Masculine. Losing the middle

Philosopher of art Hans Sedlmayr wrote the book “The Loss of the Middle” in the 20th century. In it he presented a personal version of what happened to art in its movement from the Middle Ages to modernism. And according to Sedlmayr, a catastrophe happened: the attenuation of everything divine, the replacement of God with idols and imitations.

In the process of development of civilization, faith, including in ourselves, faded. In the Middle Ages, during the Renaissance, in the Baroque, the Temple, the church, stood in the center of the world. In Modern Times: Museum and Theater. In the newest – Industrial concern, Office. A person loses support in the meaningful structure of the universe. Gigantic prospects of meanings about God, giving hope for eternal life and filling earthly life with meaning, are replaced by a world in which there is a hole in the center. And this hole is pretended to be covered by the ghosts of entertainment or business. And the man stands naked, lost, alone in an empty Universe.

I think that the art of Tanya Strelbitskaya depicts this tragedy in its images with a dislocated soul and joints. And its main characters are representatives of the stronger sex, which in fact may turn out to be very weak.

After the Second World War, it became obvious that the masculine machismo civilization suffered a crushing defeat in the deepest crisis of humanism as such. Attempts at its restoration are doomed today. After the end of the Second World War, artists appeared on a powerful front in Europe, denying any canon and beauty in art.

Self-humiliation, literally - trampling into the dirt, destruction of a beautiful picture - these are the methods of treating the bleeding wounds caused by the war. The reaction to the atrocities of Nazism was the humiliation and self-deprecation of art, the relegation of the artist to the role of a victim rather than a genius. Michel Tapie, Jean Dubuffet, Vols, Fautrier, and the international association CoBrA became the founders of the Art Brut, Tachisme, and Informel styles. The artists showed themselves to be adherents of “materism” - rough painting created as if with a spatula on plaster. In this painting, the main thing was the dough itself, the earth of substance. It oozed blood, strange mutants were born from it, either monsters or people. They writhed and suffered. The wounds of war and mental trauma had to be overcome in an honest artistic gesture.

The unique Artist, the guru of unofficial art of the present day, Tanya Strelbitskaya, took upon herself the cross and the responsibility to again suffer all the cramps and pain of Art Brut. Unlike the brilliant bearer of the idea of brut punk, Basquiat, Strelbitskaya projected this method not onto a specific biography, but onto the male gender as a whole. Leaders, warriors, leaders… On her canvases they mourn and suffer. Their bodies are dislocated, their postures are broken. The rough surface of the painting shapes their figures like a relief, making their faces similar to the stage masks of Oedipus, Tiresias, Achilles or Pierrot from comediadell’arte. The male civilization of Strelbitskaya is not leaders at all, but children who have become victims of a cruel world. They require protection and attention. And the revival of the “dirty” aesthetics of Art Brut becomes a unique therapy, according to the principles of contrast - appealing to tenderness, compassion, love.

One of the portraits at the exhibition is dedicated to director Roman Viktyuk. Roman Viktyuk was a mentor, friend, and model of honor and truth in creativity for Tanya Strelbitskaya. He uniquely knew how to expose the anatomy of the soul, using all the violent, brutal styles of theatrical art, from Brechtian drama to cabaret guignol. Viktyuk was able to debunk the myth of the hero without fear or reproach, to expose that hidden, defenseless thing that determines the essence, the core of character. The string of images seems to embody this reflective, anti-heroic essence of Strelbitskaya’s poetics, which was influenced by expressionism, art brut, and the method of anatomy of the soul at the Viktyuk Theater.

Sergei Khachaturov