MOSCOW, Sept 12 (Reuters) - British art curator James Brett
believes people are either born artists or they are not.
The eccentric founder of the "Museum of Everything" toured
Russia this summer hunting for self-taught and unknown artists
to take part in a book project and show.
L aunched in 2009, Brett's travelling museum offers
"undiscovered, unintentional and untrained" artists a platform
to show their works to a wider audience, a chance few would
likely receive from professional galleries or museums.
"Art begins at birth, it doesn't begin with education,"
Brett said while vetting submissions in Moscow for "Exhibition
#5", the museum's new Russian project.
"There are artists making art in secret, expressing some
personal vision of life today. The only way to find them is to
publicise and tell them we'll give them a forum and we'll show
their art here, inside the museum."
The Museum travelled across five Russian cities in the
course of five weeks, holding open days for people to present
their works to a jury headed by Brett, who said he was searching
for "truthful" pieces "not copying, not in a style."
Having undertaken similar projects in Britain, Brett, joined
by representatives of Moscow art centre Garage, took two empty
trucks across part of Russia to fill them up with works from
more than 500 artists.
The final selection will be announced shortly and will
include at least 25 discoveries to be displayed in April 2013 at
Garage and curated alongside historic Russian self-taught
artists from the 20th and 21st centuries, Brett said.
All the artists who pitched up will also appear photographed
with their works in a book published ahead of the exhibit.
"All the artists will be published. Because every single
person is important, each project is really a snapshot of Russia
today in terms of creative expression," Brett said.
Arriving alone or represented by family or friends, artists
submitted works ranging from the deeply philosophical to the
comical.
Whatever the interface or scope of their works, all artists
had a lot to say and had never before had the opportunity to say
it, due to "segregation and bias of curators, who only want fine
artists from fine-art institutions," Brett said.
Konstantin Sidoruk, a 45-year-old molecular biologist from
the Moscow region, took his chalk drawings around galleries in
Moscow and St Petersburg for a decade only to be sent off, until
he heard about the Museum of Everything on television.
"I've gone to galleries for years. They said it was not
interesting from the point of view of contemporary art. But I
knew it was good and continued doing it," he told Reuters after
submitting drawings of angels or wingless birds to the Museum.
"I would like for my works to go to the people, and I want
for them (gallerists) to stop pointing fingers at me saying 'You
are not an artist'. I want recognition," he said.
Having consciously timed his tour in Russia, where the
opposition rallies and protest art flourished around the
presidential election, won by Vladimir Putin in March, Brett
said he expected to see more political art than he did.
"There are protests, but they are very soft, very gentle. We
don't see that much politicised art because people are afraid to
express it. In Moscow people are a little bolder," he said,
adding that he saw some violence and anger among street artists.
In most Russian works, ranging from landscape paintings to
verbal philosophy, however, the themes of Christianity, history,
mostly Soviet, and nature, prevailed, Brett said.
"It's metaphor for Russia, for religion. People are
searching for meaning. People are searching for spiritual truth,
looking for divine life..., trying to recapture history, to find
out who they are."