Oleg Maslov and Viktor Kuznetsov have been working together since 1993. This artists duo was directly brought up by the fact that both artists were employed in the creation of Timur Novikov’s New Academy of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg.
The basis of Maslov and Kuznetsov creation is photography, the artists use painting only to transform photographic compositions using conventions and materials specific to painting technique.
Their first joint project was an artistic happening captured in a series of black and white photographs. Accompanied by their small children, who could easily be mistaken for living cupids and puttos, the artists removed all their clothes except for loincloths made of oak leaves. Passers-by were invited to take souvenir pictures. The first joint appearances produced at least ten vivid pictures showing the silhouettes of the artists set against various romantic backgrounds including bridges, ruins, obelisks and shaded alleyways.
Maslov and Kuznetsov’s next area of interest were the self-portraits upheld in neo-grecian style typical for the new academics in the early 90. In this genre the essential aim is to manifest the contemporary context of performance and presentation, which explains why the artists abandoned the immaculacy of the ideal. The ideal is therefore partially forsaken in favour of physical corporeality – the all but naked young people exposing their vitality reminded spectators that the 90. have lent a new dynamic to dormant landscapes, which have changed so little since the previous century. Another striking aspect of these performances was the atmosphere of unfettered and spontaneous joy. The gathering in the park – presently Maslov and Kusnetsov began to organize group photo sessions – was quite clearly not an exercise in propaganda of art and beauty, making no attempt to conceal weakness and the corporal imperfection of the body.
Maslov and Kuznetsov amateur sessions with the all-important element of spontaneity allowed the viewer to observe the threat of life from the point of view of the great expanse of historical time. This effect is enhanced by the photographs’ backgrounds – we may interpret the Cliassicist surroundings of St. Petersburg as a reference to the land of eternal happiness, the mythical Arcadia.
In their next projects the artists reformulated their former goals – they photographed themselves in a series of composed frames under the title The New Satiricon. Their physiognomy and gestures openly took on the conventions of the theatre. Viktor Kuznetsov appears in the female roles (for instance during the photo session for the video-opera Mirey with its traditional romantic plot.)
Theatricality and stylization led the artists to include the masterpieces of European painting in the area of their interest which resulted in a series of fascinating imitations and pastiches including a quasi-Rubenesque portrait The Alliance of Earth and Water, variations on the theme of the painting Loneliness by Hippolyte Flaudrin and the photograph Cain by Wilhelm von Gloeden.
In 1995 the artists resumed their sessions in the manor grounds. This time they were going out on “location” with a group of friends and an impressive collection of props (including helmets, swords, papier-mâché lyres and ancient tapestries). Their improvised scenes from ancient life were captured by the professional photographer Viktor Shchurov. The way the pictures were developed, printed in sepia, and their compositional form evoke the photograph albums of the previous century.
In 1997 Maslov and Kuznetsov presented their works in the Cabinet exhibition in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam. At the same time in the neighboring Van Gogh museum there was a retrospective of the famous 19th century painter Sir Lawrence Alma Tadema. In his pictures, which depict the beautiful bourgeoisie in the context of Roman atria and on the banks of the Tiber, Maslov and Kuznetsov found a reflection of their ideals. For this reason their next series bears the title Towards Alma Tadema. The collection was created in collaboration with Rainer Böhme, the Dresden born student of the New Academy. For the first time the photographer recording their ancient ambling has been able to achieve the effect of natural lighting, which brings the figural groups and historical landscape together in a romantic atmosphere appropriate for old paintings. The work performed by Böhme achieves the perfection of genuine historical stylization and pastiche in the spirit of Alma Tadema, whilst also allowing the re-emergence of powerful impression of being rooted in the present, also to be found in the original pictures of 1992.
At the end of the second decade of the last century a novel of Konstantin Vaginov was published in Leningrad. The young writer was associated with the celebrated philosophical circle OPOIAZ, with Mikhail Bakhtin and other theoreticians of the language of art, and also with experts on classical art and St. Petersburg culture. Vaginov novel is entitled The Goat’s Song, the title alone containing al allusion to Greek tragedy. Its heroes – lovers of Hellenism, adorers of the tastelessness which finds its boldest expression in the refined paintings of Alma Tadema – would meet in the cottage in Peterhof and concoct visions of St. Petersburg as a Hellenic city, in which ancient liberties and modes of thought were revived. In a strange way the bohemian milieu centered around Oleg Maslov and Viktor Kuznetsov 70 years after those events, at the time of arrival of the first new Russian freedoms, without any particular knowledge or inclination to pay tribute to historical traditions, are once again taking on the St. Petersburg philosophy of life, the cornerstone of which is the combination of barbarianism an the refined though practically dormant style of antiquity.
Text originally published in Et Arcadia Ego – Oleg Maslov & Viktor Kuznetsov, Szczecin, 1998.
Ekaterina Andreeva. Senior curator at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg.