Dmitry Sayenko

Is it really possible to have been talking about the Black Square as about the birth of the new Art for a hundred years and to take it for the corner stone in the foundation of today’s world view? What is it? A monster to scare the unprepared audience or it is indeed the first brick in the foundation of current design? Or may be it is a performance without the beginning or the end, but with the black square as a trite concept which turned into the tramp card for the many operators of the near-Art zone? Perhaps it is a wish to freeze forms and ideas of the intellection and an attempt to drive human outlook into a four-cornered compass called the black square? Could any other geometrical figure become the same metaphysic object of worship, a fetish of the modern art, as did the black square? And why black? The artist Malevich did red, yellow, blue and white squares! Why it is the black that has been chosen for worshiping? Four black angles, all of them right - easy to remember. So what else can it be but our eternal companion in the squareness of our daily life? Every day we get up from square beds, lower our feet onto square carpets, walk through square rooms into the squares of kitchens, to cookers and shower cubicles, trolley bus doors and to offices with square halogen lamps over the tables. We look at square clocks and stare into square compute monitors, tapping the square keys (even a picsel in the monitor is square). We write square letters to our colleagues, use square phones to call and operate a set of standard phrases and notions that are in fact square too. Isn’t that what can be called the ERA of SQUARE?? A real «squareness of existence», reduced to utilitarian convenience and psychopathic absurdity.

Here a forgery of notions occurs in an attempt to replace our notion of the Universe as a human soul. Instead of being space unexplored and unconceivable, limitless with its strange gaping emptiness man has always longed for, the Universe is now becoming square.

It is curiosity that has always incited mankind to explore the unknown. The Universe is alive, it does not fit into a four-angled concept and here begins the breakdown of the square shape as a conventional form of our perception.

But let us recur to the square. What if we take a look at the ripples from a brick thrown into water? A brick is square, yet the ripples are circular. That’s a paradox. Can you really go ecstatic about a piece of garden hose? No? And what if it enraptured two dozen most eminent and decorated art critics? You would probably be perplexed but all ears, trying to absorb their comment, in order to operate with their words and opinions later, pretending they are yours, gained through suffering. This is how the opinion of two dozen people grows in geometric series to become the opinion of millions.

A thought became an item; this item was given a name and an inventory number. A case to keep it in was manufactured and a place on the shelf in a storeroom was allotted. The most refined idea can turn into an obtuse scheme, the most absurd concept ­ into an unshakable and proven truth. If it occurs overtly, your personal opinion will change. Why not?

The cursor of your aestheticism and personal conviction will at first waver towards uncertain, and then shift to flat radicalism. You may have heard about an old jest that was popular at fairs in old times. The jest was called Black Hole. A visitor paid money in order to peep into a black hole. What he saw was a writing which usually read «you are a fool» and a picture of a naked bum. It was inconvenient for the poor fellow to make an overt row because of a few wasted coins and the realization of having been cheated in public. Standing up straight, with the squared shoulders, the visitor would say: - ‘Yes, that really is a drastic gesture of the artist. It is not so simple; it requires a deep perception, and must be given a proper consideration. And there after him stood all those gawks who became witnesses of the swindle, all of them dying to get to the hole to know what he meant, the one who was the first to peep into that hole, and, above all ­ «What is it that he saw??? It must be something really outstanding».

In my opinion this allegory is a clear analogy that can illustrate an attempt to use «the black square» as the means to simplify the artistic process and objects, to standardize one’s thinking and to unify ideas.

The human mind is unique; it can get accustomed to anything. Looking at the picture of a strange square, every viewer will think: «What is there about it that’s so special? I myself could do so, but why would anybody have performed such doing?» A thought is stealing into one’s mind ­ «it is me who is imperfect, because if the painting is displayed in a museum, it certainly has some singular and utterly mysterious implication».

One has to be a psychologist to make objects that will have influence on the brain cortex. Once upon a time, the ape-man took a stick in its hands. It was a leap forward in evolution. Many centuries after, man labored developing his hand and everything from the idea of a dwelling to the surrounding trappings changed. It went from simple more complicated, from pragmatic ugliness to refined aesthetics. And paradoxically, the aesthetics started to ebb. With the beginning of the technocratic era of computer keyboards and cell phones man gave up manual labor, except for steering a car and pulling weights in a gym. The idea of beauty became unified. Man grew tired of the triumph of the elemental forces and he created a square reality in which he felt relatively safe and comfortable. This day-to-day geometry of existence started to destroy the very nature of human beings that was neither symmetric nor rectilinear. Crisscrossing his natural fluidity and biodiversity with diagonal and perpendicular lines, people think they create new innermost personalia. In fact, they cross out everything they sprang from. The square is an experiment we carry out on ourselves. The square is the most artificial shape, there is no such shape in nature. Looking at a square, people look at themselves as if in the mirror of all the men-made processes. Those are the processes of logic and imaginary order. The organized chaos and inanity, the aesthetics of porky materiality taking over delicate intuition, the face of the era of square - the most static of all solids in the universe, contrary to the natural substance of man, to his soul. Human emptiness squared that’s what it is. The problem in question is not suprematism as a trend and definitely not Malevich as an artist. It is a question of all those speculations on the subject of «the square» in which they try to incarcerate all that is alive and wild.

In the empty hall of a cold and logically laid-out gallery there hangs a picture demonstrating cold death. The square represents the dislike for oneself, and, which is more important, for one’s surroundings. It is the dead end of the inner evolution.

But, reasoning from the laws of evolution, everything is in a constant motion, changing. The square is falling into pieces because nothing is eternal, and its end makes the beginning of a new form ­ irregular and organic. This irregularity gives birth to the live language of natural architecture. Changeability of life is the essence of nature, of which we all are a part. A bright and sunny morning changes night. The darkness clears away, and what inspired fear at night now sparkles with the light and colors of a new day. It is the end of the black square, like a night it disappears giving place to natural shapes and the Color as a part of Light. The square statics dies and there appears the motion of living forms. They alter and get transformed into new formations, creating their own symphony of sound and colour: the figurative abstraction.

Throughout the history of mankind, man has made four really great discoveries: the invention of the wheel, gunpowder, paper and book. But while the first three inventions didn't undergo a considerable evolution and remained exactly the same as when they were just invented, the book, on the contrary, has been changing from the very moment of its birth and till now and, more exactly, all is being enriched by newer and still newer forms. At times, behind these forms, there vanishes the criterion, which defines the concept of "book". And now, it is quite difficult for us to deduce the exact formula defining this concept. That's why now in the time of upsurge in new technologies, the concept of "book" has begun to blur and to form separate and quite independent segments or, if you want, genres.

It is clear that the book is an aesthetic thing. But, unlike a traditional thing, book gives us its internal qualities which are inherent only for the book and are not peculiar for other aesthetic things which have only external charm. It's some kind of an art miracle.When we touch a book, we plunge into the space of absurdity but sometimes we rise to the level of intellectual heights. Man appreciates any thing for its intellectual and material virtue. In the book these virtues are squared.

The eclecticism and symbiosis of the contemporary design as a whole and of books in particular has erased many distinctions, which only recently outlined the concept of the book as culture and art object. This eclecticism began to engage other genres that at first glance seemed to be far from book art. Sculpture, painting, constructivist design and other fine arts began to intertwine with book art. That's why the concept of book genre began to disappear and became positioned in separate areas and there were more distinctions than similarities. With the big reservations it's possible to bring it all to one common notion that is the book. Along with the isolation, these parts began to get an independent value and, almost ceased to intersect one another, each positioning itself as a newborn sector of contemporary art. This variety of concepts becomes more obvious and demands special studying and detailed research.

My own experience in the field of the artist's book allows me to make my personal research and to carry out the analysis of this phenomenon. Undoubtedly, the artist book is an alternative; it is a kind of undercurrent in the ocean of mass bookmaking. Sometimes it's difficult even for me to answer or to formulate accurately which genre I work in. What is it? The artist book or deluxe-book of limited edition? The Book-object or the special creation for collectors and art dealers? Probably, both that and another and the third. And most likely, the artist should not think especially of what section of art his creativity belongs to. Artist should work, simply with intuitive understanding of what he is doing. The rest is the business of art critics and art historians.

Speaking about the precursor or the precedent of artist book creation, it is necessary to mention first of all the English artist and poet William Blake (1757-1827). His books, such as Innocence Songs and Experience, were written, illustrated and even bound by him and his wife Catherine. These examples set a certain fashion and defined the key concept for the books of successive artists. This included self-publication and self-distribution of the book, which integrated such concepts as text, image, and form of the book.

The Russian Artist Book has inherited the traditions of the French Livre d'artiste which originated as a phenomenon in the modern art in 1910-30s, and is closely connected with the activity of Ambroise Vollard. Subsequently, this phenomenon became a part of the world tendency, more known as artist's book, which appeared in the post-war time and actively developed in 1950-60s. Here, it is necessary to concentrate attention of the reader on one episode, which will help clarify why artist books began to stand apart from other arts, and was soon to be formed as a separate phenomenon of the contemporary art.

Ambroise Vollard had the idea of making books with a lavish illustrative content. He was well-known as an admirer of fine arts, a dealer and a publisher. His was the idea that a contemporary artist should illustrate the work of a contemporary poet or a writer. For this purpose Vollard engaged the already well-known artists, but those who were strange to the book art. They were such artists as Pierre Bonnard, Joan Miro, Marc Chagall and others. For such extra-class books special paper was ordered and the best masters in the field of books (type-setters of the manual text, printers, bookbinders, etc.) were employed.

A bit later, this idea was picked up by Daniel Henry Kahnweiler, Terriad and others. They enlisted such well known artists of modern art as Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse in their projects.

But it does not mean that in other countries similar attempts to create highly artistic editions were not undertaken. For example, at the same time in Germany there appeared books by Vasily Kandinsky ("Sounds", Munich, 1913), and other books by Paul Klee, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Max Pechstein and other artists of the artistic group "Brucke" (Bridge).

Now let's return to the Russian artist book and how and how it evolved into a separate genre. Besides the historical forerunners such as Russian icons, traditional folk woodblock prints, a strong influence on its formation was rendered by the Russian avant-guard and by the Russian Futurism and Suprematism in particular. It is one of the brightest pages of our culture. Such artists as Olga Rozanova, Vasiliy Kamenskiy, Ilia and Kirill Zdanevichs, Pavel Filonov, Natalia Goncharova, Michael Larionov, Aleksei Kruchenykh, brothers David and Vladimir Burliuks, El Lissitski, Kazimir Malevich and others gave an enormous impulse to the development of the contemporary art and the artist book in particular; they also designated its specific features. Later, this page was pulled out from the book with the name Russian Art by the official propaganda of that time. The art of the official Soviet propaganda did not wish to have such neighbor as the artist book, since it did not correspond with official concepts of "socialist realism". But, as a Russian writer Michael Bulgakov wrote: "manuscripts don't burn", and this pulled out page did not vanish, did not burn down.

In the following years, the artist book positioned itself increasingly more as the separate phenomenon of the contemporary and conceptual art. Artists use not only the traditional materials but also some absolutely unconventional ones, such as hair, sand (Anselm Kiefer), the bird's feathers, the parts of umbrellas, rims of old spectacles (Rebe??a Horn) and other "garbage" which, thanks to the artists, finds its second new life.

However, I'm not an art historian and the purpose of this article of mine is simply to express my personal point of view at the artist book as a genre and to describe my way into this field.

I began my work in the artist book field in 1993 but all the same I consider 1996 as year of my being born as a book artist. Since that time the art of the book has so absorbed me that till now I consider it my main profession, despite of the fact that sometimes I paint, do easel graphics and also teach at the institute, etc.

I didn't know that I would be engaged in artist books seriously and professionally. Furthermore, I did not know that in a few years I would become known thanks to my work in this field. But there is a Destiny, and it has given me a chance. It was this way: when I finished the Muhina Art School I had a vague idea about what I wish to be engaged in. The diploma specialty was not interesting for me. Then one publishing house declared a competition for the best design of an ABC for children and I won the tender and the publishing house concluded the contract with me for the creation of this book. But those times weren't so stable. Russia started to live under the capitalist laws of the market and many people went bankrupt. Such was the situation with my publisher. Though, at that moment, my project was accomplished by 90 %, it was suspended. I found myself in a strange situation: my ABC book is almost made but hardly anybody would ever see it except the publishing house workers. My hopes that the economic situation would soon get back to normal and that the publisher would be able to find some thousand dollars to finish this project thawed like spring snow. Then I thought: what prevents me from finishing this project but in a different way? And I remembered the years when I studied printing processes (linocut, woodcut, etching etc). Experience was minor but all the same I had tools and printing inks. For this purpose, it was necessary to buy paper and to finish this project which became my principal task for that moment. But when I decided to adapt to other materials, I saw that it was not so easy. Also I had to think about one new fact: the book will be a limited edition. Thus instead of one year I did this book during three years.

Now that I understand the complexity of the creation of such a book I would never undertake such a project. But then I was young, inexperienced and full of ambitions. These three traits helped to get on to this orbit of the "artist book" (by the way, I had not learned this name until a few years later when I went to the London book fair then at Barbican Centre with my first books). Then there was my second, third book, then the fourth, etc. but I remember my first book, as the first love which seldom turns out happy but is always unforgettable.

A lot of foreign collectors and specialists of the artist book field tell me they feel that there is an entire history of Russian books in the way I make mine. As to my opinion, I do not feel that my books are especially Russian but if it is felt by an onlooker, it is because of something hidden, brought up intuitively. I do not think that Art has any national borders, though it may originate from different cultures. But these borders are conditional and they define the peculiarities of different national cultures. When we listen to Mozart's music, we don't think of what nationality he was, because his music belongs to the whole world, despite the fact that he was Austrian. Different cultures have influence on each other, mix up, as paints on a palette and create new colours, just like various cultural schools and traditions create new uniqueness.

Yet I assume that a lot of onlookers see my books and recollect the traditions of the Russian culture - such names as Michael Larionov, Natalia Goncharova, Vladimir Favorsky, El Lisitsky, Kazimir Malevich and others. Certainly they influenced me when I was being formed as an artist. However at a mature age it is desirable for an artist to establish his own style though it's not easy.

As to the history of the artist book in Russia, in my opinion, the brightest and most powerful splash occurred in the beginning XX century that is 1910-20s. It was an especially bright "page" of the Russian avant-guard.

The rebirth of artist book began with the Perestroyka, when publishing houses collapsed and many of them stopped collaborating with artists and switched to text books or began to publish other production, which was easier to sell and went without artistic illustrations.

That time, artists also recollected the forgotten but not extinct genre of "artist book". A lot of them did such books. However, this kind of work demands much concentration of forces, energy and emotion. The book indeed takes a lot from its creator. At the same time, the artist's book is hard to sell because it is usually more expensive than commercially printed books. I am persuaded that it is something other than profits that makes an artist be engaged in the book art. That is why there are now very few artists who still work in this field.

In Russia the artist book field is not popular as in the West. There are very few artists who work in this field. That's why I have some problems with freedom of choice of paper, supplies of book binding etc. Although it is not because of this shortage that I make paper for my books. For me, paper making is some kind of meditation. It is philosophical comprehension of how the end of an old life means a birth of a new one. I don't throw out paper waste. I process it and try to give a new life to old things. Not for all of my books do I make my own paper but only for those where it is necessary in accordance with the general idea. Talking about different book artists in the USSR in the period of 1930 - 80s, one can say that our book history was bright and full of interesting names too. There were Vladimir Lebedev, Vladimir Favorsky whom I already mentioned, Yury Vasnetsov and a lot of others. By the way, my father those years was engaged in book illustration too. Perhaps, in the years of my childhood I also absorbed a real love of the book. I watched the work of my father when he was making books, I observed this whole process. But all those artists of that time were making books in a traditional way (cooperation with publishing houses where books were published in of millions copies.)

On the other hand, at that time there was also "Samizdat" (the books by forbidden authors, published illegally). But as a rule they were text books, with minimal or absent illustration. For edition and distribution of such literature one was pursued. For such activity anyone could be deprived of citizenship and sent away from the USSR. The typical example was Alexander Solzhenitsyn and he was not the only one. Many writers had lived in emigration till the Perestroika. But if we speak about the artist book as a genre, I don't know the true examples of such books of that period.

There is one common question of what exactly an artist book is. As regards to the ?oncept of artist's book as I see it, there are four integral parts to give an artist book my personal definition.

1. The book as the result of the cooperation of a writer as the author of texts and an artist as the illustrator.
2. The book in which an artist creates the general design and sometimes writes the texts. As a rule such books are made digitally and printed on home printers.
3. The book as "art object" (the artist creates certain art space in the frames of the books). Here we have the right to experiment and do as it is necessary for the general concept. There can be used various materials - from classical (cardboard, paper, fabric) to ultramodern (plastic, polyethylene, metal etc). Often in book objects, artists use sculpture or small plasticity. The place of such books is not on a book shelf, but on a special exhibition podium.
4. The rare limited book. Here the artist is only the creator of illustrations. The print of these illustrations, the cover, the binding, etc. is done by other people. It is a product of collective creativity.

Concerning my own books, I call them: "the primeval books". It means that I try not to use new technologies but, on the contrary, I prefer the archaic ways of making books but it concerns only my techniques and the method of creation. It is as beautiful and grasping as ancient cars or vinyl gramophones. It is the aesthetics of the past time and such aesthetics has its remarkable charm. As for the fine art side, I should say that here I employ all the recent achievements of the contemporary book graphics.

Unfortunately we can't enjoy of the original poems by Sappho. Firstly, because not many of us have the knowledge of the ancient Greek language. Secondly, the texts which we know are only the fragments of her poetry. These fragments give us the opportunity to value her verses. It greatly depends on the skill of the translator who works with the originals. Mary Barnard (1909-2001), is a well known poet and the translator of Sappho into contemporary English. In spite of a free interpretation of the text, Mary Barnard is well-esteemed as a translator and her versions of Sappho's poems are frequently republished.

With her contemporaries, Sappho was well esteemed as an excellent writer and a wonderful master of style. Apparently, the present day experts of Greek literature appreciate the unique character of her poetry. In her time she was called "the tenth muse" and was even equated with the Greek gods. One can often see her images on vases, on frescos where she is pictured on an equal footing with other gods.

The ambiguous and philosophical character of her lyric, her passion and sincerity lives on forever. Sappho's legacy, like that of many other ancient poets, came to us fragmentarily. We can only enjoy fragments and extracts, mostly two or four lines long, which are sometimes incomplete. Therefore, a contemporary reader has to switch on his own imagination in order to get a profound understanding of Sappho's texts and to think them out, enriching them with his own fantasy.

About two hundred such fragments are presently available. A lot of artists find the subject of Sappho's poetry attractive for illustration. But such subject lays a trap for them. This trap is the abundance of fine arts which ancient Greek left us.

When artists start to work with the antique subject they always repeat the same mistakes: they tend to copy the pictorial style and artistic touch of the ancient masters.

Thus, the contemporary artists become captives of the ancient Beauty. It's very difficult to avoid its attraction. The majority of illustrations on the antique subject become the replicas of the antique art, where the illustrator imitates the antique style. The contemporary illustrations do reflect the epoch, but such images are not as sincere as their real ancient analogues.

However, the antique subjects are evergreen with new inspiration. They will always attract a lot of artists and impel them to do new creations despite of thousand-year-old age gap.

In all the times of the human history, artists have been taking classic subjects for their creation, because classics are never out-of-date, and there will always be the interest for the daily concerns, feelings and the ways of life of ancient people. For the whole of its history, the humanity has not changed. As a matter of fact, only dress, appearance and everyday attributes changed. But the inner nature of man always remained the same despite the age and epoch.

That's why the passions of ancient men are also typical for contemporary men. The antique subject will always be popular.

When I started thinking about my new book based on the texts by Sappho, for quite a long time I couldn't find a suitable illustrative style for it.

I remember, many years ago I once visited the storage rooms in a museum and the main keeper showed me the "trophies" from Henry Shliman's archaeological digs. We had a rare opportunity to see these objects close and even to touch them. My impressions there were stunning. I gently touched these pieces of ancient civilization and I didn't believe that so many centuries have gone since that time. It was amazing!

It's a well known fact, that the results of Shliman's archaeological digs were both sensational and scandalous. Many scientists accused Shlieman of not having a scientific method in his excavations. It was said that his digs brought damage to the archaeological legacy etc., but for us artists an absolutely different thing is important: now we are able to touch these pieces of ancient culture, the fragments of a past civilization that still keep the warmth of ancient man's hand. Even these broken fragments had a complete form and the missing pieces give birth to a splash of our fantasy.

August Rodin noticed this strange peculiarity of ancient Greek sculptures. He purposely broke off the hands and legs of his creations in order to be convinced of their perfection.If Rodin didn't see the desired perfection, he destroyed his sculptures.

This smithereen and fragmentary appearance of Greek ceramics appealed to me and I decided to take it as an idea for my images. Also I decided to refuse the antique style and make all images in my style mixed with classical and typical ancient Greece fragments patterns.