The way it was

With the hullabaloo abating, it is becoming increasingly clear that the people from the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation, which brought Paul McCartney to Kyiv, did their utmost to bill his visit as more than just a musical event.

BEFORE THE CONCERT: YELLOW

The most noteworthy event linked to the Paul McCartney concert was an exhibit of paintings by the former Beatle member, which took place at the Pinchuk Art Center. The Beatles were always connected to the visual arts. Stuart Sutcliffe, one of the group’s founders of the group, who died prematurely, was a promising artist. Paul’s late wife Linda was a photographer, and John Lennon graduated from an art college. His second wife Yoko Ono was able to parlay her marriage into a career in art. Her installations and videos are shown at prestigious biennales and purchased by art museums.

McCartney’s paintings occupied one whole floor of the center. The medium-sized oils and acrylic on canvas mostly date to 1988-94, and a few later ones to 1999. He works in a variety of genres: landscapes, portraits, abstracts, with a handful of still lifes. His style is equally diversified, clearly influenced by the classics and 20th-century trends. His abstract works are executed in the spirit of the postwar experiments of such American artists as Willem de Kooning, to whom art critics ascribe a decisive influence on McCartney.

His other works borrow from Expressionism, with its eternal fears expressed through lines and colors. Some are surrealistic hallucinations, but they are not too dangerous, just a couple of seashells in midair. There are traces of the brilliant and jovial Juan Miro and the somber British genius Francis Bacon. McCartney’s brush strokes are short and neat or broad and bold, and his lines are emotionally broken or geometrically balanced.

Yellow is the predominant color in his paintings, which is only natural for the co-writer of the famous Beatles song “Yellow Submarine,” a man who lives in a home with windows facing a beach. Except for this undoubtedly unifying feature, it is possible to say that McCartney’s the artist of too many faces. In his case, it’s worth discussing the creator rather than his creations, his personal rather than creative qualities. From this point of view, Sir Paul McCartney’s artistic endeavors are those of a man who has accomplished everything in his life and can now indulge his fascination with contemporary art by creating paintings that pay homage to his idols.

The paintings are imitative and amateurish, but viewers see only one face — McCartney, a flesh- and-blood man, who long ago became a symbol for millions of people. So, in a certain sense he is a product of culture. There are various emotions in McCartney’s gestures — not those of a specific individual but an icon eternally tied to the 1960s. But like the color yellow, what predominates is the childlike joy of existence that is felt in practically every Beatles song. If there is an occasional sad chord, it doesn’t last long. It is the same with McCartney’s paintings, which contain no metaphysics or alarming depths, even if some of his canvases feature alarming colors. The celebrated musician is simply having fun, and amusing others to the best of his ability.

CONCERT: CROWDS AND WATER

What is most interesting about such open-air shows is not what’s happening on stage but around it. The arrival of the rock star was like a powerful magnet that attracted scores of weird characters, who seemed to materialize out of nowhere. Then it started raining cats and dogs, as though someone upstairs had deliberately arranged the downpour. The walk along Khreshchatyk Street from Tolstoy Square to the Maidan (the subway station under the square was closed) turned out to be a real adventure, fit for a film.

There was that girl in the packed restaurant Puzata khata, who was not warming her hands under the dryer over the sink in the washroom but her — well, let’s call it her posterior — and who was clearly enjoying the process!

A middle-aged woman, clearly not dressed like a Beatles fan, was standing in front of a huge concert screen on Khreshchatyk Street, solemnly holding a lit church candle.

A short walk from Besarabka, a solemn young fellow at the head of a small group of friends had replaced his hat with a red-and-white traffic cone.

There was a small crowd of punks on the stairs leading to the Tolstoy Metro Station, each sporting a gorgeous comb of the most unimaginable colors: light green, pink, and orange.

There was an angry woman wearing a ball gown and sunglasses, who was standing under a tree on Khreshchatyk Street while two young and inebriated teenagers were trying to take her picture, even though it was almost dark.

A very tall man, around six and a half feet, seemed to be the only one on the Maidan with no umbrella or raincoat. Unfazed by the rain, he was cheering up spectators, who were drier than him.

All the ads and commercials had announced that the concert would start at 9 p.m. By 8 o’clock the Maidan was almost packed. The more people came the harder the rain seemed to come down. At around 8:30 the heavens seemed to have opened up all their sluice gates: it was a waterfall and umbrellas were completely useless. Some people couldn’t take it. I saw an unconscious girl being carried past me. The emcees on stage, without batting an eye, cheerfully announced that the concert would start with a 30-minute delay. The telebridge providing live feeds to screens in various Ukrainian cities was that rare case when the Ukrainian capital sincerely envied the regions, where the sun was shining in Odesa, Donetsk, Dnipropetrovsk, and Lviv. The show finally began at 9:35, by which time the rain had nearly stopped.

Here was Paul in the flesh, looking very good for his age. He greeted the audience in Ukrainian and then sang some famous Beatles songs and tunes from his solo repertoire. The huge screen behind him displayed a variety of amazing video effects and scenes selected for every song. There were also video screens mounted across the Maidan and along Khreshchatyk Street. There were fireworks displays as the show went on. There were several encores, but the concert ended precisely at midnight, like in the fairytale

AFTER THE BALL

Many of us had been looking forward to this for some 40 years. Then it happened. In the country of Cinderellas, you only have to steal a glance at the Prince Charming and be happy for the rest of your life. Even if he is not exactly young, we did share his company. It was our ball, not anyone else’s!

The bad weather notwithstanding, Sir Paul McCartney’s Independence Concert on the Maidan and the satellite feed to seven Ukrainian cities was attended by a record number of people. Some 350,000 fans stayed on the Maidan in Kyiv despite the downpour.

New Channel, which broadcast the concert, received an unprecedented 3.5 rating on the evening of June 14, remaining at that level for three and a half hours. The television audience share reached 18.7 percent. The broadcast was viewed by some 13.5 million people, according to the press service of the Viktor Pinchuk Foundation.

Hundreds of thousands of spectators watched the concert on the central squares of Ukraine’s big cities. About 80,000 fans gathered on Liberty Square in Kharkiv, some 20,000 on Theatrical Square in Odesa, and about the same number at the Mickiewicz monument in Lviv. Around 15,000 people showed up to watch the live feed in Shcherbakov Park in Donetsk, and over 35,000 fans gathered at the Festyvalny prychal in Dnipropetrovsk. In Sevastopil some 50,000 residents watched the live broadcast while celebrating City Day, and about 8,000 watched it in the western Ukrainian city of Chernivtsi. During the concert Sir Paul McCartney greeted “all the cities of Ukraine that are with us tonight.”