History and geography

The curators of the exhibition, which takes place at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, are Stanislav Silantiev and Halyna Khorunzha – the founders of the creative association “Jean Jaures First Proletarian Preserve.” An unusual exhibition can become a landmark for national culture. After all, its authors said goodbye to the traditions of Soviet art studies – and refused to “serve” any ideology.

OUR “ABROAD,” OUR EUROPE, AND OUR EVERYTHING!

Lviv, with its City Hall, and pubs, and rain washed pavement. Its churches, Madonnas, lions, the Golden Rose synagogue, Sheptytsky and UPA, Lychakiv cemetery angels... And yet – with legends coming from Medieval times, with a plaintive, sweet as the smell of grandmother’s old silk gloves, memory of Austria-Hungary, which disappeared like the Atlantis.

Lviv is a city-delusion, the center of Ukrainian dream. Our “abroad,” our Europe, and our everything! “When I will become fed up with everything, I am going to come back to my hometown Lviv,” – this is what, perhaps, every Ukrainian is secretly thinking regardless of where he or she was actually born and lives in. Meanwhile, the actual Ukrainian Piedmont has its own actual problems. Many outside Halychyna may not even realize them. Until one day this problems enter their existence. Or have they already?

More or less these issues – mythology and (historical) reality of “the cultural capital” of Ukraine, and the country as a whole – are explored in a new exhibition at the National Art Museum of Ukraine, called “Lviv: Allies.” This project is so sensational in a good sense, so unusual for our museums... and it’s very hard to talk about it.

To begin with, the exhibition is associative. Instead of the presentation style, to which Kyiv public is accustomed to – that is consistent, logically and thematically arranged conception – the vision of postwar Lviv (this is the period the exhibition is dedicated to, as part of Western Ukraine finally became the part of the then Soviet Ukraine only in 1944) by young curators Stanislav Silantiev and Halyna Khorunzha presents a confused, maze-like intertext, saturated with quotes. It brings seemingly unconnected components together. But in reality they are linked and associated on a symbolic level. As in real life, scattered phenomena and objects are combined together in a common “context.” Lviv is the context in this case.

A LVIV MIX

“Lviv: Allies” is an incredible mix of postwar models of trucks and electric bicycles – the “made in Lviv” production started after the war. Of the “local” concert posters (and their “fakes,” exact copies painted with oil). Nearby are a stuffed boar and a porcelain figurine of cheetah – according to the curator, a real indicator of tastes of the postwar Lviv inhabitants. A statue of the Catholic Virgin Mary – and an anti-religious picture by Rostyslav Silvestrov I Won’t Go (1950) from Lviv Museum of Religion History. Here, as a reminder of the paleontologists’ discoveries in the Western Ukraine, is a bust of a synanthrope (along with photos of a nonconformist Lviv artist, Andrii Sahaidakovskyi) – and the poster of provocative contemporary art exhibition “Defloration,” its authors “either not here (in the arts), or far away (from the city).”

A Soviet space satellite is adjacent to the photo “Lviv Lenin” by Valerii Miloserdov and a bust of Lenin. The exhibition also includes wooden “dummy” axes arranged around a portrait of Soviet journalist Yaroslav Halan (its author – Semen Gruzberg) borrowed from the Ternopil Regional Museum of Local History – and along with it is the usual array of coffee spoons made in Lviv. Wooden “simulacra” of pysanka eggs with logos of most famous Lviv enterprises (mostly defunct nowadays) are complement with a monumental painting The Night by Lviv’s “restless genius” Myroslav Yahoda. Somewhere nearby there is an etching by Oleksandr Aksinin, a recognized genius, and an entire wall is taken by his famous follower Halyna Zhehulska. Here and there are paintings of other landmark Lviv artists of the postwar period and pictures by photographer Mykhailo Frantsuzov, this “Mykola Trokh” of Lviv.

The three temporary exhibition halls of the National Art Museum display even a series of ironic oil paintings, copied from photos, dedicated to the recent elections of Taras Vozniak for the director of Borys Voznytsky Lviv National Gallery. Also the museum has wooden reliefs of Lenin. Documentary photographs of Lviv factories – “the forerunners” of the Soviet era. Ideological painting Yesterday and Today (1959) by Anton Monastyrsky and the People’s Assembly in Lviv of 1939 (1960) by Mykhailo Dobronravov and more.

The exhibition is staggering. It reminds of a “flea market” that suddenly appeared in the center of Kyiv. Seeing the obviously disoriented reaction of visitors from Kyiv, not conscious of the Lviv contexts, museum staff have decided to provide pointers.

Meanwhile, those who know the city are ecstatic. The exhibition, which is actually more like a giant installation, of the curators Stanislav Silantiev (he’s only 30 years old) and Halyna Khorunzha, is not afraid to explore at least two acute modern problems. One is a more private problem of the objective study of history and culture of Lviv. That is – without constructing new ideological myths instead of the Soviet one. The other one can be called one of the most pressing lines of research for the entire post-Soviet society...

THE HISTORY SHOULD NOT BE REWRITTEN

Not in a shocking or scandalous manner, but with restraint, which suits researchers, the museum workers have adhered to the point of view that modern Lviv became Ukrainian in the full sense of the word after 1944. By the way, modern historians suggest very interesting data on this subject: for example, there is Roman Lozynsky’s monograph “Ethnic composition of Lviv (in the context of social development of Galicia).”

And, most significantly, they set the ideological tone of “historical” discussions – in a decent society – for many years. As they have noted, the history should not be rewritten – it must be objectively examined, registering every achievement and failure. Even in the case of Soviet history.

“AGAINST THE MAINSTREAM”

...For a long time the National Art Museum of Ukraine has been going “against the mainstream,” breaking stereotypes for the sake of real, objective study of art and culture history of Ukraine of the 20th century. But the project “Lviv: Allies” is perhaps the most radical step away from the ideological “art history” – towards the global, European theory and practice of unbiased research and construction of art history. This is a major breakthrough! It is difficult to say any more of it. Let’s wait for further developments!

The exhibition “Lviv: Allies” will continue through June 18.