Spiritual Warfare, 2012.

The project of Evgenia Maltseva “Spiritual Warfare” cannot be considered without narrations to Pussy Riot band. It is impossible to perceive the project out of the context associated with it and which is changing for last months on our eyes, exactly in our infosphere, because hardly anything happens right on our eyes. The context is changing but it also changes the sociocultural landscape of Russia and, to some extent, of the whole world. Curiously enough to realize it, but the information about the band acquired such an international dimension which only rare events in Russia could do before, especially the events in culture and, even more, in modern art. But, specifying in advance, neither the performance in the Christ the Saviour Cathedral, nor the later clip for Internet are a contemporary art performance or an artwork, like Pussy Riot are not actual artists by occupation or kind of activity. They could be called artists in a general sense like the word “artist” is used in different languages referring to fine and performative arts or “arts” altogether. In fact it is needless to hold out singing “Mother of God, drive Putin away” with all its sad consequences as contemporary art because it did not need such shores from the beginning. The act was clearly defined by its organizers as a “punk-prayer” therefore it should be taken exactly like that. The act was performed across the practice of prayer and punk culture, which is much wider than its musical and figurative elements and can be taken as a lifestyle and a social program same time. Though, it’s not our business to discuss here the content and meaning of this action, what many clear minds have practiced – in fact the action has changed landscapes of many cultural and other spheres in Russia, from art to law.

The concern in this case is the influence on fine arts. Just as it is possible to speak of “theology after Pussy Riot” so too we can speak about “art after Pussy Riot”, meaning actionism at the level of ancestral memory busy with absolutely other things and matters. The new project of Evgenia Maltseva is its perfect example, because it does not only return the conversation to pictorialism, but tells about extremely important matters and aspects of art, mostly tabooed, avoided or causing panic reactions on discussion. But before we start talking about this – the place of an icon or, wider, religious image in the modern world and, on the contrary, about the possibility of interaction with sacral world by means of contemporary art, let us go back to the history, to the context of the project.

The distance between events and unexpected widening of their context has decreased today. Significant discoveries, events and actions change one another with outstanding intensity, spreading in turn in media sphere like some kind of mutual sublimation. Our case is just like that – in less than a year, in reaction to the actions of the punk band, state and church followed the individual action of Maltseva. This action is much wider that art “in general”, it is concerned with religion and social space. Maltseva like Pussy Riot managed to tap some nerve, painful point, and now it is possible not only consider it from the position of media space but to prejudge it having weighted many factors up. And again, like in Pussy Riot’s case, this action has a great deal of casualty. A painter without any fame for special achievements managed to approach, by means of art, the problems of immense significance and maturity. We don’t insist that “Spiritual Warfare” would be out of the question if Pussy had not performed in the Cathedral.

Of course the project of Maltseva did not appear from scratch. The experience of the previous artworks in the territory of contemporary art was an approach to it. It is crucially that those were the artworks in the sharply defined style of expressionism. It is crucially because expressionism is not just one of the XX-th century movements dedicated to evolution, but a movement connected with reformation of views on sacral and spiritual issues in art. We have more than enough examples here – Nolde’s painting, Barlach’s sculpture, theoretical works by Worringer and of course Kadinsky with his treatise “Concerning the Spiritual in Art” and overarching version of non-representative art discovery. The previous artworks by Evgenia are not about this, they are more about the things concerning modern socially oriented person, about gender and new anthropology. This is also a convergence point of her and Pussy Riot’s interests. But the style choice, notably natural, unstrained, had to leave its mark. Both tragic and carnival feeling of life grow from expressionism. Here it is reflected in paintings, attendant to the core of the project – the icons representing girls in balaclavas. Though it is clear who is meant, these are self portraits, what fully corresponds with the content basis of expressionism as well as to the message of Pussy Riot that any person can be under a balaclava mask. Evgenia tries a tragic but also a vital mask on herself.

The inner history of the expressionist line is the review of canonical image of Christ and Christian-like anthropology. It starts with the milestones in late painting by Ge, in the artworks by Ensor and the great Germans Nolde, Kirchner and Mark. In fact it is a new, based on individual search, sacral art whose radical renewal in XX century starts from expressionism. The expurgatory denial, destruction and ruin are thematized by expressionism whose style melts out the language able to convey horrors of world wars, total chaos and accelerating decay. This apophatic message determined in many ways the further evolution of sacral language in modernistic and postwar art from Goncharova (in 1913 took place an attempt to ban her religious artworks from exhibition, but it failed) and Malevich to Beuys and Kiefer. As late as our time, in direct association, we recall the images by Natalia Nesterova – the Bible story characters in masks. In the “Lord’s supper” Chist and Judas are wearing masks. But Maltseva withdraws from both accustomed dynamism of expressionist forms and scholasticism of abstract ones. Maltseva definitely moves backward in search of origin. Maltseva creates an icon.

The idea of icon (due to respectful attitude to it) shall be specified in this text pointedly. Neutral in Greek, the word that means “image” (the idea with a maximum wide space for interpretation) on Russian soil as a result of centuries-old practice became closely connected to a spiritually determined artwork made by a definite technology, meant for prayerful activities and which is an effective model of a medium between secular and sacral worlds. Taking icon only in such a capacity and actually refusing to mean the natural evolution of image, the Orthodox world since early XX century got into trouble. Historical disasters and the devastating impact of the external environment drove the situation with the icon in a sharp peak, which “full of grace” post- perestroika years, instead of straightening, only strengthened in a paradoxical way. For decades the language of iconography did not develop and did not perceive any innovations which hitherto with unprecedented intensity influenced the universal language of art. For the whole century the field of image has experienced transformations, now tapering then spreading, acquiring paradoxical decisions. Humanistic resistance like the conceptualization of the sacred in an age of extreme anthropological degradation occurred on the territory of contemporary art. But the icon, from time to time withdrawn into itself with almost sectarian persistence, as a result unable to resist consumerist onslaught of postmodernism, refusing thereby from the status of artwork. As sad as it is to admit, there is no language of our day icon.

The project of Maltseva develops three lines, thoroughly contrary to each other: the icon, the modernist tradition of XX century art and the radical actionism line, being on local soil partially pronounced anti-clerical (A. Ter-Oganian), but also God- seeking (O. Mavromatti) by nature. It turns out the unexpected, explosive mix on the stylistic level, but its power is in alchemy at the image level. Tertullian speaks of the paradoxical nature of God. Truly paradoxical (i.e. referring to the incomprehensibility of the divine what does not fit human consciousness), it is exactly the Pussy Riot action helped Maltseva detect the miserable state of the icon and respond to it. Her icon can be called negative or apophatic. On the surface of its boards from intense, addictive emptiness of the “Black suprematic square” appears a new experience of icon – after postmodernism and Putin, after Auschwitz and negative dialectics. It is a silent and withdrawn icon. It’s dark and harsh, but still flaming with gold and binding meanings.

The epicenter of “Spiritual warfare” are three icons, the images of the Savior, Trinity, Virgin Mary, “the thing itself” (A. Losev) of sacred imagery. In the same row is a very risky image of the Antichrist, which only rarely arose in the context of iconography, and within contemporary art. The creation of this series reflects the radical movement from existential dedication to the metaphysical. It needs responsibility and discipline to formulate in today's circumstances “speculation in paints” (S. Troubetzkoy), where instead of colors are mean proportions of bitumen, varnish and gold. New icons by Maltseva can't help influence: by the revolutionary visual solution with hiding the faces behind the masks; a fierce expression together with cold clarity; personal, heartfelt motivation; frighteningly deep metaphysical sight, in which the trail of esoteric teachings until "the Last Doctrine" by Mamleev is recognized...

Unlike Pussy act this is not a provocation. This is a fresh and bold, hot and bitter, anxious and tremulous attempt to deal at once with twenty centuries of Christian pictorial tradition, which consisted, as is well known, not only of the canons and drawings, but also from innumerable lacunae and appropriations, conquests and retreats, blowouts and breakdowns; with their own relationship to contemporary art and classical heritage; with a swollen to the limit tangle of social problems that has entwisted the Homeland. Evgenia has made choice in favor of visual metaphors, and it’s not her fault that the metaphor today can not be read clearly and positively. Her icon is in any case not an answer, but a much more important question is in the form of universal, clear to anyone patterns; God-seeking, the meditation through art.

The point of “Spiritual warfare” position is highly disputable. It is the point’s undeniable advantage; it gives the artworks life persuasion and blessing threat. The same threat emanating from the words and actions of Christ against the Pharisees and temple merchants, the old stagnated tradition. The same threat that comes from the band Pussy Riot, which turned out to be able to unexpectedly and “accidentally” expose the false and fragile pillars of Orthodox religious shell. The result of Maltseva’s work may seem to someone questionable, especially absent the distance, closeness of contexts and media waves pressure. But looking at these things almost for the first time there is a feeling that the talk of a new sacral image is possible without leaving clear fairway of modern art, staying out of which deprives any creative attempts of conventionality. And again, as in all ages of Christianity, this will be a talk about the main things.