At a press conference at TASS, Shemyakin spoke about his biography.
Photo: Denis KORSAKOV
This thick book, published by the AST publishing house (edited by Elena Shubina), is dedicated to the first 28 years of Mikhail Shemyakin’s life, from his birth in 1943 to his departure to the West in 1971. At a press conference in TASS, Shemyakin told about his biography.
ON THE LENINGRAD INTELLIGENCE AND PUNITIVE PSYCHIATRY
– I wanted this book to be interesting to read for people who don’t have much experience in the visual arts. I would not want to dilute the theories of art history or develop visions about the world and painting in this book. This book is dedicated primarily to the leftist Leningrad intelligentsia to which I belonged. She was different from the Moscow intelligentsia, since we still lived in a city that was called the cradle of the Russian revolution. And there the attitude towards ideological opponents, which we, in general, were not because we were not involved in politics, was stricter than in Moscow. In Moscow, if Oscar Rabin was summoned for a conversation at the police station or the Lubyanka, publications immediately appeared in the Western press that the dissident artist had been arrested and interrogated. And Oscar was released an hour later. In Moscow, punitive medicine was not widespread, as in other cities and especially in Leningrad. All of us leftists there went through camps or forced treatment. Those who were unlucky underwent three years of treatment, after which the person turned into a vegetable. Additionally, we had no opportunity to exhibit or sell our work. We didn’t even think about it, we were unskilled workers, and this was essential: none of us wanted any close contact with the bureaucracy. Submitting to someone was not part of our ideology. Therefore, some worked as loaders, others as night watchmen, and thanks to this time was freed up for creativity. This is what I’m writing about.
And a fairly substantial part of this book is dedicated to a special psychiatric hospital in which I was subjected to forced treatment. Six months. More precisely, I was imprisoned for three years, but my mother got me out of there. Otherwise, of course, we wouldn’t be talking to you. It was a hospital under the KGB, under the direction of Professor Sluchevsky, experiments were carried out there with psychotropic drugs, it was a complex treatment, after which you turned into a vegetable…
ABOUT PARENTS
– Many pages of this book are dedicated to my parents. Some people don’t like to talk about them, but our parents had a great influence on each of us, providing us with both the good and the bad. And in this book I analyze the good that I received from my father, a completely unusual person. A drinker, a big troublemaker who could show up at a banquet in long johns and dance lezginka there. He didn’t care at all. He was once Makhno’s assistant, during the period he served with the Reds. And this walking field had a great influence on the young Mikhail Shemyakin: my father was also Mikhail, although his real name was Muhammad, he was a Muslim, although he remembered Allah only when, while drinking, he grabbed a saber and shouted: “I! I swear by Allah I will cut off your head!
Indifference, which is very important for any self-respecting man (in fact, Shemyakin used a harsher word. – Ed.) I inherited from my father. Good legacy! I had to receive strong blows in the ribs many times, and my dismissive attitude towards this, as well as towards my superiors – towards everything, in general, I treat quite calmly and indifferently – was a gift from my father to me. And from evil he inherited the addiction at one time to the green snake and many little things in the male line.
My mother is an actress, she worked in the theater for Akimov, then she served in the cavalry for two and a half years, in my father’s division. She is from an old noble family, a complete intellectual, but, curiously, she had much less influence on me than my father, who had nothing to do with art.
ON EXPOSURES AND SANCTIONS
– Now it is difficult with exhibitions – sanctions. The West behaves shamefully towards the Russian intelligentsia. And not only to the intelligentsia, but also to the common people. You know that many people are now deprived of necessary medicines because pharmaceutical companies have stopped working due to sanctions. [в России]. And this is ugly, I cover the French with indecent words, I say: “You bastards forgot who freed you!” You already know that the Champs Elysées have already changed their name [во время фашистской оккупации на немецкий манер]and the streets of Paris: everything was in German. If it weren’t for the Russian soldiers who shed so much blood, today they would be eating German sausages and speaking German. And all of Europe too!
And this is the attitude towards the intelligentsia… Remember how a Russian woman was humiliated when her underwear was almost going to be taken off and confiscated. Mobile phones [собирались отбирать на въезде в Европу] – Fortunately, now reasonable people have already canceled this sanction. These are unacceptable moments for me. But I think that we, the intelligentsia, must defend our positions. They are losing a lot.
The French intelligentsia, not to mention the American one, sympathizes with everything that happens in Russia in the field of art. But politicians and bureaucrats are in charge of the parade. I am a friend of the Russian ambassador to France, he addressed the Minister of Culture several times and she told him: “I have banned all cultural ties between our countries until they deal with Ukraine.” On the eve of his 90th birthday, Eric Bulatov, a wonderful artist, had the paintings that were hanging in the main exhibition of the Georges Pompidou Center for Contemporary Art removed. He was proud that they were there, as would be any artist whose work was brought to the Pompidou: this is the most important point of the European cultural world. But they were eliminated for no reason: simply because he was Russian. This is how they congratulated him on his 90th birthday… So now it’s a bit difficult to be Russian in Europe. But we will stand firm, that’s not how we did it. And I will organize exhibitions in Russia, but they will mainly concern printed materials, because nowadays transporting paintings is simply impossible.
THE NAIS IS OFFICIAL EDITOR ON NAIS NEWS