Encounter with a master
The creative legacy left by the Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani (Pirosmanashvili) (1862-1918) is an enigmatic manifestation of talent, originality, sincerity, and a child’s directness that seemed to materialize out of nothing, the way bright flowers appear from beneath the snow on mountain slopes. Niko did not have any professional artistic training and apparently never had an opportunity to familiarize himself at any length or depth with the works of brilliant artists of the past, creative trends, or the works of his celebrated European contemporaries.
However, despite this and his lost life, as Philistines would call it, Pirosmani left his legacy-his sensitive, youthful soul transferred to patches of dirty oilcloth-to his fellow countrymen and the rest of mankind. Thirty-five pictures by this master (out of a total of 200 known works) were recently displayed at the National Art Museum of Ukraine. Throngs of Kyivans queued up to explore the paintings.
One of the things that makes Pirosmani so attractive is the fact that he inherently identifies himself with nature and considers everything else — children, donkeys, bears, deer, clouds in the night sky, grass underfoot, his fellow countrymen — as things and creatures that are near and dear. He sees God’s world through the eyes of his good and friendly creations: animals and children.
But the eyes of his village children are somehow sadder and more somber than the eyes of a cow, small deer, or old, worn-out camel with an angelic smile on its “face.” So, when you look at his Paschal Lamb doomed to be sacrificed, you are involuntarily reminded of the early Christians, who pictured Jesus Christ, who innocently suffered for our sins, as a lamb. This lamb must have had eyes painted by Pirosmani. The artist was fond of saying: “I love animals. They are friends of my heart.” He must have also thought that animals treated him better than his fellow humans.
His paintings of festively laid Georgian tables are especially interesting. You see serious, reserved men, hieratic poses, dignified merry-making befitting respectable Cahetians. There is one striking feature: every man’s mouth is open in a different way. Why? Because they are all singing in that special polyphonic style germane only to the Georgians for more than a thousand years.
I was first fortunate to hear it many years ago at the ancient Zion Cathedral in Tbilisi, and have been in love with it ever since (UNESCO includes Georgian singing in the intangible legacy of the world). Indeed, it is one of the wonders of the world. The ancient Greeks once said that it conquers people regardless of their knowledge of Georgian culture or musical preferences. Listening to male Georgian choirs, one is always reminded of the Great Caucasus Range, the snow-capped peaks and steep gorges peaks that are accessible only to a chosen few, Svanetian settlements where an ancient defense fortress stands in every homestead, and slender, severe-looking, old Georgian women. It seems as though every singer in that choir is standing all alone on the top of a huge mountain and singing his unforgettable song to the heavens, but together they create a divine harmony.
One of my favorite Pirosmani works is A Bear on a Moonlit Night. This painting has so much love hidden in every brushstroke, so much love for everyone and everything around us, that no words can convey this feast of colors. You have to see it to believe the poetry, the mysteries, the mystic touch in that Cahetian night train! Where are the people traveling on board this train? What makes the people so keen on watching those who are silhouetted in the windows of the train car? They are staring at them the way audiences at the Bolshoi watch the stage. Will they ever return to the point where they set off on their journey?
This painting has a surrealistic detail: we can see the track in front of the locomotive, but there are no tracks behind the last car. This is what we know as “burning one’s bridges.” The master artist may have forgotten to paint the track, although I am of a different opinion.
My other favorite is Pirosmani’s The Lion and the Sun, which pictures an aristocratic and refined lion with a sword underneath his right front paw, as befits a true knight. His gait is as refined as a ballerina’s. This is obviously an allegory or a coded image of a supreme lion-like aristocrat, perhaps one of Georgia’s old heroes. Another painting entitled The Double Eagle is a symbol of ruthless death. It shows a haughty black eagle that has just hunted down and killed a smaller animal; the eagle doesn’t seem hungry. Its prey is simply there; it’s an act of murder for the sake of murder. The artist commented on the subject: “This eagle resembles the tsarist Russian emblem and the hare symbolizes all of us.”
In all the living beings portrayed by this artist (adults, children, animals, birds), their eyes are the main feature. Even when Pirosmani depicts a living creature in profile, he allows us to see both eyes, perhaps so that we cannot miss the image’s content and depth.
Some of the paintings displayed at the museum are obviously autobiographical, illustrating Pirosmani’s miserable, homeless life, which was devoid of the warmth of understanding and love. Proof of this is his painting Three Deer by a Spring. What I see there is something like a deer version of the Holy Family: father, mother, and child, a tiny deer, totally vulnerable and snuggling up to its mother. This is harmony, quiet, and shared love: a closed triangle. This is something that the artist could have experienced only in his work.
After you force yourself away from Pirosmani’s paintings and return to the exhibition hall where the exhibit begins, you find yourself staring at Picasso’s Portrait of Pirosmani and thinking that this world-famous artist produced a very impoverished, dry, and abstract-geometrical image.
