BIBLIOGRAPHY
IGOR CHETVERTKOV

Oleg SULKIN
"NEW RUSSIAN WORD", October 30, 2000, New York

CLOSE CONTACTS OF THE SUPREME DEGREE

Awe to the past - a saving reflex of the modern aesthetic consciousness tired of permissiveness of newest "receptions". As the sinking Cuban boy who has caught for a pontoon and the wonderful image escaped, many artists are sufficed for the relic anchor buoys designating sunk into oblivion layers of culture. They "look in a root", drilling historical layers in hope to find a world outlook, methodological support.

This hobby concrete epoch, the concrete period of art - we shall alter unforgettable Kozma Prutkov - similarly to a flux. The artist is distorted, obstinate, we possess. He, as a matter of fact, mentally "is touched", his diagnosis - a syndrome of historical self-identification, and noble illness only by work therapy, a continuous embodiment on a canvas and a paper of persuasive images is got rid.

The 44-years muscovite Igor Chetvertkov is those. Him "Theme " - ancient Greece. Her legends and myths. Not item even, and a fixed idea because he works last years extremely "the Greece hall", varying various antique plots.

These days in constant mission of the Russian Federation at the United Nations, on East 67-th street in Manhattan (between 3-rd avenue and Lexington of an avenue) there passes an exhibition of works of an antique cycle of Igor Chetvertkov. This exhibition has already done a bit of travelling on the world, in one of the countries she referred to as "Logic of the Myth". Yes, the myth has logic, and it has more than it, than at a reality environmental us movable by set of accidents. The myth does not hasten anywhere, he stays in rest or rotates in a great circle. In modern consciousness vector time dominates, in hellas - time is deprived homogeneities and orientations. Hours of the ancient Greek have stopped, progress for him does not exist, as the Golden Age - behind, in the past.

There was, probably, a, private logic and volume, that Igor Chetvertkov who finished and 1977 theatrical branch of the Moscow art school of memory of 1905 and has received the first strong creative pulses in workshop of Alexander Tyshler, has come any time back to sensation of self-value "Greece hall" which he began to use as fantastic Sezam, full of treasures. But before the artist has issued in various cities of Russia over 50 performances, that, undoubtedly, has helped him to aggravate aesthetic sight and to learn to be immersed, though and under the order, at another's will, in the most different historical epoch and the art worlds.

"Inside theatre there were hobbies different artists, very strong hobbies and not so. - told in one of interview Igor Chetvertkov. - But then somehow from it all it was released". He was engaged art-graphic much, made out books. Gradually easel painting which at first was for the theatrical artist a certain similarity of a hobby, has left for him on the foreground. According to Igor, it has taken place years ten back.

"The Rain - Katarsis the Nature.
Katarsis - a spiritual Rain".

Last two lines from written Chetvertkov in 1981 of a philosophical poem of obviously program character appeared prophetical. The spiritual rain has spilled on him in Chersonese, an ancient advanced post hellas civilizations on surburb of present Sevastopol. Ruins of quarters, temples, an amphitheater, a sculpture, ceramics - all this has made on Igor, on his recognition, stunning impression. He has exposed the first pictures of an antique cycle in walls Khersoness of archeologic museum - reserve. And then hellas exposition Chetvertkov started travel from globe, having visited in Moscow, St. Petersburg, Switzerland, Italy, Germany, France, the Great Britain, Cyprus, Japan, at last, in USA.

That most of all amazes in antique cycle Chetvertkov - a delightful combination of diverse, contrast picturesque invoices, first of all a relief and a mosaic. The artist uses this weapon masterly. His works are essentially intimate - any swings on generalizations and pathetics. It or a still life with ceramics, either a fragment of a sculpture or diagrams, heads of antique gods or heroes. On the one hand, using special ceramic cocktail - paste, he emphasizes a museum roughness of torsoes and heads ("Defeated Warrior", "Alexander", "Aphrodite", "Torso of Heracles"). With another - delicate fragments achieves effect of aesthetic actualization, and not epatage character, as, for example, at neo da-da. and especially valid. It may be a fragment of a color ornamental background, a mosaic floor any imagined terms or a slice of the ancient greek text.

The underlined brightness of fragments is a mark of violent interface of time - antique with present, a mark of postmodernist freedom when "all is possible". But, I repeat, at Chetvertkov these particles are respectful as aspiration neofit, as demonstration "fragments", left by restorers on walls of temples. Restorers know how to restore a temple fresco, and recreate on a wall her slice, certain "a window in the past", - for comparison with faded escaped painting. But on it wisely stop:

Let people look at the present, authentic, carrying energy of left epoch, instead of on "novodel", let and the supreme restoration pilotage.

"Novodel" of Igor Chetvertkov - his firm reception perfected by him up to shine. It is necessary to have extensive erudition and especially "archeololcal" intuition to select to concrete hellas to motives of faultless taste color applications. "Lilies" which the artist gallantly gives to the grown dull antique ceramics are amazing. The stroke, not accent, and a dominant central chord is magnificent diptich "Feast", where color addition of antique festival any more,

Poetic laconism things from a series "Shelf" where antique artefacts are placed in "aquarian" space and the not dull company of freakish fishes differ. Archeologists - submariners may count Chetvertkov the ideological teacher. A mark of infinity ("Troyan vessels ", "Troyan shelf ", " the Way") - a color whirlwind "worth on a place" to a human history and simultaneously mystical spiral of the philosophical movement allowing "to return" time back, Transformation alive in a fossil it is submitted as the ambivalent process having ability of movement in both parties.

Cultural curiosity uncontrollably conducts Igor Chetvertkova on a spiral - in other worlds. Not leaving loved Hellas the attention, he is going "to appear" to Byzantium and medieval Russia, to Venice and Saint Petersburg, cities - symbols, cities of metaphysical destiny. Process of historical self-identification proceeds.

Contact

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