INTERVIEW: Paris-based artist Volodymyr Makarenko (09/21/97)

INTERVIEW: Paris-based artist Volodymyr Makarenko

Paris-based painter Volodymyr Makarenko (also known as Makar) was in Toronto earlier this year for an exhibition held at the St. Vladimir Institute. A native of the Dnipropetrovsk region, he graduated from the Leningrad Institute of Applied Art in 1969. Having run afoul of the socialist-realist ideology of the faculty at the institute, he was eventually forced to leave Leningrad, and settled in Tallinn, Estonia, in 1973.

In 1975, maintaining contacts in the artistic community and staying one step ahead of the regime's watchdogs, he organized the first exhibition of non-conformist Ukrainian artists in Moscow. Also that year, he took first prize in the 11th Biennale of Graphic Art in Ljubljana, Slovenia.

In 1976, he took his first trip to Paris, where a one-man show of his work was held at the Galerie Hardy. His work was also exhibited at the Palais des Congrès in Paris and taken abroad for group shows in London, Tokyo and Washington.

Mr. Makarenko emigrated to the West in 1979, settling in Paris, and touring Munich, London, New York, Philadelphia, and Washington with the "Contemporary Art in Ukraine" exhibit. Since 1981, 45 one-man shows and group exhibitions that included his works have opened in France, Germany Switzerland, the U.S. and Canada.

The interview was conducted in Toronto by Nestor Mykytyn and Andrij Kudla Wynnyckyj.

Q: Have you been back to Ukraine?

A: No, nothing draws me to that country. Look, I lived there for about 30 years, and so I carry Ukraine with me. Obviously, Shevchenko didn't live there for the longest time and never forgot its essence.

For me, life and art in Ukraine became totally associated with lies and deceit. The repressiveness of the regime was a very personal experience for me. In 1958-1960, people would tell me to cut my paintings into pieces because they involved some elements of cubism or what have you. A child is told to destroy his own work. It's a shock - just as you begin painting, you're dealt this blow.

Q: Have you met any artists who emerged from Ukraine in the past five years? Do many travel to Paris?

A: Of course. At first, most came to Paris to see the Louvre, to see the beautiful city, so you could devote a day or two to taking them around, share impressions and so on. This element of living with art is quite important for me. When I decided to leave for the West, it was because I had the admittedly romantic conviction of wanting to meet the great masters, the Leonardos, the Fra Angelicos, in person; to travel to Italy, to Germany, to France, without asking anyone permission.

When you study, you pore over reproductions and painfully try to absorb all the various techniques that were used over the ages. But when you meet a masterwork, it's so simple, so clear.

When you get back to your own studio, you have a fresh mind, you can reconceptualize your approach, you become more at ease with your palette, it's suddenly easier to work - no longer oppressed by the stuffy reproductions.

It seems that this is lost on many of those who have been coming out West in the past few years. As my address got handed around, people would call and say, "Makar, I want you to organize an exhibit for me because I need a car, because I need this and I need that."

As you can imagine, the romance of answering phone calls from Ukraine faded rather quickly. I got calls in the middle of the night. "Listen, you have to organize a show for such and such from Zhytomyr, from Rivne." And I'd reply, "Look, it's been some time that I've lived on this side of the border, and I've completely lost track of this idea of 'I have to' ... No, you needn't explain it to me, it's just that it has become completely foreign."

Of course, when Leonardo, or Piero della Francesca or Masaccio painted, these were commissions, not spontaneous works. But the masters had a sense of responsibility to their craft and a moral compass that led them to create masterpieces. Among those artists I've met that have come over, the moral sense seems completely lost.

But travel itself can have a great effect, so they should keep doing it. It plunges you into an entirely different atmosphere. For me, when I'm walking about in a place where I don't know the language, it's like watching a fascinating pantomime.

It's something that becomes more and more important as you get older, around 50, as I am. Each time I put on an exhibit, I meet new forms of criticism ...

Q: Such as the interesting anonymous letter you received ...

A: Sure, that was great. Brought back old times. Just like the denunciations people used to write to get you packed off up north so they could take over your apartment. The person even signed it "Ne Selepko" (Not an Idiot) to make sure nobody was confused about how knowledgeable they were. It seems I was caught red-handed passing off "laser copies" of paintings as originals.

Q: You mentioned that your early works had a cubist element in them. Did you have access to reproductions of the cubists?

A: Actually I was first exposed to these forms thanks to a very good teacher, Yakov Petrovych Kalachnikov, who'd studied at the Latvian Academy of Art. The Baltic countries, being closer to the West, had somewhat better contacts with currents in art outside the Soviet Union.

At any rate, he arrived in our school in Dnipropetrovsk and immediately acquired a following. He had a very interesting, clear and direct approach to art - you could progress almost immediately. Others would belabor you with lecture upon lecture.

Q: Do you still keep in touch with those you lived and worked with from your days in Tallinn [Estonia]?

A: I get the occasional visit from some friends who bring me this or that magazine and bring me up to date on what's going on, but I don't have any continuous or regular contacts with them.

Q: Is there a different atmosphere among artists in Estonia than in Ukraine?

A: Obviously, I can't really say much about how it is now, but earlier the atmosphere varied from place to place. To my mind, it was best in Lviv - with a sense of camaraderie, of interesting ideas. Kyiv was so-so, but Dnipropetrovsk was very sterile, stuffy.

When I was in Estonia it seemed to me that the rapport among artists was very warm and cordial, and I was very well received, partly because I was Ukrainian and not Russian. I was like a varenyk in sour cream.

Exhibitions were staged effortlessly, studio space was easily available. I must tell you that I was very pleasantly surprised.

Q: How do you see yourself fitting into the current art scene in Paris?

A: I don't. What passes for art nowadays in Paris I find very difficult to understand. Most of what the major galleries are selling doesn't interest me. I witnessed similar things in New York as well.

I seem to exist between two camps - between paintings that play with illusion, surrealism and photorealism on the one hand; and those that involve finding all manner of junk, placing it in on a canvas, brushing over it with some paint. Some of the effects achieved are visually interesting, there's no doubt about it, but it's not something I'm too comfortable with.

Q: Are elements of iconography important in your work?

A: This is often ascribed to my paintings, but I never set out to follow any canons of iconography. I do try to create images that have echoes of icon painting, Italian frescos, but rather than follow the form, I try to achieve the peace and serenity that icons and, for instance, Dutch still-lifes have.

I experiment with the various effects achieved by Van Eyck, by Vermeer, by Fra Angelico, and place them together in a single work. I'm not looking for what makes them different from another, but to bring their common elements together, in a synthesis. I always look for what forms a unity rather than disunity.

When I arrived in the West, it seemed that art here was designed to destroy everything, even while life was fairly well structured. I had left a place behind where life was in ruins, in a shambles, but artists sought to build sanctuaries, shrines for themselves to shelter their souls.

I don't really search for absolutes, ultimate truths, but I do have my own ties to the spiritual realm. I pray in my own shrine, at my easel, and that way I can best express my love for people and for life.

Q: You mention a number of Renaissance artists. Are there any contemporary artists whose works interest you?

A: There is much that is interesting. Cézanne's work is very interesting, early Malevych. Of course if you mean in the last 20 or 30 years, then I run into greater difficulty. [Jackson] Pollock produced some things that I like to visit at museums, but much of everything else seems too distant.

Abstraction, to my mind, came from two things: an ability to dream and float free of the concrete (something that I believe was very difficult in Ukraine, where the political oppression over hundreds of years forced everyone to think very concretely), and a fracturing of aesthetic systems and political systems.

I don't really feel a need to express this fracture, on one hand, and on the other hand, perhaps I dream differently than Western abstractionist artists do.

One thing does pain me: the commercial aspects of art are now immense, practically insurmountable. It's annoying to see a painting that is practically void of content, nothing in it to talk about, with a price tag of $200,000 or $300,000 or more just because it has the name [Julian] "Schnabel" on it.

Q: In one of the catalogues of your previous exhibitions, a critic wrote that you are not an "artist-in-exile."

A: That's quite right, I'm not in exile. When I lived in Dnipropetrovsk, I was fine, but I moved to Leningrad. I was fine there until they started chasing me out of art classes and pestering me over supposed passport violations. Then I went to Estonia, and I was fine because my works were exhibited, I had a nice place to live, I met my wife. In all three places, I felt at home in turn.

But it got to the point where I needed to live somewhere else. This other place was Paris, and from the very first day I arrived, I understood that this was my home, with no terrible sense of shift or trauma.

I remember standing inside the Louvre and looking out the window onto the Rue du Rivoli and thinking, "What a beautifully built city - everything is just right, not too large, not too small." I walked up to Leonardo, talked to him for a bit, and decided: "This will be the place where I live."

Nostalgia is not something that I've ever suffered. I'm immersed in my work, my family, my present. The rest I leave to the historians. Maybe that's why there's nothing in my paintings that you can easily hang Lesia Ukrainka or Shevchenko or the Kozaks on.

At any rate, if you have an emotional connection to a place, this is best expressed by applying your inner code, drawing on your own feelings and vision. It doesn't mean that you can't have embroidered rushnyky or varenyky. Why not? I do. It's part of our life. But you have to ask yourself, "How do I see this?" rather than say "I have to have something like this in my painting," or "Here's a big sabre blade that people can't help but see and understand."

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