To Overcome Oneself
by Olena RipkoFrom: Vasyl Bazhay: Catalogue. Lviv, 1993
Used to standards and classifications, we do not easily abandon stereotypes in perceiving art. It is difficult to use independent judgement if one does not rely upon the depth of cultural heritage created by our predecessors. On the eve of the Vasyl Bazhay's first exhibition at the Lviv Picture Gallery, someone declared: " The vogue for abstract art in the world has passed". Since then, Bazhay has been exhibiting new canvases in the same halls in Kyiv and without much effort abroad. Yet the inexorable verdict again and again tries to catch up with him. Unfortunately, the vogue for the necessity to win the right for existence in one's own medium does not pass.
As to anachronisms... Remember, the "avantgardism" of abstract, plastic art has conquered a time slot in the neolithic era. At a time when values are being devaluated, it is worth while to brood over the question of what conscience tries to express through "objectless" creation and what one is to perceive.
Vasyl Bazhay was 39 when he crossed the threshold of his first exhibition. He was a mature man, not only in age or social status, but also in his character and life credo. In his conception, the world was not pragmatic; on the contrary, it was the crowd that was pragmatic. Vasyl seemed to be forged of hard material, yet he remained sensitive, complex and often helpless. He married a woman, also a "Libra": tender, cleareyed, fragile. Born in Karahanda into the family of a man educated at the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, she became his stay and support, hard as steel.
The couple acquired their professional education at the Lviv Institute of Applied and Decorative Arts. There Bazhay's teachers did not force him to go their way; they allowed him to taste the solitary torture of creation. And with this thirst, they released him into the world.
What he strove to get from school he found by scrutinizing the weaving of Roman and Margit Selsky's pictorial images. He understood the ultimate aim which they persued and admired the dignity with which they asserted their point of view in art. He was indignant when he heard people speak of R.Selsky's "decorativism", because this was an absurd definition. His rejection of literalism, search for lucidity and emphasis on color planes were not an aim in itself; they led to a monumental interpretation of reality as eternity, infinity of thought, matter and spirit. Behind all this was deep culture, the acquired experience of many generations.
No less important to Bazhay in his education was a children's amateur group, which he led not only for money. He placed before the boys, disturbed by the influence of the street, a white sheet of paper and allowed them to try the feel of colors and their combinations. He set no prescriptions, but directed their imagination toward subjective and emotional, rather than descriptive, images. This was not a simple task. Competition with the romantic call of the street, the down-to-earth mentality of the parents and the affected bravado of the boys required an utter strain of Bazhay's spiritual powers. But there were moments of fantastic mutual understanding and absolute contact. These lessons were not just gymnastic exercises for the teacher; creative will participated in the process and new unknown values were discovered.
In the meantime, piles of reticent canvases continued to grow. The author himself did not see them from aside, objectively. He was lost in doubt, afraid to pass judgment, spending sleepless nights wondering if there was any sense in his efforts.
Suddenly there came an unexpected proposition. Tall, spacious exhibition halls showed the wonderful harmony of long cherished images. From the chaos, outlines, accents, the articulation of masses of color and elaborate structures all acquired meaningful associative significance. Finally the artist had a chance to associate with himself, to conceive the essence of all and to formulate claims to himself, to make conclusions, analyzing his dreams and achievements. The chorus of contradictory evaluations and proposals did not confuse him, it rather confirmed his intentions.
How could he have existed without exhibitions for so many years? This would be impossible now. His primary realization following the first exhibition was the desire to act. From the very beginning, he rejected the isolation of a separate picture and its inner world that the random collection of "exhibition" canvases created at different times (though they had been created by a strict master, free from the bad taste of society's "sentiments" and the effects of notorious "subtlety" or "musicality", in a word, from cheap flirting with the "consumers of the beautiful").
He knew what he should do next. Action could be born only in context. Thus, he put an end to associative "landscapes", "still lifes", "preludes", "scherzos" and "nocturnes". Bazhay needed a larger form for his development.
For some time after graduating from the institute, Bazhay worked in one of Lviv's theaters. This experience freed him from the natural fear of space, liberated his plastic thought, his artistic selection of palette. This experience was decisive in the realization of a new exhibition. The artist built it as an entirety, like a theatrical performance that takes place not only in the three dimensions of space but also in time. Its dramatic conflict was inherent in the material itself - in the selection and disposition of the exhibits. The mighty artistic temperament sounded in the lower registers of the large canvases, on which monumental architecture continued, developed and concentrated on the intense dynamics of the main movement - struggle. On the other hand, the most subtle nuances of color sounded in diminutive form. Here a single stroke of the brush acquired utmost significance. The artist's gift of composition was already evident in the exposition and was fully realized in the specific arrangement of each work. This system was based on juxtaposition of various contrasting structures, which led from the expressiveness of the whole to the depth of the play of elements, particles first selected and then oddly connected, and to contact with other works, other worlds. This was a "theater" in which space and perspective, movement and time were spiritually active, joined by the logics of perception; that is to say, they were no less socially active than the juxtaposition of spots of color and the plasticity of the author's brush.
The third exhibition was like the second as far as the principle of its decision was concerned; however, here the tragic element of the gigantic canvases was evident, emotion prevailed over philosophic perception of the world. Bazhay noticed that, in acting from the "position of strength", he unwillingly oppressed the creative initiative of the beholder. To overcome the monotony of mood, the artist had to free himself from the bonds of existence and be unbiased in his dialogue with the spectator.
Again the theater, with its play of elements in the process of improvisation, showed him the way. Ingeniously, almost subconsciously, Bazhay performed the act of mastering the volume of the exhibition. Even after the fourth exhibition had opened, he rearranged it many times, achieving new effects from replacing separate canvases. The changed directions of light exposed new movements in the strokes of color; toning down the former, new associations of colors appeared, the rhythms of vertical and diagonal forms created new, often unexpected "vers libres".
Spatial compositions also found other places in the halls, and broadening or narrowing them, emphasized the changes of pictorial and prepictorial space. The artist's creative life is concentrated in the exhibition, where his pictures live and act. Walking among them, turning them over like pages of a book, Bazhay finds new content and meaning, enjoing the beauty and complexity of their mystical activity, which has no dimensions, no beginning or end. It is only Volodymyra, his wife, who sometimes becomes a mute witness of deep, tense concentration, as she can read the planetary language of Bazhay's book of creation.
"And again Bazhay?", a Lviv newspaper exclaimed when the artist, with enviable courage, opened his next exhibition. He was going ahead to meet "his" viewer expecting, not without ground, cooperation.
Art needs choice. Those who like to shed a tear over a spectacle, those who look for entertainment, who expect to be surprised, touched or just impressed, always find their own object. Does Wagner deny Verdi, or vice versa? Certainly. But they coexist, being as necessary as the most complicated, modern, professional music.
It is true. Crowds do not storm mountain tops. Conquering them, an individual conquers himself. Face to face with his own self, he can more sensitively, more subtly see the vistas of art as if it were the waves of an energy field: undiscovered, inconceivable, supernatural. Then comes the echo of this emanation. Its deep, aesthetic experience remains in man's conscience. It makes him not glide along the surface of things, but, under new circumstances, listen to the orchestras of color or look at the vibration of some enigmatic shade.
Expositions come to an end. The canvases are stacked face down. But the need to feel the essence of their sublime light comes again and again.