Sergei Maslov

The fact that Sergei Maslov was an intellectual artist is far from immediately apparent. His paintings, objects, and texts are so unusual, perplexing, and stylized that they are confusing not only to the ordinary viewer, but also the professional. They are inscrutable, provocative, and sometimes overly honest, all while being naive. As the critic Zemfira Erzhan wrote, “Maslov … is a kind of phenomenon presenting itself as art, rather than art itself.” [1]

The paintings that Maslov made in the 1980s, during the Soviet era—Prodavets isporchennykh veshchei [Seller of Ruined Things], 1980; Progulka v lodke [Boat Ride], 1982; Tainaia vecheriia [The Last Supper], 1982; Fokusnik [The Magician], 1988; Vstrecha so smert’iu [A Date with Death], 1988—feature figures that are highly untraditional for Soviet art, and they are executed in a careless, sketchy style that shocked and puzzled viewers. Two of the paintings in the Zimmerli Museum collection, Zavtrak v lesu (Breakfast in the Woods, 1984, 2000.0030) and Progulka po gorodu (A Walk Through the Town, 1981, 2000.0026), are typical of this period, with their phantasmagorical, hazy landscapes and transparent figures that are difficult to decipher. The rendering is sloppy and the paint is washed out, dominated by a single tone, bringing to light an alternate reality and mysterious lives that are difficult to connect to our world.

Maslov’s work from the 1980s is characterized not only by this style, but also by its many allusions to and quotations from world (primarily European) art history, literature, and mythology. Alongside his “naive” rendering, this kind of escapism was looked down on by exhibition committees, whose members would very rarely allow Maslov’s work to be shown. Thus, Maslov was only in a small handful of shows organized by the youth division of the Artists’ Union of Kazakhstan in Semipalatinsk and Almaty. Yet his work was shown in Moscow, at the exhibition hall of the Committee of Graphic Artists on Malaia Gruzinskaia Street, a venue that would have been very rare for an artist from a provincial Soviet republic; this says much about the real value of Maslov’s work.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, Moscow lost its significance as a center of knowledge production and culture. It turned out that global art progressed along a different trajectory, and that Maslov’s intuitions about the limitations of accepted artistic techniques and methods were not the ravings of a madman: the world was much bigger, broader, and more complicated than it was presented to be behind the gates of the Soviet prison colony. The ideas that Maslov had groped for in the 1980s became much clearer to him in the 1990s. Esoterica, sex, everyday reality, and Kazakh traditions went on to inspire an outpouring of his writing, performances, paintings, installations, and objects, all generously seasoned with his ironic wit. But even with the unbridled freedom and general disorientation defining this period, Maslov’s work continued to inspire bewilderment and indignation. The titles of articles about his shows and projects are illustrative: “Satana za nim maiiachit, za spinoĭ palitru priachet” [Satan follows in his wake, a palette hides behind his back] (Karavan, 1999); “Misticheskii krovopiitsa Maslov” [Maslov the mystical vampire] (Karavan, 2000); “Bezumnyi Maslov” [Mad Maslov] (ZIP, 2002); “Erotoman Maslov i zooliub Mel’dibekov” [Maslov the nympho and Meldibekov the zoophile] (Karavan, 1999). Maslov answered attacks from the journalists in kind: he would mess with reporters’ heads, telling them about meeting Picasso and Salvador Dalí; he published his own magazine “for idiots,” with the humorous, ironic title Maslov (“like Forbes,” he said) and parodied tabloids, claiming, for instance, that he’d died from being too in love with Whitney Houston.

Maslov meticulously crafted his trickster persona in sharp and joyful contrast to the heroic figure of artist Rustam Khalfin, the patriarch of contemporary Kazakh art. He wore a magenta blazer, the signature look of “new Russian” nouveau-riche criminals. He drew with his own blood at the museum; checked the I Ching before leaving the house; brought funeral wreaths to official artists’ shows bearing a paradoxical ribbon that read, “Died innocently from Maslov’s hand.”

At the same time, he painted subtle, lyrical works about love, including Belye nochi v stepi [White Nights in the Steppe] (1995); Devushka na lune [Girl on the Moon] (1997); Koroleva nochi [Queen of the Night] (1999); Moiia Uitni [My Whitney] (1999); and Brat Dzhokondy [Gioconda’s Brother], which were formally practically academic. Then, he would destroy the paintings’ illusions of realism by washing the entire canvases in either light or Yves Klein blue, emphasizing the depth and mysteriousness of the images.

His 1999 Self-Portrait is also a part of this series. In it, Maslov depicts himself as an enigmatic figure in a grand nineteenth-century suit, with a ruffled shirt and a velvet frock coat. Piercing white blots on his eyes suggest a terrifying omniscience, knowledge of the occult, or ominous premonitions of the future.

The graffiti he did at the 1999 Shiryaevo Biennial in Samara, Russia, was a continuation of what Maslov had started with his self-portrait. A phrase resembling an anti-Soviet maxim appeared on the wall of a destroyed building: “The Future Will Never Come. We Will Just Get Old” [Budushchee nikogda ne nastupit. My prosto sostarimsia].

Indeed, the artist was more wary of old age than he was of death, analyzing this phenomenon with less humor and more attention. (Impossible not to remember Kant here, “Those whose lives are of the greatest value fear death the least.”) In 1999, Maslov wrote a piece called “Vremena goda: Eroticheskii traktat” (Times of the year: An erotic tractatus), in which he contemplated various stages of life through observations of his own physical state. The approach of his fiftieth birthday brought the erotic into the forefront of his work—his paintings and drawings, as well as his novel Zvednye kochevniki [Astral nomads]. These coping practices for the “enlightened aksakal” [2]—which happens to be the title of another one of his writings, “Prosveshchennyi aksakal”—led to more scandals and accusations of perversion, pedophilia, and “propaganda of homosexuality.” The fact that Maslov had a degree in pedagogy and taught at an arts college only made the situation worse. In the end, the artist got fired, and with that, he was finally granted his freedom: from then on, he worked as a security guard at the Voyager gallery.

The explicit nature of certain scenes in Belye nochi v stepi [White Nights in the Steppe] (1995), Vvedenie v sem’iu [Initiation into the Family] (1998), and Kyz kyy (1998) was especially offensive because the narratives were based in Kazakh steppe traditions [3]; this provoked harsh responses from critics. In order to most accurately interpret the artist’s erotic works, especially in their orientalist mode, it is important to pay attention to their life-affirming aspects. Their rage and energy is in sharp contrast to, for example, the Europeanized “gothic” of Vstrecha so smert’iu [A Date with Death] (1988), which is structured around Christian symbolism: a shroud, a ghost, resurrection, “uncreated light,” and “numinous death, threatening the immortality of the soul.” [4]

Despite all this controversy, Maslov contributed a great deal to art in Kazakhstan. First of all, he affirmed that it was possible to live outside of the framework of sanctimony, to lead an unusual life, to be an artist here. Second, he took down the patriarchal mentality that Kazakh society was virtuous, pure, and uncorrupted by Western influence. Third, he proved that Kazakh art is filled with considerable potential and is a part of the global evolution of art. Finally, he was the quintessential Kazakh postmodernist, an important member of a small circle of artists and theorists who stepped outside of the Soviet ideas about art toward more modern concepts and practices.

Maslov’s final piece, an installation completed before his death, is the ironic and absolute antithesis of Kazah archeologist and petroglyph researcher Alan Medoyev’s claim affirming the historicity of traditional nomadic culture: “Kazakhs didn’t just fall from the sky.” Maslov’s Baikonur-2 (2000) was inspired by the resemblance between the conical form of a yurt and the nose of spaceship. Inside the structure that Maslov created, which gestures toward both, he set up a computer playing a slideshow accompanied by an ancient Kazakh melody played on a sazsyrnai, a kind of clay flute. The collages in the slide show depicted scenes of nomadic life, except they took place on the moon. Cartoon aliens, cosmonauts, and Russian tsars were inserted into scenes of traditional feasts and labors. Baikonur-2 is a decolonial gesture, drawing equivalence among all civilizations, including alien ones. In it, Maslov also prefigures internet memes entailing juxtapositions between global cultural codes in unexpected spaces.

Thus, Maslov looked into the future in which he never grew old.

Valeria Ibraeva

Translated from Russian by Bela Shayevich

Notes:

1. Erzhan, Zemfira. “Postsovetskie khimery” [Post-Soviet chimeras]. In Aktual’no ob aktual’nom [Topical on the Topical] (Almaty: SCCA, 2000): 125.

2. The literal translation of aksakal is “white beard.” It is a Kazakh term for a person of a distinguished age, a wise man, an elder.

3. Kyz kuu means “catch the girl” in Kazakh, it is a kind of traditional horse race.

4. Ulko, Alexey. “Ezotericheskii mir Sergeiia Maslova” [The esoteric world of Sergei Maslov]., In Lovets snov [The dream catcher], exh. cat. (Almaty: Aspan Gallery, 2022): 19.