Вебинар «"Бубновый валет" и "Ослиный хвост". "Новый примитив" – эгалитарное искусство будущего»

Summary (art-focused)

The speaker runs an online seminar introducing Russian avant-garde “new primitivism” as an egalitarian, anti-elitist art project. It brings together “naive” popular sources—such as lubok/folk prints, children’s drawings, graffiti, market objects, and peasant culture—with professional avant-garde experimentation.

The lecture frames the movement through three landmark exhibition cycles: “Jack of Diamonds,” “Donkey’s Tail,” and “Target.” These circles are explained as evolving through controversy, polemics, and shifting alliances, rather than through stable institutions.

A recurring idea is that artists should update the language of art using visual vocabularies outside institutional authority—while also rethinking what counts as “art” by collapsing hierarchies between:

• elite urban culture and rural folk culture
• “professional” painting and children’s/vernacular drawing
• classical “normative” taste and kitsch/popular mass taste
• pictorial space and flat pictograms/sign-like imagery

The lecture also emphasizes processes of appropriation: borrowing from figures like Gauguin and Van Gogh (often through collections and magazines/reproductions), as well as from icon painting, circus posters, street signage, and imported/exported “japonism”—then recombining these influences into new pictorial systems.

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Artistic techniques & creative processes shown/described

Seminar/game-like artistic method (role immersion)

• Participants choose an artist and live “in character” for about a week by reading/watching/preparing works by their chosen artist.
• During the seminar, groups discuss the works to practice:
  • “thinking like an artist”
  • internalizing the artist’s logic/experience
  • role-play communication behind the screen/avatar

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“New primitivism” and egalitarian aesthetics

The seminar treats vernacular and “low” sources as legitimate artistic material, including:

• lubok prints and folk motifs
• peasant imagery
• children’s drawings
• graffiti/street art
• toys, signs, and pictograms
• market trays, everyday objects, and everyday carnivalesque props

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Formal strategies: flattening, signage, and pictorial “shock”

Key formal approaches include:

• Flatten space: pictorial depth is refused or reconfigured into plane/pictograms.
• Color as direct impulse: color affects viewers before explanation or subject matter.
• Simplified drawing & decorative patterning:
  • ornaments turned into structural elements
  • silhouette reduction with bold contrasts
• Piracy/appropriation as method:
  • motifs are “digested” (absorbed and rewritten) from multiple sources
  • style imitation is treated as creative transformation, not as plagiarism avoidance

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Exhibition-as-art and controversy-driven creativity

Avant-garde circles are described as behaving like collectives that evolve through conflicts:

• “Jack of Diamonds”: a model of a community that forms, argues, fractures, and generates new programs.
• “Donkey’s Tail”: shifts toward more radical play—graffiti-like rudeness, children’s drawing energy, and censorship conflicts.
• “Target”: treated as an apex—consolidating “new primitivism,” including children’s drawings and formal anti-elitism.

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Materials/inputs explicitly mentioned (as sources of imagery)

• Satirical magazines (for anti-monarchist/anti-religious material)
• Icon painting studies and fresco restoration context
• Collections and reproductions via Moscow patrons and magazines
• Circus posters and market/estate props
• Street signs, advertising text, pictograms
• Gauguin/Van Gogh imagery (especially via reproductions and collection access)
• Children’s drawings (treated as raw artistic material for exhibitions)

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Contributors / creators mentioned

Main named artists and groups/circles

• Mikhail Larionov
• Natalia Goncharova
• Ilya Mashkov
• Mikhail/“Misha” Konchalovsky (subtitles are inconsistent, but “Konchalovsky” is repeatedly referenced)
• Alexey Morgunov (also referenced as a “legend”; subtitles may contain name confusion)
• Valentin Serov
• Marc Chagall
• Kazimir Malevich
• Vladimir Tatlin
• Alexander Shevchenko (referenced in “Target” context, including factory/graffiti resonance)
• Viktor Bort (sometimes rendered as “Viktor Bork/Bort”)
• Aristarkh Lentulov
• Robert Falk
• Pavel Filonov (mentioned via icon painting/mosaic-like associations)
• Bogomazov and Bogomazova
• Pirosmani (Niko Pirosmani)
• Kirill Zdanevich and KiriI/“Danevich” brothers (part of the “Target” resonance)
• Elu/Lentulov? (subtitles are inconsistent; Lentulov and Larionov are key recurring names)
• Alexey Kruchenykh
• Marina Tsvetaeva (as an essay/ideation reference)
• Vladimir Obolensky / “Obolensky”
• Vladimir Bulgakov / “Bulgakov” (mentioned as a seminar participant)
• Ivan Petrov (mentioned as a seminar participant)

Patrons/venues/related references

• Tretyakov Gallery
• Russian Museum
• Jewish Museum
• Sergei Shchukin (collection/patron)
• Morozov collection / Mikhail Morozov
• Polytechnic Museum (referenced as a dispute/exhibition-related location)
• Museum of St. Petersburg city history

Seminar organization / speaker

The lecturer/speaker is not explicitly named as a person in the subtitles, but is described through repeated addressing of participants and seminar logistics.