Black Velvet

The photos are provided by the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art

Ukrainian underground art appeared in the early 1960’s and has since actively developed its alternative cultural context. Only now is it beginning to enter the global art market. This world is different in Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa and Kharkiv; each has its peculiarities, but they all conceal a tremendous number of messages.

The artist Oleh Sokolov is an important figure in the Ukrainian underground in Odesa. It was in his apartment back in 1956-58 where the first “apartment exhibits” took place.

The artist dedicated over 30 years of his life to work in the Odesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art. A Russian by nationality, Oleh Sokolov felt Ukraine well, liked the Ukrainian language and Shevchenko: Kobzar became a reference for him.

Among the heritage of Sokolov there is even a picture created based on the subject of the Shevchenko’s poem “Haidamakas.”

At the same time, the work of Oleh Sokolov cannot be squeezed into the framework of one art trend. A man of the sixties, of the “thaw,” he was absolutely open to different spheres of life, and his works reflected an integral picture of the world.

Perhaps the cosmism inherent in the creativity and life of the artist appears during his studies in the Lviv Art Institute, or perhaps Sokolov’s teacher Teofil Frayerman is behind it. Frayerman was artist who studied at the Paris Academy of Art in the workshop of Pierre Bonnard, made friends and had exhibits in the same galleries with Henri Matisse, Georges Rouault, and Marc Chagall. However, for Oleh Sokolov the traditions of Western art didn’t become a sample to follow, but an incitement for understanding the philosophy of being and the manifestation of the talent he had.

Olena SOKOLOVA, art critic, the head of the department “Museum-Apartment of Sokolov”:

“The sixties generated artists of synthesis: the comprehensive correlation of knowledge in art, science, and religion. That’s what is called cosmism or religious-philosophical renaissance. And Oleh Sokolov belonged to such artists; he was not just a personality, he was a phenomenon: a synthesis of music and painting, science, religion and art. Oleh Sokolov in his creativity devoted half of himself to realistic art, and another half to cosmic art. He painted both our world and landscapes of unknown stars, the worlds we have not yet discovered.

“Sokolov wrote of himself: ‘I am less than a grain of sand on the Earth, I live in two worlds at once.’ From the perspective of the Brussels school of physicists this is a situation of transition from chaos to order. And the artist also talked about painters like him: ‘We are believed to be a mirror, but we’re rather like black velvet.’ He absorbed the other world in himself, like a radar that sees behind the clouds what is invisible to the physical eye. However, one should distinguish between Sokolov’s technocratic space and half-mystical space.

“And what is mysticism? It is when you believe: what you can imagine actually exists. These are the words of John Lilly, the favorite author of Oleh Sokolov.

“The artist, despite his close ties with science, was a religious man. A religious mystical component is fundamental in his creative work.

“In the 1960’s art not only closely interwove with science (it was then that Lev Landau said: ‘one must deal with science due to the love for art’), but implicitly united with religion.

“Oleh Sokolov, who among other things loved cybernetics and kinesics, is in the thick of these processes. He managed to reach the metaworld, and his genius lies exactly in this transition.”