"The Reflex Arc": A Dialogue Through Time Between Yuly Vedernikov (1943-2013) and Vasily Sitnikov (1915-1987)

Among Moscow's unofficial art groups of the 1960s-1970s, V. Y. Sitnikov's school held a notable place. The artist developed special techniques for constructing form in space, which students mastered step by step. In 1991, artist Y. A. Vedernikov – one of the first pupils of V. Sitnikov's school – created a cycle of graphic works in memory of his teacher. The cycle consists of 34 sheets and provides the most comprehensive representation of the technique and philosophy of V. Y. Sitnikov's original artistic system. The works are held in a private collection and have not been previously published.

Social and cultural processes that took place in our country from the late 1950s through the 1980s are primarily viewed through the lens of renewed contacts with the Western world and a return to the interrupted experience of revolutionary avant-garde. According to B. Groys, early 20th-century avant-garde projects showed universal attempts to recreate the future and create plans on a cosmic scale. In the neo-avant-garde of the 1960s, this grandiosity was lost, with private interpretation predominating. Individual artists created projects for themselves or a group of friends, or for some community. This observation holds true for the global cultural situation. However, in the Soviet Union, this "individual artist" operated in opposition to and under pressure from official institutions.

"Underground culture emerges at the moment of exhaustion of the heroic utopian energy of Soviet culture, at the moment of the appearance of 'cracks' and 'ruptures' in the integral fabric of Soviet mythology" [1, p. 47]. Let us add – mythology that was one-dimensional, stifling, and simplistically positivist.

The collective intelligentsia consciousness turned to the search for the unusual, the otherworldly and mysterious, going beyond the visible and tangible world. Philosophical and religious seminars appeared, along with UFO study groups, parapsychology circles, and groups conducting séances. Various "health groups" emerged everywhere, forming around energetic preachers of special lifestyles, often incorporating elements of yoga, esoterics, and occultism. Alternative medicine gained strength, with healers, folk healers, and psychics becoming important authorities. Some young people turned to Orthodox tradition, renewing Christian communities, which in turn nourished the religious wing in unofficial art. All spheres of life were marked by searches for unusual paths, and most importantly, ones different from those officially proposed.

Underground artistic life was an important area of this informal search, breaking through the boundaries of the approved and permitted, beyond the framework of the recognized realistic canon. Unofficial schools and academies set new tasks, promoted extraordinary methods of creative activity, different techniques, and paths to mastering craftsmanship. Among Moscow's most notable were the studios of professionals: intellectual and connoisseur E. Belyutin, the circle of mystic and philosopher M. Shvartsman, the circle of students of analyst V. Veisberg, as well as the "academy" of the self-taught "Vasya the Lamplighter" – V. Y. Sitnikov.

The artistic enterprise of the latter stood somewhat apart. Not physically – the master was acquainted and maintained business relationships with "all of Moscow." The academy stood apart in its methods and principles of teaching.

Against the background of the heterogeneous capital's underground with its "eccentrics and originals," the colorful figure of V. Sitnikov did not get lost. He was multifaceted: an extraordinary artist and teacher, successful art manager, keen collector, and moreover a "picturesque bearded man" striking with his "youth, strength, quickness of mind and body." Not drawing boundaries between life and art, between the ordinary and creativity, Sitnikov was one of Moscow's first practitioners of Western performance art, but seasoned with a fair share of indigenous Russian holy foolishness.

V. Sitnikov's work made just as stunning an impression on others as his personality. Viewers and buyers were enchanted by convex luminous forms floating in shimmering space. With soft closely related tones without visible contours, he painted "ghostly little churches" hovering over flowering meadows, endless steppes under the moon, sacred monasteries behind a swaying snow veil. In the same technique were executed tenderly shimmering, almost incorporeal, but quite erotic Nudes. These mirage-like images in some way referred to the lyrics of Russian symbolism. But the sound of lyrical notes was often modernistically drowned out by deliberate detail-grotesque.

The unusual aesthetics of the paintings was firmly connected with the legend that the master painted them with a shoe brush. This notion is described by many students and guests of Sitnikov's Academy. The beginning twenty-year-old artist Yuly Vedernikov was also struck. Sitnikov "took a sheet of white paper... carefully rubbed paint with a shoe brush so that it almost dry covered the brush, and began to slightly wave it over the white sheet. After five minutes, a wriggling intestine with the finest and most delicate chiaroscuro appeared on the white sheet. I no longer saw white paper as such. Instead, I saw deep and bright space." [3, p. 54]

The proposed method radically differed from the traditional "poring over idiotic hatching... and endless natures with an empty head and glass eyes," [3, p. 52] which Y. Vedernikov had already tried in the traditional education system. As a result, the refined intelligent young man decides to master the mysterious craftsmanship under the guidance of a "peasant self-taught genius," despite the teacher's roughness and dictatorial manners. Training was preceded by a peculiar act of initiation – it was required to destroy, or better "burn, after praying, if religious" all previous works.

The meeting of teacher and student took place in 1962. "For V. Y. Sitnikov – this was a time of triumph, when his confidence in his own powers and self-esteem grew. Four of his works out of seven given to Jimmy Ernst, son of the famous surrealist M. Ernst, enter the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York (MOMA)." [8, p. 23] The artist actively sold works, mainly to foreign buyers, and his academy was full of students. For some of them, it was more like club communication, but for Y. Vedernikov, it became a serious professional school:

"...after seventy-two lessons I could begin to create painfully independently, learning anew, but having under my feet a solid foundation consisting of 'inner vision' and a more or less sensitive hand... Vasily Yakovlevich released me with the order to draw what I like, but from memory, paying main attention to objects that should be enveloped by space according to the method I learned from him."

Soon teacher and student moved from personal meetings to regular correspondence that lasted several years. Unfortunately, only seventeen letters from V. Sitnikov to Y. Vedernikov have survived. Written in a special style, whimsically combining the intonations of N. Leskov and Y. Mamleev, the letters contain personal, business, and instructive statements. They give some idea of V. Sitnikov's personality and elements of his creative method. They also reveal the nature of the teacher-student relationship, which included both cooperation and rivalry. The leading social-everyday theme in Y. Vedernikov's work was determined not without V. Sitnikov's support:

"Your keen eye and cheerful thinking will notice and reflect our life in art for posterity not one-sidedly. And this is the greatest merit before future generations, whom the current directors of Manezh artists want to deceive."

The Moscow suburb of Klyazma, where the artist lived all his life, became the main character of his paintings. All details in them are authentic: the old decorated Klyazma dachas – "a stronghold of comfort and stability in the world," the desecrated half-ruined church, modest philistine houses, market stalls, streets, and backyards. The heroes densely populating this world are documentarily convincing and at the same time painfully ugly. The artist possesses a peculiar optics in which the realism, almost tangibility of specific details drowns in the general meaninglessness, and sometimes fantastical nature of what is happening. Everyday scenes are immersed in a transparent, motionless, seemingly airless environment – a visual metaphor of "stagnation." Y. Vedernikov clearly formulated his credo:

"It took me a long time to see beauty in ugliness... In Klyazma I saw all of Russia, I didn't need to travel around the country... I saw the shame of our system, saw power that had nothing sacred... I had to gather courage – I became a chronicler of my time in artistic and pictorial form."

Few works by Yuly Vedernikov remain in Russia. About 10 works are kept by the artist's widow and some are in private collections. An extensive and very interesting archive has survived. These are autobiographical notes (partially published), correspondence with clients. As an organized and pedantic person, Y. Vedernikov kept books with detailed descriptions of work concepts, as well as daily reports on the progress of their creative and technical implementation. Additionally, accounting books were kept – "My paintings, painting, graphics. Plans, accounting of production and their sale to anyone for free or for payment." They indicate the technique and size of paintings, time spent on their creation, to whom, when and at what price works were sold or gifted. Overall, the archive provides an opportunity not only to delve into the artist's creative kitchen but also to examine the features and mechanisms of unofficial art's functioning.

For thirty years, material remained in Vedernikov's archive that stayed outside the attention of interested persons. In 1991, when V. Sitnikov was no longer alive, Yuly Vedernikov created thirty-four large sheets measuring 86 x 61.5 in the "dry brush" technique. This graphic cycle shows step by step the methods of creating form in space in the technique of the famous "Sitnikov sfumato."

Probably, the impetus for creating the cycle was the preparation of the exhibition and catalog "Other Art" – the first serious domestic publication devoted to the history of unofficial art in the USSR. The catalog included brief memories of Y. Vedernikov about his teacher, as well as the statement of fact that there are no works by V. Sitnikov in Russia.

Let us recall that the main achievement of the artistic-pedagogical system, which V. Sitnikov promoted in writing and verbally, was a special way of constructing form in space. According to this methodology, contour drawing was banished from educational practice. "There are no lines in nature" – this axiom had to be mastered first thing. The main teaching technique was "dry brush," it gives the opportunity to work not with line, but with spot. Today this is very popular in various art studios, this is exactly how they suggest beginners start learning. In Soviet educational institutions in the 1950s-1970s, the "dry brush" technique was not worked out, therefore it was perceived as innovative. In the process of studying with V. Sitnikov, the stage of working from nature was absent, in other unofficial schools it was preserved. Although students received assignments to make sketches from nature independently. In "class" one had to learn to "draw in the mind," i.e., hold objects not before the eyes, but before the inner gaze, imagining them "not in front of the canvas, but inside it." The construction of volume began from the most illuminated surfaces and went deep into the shadows.

Many artists passed through V. Sitnikov's school. Materials about how theory was implemented in practice are extensive but rather scattered. They are dispersed in students' memories, in separate letters from V. Sitnikov – peculiar teaching messages. The most complete corpus was written for brother Nikolai Yakovlevich – a journalist and translator who turned to artistic creation after retiring. Private collections preserve so-called "Lessons" – separate educational drawings with detailed comments and instructions that V. Sitnikov distributed or sent to students. As a true guru, he attributed the invention of the correspondence teaching method exclusively to himself, not suspecting or not taking into account that this was how the Correspondence People's University of Arts had been successfully teaching everyone who wished for forty years already.

When combining the cycle made by Y. Vedernikov in 1991 with surviving letters and notes, one can restore a complete picture of the training system. Each of the 34 sheets in the series reflects a certain stage of training, each is numbered, commented on and dated. Here even in small things, the teacher's precept is observed that all trials need to be precisely preserved and dated to facilitate analysis. In essence, Y. Vedernikov's graphic series is that very textbook that the impulsive and artistic V. Sitnikov often dreamed of creating but never did. In memory of the Teacher, this was done by his methodical, consistent student.

In traditional academic drawing, one must master the cube, sphere, cone, plaster head. In Sitnikov's drawing alphabet, there was also a mandatory set of form-images. The process began with "fogging" spots and blots on the sheet or canvas using a flat brush or eraser. Then one needed to master simple, double, rough and fine gradients. Thanks to tone and texture, the field of white sheet or canvas turned into a mysterious foggy space. From it gradually "extracted" horizontal and vertical planes, cubes and famous "glowing intestines." Special attention was paid to the construction of spheres. In the end, gradually all elements, as in a thought-out constructor set, were assembled into a generalized sexless figure – a "doll." V. Sitnikov believed that a student who mastered this alphabet of forms would further cope with more complex creative tasks.

V. Sitnikov considered important priorities of his methodology to be universality – he undertook to teach anyone who wished. And also the speed of learning – he assured students that they would be able to "compete with graduates of official academies" not in 5 years, but already in a year.

However, to master this technique, the student required determination, "bull's stubbornness" and enormous work capacity. Sitnikov often used sports lexicon, spoke of "training to exhaustion," "courage," "onslaught," i.e., a certain inner attitude necessary for quickly acquiring skills. One of the letters to Y. Vedernikov begins with the words: "My dear friend and student Yuly... Thank you for being such a hard worker..." [8] One "lesson" could continue for ten hours. V. Sitnikov himself enthusiastically worked together with students, showing practical working techniques. Independently, the student daily needed to "force himself" to perform five to ten "lesson-trials" in order to ultimately "sufficiently train your reflex arc consisting of your eye, brain and sensitive hand and then it will be easy to achieve tone changes at your whim." [4, p. 95]

In his training system along with strict requirements, Sitnikov included methods of psychological liberation.

It was proposed to work on sheets of large size – not less than one square meter, use large instruments. Start with generalized forms, not worrying about proportions, details and similarity in the first stages.

Use newspapers, wrapping paper for "training," not being afraid to spoil and spend materials.

Not correct an unsuccessful drawing, make a "trial" anew.

Begin with toning the sheet or applying arbitrary spots, which eliminates fear of the empty white plane.

These tips can be found today in numerous books on art therapy. Only in art therapy practice they are used for liberating creative abilities, in V. Sitnikov's Academy for virtuoso mastery of a special artistic technique. One who coped with technical difficulties awaited a peculiar catharsis: "...when it becomes easy to achieve tone changes at your whim... And when you try this, you won't want to eat or sleep, but will keep drawing and won't be able to get enough of drawing."

[9, p. 73]

Y. Vedernikov, who did not practice as a teacher, made his cycle in memory of his teacher. He was able to formalize the process that in practice V. Sitnikov passed to students "from hand to hand." Another student – Vladimir Petrov-Gladky – managed to revive the teaching practice according to V. Sitnikov's system. In 2016-2107, he conducted seminars at the art academy in Geras, Austria. At a week-long seminar, artists and just amateurs could master the basics of constructing form in space according to V. Sitnikov's system.

It is difficult to say whether Y. Vedernikov's graphic cycle can be used as a teaching aid today. Rather, it is an important and interesting fact of unofficial art history. As follows from students' memories, the main element of V. Sitnikov's school was V. Sitnikov himself with his energy, fantasy, épatage and devotion to art.

However, Y. Vedernikov's graphic cycle has not only applied or historical significance, it has an independent philosophical and aesthetic value. Each sheet with its fine tonal texture, soft transitions from shadow to light is mysteriously beautiful. Through the fog of primordial chaos, a barely discernible light first appears, which, condensing and compacting, reveals perfect geometric forms and harmonious bodies in space. In its artistic completeness, the cycle is perceived as a metaphysical history of world creation, as an incomprehensible transition from "non-being to being."

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Literature and Sources:

1. Bobrinskaya E. A. Strangers? Unofficial Art. Myths, Strategies, Concepts. Vol.1. Moscow: Sh. P. Breus, 2012, 496 p.

2. Vasily Sitnikov and His School. Exhibition Catalog. St. Petersburg: Petrony, 2009. 289 p.

3. Vasily Sitnikov. Lessons. Moscow: Agey Tomesh-Press, 1998, 88 p.

4. Other Art. Moscow 1956-76 in the Chronicle of Artistic Life. Vol. 1-2. Moscow: SP "Interbuk", 1991.

5. Florkovskaya A. K. Malaya Gruzinskaya, 28. Painting Section of the Moscow United Committee of Graphic Artists. 1976-1988. Moscow: Monuments of Historical Thought, 2009, 254 p.

6. Yuly Vedernikov. Life in Art. Moscow: Art Likor, 2009, 112 p.

7. Arkharova N. A. The Work of V.Y. Sitnikov (1915-1987) and His School in the Context of Moscow's Artistic Life of the 1950s-1980s. ABSTRACT of dissertation for the degree of candidate of art history. Moscow, 2014, 33 p.

8. Archive of artist Y. A. Vedernikov's family.

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Andreeva-Prigorina Ekaterina Nikolaevna

Marchand Gallery

Collection Curator

Member of the Art Critics Association

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