ELINSON, SHARRAD AND A CERTAIN KHACHATURIAN
Garik Elinson who was invited to visit Salvador Dali, said it was the most boring evening in his life. Dali and Gala were sitting silently like painted wax figures with communication skills matching the Madame Tussaud’s heroes. OK, nothing unusual, a visit likes any other visit. Aram Khachaturian had a different kind of encounter with Dali. A mile away from the Dali’s Spanish castle the road ended in a plowed field (Mr. Dali couldn’t stand the noise of cars and their honking). Khachaturian was helped out of the car, escorted to the gate and allowed to enter the courtyard. From the opposite gate, to the sounds of "Saber Dance" Salvador Dali jumped out on his horse and rode a couple of laps, waving his saber, and then the gate shut behind him. “The audience is over,” the secretary announced. Khachaturian trudged back across the plow in the perfectly Spanish heat.
Another Khachaturian story I heard from a Journalist from Pavlodar (Kazakhstan), who covered the Khachaturian’s visit with a recital in Novosibirsk or a similar place. No doubt, the best hotel suite was reserved for him. There he went, unpacking his makeshift bar with the best Armenian brandy; Zhora the Maître d’ inquires what Aram Ilyich deigns to order for dinner. “Well, let’s say veal and, whatever, I don’t know… shrimp for sure…“ Zhora and Komsomol secretary discussed the situation and call the whores: “Listen, whores! Quick, rinse yourselves and come to dinner with Khachaturian himself!” “Aram Ilyich, shrimps are served!” And the three whores fluttered in the room. “Get the hell outa here!” Khachaturian yelled.
So much for the Khachaturians… Arnold Sharrad in Lvov dreamt a dream that Dali drew a picture and gave it to him as a gift. Waking up he saw nothing but plain Soviet reality. After a while he immigrated to Israel, and then went to New York, where he is now. He was working as a restorer in a major company. One day Salvador Dali comes in with an order, clad in a leopard fur coat, accompanied by his secretary. He checked out Arnold’s work and liked it. Drew his autograph on Arnold’s palette and posed for a snapshot, all three of them, Arnold with a beard, Dali with his moustache. The clean shaved one is the secretary, a well-known crook. Arnold told me that when Dali had his depression, he would slip blank sheets of paper under Dali’s hand saying: “Well, at least, draw an autograph!” And then printed fake lithographs on them. There were other versions of the story: Dali was quite comfortable himself signing the blank sheets and the procedure was routinely streamlined: the secretary brings the sheet, Dali signs, and the wife picks up, a pipeline process. Still not enough to get really rich… Nowadays they are advertizing the rugs hastily produced after his designs (instead of 89 marked 86, and “due to Mr. Dali poor health” instead of 3 thousand bucks just 1 and a half… an opportunity! I’ve seen those ads in the same magazine on the spread, Chagall, Dali and Chemiakin at one price range. That’s why Chemiakin refused to drop his John Hancock on an empty canvas I found in his john. What if I daub something on it and then sell? So, I had Yesaul to sign the canvas, which lowered its value. In any case, I never painted anything on it, just left it lying somewhere blank and crumpled…
The very next day poor little Sharrad was laid off. But he left the company in a good mood: meeting Dali in person is nothing to sneeze at! And to be photographed with a great man and get his autograph! Arnold still can’t get around to take for me the autograph photo he promised… Oh, well, at least I have the photo of the three guys…
Sharrad lives in the Arab quarter of Brooklyn with his pictures and cats, makes a living restoring paintings, in the interim paints his own stuff. He used to have 4 cats, now 3, each has a name and an attitude. They go out to get some fresh air right out the window onto the tarred roof. Arnold prefers to have the woods for his outdoor walks. Once he was driving us in Nekrasov’s car to pick cornel berries. Sometimes he goes by himself on a train to pick wild mushrooms. And he is a real expert in pickled mushrooms. Sometimes I get a jar from him. As for his pictures, he rarely gives them, unlike Chemyakin, Mezhberg, Dlugy and others. Having no permanent wife, hangs around with Nekrassov’s crowd. He was born with his hand stuck to his head in a pose of Rodin’s Thinker. He lets everybody to feel the dent on his head. Always cheerful, sociable, smiling, friendly, and while in a melancholic state prefers to stay away from people. In such cases writes poetry. Comes to see almost all the exhibitions, exhibits himself rarely, mostly in my place. The nickname is "Koshatik" (Cat man) he calls animals "lyulechka" and likes them more than people. Still, to the humans, like I said, he is always friendly and never envious.
Doesn’t like reading since his childhood, but likes to write instead. I enjoy reading his stuff, so does Ocheretyansky (for the free verse sake). Works in surrealism and abstraction, as well as pop art. He writes intuitively, doesn’t claim to be a poet, that’s why I publish him.
*
the painting is drying
soft wind rustles over the roof
it’s late
morning already
cats, go to bed
*
the far away gaggle
of flying swans
sounded in vain
nowadays real poets die out
*
sitting in the kitchen, smoking
myself
and two cats
*
hurrying to get home
a dog is running by
wind sweeps the leaves
I’ve got hot bagels in my hands
*
someone said to me
jump off the cliff
I did
and ascended
*
when you wake up in the morning
what sadness and joy
there’s nobody around
LVOV
About Lvov… I don’t remember anything
Lvov, Lvov, Lvov
A City of fashion
Love is Lvov
A souvenir for a foreigner
Rattling with Number Twelve Tram
The old flame of Polish women
The cobbles of the Market Square
City of
Fashion
Lvov
Love
Lvov where people speak Polish, Ukrainian and of course Russian, where local Ukrainians (party functionaries) complaining in private, saying sotto voce, we are not against new order, but allow us to manage things here. Lvov became Soviet as recently as 1939.
I left everything behind. Dad, mom, doggie, the balcony and the outdoor market with sunflower seeds, the old Striysky Park across the street (with swans, their wings clipped so they won’t fly away). The taxicab was waiting… Upstairs to kiss good-bye… And the hell out of here…
“You can daub your own anew”, said the gallery director when he realized that I overpainted my “formalism” with realistic gouache only to wash it off in New York. I am tired of painting and heap the pictures up on top of the wardrobe, showing them occasionally just to a few of my friends. In the gallery you get rejected every time: too dark, to thick layer of paint. Finally one got approved; a cityscape, an empty street. I was proud being mentioned in a paper, criticized for the absence of people in the street. “Where is our contemporary reality, the bright colors of today, faith in our great future” and so on. But I was still glad being noticed.
I dreamt a dream: in a gallery, a purchasing committee is working. Pictures in antique frames facing the wall. In the back are the old canvases, darkened and covered with cobweb. Someone says “At least from one Yid we can buy”. And my artist friends, ooh and aah, modernism, eh… What kind of artist you are if you don’t drink? But what can I do if tastes and smells bad to me, am I allergic or something? I rather go to the woods or fishing at night.
[OBVIOUSLY PART OF THE MANUSCRIPT IS MISSING HERE]
… expressionism, but everything is softer and warmer. They betray the hardships of her younger years, and she was happy when the Russians came and took care of her. But later they disapprove the lack of realism in her works. I only remember her last name: Selskaya. Ecole de Paris. She lived there. Post-impressionist roots… Carpathian rural landscapes. Warm color range of red ochre brushstrokes, very dense, fleshy , even un-feminine.
Skobalo, Ivan Mikhailovich, who liked to repeat: “Step the way Chagall did” [an untranslatable pun – step is shag in Russian] He and his wife Sonya (his former model) were heavy drinkers. He has taught at the Institute of Applied Arts where he was expelled from for condoning modernist inclinations of his students. Once, confused, I painted my exam still-life over to make more acceptable, and in the morning did it again my way. A student of Selskaya and Levitsky.
Here in the States, when I recall my student years, it’s amazing how brilliant they could draw and paint. Just plain masters!
Leshchiner Mikhail Ivanovich was a pupil of Tatyana Yablonskaya. A homeless Jewish boy from Odessa, where he enrolled in the Art School, he liked to show how he clacked Internationale on his teeth to get his alms in the market square. Drew cartoons condemning Zionist aggressors.
Siper Beniamin Pavlovich, studied with Malevich for 1 school year in St. Petersburg, but later became regular bland realist with no spice. After reviewing my experiments he stated that he couldn’t tell if I have any abilities, which made me feel really offended.
The Hutsul ceramics and glass is the pride of the folk artisans of the Western Ukraine. Green-ochre stove tiles with primitive designs: rural musicians, animals, marvelous floral decorations. The Hutsul land has its own Trembita, a very lo-o-o-o-ng wooden pipe which requires two people to play. One holds it by the bell end, the other does the blowing. Heard far… The ancient Chasidic cemeteries of Subcarpathia. Brody. Skole. Nikolayev. Stone Torahs, flowers and imaginary beasts. Ever read Babel’s Kozino Cemetery? Read it. I went there. To find. Searched. Found. The old tombstones were removed and used to pave the floor of a shooting gallery, the rest stolen and made into porch steps. A local old woman told me that it wasn’t the Germans, who did it, it happened after war.
Sometimes we had exhibits of very modernist stuff from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary in the House of Architects on Podvalnaya Street, near 13th Century Armenian cathedral. The guys from the gallery, the reestorers, told me there are treasures kept in the cellars there. The most ancient Armenian icons, inlaid with precious stones. Nobody ever saw them, except some top officials. The young artists, officially recognized, as far as I remember: Patyk, Medvid, Puskas. The latter moved to Hungary. His works remind Emile Bernard. As Petyk wrote he also had French roots, with Ukrainian ethnicity. Andrew Wyeth was Medvid’s idol. He was one of the favorites of the local art scene. His stuff sold well. City gallery had some works of him with Kolkhoz themes.
Boris Ponizovsky came in 1973 to stage Divine comedy for puppets. My friend Misha Khusid, student of television directing, brought him. Along with him came a group of Petersburg Theater Institute puppetry graduated students. Boris was accommodated directly in the theater in the room next to the prop storage in a room where we had hung out all nights long.
We were very enthusiastic about the whole affair and full of hope that puppets could help us to get through with our own new ideas. The main concept was to have the black chamber and no hand puppets. The stage, entirely lined with black velvet with the actors clad in all black, face and hands also covered, only slits made for eyes. Invisible for the audience they would manipulate the puppets, small to huge (there was an Elephant and a Whale). Boris produced the show, I made the designs for puppets and the stage. The whole thing never got further than a standard playbill, my designs (now in Petersburg Ponizovsky Archive) and beyond heated debates with the theater management. We were informed that our concept was too innovative, went further than even the Baltic republics would allow and the local Culture Administration would never permit this show. That was the end of the affair. In the fall I left for good, and Boris, as I heard, went to Kurgan with his idea. Might be, he was lucky there in the land of no return.
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