NAIVE FREE
The Ukrainian House National Centre presents the exhibition NAIVE FREE.
The project presents over 300 unique works of Ukrainian naive art from the collection of the Mykola Babak Foundation.
Curators: Mykola Babak, Tetiana Voloshyna, Veronika Haniechko, Alisa Hryshanova
Scientific consultant: Oleksandr Naiden
Project manager: Olha Viieru
Graphic design: Anton Pcholkin
Installation architect: Oleksii Antoniuk
PR support: Olha Nosko
Editor: Olena Chekhnii
Video: Halyna Kliuchkovska
Public program: Oleksii Ananov, Viktoriia Boiko
Museum department: Alisa Horska, Viktoriia Porplytsia
Excursions: Viktoriia Boiko, Nataliia Pyrohova
Organizational support: Nataliia Zubova, Kateryna Oranska
Work with partners: Oksana Sorochenko
Photo: Halyna Kliuchkovska, Ruslan Synhaievskyi
Financial support, purchases: Oksana Savina, Viktoriia Boiko
Legal support: Andrii Medvetskyi
Exhibition installation: Ihor Klymenko, Pavlo Kolomiiets, Dmytro Panchenko, Yevhen Panchenko, Serhii Slobodeniuk
Technical Director: Denys Zimin
Technical Support: Vadym Yurchuk, Ivan Havryliuk, Mykola Yemtsov
Household Support: Dmytro Chornyi, Ihor Nevzghliad
Security: Mykola Dovhaliuk, Oleh Zubov, Vitalii Osavoliuk, Yurii Liubachenko
Organizer: The Ukrainian House National Centre
In cooperation with the Mykola Babak Foundation
Special thanks: National Art Museum of Ukraine
Project Partners: JSC "Oschadbank", Visa
NAIVE FREE
The phenomenon of “naive art” is surprisingly complex and serious in the context of cultural research, because it goes beyond the usual understanding of professional artistic activity and challenges us: how to evaluate works of art created outside the boundaries of academic norms?
The term “naive art”, as well as its equivalents “sincere art” or even “primitive art”, was actively used by researchers in the 1930s to refer to the work of self-taught artists and rural masters who had no professional art education. The names “art brut” and “outsider art” are also used to describe this phenomenon, referring to existence outside the general artistic context.
However, modernity calls into question this terminology: where does amateurism end and professionalism begin, when the boundaries of professionalism are blurred, and artists with academic education and self-taught artists increasingly borrow ideas and visual language from each other?
Naive art is characterized by instinct, freedom from canons, bright individuality and sincerity, which opens up new ways of seeing the world. Exactly these features that give naive art, or naivety, special value in the contemporary artistic context, where conceptual forms often dominate over emotionality.
The exhibition NAIVE FREE invites you to a world where simplicity becomes strength, and sincerity is the highest value.
The Ukrainian folk painting, folk icon, and rural photography presented in the exhibition demonstrate the inexhaustible wealth of creative imagination and a deep connection with traditions. The works created by unknown masters do not correspond to strict stylistic canons, but instead impress with their immediacy, expressive individuality, and spiritual fullness.
The three components of the exhibition — folk icon, folk painting, and rural photography — are important visual elements that form a holistic picture of the macrocosm of a peasant hut. They create a unique atmosphere where aspects of everyday life, religious ideas and folk art are organically intertwined, determining the aesthetic and spiritual structure of this environment. This synthesis is reflected in the central installation of the hall - a symbolic iconostasis. In the context of the exhibition, it becomes a metaphor for the unification of visual elements of folk art - icons, paintings and photographs - into a single composition, which is the embodiment of harmony between the spiritual and material worlds. NAIVE FREE is a story about freedom of self-expression that does not require recognition or approval.
ABOUT COLLECTION
The Mykola Babak Foundation collection began to take shape in the late 1980s, when Mykola Babak finally realized his destiny as an artist. At first, he carefully preserved artifacts from his home in the village of Voronyntsi in the Cherkasy region, including paintings and towels embroidered by his mother Kateryna Lukivna, family photos taken by local photographers, and home icons passed down from generation to generation. Mykola Babak moved many of these family relics to his art studio, which inspired him to work, strengthened his ties with his family, and individual objects stimulated his own artistic search.
In 1990, Mykola Babak and his friends went to Poland. By chance, finding himself at one of the Warsaw markets, he noticed familiar faces among all sorts of junk for sale. These were Ukrainian folk icons, laid out in long rows in the open air. The artist was shocked that samples of unique folk icon painting were freely exported from Ukraine and virtually lost forever. Returning home, he plunged into collecting with a mad passion. In an effort to preserve as many artifacts as possible in Ukraine, he traveled to antique markets and on expeditions to the villages of Cherkasy region, established contacts with sellers of art works, often bought icons in terrible condition, restored them himself, and attracted specialists. At the same time, the collector began to collect rural photos, folk painted and embroidered paintings, towels, ceramics and glass, and household items. In the late 1990s, Mykola Babak’s workshop, which housed a significant part of the collection, was robbed, dozens of icons disappeared without a trace, and the artist himself spent a long time recovering from the painful loss.
In the early 2000s, Mykola Babak met Petro Honchar, and the artists became friends on the background of collecting and common views on art and life. In 2001, Mykola Babak first presented part of his collection at the Ivan Honchar Museum National Centre of Folk Culture. Then he repeatedly presented individual artifacts at the Cherkasy Regional Art Museum, the Ukrainian House, the Taras Shevchenko Museum in Kaniv, the Taras Shevchenko Kobzar Museum and others.
In 2009, based on the artist's collection of folk icons of the Middle Dnieper region of the late 18th - 20th centuries. a monograph was created, for which Mykola Babak (as the author of the project and artistic design) and Oleksandr Naiden (author of the text) received the Taras Shevchenko National Prize. In 2016, the artist donated more than 20 folk icons to the Cherkasy Regional Art Museum, and six years later, on behalf of his own charitable foundation, he presented about 30 folk paintings that were included in the permanent exhibition.
At the beginning of the full-scale armed aggression against Ukraine, the Mykola Babak Foundation turned to international organizations for help in preserving its own collections. Thanks to the grant received from the Prince Claus Fund (Netherlands), the charitable organization managed to prepare unique art objects for possible evacuation.
Currently, the Ukrainian House presents a significant part of the Mykola Babak Foundation’s cultural heritage collection, which totals more than 15,000 artifacts. The head of the Foundation believes that all exhibits from his collection will sooner or later be presented in the museum space, so that everyone who wants to — compatriots and foreign guests — can be inspired by carefully preserved examples of Ukrainian traditional culture.
"HERE WAS THE HOUSE OF TARAS SHEVCHENKO"
Hryhorii Shevchenko
Photographer Hryhorii Petrovych Shevchenko (1868–1941), great-nephew of Taras Hryhorovych, photographed the places of the great poet's childhood with poetic delight and love. Taken at the turn of the 19th–20th centuries, Hryhorii Shevchenko's photographs undoubtedly have artistic and historical value, because the artist managed to capture an authentic Ukrainian rural place before it underwent dramatic changes.
In Hryhorii Shevchenko's photographs and postcards - rural landscapes with mud huts and mills, girls and boys in elegant clothes, scenes of celebrations with traveling lyre players, harvest and grazing of cattle. All the details: jewelry and clothing, faces and postures of people from the past, captured by a talented photographer, fascinate with powerful magnetic vibrations of living history. Through the photographs of Hryhorii Shevchenko, it seems as if the spirit of the times is telling a story about the everyday life and holidays of the inhabitants of ancient Kyrylivka (now the village Shevchenkove, Zvenyhorod district, Cherkasy region).
Hryhorii Shevchenko also managed to make photo reproductions of portraits of Taras Hryhorovych Shevchenko from photographs by Andrii (Henrikh) Denier. In addition, the photographer produced postcards with the sights of the village of Kyrylivka and the city of Kaniv, where the great poet was buried.
Of the considerable creative output of Hryhorii Shevchenko, only a few dozen photographs and postcards have survived to this day, most of which belong to the collection of the Mykola Babak Foundation.
HEAVENLY CHRONICLE
The idea to combine rustic photographs and folk icons of Central Ukraine in one artistic concept occurred to Mykola Babak in the early 2000s. In 2003, he presented the results of his artistic searches within the framework of the project "Ukrainian Retrospective" at the first Kyiv International Photo Biennale in the gallery of the Foundation for the Promotion and Development of the Arts.
On the one hand, it may seem that the combination of photographs and icons is artificial in nature, but in fact such a combination is quite organic. Let us recall traditional Ukrainian huts, in which the walls were decorated with icons in towels, and family photos were always placed nearby: large, enlarged, often retouched portraits of spouses in carved frames under glass, as well as photographs of weddings, farewells to the army and other important events in the lives of the inhabitants of the house.
Due to the fact that Mykola Babak used the artistic technique of hyperbolizing rural photos, that is, enlarging them to the size of icons, the project acquired a more penetrating sound. Being in the space of the exhibition, the observer physically realizes how one type of art (icons) gives rise to another (photographs). Thus, the icon is opposed to photography, as the “sacred” is opposed to the “ordinary”, “handmade” to the “mechanical”. On the other hand, attention is focused on the convention of such a contrast, on the fact that “photography” and “icon” are only different forms of creative expression of Ukrainians.
The Ukrainian Retrospective project gave impetus to the creation of a series of photo installations in which village photographs were enlarged by photographic means to such a size as to emphasize the traces of history on them (cracks and chips, fingerprints and insect stains). The multiple enlargement of small photographs creates a different scale: not only plastic, but also ideological. What was invisible in an almost forgotten photo album comes to life on the wall of the exhibition hall under the gaze of the viewer.
Visitors to the Heavenly Chronicle exhibition immerse themselves in an interactive space in which saints are among people, and people (in the photographs and in the exhibition hall) are among saints.
The nature of the exhibition allows each viewer to find their own connection between the past and the present, between the sacred and the everyday, between image and reflection.
The project emphasizes that the depth of the cultural memory of the Ukrainian people is revealed in the dialogue of the sacred and the profane.
FOLK ICON
It is worth remembering an episode from Taras Shevchenko's biography - the future poet's walk among the Dyak icon painters. It seems that two of them did not accept him as a student. One arranged an exam, forcing him to carry water from the Tikych River and rub the copper paint for three days, another, as Shevchenko humorously states, looking at his left palm, noted that the boy was not suitable not only for icon painting, but also for cooperage. Only the third or fourth dean agreed to let Shevchenko become an apprentice, but he demanded that the landowner give permission for this.
We mention this fact because among the exhibited folk icons from the collection of the Mykola Babak Foundation, there could be created by the Dyaks to whom the young Shevchenko turned. These are folk icons of the early and mid-19th century, found in the villages of Zvenyhorod, Smiliansk, Khrystynivka, Kaniv, Horodyshche, Kamianka and other districts of the Cherkasy region. The Dyaks were icon painters, craftsmen, who painted icons to order for village churches and individual wealthy peasants. Icon painting was also practiced by artisans and individual masters. They differed from artisans in that they created icons for sale. However, the works of the Dyaks-artisans can be attributed to folk icons, since their color scheme and images of saints contain many signs of the folk folklore worldview, and their color scheme is close to the colors of folk embroidery, carpets, chests, wall and ceramic paintings. The colors red, brown, dark green, and hot yellow in certain combinations create a mood of sincere humanity and warmth, close to the naive simplicity of the beliefs of village grandmothers. The faces of saints — are devoid of Byzantine asceticism, but instead are endowed with the features of local men and women.
Oleksandr Naiden
RURAL PHOTOGRAPHY
Rural photography combines two hypostases of Ukrainian culture — historical and folklore. In a village hut of the late 19th — early 20th centuries, a small iconostasis of ancestral and family portraits and joint family photos was usually wrapped in a towel — “bozhnyk”. That is, rural photography was to some extent close to the icon, but it recorded reality, dressed in traditional costumes and decorations, a reality that in historical space-time changed internally and externally according to new existential states and social circumstances.
Thus, rural photography makes it possible to trace the evolution of the figurative context of the peasants, a gradual change in clothing, posture, facial expression, attitude to the very fact of photography. The festive monumentality of the faces-masks in their cosmological moment of timelessness gradually gives way to a more real sense of self in space. We can say that over the years and decades, the sacred self-consciousness of the people depicted in rural photography turns into a real-life one.
Rural photography records moments of hardship and suffering during wars and famines, the false officialdom of the dominant ideology. But most importantly, it documents the immutability of the Ukrainian presence in the world. Therefore, rural photography has existential and historical value as a factor in fixing the relics of family unity preserved through the centuries, the stability of the ancestral foundations of the rural ancestors of modern Ukrainians - city dwellers. These photos remind us of the cosmology of the Ukrainian folk spirit.
Oleksandr Naiden
FOLK PAINTING
The paradox of Ukrainian folk painting is that it, with all the archaism of its archetypes and symbols, with the conventionally simplified nature of the images, with elements of kitsch and the obvious simplicity of the plots, is a phenomenon of the 20th century. More precisely, of its second half. Even more precisely, of the 1940s and early 1950s, the years of post-war hardship. Then, in provincial towns and district centers, market fences were completely hung with bright paintings by artisan artists, full of a sentimental-romantic, often mysterious-mystical mood. On the other hand, in the 18th and 19th centuries, folk painting as a mass phenomenon was unknown.
The folk painting collected by Mykola Babak, which is currently exhibited, is not only a cultural, artistic and pictorial phenomenon, but also a social, existential, historical phenomenon. The folk “bazaar” painting, having occupied a certain place in the everyday life of the peasants of that time, became for them a sign of a new time. It replaced (or supplemented) the traditional ornamentation of embroidery, carpets, tiles, thick sackcloth (made of hemp or flax), table and ceramic paintings, lyshtva (a method of embroidery where the embroidery has the same appearance on both sides), papercutting, aesthetically and plastically consistent with the semantics of rural housing. The folk “bazaar” painting in a rural hut is not kitsch, but, one might say a fairytale firebird, which was supposed to illuminate the darkness of the poor and stingy with the joys and entertainment of post-war everyday life. It was created not by amateurs, but by a kind of professionals - craftsmen who knew exactly the needs of potential buyers and possessed the magic of fantastic plots, the aesthetics of glamorous scenes, and used the effect of bright, often "flashy" colors.
Folk painting is a kind of cosmological equivalent of the World Tree, that is, the ancient idea of an ordered and harmonious world order. Its landscapes most often feature pigeons, swans, and deer - symbols of the upper (pigeons), middle (deer), and lower, chthonic (swans) floors of the World Tree. Unlike a realistic or impressionistic landscape, a cosmological landscape tends toward a paradise, idyllic worldview, when the earth, water, and sky are perceived as images of the elements of the world and at the same time as factors of a familiar landscape.
One of the most important images of folk painting is the image of light. It nourishes the folk painting, creating a certain theatrical and decorative effect. This, in particular, is the exotic light of the evening glow, as well as the mysterious and mystical light of twilight with the pink glow of the sky through the trees. However, the most significant in folk painting is daylight, the light of a beautiful summer day - it testifies to the positive stability and uninterrupted continuation of life.
When social changes took place in the village and the quality of life improved somewhat, such a picture became unnecessary in modernized interiors, and this is an objective phenomenon. Folk painting fulfilled its mission in the post-war village. However, it must be collected, preserved, researched and exhibited at exhibitions as the spiritual heritage of our people.
Oleksandr Naiden
*The interpretation of the plots of folk paintings presented in the exhibition is based on the scientific works of the doctor of art history, collector and researcher of folk culture Oleksandr Naiden.
THE FLOW OF TIME
The ideal landscape of a Ukrainian village, with its pretty houses, church, lake and boat, acquires a certain tension upon prolonged observation, enhanced by the sense of expectation that permeates the silent landscape with the silhouette of a fisherman - the "lord of space". As the poet and playwright Oleh Lysheha aptly wrote: "A fisherman, frozen in a boat, is a secret human aspiration. This is an expressive universal symbol for all times". However, everyone will sail as much as is measured...
THE MELANCHOLY OF THE EVENING
"The essence of a folk painting, in particular idealistic evening landscapes, is in the immortality of a secret human aspiration, part of which has become a premonition of permanent eschatological finitude. The naivety of such landscapes, their guileless simplicity, the trusting frankness of intentions and results is based on the manifestation of being itself as the primary truth of human essence".
Oleksandr Naiden
FAREWELL TO WAR
The plot of farewell to war in Ukrainian folk art echoes with tragic and lyrical songs, which were an integral part of the ritual action of seeing off men to the army. This rite is one of the manifestations of the general ritual of sending off on a long journey, inherent in the Ukrainian tradition.
Farewells were arranged not only for soldiers, but also for chumaks, artisans-migrants, pilgrims, pupils, students or other persons who left their home for a certain time. Regardless of the purpose of the journey, farewell rituals were universal in nature and included wishes for a safe journey, prayers and symbolic actions aimed at the protection and successful return of the traveler.
The rite of farewell to war was especially touching and tragic, because it sounded the theme of separation, uncertainty and the threat of loss. The folk paintings and songs that reflected it became a kind of emotional chronicle, recording the deep connection between people, their hopes, fears, and faith in return.
VILLAGE PORTRAIT
The village portrait as a phenomenon in Ukrainian art occupies a special place, forming a kind of bridge between elite artistic practices and folk art. For centuries, examples of portrait art could be seen in the spaces of art salons, estates of Cossack elders and houses of urban intelligentsia. However, since the beginning of the 20th century, it has gradually spread in the peasant environment, becoming an important element of cultural self-identification. In this context, the village portrait is distinguished by sincerity, expressive stylization and deep symbolic content.
One of the most famous representatives of the portrait genre in the collection of the Mykola Babak Foundation is Panas Yarmolenko, a master of folk painting of the first half of the 20th century.
A native of Pereyaslav region, Panas Yarmolenko painted portraits that are striking in their laconicism and attention to detail. He depicted fellow villagers and relatives, creating single, paired and group portraits (waist and full-length) and emphasizing the dignity and spirituality of the heroes of his paintings. A feature of his works is the emphasis on the eyes of the characters, which radiate inner strength and character. The artist often painted portraits to order, and they later became family heirlooms. Panas Yarmolenko painted such paintings from photographs, reproducing the smallest details: features of clothing, embroidery patterns, decorations, flowers, trees and other components of the landscape.
POPULAR SUBJECTS
Among the favorite subjects of folk artists are famous examples of classical art. Some of the most frequently reproduced in folk painting are paintings with festive and everyday scenes by Mykola Pymonenko, “The Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan” by Illia Riepin, “The Heroes” by Viktor Vasnietsov, the scene of Taras Bulba meeting his sons (based on the work of Mykola Hohol), which is significantly different from the similar sepia plot by Taras Shevchenko and more resembles a painting by Oleksandr Herasymov.
Some folk artists copied paintings in detail and conscientiously, others were inspired by them, creating their own various variations of recognizable plots. Above all, folk masters were touched by the emotion that professional artists so accurately embodied on canvas. They copied humorous, romantic, lyrical, full of cheerfulness and fun, and sometimes longing scenes; They recreated mysterious, pompous, and battle scenes, drawing on history, myths, and legends.
STILL LIFES
One of the popular subjects of Ukrainian folk painting is still life, which reflects not only aesthetic preferences, but also the worldview of the people. The main elements of such compositions are flowers in vases, various fruits and vegetables, bottles and glasses of wine, which together symbolize the generosity of life and connection with nature.
Ukrainian folk masters created still lifes, putting deep meanings into them. Thus, ripe apples symbolize wisdom and fertility, grapes - joy, and bread - hospitality and spiritual generosity. Almost every still life has a watermelon cut into juicy slices. Its rounded shape and bright pulp enhance the festive impression of the composition.
Luxurious still lifes with various snacks and drinks filled the village hut with the life-giving energy of nature, which is able to reproduce itself in spite of everything. They were the embodiment of well-being and happiness for the peasants, had a literally therapeutic effect and helped to survive in times of adversity.
FOLK BURLESQUE
A separate group of works of folk painting and embroidery are paintings created in the genre of burlesque. They are often parodies of everyday scenes and a manifestation of an ironic and humorous attitude to life. Folk artists used burlesque to ridicule social stereotypes or human vices. Such scenes are often filled with bright hyperbolized images of characters: with comically rounded figures, excessive grimaces or in bizarre poses. Often, a humorous statement also appears in the burlesque plot, which may belong to the main character of the picture.
One of the most popular burlesque plots in folk painting is the meeting of a wife and a husband who returns home drunk. This scene in folk painting often compositionally reproduces the famous work of Mykola Pymonenko "Home", although it has certain differences. In particular, in the folk painting the woman holds a rocking chair in her hands, and in the painting by the famous artist - a stick resembling a rocker. One such folk painting also contains a verbal message on behalf of the woman: "I have been looking for you, my dear dove, for a long time!" The embroidered version of the plot records a short poetic description of the image based on a folk song: "A woman beat a man, taking him by the hair, so that he would not go to the tavern without asking her." Folk burlesque in Ukrainian painting is evidence of a deep sense of humor and the talent of folk artists to create a simple but meaningful visual expression.
SWANS ON THE WATER AND DEER ON THE SHORE
Images of deer and swans are among the most common in folk art. “The deer in the Slavic world is one of the main totems,” it is also associated with the image of the birth mothers, who could be depicted in embroidery as two deer standing near trees.
Researcher of folk art Oleksandr Naiden notes that “in works of verball, verball-song folklore, the totemic, in particular the totemic-sacrificial, meaning of the deer is confirmed… The deer-sacrifice in this case is not just an animal, but a cosmological object singled out by nature, destined to be sacrificed for the sake of the inviolability of the eternal state of things.”
““Let happiness beat its wings over fate, as a swan beats its wings over water” is a naive, simple-minded wish. The swan, on the one hand, is a bird of happiness, a bearer of festive “festive” imagery, a fabulous and mythical image of chthonic presence in a metaphorical space, on the other hand, a banal stereotype of a kitsch and philistine image of an exotically beautiful world of somnambulistic dreams; on the other hand, a symbol of tragic love in high poetry (“Swans of Motherhood” by Vasyl Symonenko) and at the same time, one of the signs of eschatological inevitability,” writes Oleksandr Naiden.
TRANSPORTATION TO "OTHER" SIDE
“The no less mysterious painting “Transportation to the “Other” Side,” popularly known as “Mermaids,” recreates the previously described, nighttime glamorous and mystical scene. The soul of the deceased, in the form of a sleeping woman in a luxurious, richly dressed, angel-driven boat, towed by a pair of swans, heads into the chthonic darkness of the afterlife. The boat is accompanied by beautiful, well-dressed women - mermaids. There is no doubt about the non-local origin of this plot with its signs of European sentimental-mystical modernism of the late 19th century.
Oleksandr Naiden
MARRIAGE WISHES
Lush floral compositions, into which authors often inscribed pairwise symmetrical pigeons, are a symbol of marriage wishes. The works of folk artists with such a plot were in great demand, they were actively replicated and willingly bought at the markets, decorated the house, and given as gifts. Often, folk artists integrated inscriptions into them such as “In memory of”, “I wish you happiness”.
As art historian Oleksandr Naiden notes in his works, this was evidence that folk painting began to occupy a prominent place in peasant life, along with ornament. Emphasizing its post-ornamental nature, the researcher points out: “And yet the main function of this plot beloved by the peasants lies in the general symbolic and metaphorical image of happiness, harmony, fidelity, and family comfort, which the combination of pigeons and flowers creates. The image is both cosmological and straightforwardly naive.
ANGEL GUARDING CHILDREN
The angel here is “a guardian called upon to prevent the very fact of danger from occurring.” The prototype of the plot was a German postcard, which was reinterpreted and transferred to the Ukrainian environment, becoming a widely popular folk painting. It was enriched in content, art, and imagery, having been influenced by “the Ukrainian Baroque, in particular its pictorial — figurative and iconographic — factors.” This image of the “guardian” found its organic place in the macrocosm of a village hut — laconic and exclusively functional. The pictorial embodiment of the Angel guarding children was placed above the crib, without violating the rationality of the space and covering the pragmatic need of the parents.
THE WORLD OF GLAMOROUS-KITSCHEN IMPRESSIONS / THE DESIRE OF EXOTICISM
“The epithets “kitsch”, “bazaar”, “ burgher”, “glamorous”, “wild”, “dissonant” are in no way condemnatory of folk painting. These features, properties and principles are the basis of its poetics. Only in this form is the “classical” folk painting able to function, this is the only way of its existence.
The primitive in folk painting, often in combination with kitsch, is a constructive factor that determines the figurative character of the work. In no other way can this mood, state, world of idylls, the world of cloudless blissful state, at the same time, it is impossible to express the archetypes that are being domesticated, the seemingly friendly nature in which signs of eschatological realities are awakening..”
Oleksandr Naiden
OLENKA AND THE DEER
“The mysterious painting “Olenka and the Deer”, widespread in many regions of Ukraine, is most likely associated with the ancient phenomenon of totemism. The girl and the deer, covered in flowers and wearing wreaths, are a married couple. Judging by the girl’s clothes and some other details, this plot was formed in the fairytale and mystical spheres of Western European artistic culture, in which there was another quite famous one - “The Girl with the Unicorn”. It is believed that the painting “Olenka and the Deer”, like “The Angel Guards the Children”, is a significantly simplified, folklorized equivalent of the European “modern” style.”
Oleksandr Naiden
ON THE OPPOSITE SHORES
The original source of this mythological and fairytale picture plot has not been established with certainty by researchers. Based on a certain European prototype, this plot was not completely Ukrainianized, remaining, rather, intuitively grasped. “The point is not only that the meaning of the depicted scene and the nature of the action remain unclear or not fully understood, but also that the manner of depiction, attributes, stylistic factors, the characters themselves indicate that these plots were brought to us from some cultural and social spheres far from the Ukrainian village,” notes Oleksandr Naiden.
This mystical plot, interpreted by researchers as “staying in other spheres of existence,” most likely subconsciously responded to the illustrators, captivating with the exoticism and mythological nature of the images, with its ritual component.
THE COSSACK AND THE GIRL. TIME-SPACE OF THE WELL
The plot "The Cossack and the Girl by the Well" was widespread in various regions of Ukraine (Poltava, Sumy, Cherkasy, Kyiv, etc.) and, having no rigid canon, was embodied by folk artists according to their artistic taste and in "several modifications regarding meaning. Hence the composition, and sometimes the painting, acquire a representative-solemn, schematic (emblematic), event-dramatic, sentimental-melodramatic, humorous-burlesque character". Researchers, among other things, associate the artistic origins with the archetype of the warrior, the iconographic image of St. George the Serpent Fighter and a wide layer of folklore from courtship to sending off to war, which, accordingly, finds its embodiment and development in various parallel storylines.
FAITH, HOPE AND LOVE
One of the favorite subjects of folk painting is “Faith, Hope, Love”, mostly presented in the form of a small-format glass painting, a clear example of the so-called “bazaar kitsch”, the task of which is to cause “sentimental admiration”.
Folk painting embodiment of the iconographic subject “Faith, Hope, Love and their mother Sophia”, Christian saints, revered in the form of martyrs, who appear as a trio of flower-covered girls - images of unshakable piety, a folk idea of eternal values.
ROMANTIC MOTIFS
CHURCHES
POETICS OF EVERYDAY LIFE
GARDEN OF DIVINE SONGS
The semantics of Mykola Babak's assemblages involves, depending on the differentiation of the viewer's perception, many (but at the same time quite specific) stratifications. And the basis for all this is the object as the embodiment of human substance, which constantly descends from metaphysical heights to the ground and breathes into an abstract image a completely real - social and historical - content, losing its narrow applied meaning, although preserving the memory of it in its forms; the object in Mykola Babak, on the one hand, becomes a sign of large chronological sections, and on the other - as if constantly reminds of the warmth of the hands that held it.
Among the characteristic features of the artist's assemblages, one should identify the clarity and structure of the composition, almost always enclosed in a frame, which in turn is also fastened with corners as decorative, but to a greater extent symbolic — final — elements. Often the composition is built on the principle of an icon: the place of life scenes around the pictorial center is taken by stamps with old photographs. The restraint of intonation, the absence of any affectation and pathos attract.
Finally, one of the key nodes in the figurative backdrop of these assemblages: sacred — profane. The artist actively arranges in them kitsch and the so-called "trivial art", which are partly still associated with the low, brutal.
Working with a thing as a factor of history, reflecting not only customs and tastes, but through them the spirit of the times itself, apparently became the starting point from which Mykola Babak began to develop the idea of reproducing on a plane by mounting objects certain materialized models of the world perception of the past. The artist's assemblages are very consonant with the retrotrends that accompanied modern art in almost all periods of its development. They are like memories of the lost harmony of life.
Oleksandr Soloviov