, and hold in position for several minutes when the clay needs to be poured out. For instance, my biggest plaster mold weighs a fair amount on its own and holds three gallons of liquid clay. So it is completely beyond my strength. For this reason, I was forced to devise a hoist system in my basement for the excessively heavy molds. I screwed a hook into the ceiling and attached a chain hoist to it. This allows me to lift, lower, and turn huge and very heavy molds entirely by myself.

Sometimes I substitute the press-molding technique for slip-casting. I press clay into a plaster mold to create certain parts to be used in my project. However, this happens quite rarely.

I have always tried to ensure that all my processes (including the preparatory ones – developing ideas, sketches, and so on) don’t take years of effort, as they often do with real masters of art. And I have never devoted as much attention to detail as I have observed some of my colleagues at the Summit studio doing. I saw girls there make a mug on a pottery wheel and put it under plastic to keep it moist through the week. A week later, after careful contemplation, they would attach a handle to the mug and once more put it under plastic. After another week and more pondering, they would adorn the mug with a floret. Yet a week later – one more floret. All that irritated me. I have always tried to do everything fast, in one go, although such haste has not always been advisable.

On one occasion, my teacher, Carole, suggested that I test glazes before using them on my ceramics. “Life is too short for that,” I told her. In response to which I immediately received a slap on the forehead. Although ten years after that episode, I realized I had been wrong. So I made two boards with testing plates – one in cold, and the other in warm colors. Each plate I made contains two, and sometimes three or even four color tones. Having such boards has turned out to be very beneficial, and now I don’t understand how I was ever able to live without them.

*       *       *

People often ask where I get the ideas for my ceramic works and for my paintings. Sometimes they also inquire how I come up with the colors. And this certainly does not come as a surprise. Occasionally I get similar questions regarding my literary works. As soon as one of my books gets published, I immediately face inquiries about the origins of its plot. So how do I respond? Naturally, I admit that I don’t come up with all the plots on my own. Then where do I get them? The answer is pretty obvious. I borrow the plots for all my books from Pushkin. But this applies only to the books I have written in Russian. Some of my works have been translated into English. Where do I get the plots for these? Here too, the answer is pretty obvious. The plots for these, naturally, come from Shakespeare.

How do I respond to questions about the origins of the subjects and colors in my ceramic works and paintings? Of course, I don’t come up with these on my own either. I get every single one from Leonardo da Vinci. And I believe my replies sound natural and expected to those who asked.

But on a serious note, I would like to mention two sources that really did inspire me to create two series of artworks. The first was the extended series of variations Picasso painted in 1957 based on Diego Velázquez’s 1656 work, “Las Meninas.” As soon as I saw a couple of reproductions of these “Las Meninas” after Velázquez, I decided to create variations of my own. Soon after, I created my work in oil called “Boy on a Cube, after Picasso.” Then, for a long time, I forgot about the idea of the variations. I recalled it only when I started working with ceramics, after I came across a number of these variations in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona. That’s how a series of four ceramic plates came about: “Requiem for Guernica, after Picasso”; “The Cow with the Subtle Udder, after Dubuffet”; “Construction Workers – Adam and Eve, after Leger”; and “Military Violinist, after Chagall.” And just recently, another ceramic plate came into being – “Las Meninas, after Velázquez.”

The second source from which I drew inspiration was the rock art of native Americans. I have a series of plates I made under the influence of the rock art of American Indians. This influence lasted for a long period of time.

*       *       *

My earlier experience with painting led me to recognize that a two-dimensional environment was too tight for me. My hope was that ceramics would provide me the opportunity to transcend two-dimensional limitations. However, it turns out that even my sculptural ceramic works seem less than three-dimensional, though my plates, which are supposed to be flat, are definitely more than two-dimensional. So ultimately, I ended up considering myself a two-and-a-half-dimensional ceramist.

*       *       *

Another of my art pursuits is creating collages. At some point in my life, I started to favor Scotch whisky over all other strong alcoholic beverages. And the type that increasingly appealed to me the most was single malt whisky. The price of these precious drinks turned out to be lower than I expected. To commemorate the inarguable triumph in reaching this life-changing realization, I proceeded to create a set of collages collectively titled “Single Malt Art.” Each of my collages has a theme or “parallel subject,” and all are somehow related to my other activities.

The very first parallel subject was a violin. I started to work on this collage in 1991, right after I came to America. And although it was not until somewhat later that I got the collage in final form, I still assigned the year 1991 to it. In my subsequent collages, there are also parallel subjects related to music and other things. But most of my themes are related to ceramics.

I am often asked how I manage to get such wonderfully flattened bottles in my collages. I know that it is not necessary to answer this question; it is enough just to look at the person who asked and keep silent for a while. Usually, within a couple of seconds, it will dawn on the inquirer that since I do ceramics, I must have a kiln, and that is where I flatten my bottles. Occasionally, someone might ask why the labels on the bottles do not burn in the kiln. Once again, there is no need to rush to answer, because invariably, someone standing nearby and listening in will solve the riddle and point out that the labels can be removed and then reattached after the bottles are fired.

Curiously, nobody has ever asked me why the corks do not burn in the kiln. People might assume I remove them before firing, but in that case, why doesn’t the bottle neck get flattened along with the bottle and why does the cork easily fit back into the bottle neck? And since nobody has ever asked me this question, there has never been anyone to help me work out the answer. Therefore, I myself do not know how I would explain it all if, perchance, someone did ask.

Over time, I have come to realize that the scarcest commodity in an artist’s home is available wall space. When things got really tight with the walls in Millburn, I gradually began to transfer my “Single Malt Art” series to my Delray Beach house in Florida.

When I ran out of wall space in Delray, I started creating more and more works in Gouldsboro, Pennsylvania. And as a result, most of my “Single Malt Art” collages are concentrated there. The exposition of my artwork in Gouldsboro is preceded by three scarecrows. Two of them – “Vasilisa Vasilievna” and “Marivanna” – are both mounted on our peninsula.

The third, “Boris Borisych,” is proudly installed on the beach.

Unfortunately, the Art Council of Our House has not approved the work for display in the main rooms alongside my ceramics. So I had to place them all in the poolroom. There was plenty of available wall space there. However, eventually even that got filled up. And I ended up exhibiting my subsequent series of collages in my Boynton Beach house in Florida.

*       *       *

At some point, I realized I wanted to return to painting. Of course, I decided to start with oil on canvas. But upon my first attempt, I did not like the quality of the primed canvas I had purchased from the local art supply store. So I decided that instead of buying pre-primed canvas, I would prime it myself, using the techniques I once learned from Lesha Pomansky, based on tips from his mother.

I bought fine-quality, unprimed canvas from the same art supply store. Then I began to look for the necessary primer ingredients. Back in Russia, a basic constituent of primer was children’s tooth powder. So I started looking for it but for some reason, wasn’t able to find it anywhere. Maybe I was looking in all the wrong places. Had I kept searching, perhaps I would have found it or something with the same properties. But fortunately, at just that time, my wife’s sister was planning to visit from Russia. At my request, she brought me a couple of boxes of excellent tooth powder.

Encouraged by the success of procuring this important ingredient, I began searching for the second component of the primer – fish glue. Securing the fish glue proved to be a much easier task. I found many varieties, which saved me having to make fish glue myself from the membranes of fish air bladders.

But then my friends started subtly asking me why I wanted to use fish glue rather than buying a glue specially designed for use in primer? When I started to agree with them, they went further and began to suggest I replace the children’s tooth powder with something specially designed for the purpose, such as chalk powder. When I accepted that idea, they began to tell me they believed I could easily buy a ready-to-use primer and probably even ready-to-use primed canvas. I agreed with them once more and said I knew I could buy primed canvas. In fact, I could get that canvas already attached to a stretched frame of any size. I could even buy it with painting already on it and even installed in a suitable frame.

Eventually, I solved the problem of priming the canvas but did not end up doing much work in oil. Instead, I began painting watercolor portraits, something I had started doing in my youth, back in Russia. Unfortunately, I have retained only a few of my works from that early period of my life.

In America, one of the first watercolor portraits I painted was of my literary mentor, Nadezhda Braginskaya. I presented her with the finished piece on October 19, 2005, on Lyceum Day^*, which our inner literary circle considered to be nearly the main event of the year.

At first, Nadezhda did not like my work. She asked me why she was depicted with such small hands; what did I mean by that? When I did not know how to reply, she asked me to show her my 1980 portrait of my daughter Anna, which Nadezhda had seen many times. She examined it more closely this time and after a while, announced, “Well, all right then. So be it.” This was in relation to her portrait. And she let me hang it on the wall of her apartment on Roosevelt Island.

Over time, I painted many more portraits. They were of people close to me. The only exception was the portrait of Mandelstam. I painted it in 2012, especially for a Millburn Literary Club session dedicated to Mandelstam’s poetry. I started running this initially small club in 2004. Since then, it has steadily grown and turned into one of the most respectable Russian language literary associations in America. And it was for one of the sessions of this club that I painted the portrait of Mandelstam. That said, I have never, either before 2012 or thereafter, had the desire to paint another portrait for any other session of the club. Why the portrait of Mandelstam turned out to be the only one of its kind is a question I cannot answer easily.

From 2012 on, I have rarely gone back to watercolors and have painted mainly in oil on canvas.

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My final series of artworks is teapots and kettles. Sometimes these appear as parallel subjects in my “Single Malt Art” collages. And I have quite a few of them in ceramics. But I cannot explain why they make such frequent appearances in my work. Perhaps something about their shape touches and attracts me. And that’s what led to the emergence of my series of kettles and teapots in metal.

Initially, I had no intention of creating teapots and kettles from scratch. Instead, I was going to take existing teapots and kettles I happened upon and alter them to suit my purposes or use other metal objects as support material. Although even that turned out to be more complex than I had initially anticipated.

Once in Russia, I made repairs to my car by replacing the rusted metal floor with a new one under the supervision of a professional welder. However, the soldering of teapots and kettles turned out to be a much more delicate exercise. I had to be completely retrained. I got my contractor in Delray Beach to teach me some basic soldering skills and then bought the basic equipment and materials he recommended. In the end, creating teapots and kettles turned out to be fairly uncomplicated. Especially after I realized that welding could be replaced by a simpler technique.

The very first kettle I created took a few attempts and a lot of tinkering. However, the result was simply beautiful – at least that’s how it appeared to me. For some reason, my kettle spouts always seem to bring skeptical smiles to men's faces. But the women’s faces always take on a joyful and even enthusiastic air upon seeing my work. What could possibly be the reason for this? Nobody knows.

That first kettle of mine was quite functional, and I even organized a ceremony to trial it at a tea party in our Millburn backyard. However, later on, functionality became less of a focus, and the thought of testing the finished products never occurred to me again. As I continued to make my kettles, I realized I was running out of space to exhibit them, so I began creating teapots instead. Surprisingly, this did not resolve my display space problems, and in the end, I moved all further teapot experiments and the entire collection to my house in Florida. That’s where they have been residing ever since.

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I never even imagined selling any of my artworks. For that reason, I never really exhibited my creations anywhere other than in my homes or on the internet. One exception was when I displayed several of my ceramic plates at a Museum of Russian Art exhibition in Jersey City during the post-Glezer-directorship era. I later gifted one of these plates to the museum.

Another exception was way back in the ’60s when I brought my artworks to Ekaterina Pomanskaya’s apartment. She lived in Upper Maslovka, along with most Moscow artists. Pomanskaya suggested I display my paintings at her apartment so that some of her artist friends could view them. I don’t know who actually saw my art at the time, and I don’t remember ever knowing. However, one day, when my friends and I were visiting Pomanskaya, two members of the Lianozovo group – Genrikh Sapgir and Igor Kholin – showed up. They viewed my exhibition and politely started telling me something positive about my pieces. Suddenly, Bella Belenkaya, one of the girls from our university group, interrupted the conversation. She said that Henry and Igor were taking the exhibited works at face value, which was ridiculous. Because the artist himself was not taking his work seriously. “He is playing you,” she said. “It’s all a joke.”

There was an awkward pause. And although it was true that I didn’t take my work very seriously, what I wondered at that moment was, where did Bella get the idea that I was playing someone and that it was all a joke? At that point, Igor Kholin asked Bella whether she would be able to believe it if her beloved told her that he had been playing her and that it had all been a joke. Bella became confused and did not know how to reply to that. In the meantime, Igor continued to argue his point and ended on the note that it did not appear that I had been trying to play a prank on anyone or that I considered my artworks a joke. And everyone seemed to accept his arguments.

Here I must say that Bella’s remarks were not entirely unexpected. How did ordinary Soviet people feel about styles of painting that differed from that of socialist realism? Their attitude would be wary, to say the least. I’m referring here to those who had attended an art exhibition at least once. As for paintings where there was no photographic accuracy, few would doubt that in order to produce such a painting, one did not have to be a professional artist. And as for non-figurative work, one would be hard-pressed to find someone not fully convinced that he himself could easily produce such art. So when the Corn Man claimed that the art exhibited at the Manege Gallery was not needed by the Soviet people, he certainly had grounds for such conclusions. In those days, the Soviet people as a whole had not yet been given guidance as to which artist was to be considered second-rate, which – good, and which – a genius. This guidance was, of course, ultimately provided. But with a considerable delay compared to the rest of the world.

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Needless to say, everything I do is very time-consuming. In addition to my primary activities, much of my efforts are directed towards supplementary operations of various kinds. The majority involves ceramics. This includes the selection and composition of glazes, the preparation of plaster molds and the various auxiliary devices, the installation and repair of kilns and other equipment, as well as the fitting out of the workshop premises for the required needs.

Everything that I create, I display on my website www.slavabrodsky.com. The code I have written for the website is extremely simple. Nonetheless, it serves its purpose and allows me to easily maintain everything without external assistance.

For the purposes of archiving, I maintain a very simple database to store information about all my artwork. For ceramics, for example, that includes all kinds of technical information, such as the structure of the clay, the types of glazes, the way I used them, and many other sometimes very minute details. Such information for all my projects is stored in a system containing approximately fifty sections with various software procedures.

To photograph my work, I have set up basic equipment that allows me to keep all the colors as close to reality as possible. After I finish taking photos of items, I use special procedures to adjust the photo files to conform to the requirements of my website. I do not manually create all the other supporting files; there are too many of them. After all, I have more than a thousand ceramic items alone. So I have written software procedures that allow me to obtain all these files automatically, directly from the database.

In addition, there are lots of other auxiliary operations for my ceramics as well as my metal works, paintings, and collages. So all these processes take up a considerable amount of time, of which, I must add, I have never had a great deal. (After all, I have mostly had to work from dawn to dusk in completely different areas: in Moscow, I developed various mathematical theories, while in Manhattan, I used math in a more practical manner – protecting financial companies from excessive risk.) Without a doubt, I would not have been able to complete the entire range of work I had planned if I had not carried out everything myself but counted on someone’s assistance.

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The main goal of my website is not only to describe all the twists and turns of events related to my visual arts endeavors, starting from the moment I began painting and up to the present time, but also to present my works themselves. In four sections of the website, I introduce my works from all four projects. Out of the ceramic pieces, I have selected the ones I like the most. Also included here are most of my paintings, nearly all of my collages, and most of my works in metal. And I hope that these reproductions of my creations will make it possible to get a sense of what the originals are like.

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Why did I toil in my workshops to create all these kettles, collages, paintings, and ceramics? To answer this question is as difficult as the one about the meaning of life. We do not know who we are, why we exist, and where we are heading. Similarly, I do not know why I created all of this.

All my works, together with their attributes, such as the genre, the subject matter, the shape, size, material, and even the perceptible hint as to the source of inspiration, serve merely as a means to show my unique aesthetic vision of everything that surrounds us. However, they do not contain any ideas about, nor express my attitude towards the world in which we all live, which is so frightening in its unpredictability and so remarkable in its mysterious inscrutability.

Footnote:

^* The Lyceum Day honors The Imperial Lyceum in Tsarskoe Selo, which was opened on October 19, 1811. The first graduates included Alexander Pushkin, so October 19 is a special day for those who speak Russian. The Lyceum was closed on May 29, 1918. In 1924, twelve former students of the Lyceum who celebrated October 19 were executed. Twenty other students were sent to the Solovki prison camp.

Slava Brodsky can be contacted via e-mail: [email protected]

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