Two art criticism about creations of the artist Oleg Leonov on the eve of the opening exhibition

In the Central House of Artists from December 26, 2017 to January 14, 2018, an exhibition "Towards the Left" will take place, in which Honored Artist of Russia, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Arts Oleg Leonov will take part. The exhibition will feature new works by the famous artist.

Two leading experts of contemporary art expressed their views on the artist's work: Igor Mandel from New York and Viktor Kalashnikov from Moscow.

Igor Mandel,  publicist, doctor of science, New York

Any text about painting (and about art in general) presupposes the ability of its author to make any generalizations, if this is not just a detailed description of a picture that nobody really wants. Generalization suggests that you can drop something without loss, something (very important) to emphasize. That is, it is required to avoid mistakes of both the first and the second kind, as is customary in statistics. But if this is very poorly published in this very statistics - why should it come out in art criticism? Of course, it does not come out either. We have as a result no more than a personal opinion, and how it resonates with the intentions of the artist or even more spectators.

Oleg Leonov generalize with great difficulty or not generalize at all. He is very rare. The oddity is that he uses extremely different styles - and everywhere he reaches exceptional expressiveness. This suggests that it has an internal reference point dictating exactly how to write, when a task has already been set, but the tasks are completely different at the same time. This approach to art is a rarity. It's much easier to recognize that "style is a person" and to recognize the artist instantly, one look at his canvas. With Leonov this does not work out.

Perhaps his work can be divided into several types. In one, technically, the genre of harsh realism dominates, very reminiscent of G. Korzhev ("Castle", "Cuckoo", "Rake", "Counting" among the exhibited; "Emma's neighbor", "After the shift," etc.). But it's technically. Leonov is symbolic, laconic, metaphorical. Pick up the "Castle" - probably the most piercing work from the exhibited ones. Here the image mode perfectly corresponds with the image. How else, in what technique, to write this door and these crutches with developing bandages? How can you create a picture from my childhood with primitive crutches of Uncle Izi in 2017, who lost his leg near Leningrad in the winter of the 41st? But you can, as it turns out. The door, the symbol of the transition (from where and where?), One of the favorite symbols of postmodernism. The blackness is there, the crutches and the castle are on the border, but what of this side? Yes, nothing like that, 2017. The lock opens the door. And if you change the stress in the title - there will be a Castle, that there is already Kafka, that there is already a rethought absurd hidden in the blackness where the open door will invite.

Victor Kalashnikov, Dr. art of, Moscow

The creativity of Oleg Leonov is a peculiar and natural phenomenon of contemporary Russian artistic culture. He offers the viewer a complex game of meanings and forms that requires both a common culture and imagination in interpreting images. At the same time, such a game is possible only with absolute possession of the technical side of performance. The fact is that one of the most important ways to evoke the reaction of the viewer is the ability to give the image the greatest certainty, persuasiveness. Unconditional mastery allows the artist to stay within the framework of a serious conversation with all the irony and grotesque of his works. And the metaphor does not become a self-sufficient component of Oleg's paintings, because of the special plastic saturation of each image. Creativity of the artist gives a convincing example of a certain pattern, sometimes overlooked in the analysis and evaluation of the phenomena of art: there is a certain level of perfection of the form, which provides artistry to the work. So, the make-up of every detail, supplemented by the gracefulness of the picturesque maestry that does not hide the texture of the smear, does not hamper perception in the "Solo with a red saw" at the level of the simplest verbal interpretations, but it helps to build complex associative chains. However, the word for Leonov means a lot. Like the great predecessors of the nineteenth century, our contemporary is attentive to the title of his works. The hero of his "Accountant" is the only one not only living, but furiously declaring his liveliness in the middle of the deserted plain, suitable only to produce bad infinity. He falls out like an anti-Adam, giving names to the dead and recounting the deceased, trying to give things a needlework, but no one has ever needed signs of vitality, thus becoming a gardener of the uninhabited. The metaphorical nature of the language and the complexity of the picturesque structure of Oleg Leonov's paintings that attract the prepared spectator do not become abstract constructs of "pure art", but they acquire the life of an actual artistic expression. The canvas "Empire" is a very significant one in the year of the century of revolutions, the counterposition of stability and fall, fire and cold, behind which the broadest spectrum of reactions is seen. And not so much on the events of a century ago, but rather on the possible prospects of the current Russian society. The very space of Leonov's pictures is meaningful, metaphysical clarity is combined in his nature with plastic mobility, each time leaving the viewer the possibility of maneuver in interpreting the image from general concepts to concrete experiences.