А. Сафарова, Л.Дашевская. Статья «Портрет как жанр индивидуальности». Журнал «ДИ» №7-8, 2003
«Портретный жанр в творчестве Зураба Церетели занимает особое место. Церетелевские портреты представляют огромную галерею типов, неистощимую в раскрытии все новых и новых нюансов душевного облика. Здесь царит культ индивидуальности, но в то же время все эти индивидуальности есть грани одного огромного кристалла - Человека. Все они такие разные и одновременно единосущностные. Так что же это за сущность, которая их объединяет? Бодлер утверждал, что портрет - это драматизированная биография. А Шопенгауэр говорил, что каждый из нас носит в себе готовый алфавит для прочтения тех иероглифов, которые скрыты в чужой физиономии. Но задача художника не только прочесть, но еще и, может быть, максимально обнажить эти иероглифы. Жанр портрета неизбежно содержит конфликт: с одной стороны есть задача портретного сходства, но с другой стороны есть авторская воля избрать, в чем прежде всего это сходство заключено. К тому же художник, добиваясь индивидуального сходства модели на портрете проявляет при этом свою индивидуальность как мастера. Для Церетели проблема портрета сводится к творческому углублению личностного начала модели и даже к утрированию ее характера через деформацию пропорций. Можно говорить о гротеске или о повышенной в искусстве художника роли эмоционально-деформирующего или интеллектуально-анализирующего начала. К деформации Зураб Церетели прибегает для усиления монументальности, подчеркивающей личностную значимость модели. Той же цели - монументальности и острой характерности - служит и предпочтение, которое он отдает изображениям строго в фас или в профиль. И в этом можно увидеть аналогию с изображенями человека в культурах Древнего мира, любивших однозначную конкретность и даже порой буквальность в характеристиках моделей. Кроме того, Церетели часто использует прием, характерный для древнеегипетского искусства, в частности для фаюмского портрета, - оплечное изображение на нейтральном фоне. Тем самым образ как будто бы изолируется от реального бытия, но в то же время и индивидуализируется. Цель такого композиционного решения - дать отвлеченное от всякого сюжета изображение индивидуального человека - замкнутого в себе мира. Как показывает опыт, обращение к живой традиции первичного искусства (восточного, греческого и т.д.), от которой можно провести проекцию, проложить мост к современности, что и делает Церетели, оказывается весьма результативным. Именно архаика становится для художника предметом сосредоточенного, программного интереса. Но при этом архаика для Церетели - один из приемов, к которому он прибегает, когда этого требует решение образно-символической задачи, при этом он вносит в древний прием новые смыслы. Так, в фаюмском портрете изображение головы воспринимается как форма, предназначенная для приема души, если той захочется «навестить» свою оболочку. Церетели же, утрируя внешнее сходство, что особенно заметно именно при фронтальных и профильных изображениях, предлагает синтез - отображая внешний облик модели, проявляет и психологический сгусток образа, сохраняя при этом ритм ее динамического бытия (через колористическое решение) - того, что есть в модели непрерывного. Именно динамическое, в отличие от известной статики Ренессанса и абсолютной статики в изображениях человека в искусстве Древнего мира, характеризует портреты Церетели. Примечательно, что психологической определенности церетелевских портретов нисколько не противоречит безымянность многих из них. Более того, у художника портретна даже обнаженка. Это тоже почти всегда и характер, и неповторимость душевного склада. И едва ли найдется хоть одна бездушная штудия, потому что для Зураба Церетели обнаженное тело - возвышенная поэзия. Субстанцией этой поэзии становится не только изображение, но и сам мазок, движение кисти мастера, которые передают напряженность чувства и видения и завораживающую непринужденность их проявления. И в этом Церетели наследует Модильяни. Обычно краски в портретах преимущественно были и остаются по сей день средством скорее известной идеализации, нежели экспрессии, выражением индивидуальности художника, а не индивидуальности модели. Но Зураб Церетели именно в красках дает настоящий психологический анализ, находя красочный лейтмотив, свойственный данному человеку, добиваясь унисона между красочной гаммой и духовной сущностью изображаемого лица. Здесь он следует вангоговскому принципу индивидуализации колорита соответственно «естественной живописности» каждой модели. Краска становится носительницей духовного сходства модели с портретом, своего рода ее символическим знаком, а тона - показателями ее душевной температуры. В психологической характеристике так же участвует и живопись фона, всегда по-разному красноречивая. Она создает эмоциональную атмосферу портрета. Колорит фона неотделимо связан с колоритом лица и фигуры то по контрасту, то по тончайшему слиянию, то по какой-то менее явной, но всегда ощутимой перекличке. И в этом смысле очень интересную группу составляют женские портреты с букетами цветов. Цветы - первое украшение Первой Женщины, вечное напоминание об утраченном Рае, символ быстротечности жизни и одновременно ее постоянного обновления. Художник пишет не столько сами цветы, сколько тенденцию материи к цветению, фиксируя квинтэссенцию бытия плоти. Эти проблемы взаимоотношения времени, бесконечно малого и бесконечно великого, бренного и вечного, так интересующие Зураба Церетели, - это все те же вопросы, которые волновали мастеров средневековья и Ренессанса. Интересно, что в некоторых работах именно цветы занимают главное место, а женские образы играют аккомпанирующую роль. И уже становится непонятно, что перед нами - портрет или натюрморт? Так и в «Девочке с персиками» Серова вплавленные в образную структуру полотна фрукты одновременно и самоценны, и служат метафорой наливающейся соками юности. Это сравнение Церетели с Серовым может прозвучать несколько неожиданно, но между тем в методе портретирования, избранном обоими художниками, суть которого заключается в том, что психологическая характеристика изображаемого человека, передача его духовного мира дается не в постепенном развертывании, а как бы сразу схваченные и отраженные художником, улавливается внутреннее сходство двух мастеров. Но у Серова это часто жанровое решение портрета, в то время как у Церетели оно все же в большей мере пластическое. Проникновенный художник внутренних движений души, Зураб Церетели создает образы такой эмоционально-психологической насыщенности, что они в какой-то мере лишаются своей конкретики: с одной стороны приближаясь к характерам-типам, а с другой - становясь красочным выражением некой сублимации состояний человеческого духа вообще, например, «Инесса» (1991). Профильное, погрудное изображение молодой женщины, содержащее в себе черты яркой портретной характеристики. Длинная шея, высоко поднятая голова, решительный взгляд, устремленный вдаль. Во всем ее царственном облике столько достоинства и уверенной решительности, свойственной молодости, всеми своими помыслами устремленной в будущее, что юная женщина начинает восприниматься как символ цветущей юности, именно «цветущей» - румянец на ее щеке подобен розе, это ощущение усиливается вкраплениями зеленого по нижней границе розового пятна (опять та же тема: женщина-цветок). Не случайно портрет имеет еще одно название - «Смотрящая вдаль». Или еще один портрет - «Дирижер Джансуг Кахидзе» (1988). Композиционное и живописное решение таково, что конкретный музыкант начинает восприниматься как символ творческого горения, как полное растворение человека в мире искусства. Пробивается человеческий образ как источник и причина этих движений души и мысли».
А. Сафарова, Л.Дашевская. Статья «Портрет как жанр индивидуальности». Журнал "ДИ" №7-8, 2003
Artist as a symbol Zurab Tsereteli is today something of a symbol. The resources of this symbol seem untapped. The scale of his personality as an artist is well known, but there are a great many aspects to it that have not yet been revealed in full. It is certain that he is a wide-ranging artist. It is also certain that he is capable of organizing and modernizing the Academy of Arts, setting up museums, galleries and cultural centres, gathering collections of art. His personality has changed the public's image of the status of the artistic profession, and the image of an artistic personality in the modern world. There is in the art of Zurab Tsereteli one quality which matters greatly if we want to understand its deep-lying essence, which neither artists nor the public have yet been fully aware of. It is the poetry of his work. His philosophy as an artist is mainly based on his faith in man's high predestination and in the world's positive fundamental principles, as well as on his conviction that the universe draws for energy on exchange of goodness and light and that beauty of nature and man and beauty of their relationship serve as proof that the world is well built. Zurab Tsereteli is now perhaps the most authoritative artist. At any rate, he is holding the top and central position in the landscape of art. At the same time, there is still much controversy about him. Paradoxically enough, he has retained a comprehensive and dynamic individuality throughout the past decade, when most artists have been striving to work out a recognizable, durable trademark style and secure for themselves a niche in the virtual museum and art market of today. Zurab Tsereteli, instead, has proved strong enough to resist the pressure of the mainstream. He has remained sensitive to his own variable impulses and to his own responses to personal and outside events, moods, impressions, ideas or simply to his own inner rhythms, "the way my blood beats time". The scale of Zurab Tsereteli's sculptural projects usually gives rise to much more controversy than any other of his works. Their monumentality leaves some stunned, others annoyed. Still, his exhibition at the Gallery of Arts, Zurab Tsereteli's largest project, was in fact staged on such a grand scale that not all visitors were able to see, or, rather, comprehend, every piece exhibited. The exhibition was a wide-ranging cross-section of what the master had created over the 45 years of work. Anyone looking at it could not help thinking that Zurab Tsereteli's work as a whole is in fact a single well-conceived artistic project. Of course, there had been similar projects in history before. Take, for example, the novelists Balzac and Zola or the painters Gauguin, Cеzanne, Kandinsky and Malevich. But Balzac' The Human Comedy, and Malevich's suprematist cycles, which the painter conceived as style rather than as a philosophy of the world and existence, and Gauguin's pictures of the Tahitian paradise, and Kandinsky's abstract paintings as means of making man learn more about their spiritual inner essence - all these works, for all their grand-scale conception, were just stages in the work of each of the artists. Now, for an artist who looked upon his lifetime work as a single artistic blueprint no parallel can be found. Undoubtedly, Zurab Tsereteli is the first in the history of art. The philosophy of the project exhibited at the Gallery of Arts can epitomized as the trinity of the world of emotion, the world of spirit and the world of culture. Beneath its contemplative, philosophical and cultural top crust lies another, no less daring project aimed at analyzing the history of painting in terms of art. Zurab Tsereteli does it with his professional language - the language of painting. This underlying project may be treated as a dialogue Zurab Tsereteli conducts with masters of different periods in a language common for all of them. The result is a double-layer show, on the surface a large project of artistic, philosophical and cultural content offered to the public at large, beneath a strictly professional one devoted to the history of painting. As a special form of expression, the latter assumes that viewers have been trained enough to be able to see it and more so into order to understand and conceptualize it. The professional history of painting written by a painter with means of painting itself is undoubtedly Zurab Tsereteli's another pioneering achievement. In his portraits, Zurab Tsereteli solves his problem by gaining a deeper insight into the personality of the model and even by emphasizing his or her character through deformed proportions. It may be taken as something of a grotesque. Or it may be seen as the artist's more reliance on principles of emotional deformation or intellectual analysis in his work. Quite often Zurab Tsereteli makes use of a technique characteristic of ancient Egyptian painting, in particular, of the Fayum portrait, in which the bust of a figure was depicted against a neutral background. This makes the image appear isolated from the real surroundings. Zurab Tsereteli, however, draws on ancient techniques when such are needed for solving his own visual and symbolic problems. And in doing so, he always makes an ancient technique render new meanings. By emphasizing a model's outward likelihood (more noticeable in frontal and profile portraits) he offers a kind of synthesis by showing a psychological epitome of the image, alongside with its outer appearance, and at the same time by retaining (through a colour solution) the rhythm of its dynamic existence, that is what is seen as continual in the model. Zurab Tsereteli's portraits are startlingly dynamic, compared to notoriously static Renaissance portraits and especially absolutely static images of human figures in ancient Greek and Roman art. Of special interest in this sense are his female portraits with flowers. Flowers in them suggest the adoration of the First Woman, the eternal reminder of the lost paradise, the symbol of fast fleeting life and at the same time the symbol of continuous rejuvenation of life. He paints not flowers as such, but, rather, the tendency of matter towards flowering, thereby fixing the quiescence of flesh in existence. These problems - relation between time, infinitely small and infinitely large, mortal and eternal - sound as much challenging to Zurab Tsereteli, as they sounded to the great masters of the Middle Ages and Renaissance.
A shrewd psychologist, Zurab Tsereteli creates images of such emotional and mental intensity that they somehow look devoid of their particular characteristics that make them distinct from any other images. On the one hand, they resemble type characters; on the other, they appear to be a colour expression of some sublimation of one or other state of the human spirit in general. The master prefers painting those who are akin to him in spirit, such as musicians and painters. On the other hand, he takes interest in common people who are concerned with their daily needs and truths, such as peasants, traders, janitors. Portraits of the latter kind appear naive, dreamy, at times sentimental, open-minded and gullible. They appeal with their sincerity. Sometimes they look funny, sometimes too self-concentrated, sometimes ill at ease. But they invariably retain their inner dignity and their somehow unmistakable individuality. Each figure is a world unto itself. In terms of character, Zurab Tsereteli's portrait figures range from generalized ideal to differentiated in features as type characters. The master likes to paint a human figure in the form of a plant. It seems as if the bodies curved in a wave-like rush are meant to convey the unity of the natural origin of all things living and at the same time serve as a metaphor of the mental state which makes its outer appearance look so differently. In this way the master is able to render agitation, inspiration or creative drive in the dancers, musicians, singers and itinerant actors he shows in his portraits. In short, deformation in Zurab Tsereteli's portraits is the result of inner impulses rather than external forces, as in Picasso's portraits. Thus, short legs in his portraits can be seen as a metaphor of "down-to-earth", not in any spiritual sense but as belonging to all things created. A vertically elongated torso, on the one hand, suggests a tree trunk or a stalk which strives towards the sun against the gravitation of the earth, and, on the other, may be seen as the aspiration of earth-born man to reach summits of spirit. Things created in Zurab Tsereteli's portraits are not antipodes to things divine. Their unity is characteristic of both man and all things living. This theme is articulated most graphically in his paintings devoted to love, both sublime and sensuous, holly and sinful. There is something pantheistic about his worship of every thing on earth, rejecting asceticism and declaring man's right to unrestrained Dionysian happiness. He looks upon life in its origins as a realm of pristine emotions. His interpretation of the motif of beautiful nudity is at once poetic and sensuous. In his works on ancient Greek and Roman themes and biblical themes, he comes close to the nature of ancient myths, expressing, on the one hand, natural instinct in its original spontaneity and, on the other, supreme wisdom of being. Spiritual and corporeal become merged. His male and females figures are the same Adam and Eve. They are like eternal nature re-born in every male and every female. "Psychology" of still lifes Zurab Tsereteli's still lifes show, perhaps more than any other of his works, that his system of visual presentation has, at least, three levels of perception. The first level is the flesh of art itself, that is combination of patches of colour. They act on our subconscious perception by virtue of intensity of colour, configuration of colour silhouettes and juxtaposition of colours. These patches of colour, arranged with a particular rhythm, are, in effect, the decorative content of a work of art. The second level is sensuous perception. This kind of perception comes at that level of seeing at which patches of colour, lines and texture of brushwork take the form of a bundle of flowers or a pile of fruits, that is what makes up the corporeal world of a still life. To Zurab Tsereteli, everything on earth is beautiful in itself and deserves to be presented visually not just for its beauty and significance but also for its belonging to the whole world, beautiful and filled with air and light. Finally, the third level is a contemplative one. Every objective image in Zurab Tsereteli's paintings, besides a particular content as visible in its outward appearance, also bears one or more deep-lying meanings. This three-level message discernible in his still lifes is indeed characteristic of Zurab Tsereteli's general method as an artist. ...in the name of nature... Zurab Tsereteli's landscapes are not "pure" landscapes as such. Every of his landscapes contains something suggestive of man's presence, either a cottage, or a cartwheel, or a jug, or anything else. Once again, this tells of the unity of all things on earth, though, in such cases, not directly, through somebody's image, but through traces left by somebody. In his landscapes, like "A Village in the Mountains" or "A Log Cabin in the Woods", the houses are fitted into the landscape so naturally that they look like offspring (or creatures) of nature, just like trees or mountains. Their deformation makes them appear as part of the organic world, as though they are living beings, just like elements of the vegetable world. The houses appear as growing out of the surface of the earth. They appear as part of the earth. What is characteristic of Zurab Tsereteli's painting in general is that all meaningful elements on the canvas appear integrated within a single energy field. The forces of this field appear to have the effect of making every detail look similar to one another and beat in unison, as if having been derived from a common principle. Another distinctive feature of Zurab Tsereteli's landscapes, born of his philosophical rather than artistic position, is lack of perspective in the conventional sense of the world. Instead, there are some peculiar rules of perspective composition. For example, a landscape may be viewed from a point somewhere high above, as if from a bird's-eye view, while the horizon runs well below, so that the whole picture assumes a sort of vertical orientation. This is emphasized with some ascending planes (or tiers), but each plane is painted as though viewed from the usual point. On the one hand, this approach to perspective is the result of the painter's upbringing in Georgia, where the mountainous topography of the country tends to make anyone look that way. On the other hand, this approach may be seen as being derived from the painter's study of ancient painting. Tier-wise composition of deep planes can be found in ancient Egyptian, Assyrian, Chinese and even medieval European art. In Zurab Tsereteli's landscapes, planes so arranged are merged into an organic unity of "continuous" nature. ...in the name of holly spirit - art... Art is the consummation of the universe created by Zurab Tsereteli. The image of art is almost always present, either explicitly or implicitly, in every of his works. It is not necessarily personified in figures of artists, such as singers, actors, musicians or painters. It permeates the whole work like a vital blood circulation system. Naturally enough, this temple of art, like any temple, has iconostasis of its own. The reference is to Zurab Tsereteli's paintings dedicated to the masters - Matisse, Modigliani, Picasso, Tyshler, Pirosmani, Van Gogh, Leger, Dali and so forth. The manner in which each of these paintings is produced will itself indicate the master to whom it is dedicated. Nobody will even have to read its title for that. These dedicated paintings may be seen as a sort of dialogue Zurab Tsereteli chooses to share with the master in question as a painter himself. With amazing skill, he is able to spot out the right point of reference in the style of the masters of the past. In doing so, he never borrows direct quotations. Rather, he behaves like an actor in the process of playing a part. When he takes to painting such canvases, he enters into the world of Matisse, Modigliani, Pirosmani or any other master and look at things through his eyes. It is something like the mystic sacrament of letting someone's soul into one's own. sounds of painting Zurab Tsereteli is a knight in the service of painting as ideal. Many of his canvases are real gems of painting: their colours are fanatically splendid, their composition impeccably expressive, their texture intensively powerful. He studied the history of art as a painter, not as a theoretician. He did it literally by touch. This is quite evident in the ways his brushwork and line arrangement vary. Zurab Tsereteli's brushwork is indeed a theme unto itself. Brushwork is a craftsmanship without which no true painter is possible. It is a set of tricks to make the very substance of oil to assume expressiveness. A barely noticeable touch by a craftsman of brushwork can put the movement of thick paints under control. A mere brush stroke can express all. It may convey the painter's adventure, or his spontaneous gesture, or his mental state at the particular moment of painting, or his awareness of the general plan of his work. A brush stroke may even suggest what has not yet happened and even what would happen if the painter's hand makes a bizarre turn, so that the brush stroke would surge up and throw down a viscid wave of paint like an arabesque. The outcome of all this would be that this single tiny spot of the canvas would forever save the bravura of the spontaneous feeling that has pushed it into existence. It may be just an inchoate gesture, yet for its implicit message it would help us feel how stunningly swift the painter's creative emotions may be in their development. Alongside there would be other brush strokes in different shape and with different message, and they altogether would make a work of painting, with its own mood and melody. The tiny brush stroke that has attracted out attention would not get lost. It would sound like a pure note within the general environment of a symphony. It would give unaccountable joy to our guesswork about what power of will may have brought it into existence. For years it would give this kind of joy to anyone who would take pains to look closer at the canvas, without fearing that the assemblage of brush strokes would not conceal from them the theme and composition of the work as they delve into the very substance of the painting and abandon themselves to the elements of painting and the emotions recorded in the well-arranged chaos of brush strokes. Indeed, brushwork serves as a true indicator of the painter's personality and his range of psychological, intellectual and professional capabilities.