Olenka. Ukrainian folk picture.
BAD TASTE OF THE MASSES OR GENEROUS GIFT TO THE TASTES OF INTELLECTUALS
BAD TASTE OF THE MASSES OR GENEROUS GIFT TO THE TASTES OF INTELLECTUALS – the view of the doctor of art Oleksandr Nayden on the folk pictures that have been recently exposed by the actor, singer and showman Anton Mukharsky from his collection. Not long ago the author’s “nave and vulgar” direction roused indignation among former supporters of socialist realism who accepted only criteria’s of the so called “academism”. The pictures, withdrawn from the village houses and exposed in the hall full of light, create complex qualitative integrity that is forced by every piece. The collector was amazed by the brightness of colors and anti-painting eclecticism (in traditional sense). In the pictures of unknown authors the collector saw the light of their bright exotic fantasies as a kind of a paradise on the contrary to their poor hungry everyday life. Thus, a Ukrainian folk picture of the XXth century with its conditional artificial puppet village glamour is a complicated phenomenon with its dialectics and metaphysics, historical poetic drama of consents and conflicts, intrigues and contradictions, with its early cheerful light and late tired one. The author concludes: bad taste of the masses as always presents a generous gift to the tastes of intellectuals.