Why do you make art?
When I make art, paint a picture, do a sculpture, write a literary work, I am guided by INTUITION on the basis of conscious MOTIVATION.
A few words about my path, my creative experience over 65 years.
After graduating from the ART College, which received a wonderful ACADEMIC education, from 1963 to 1977, I lived like Sakya Muni, like Buddha.
I worked, became recognized as an artist. Received the biggest PRIZES, participated in the Biennale in Paris, Berlin, in Dusseldorf, had more than a hundred exhibitions in Russia and abroad.
In 1977 I found out about the conscious PASSING of a close friend of mine, twenty years older than me!
It was a SHOCK for me!
The death of my friend, one of the most educated people, he knew all European languages, made me ask myself, “Who are you? Romantic?” – And I was terrified!
I have not worked for a long time. I was thinking: “Who are you? Why do you live on the Earth?”
Just like Sakya Muni-Buddha – I’ve got the answer.
Being a Holocaust victim, I escaped death as I was born in evacuation ..
Born as Jesus (not in a stable), but in YURTA, in a distant, wonderful country – KYRGYZSTAN.
In the House of Creativity I met wonderful artists, friends from Central Asia – INTELLECTUALS, smart people, men of great depth, unencumbered by ART MARKET, ART BAZAR!
Later in Moscow, in the city where the GENE POOL was still preserved, other people were living: artists, writers, musicians, I met most of them and made friends with them…
In the famous book ”FROM THE ARCHIPELAGUS TO PUBLICITY” the name of Lucien Dulfan is mentioned many times. In the section “RELIGION”, which refers to the proximity to O. Tselkov, that is to say about my interest in the Old and New Testaments, as the latest achievements of mankind for the last 3, 4 thousand years of monotheism.
MY FRIEND’S PASSING made me scream loudly! ABOUT DEMONS, DEVILS, dropping monuments!
In the Odessa Museum there is a wonderful work by Michelangelo Caravaggio “ARREST”’ or “TAKING THE CHRIST”! The culmination of the arrest of God-Man Jesus Christ. Since 1977, I have made more than 200 artworks on the theme “KISS”, “ARREST”, devoting these 200 works to my deceased friend.
My idea is “JUDAS KISS”, “ARREST” – the arrest of the innocent is underway!
Having lived in New York for 30 years, I gained a huge life experience! Received invaluable INFORMATION about art, about life. And became more aware of my MOTIVATIONS.
What changes can art make to life?
Did my idea suddenly find an interesting angle?
The heroes of my latest works are HOMELESS, they don’t have a roof over their heads, they live without a real-world DOME, they exist under the sky, the sun, the moon – under the Сanopy of Heaven. Defenseless, physically weak.
There is a kind of adjudgments – to put under “HOUSE ARREST”!
The real-world house is the place of DETENTION, without the right to go outside, without the right to communicate!
It turns out that people under the CROWN VIRUS, which sweep the inhabitants of the EARTH, made them live in closed HOUSES!
So they turned out to be homeless! All living humans on the EARTH are homeless!
Will the inhabitants of the Earth hang a picture on the WALL, that doesn’t EXIST? Or put sculptures on
NON-EXISTING AREAS? ..
How would you characterize the time we live in?
The time we live in? The time that belongs to a “HOMELESS DRIVER… THE CAR, THAT HE DRIVES STILL”
And the artist LIVES CONSTANTLY in “STRANGE TIME”’ – regardless of war, plague, coronavirus…TIME is ALWAYS “STRANGE” for those who are looking deep into ONESELVES!
Canvases, that are found, wood and plywood, any materials, that can be of any use for artworks – do these things GIVE A HINT to the artist what to do? How to enter a temporal TIME?
As a case in point: I have found large plywood sheets, TESLA cars were packed in it.
On the top of it there is a message “DRIVE SLOWLY” – I thought, “ISN’T IT SWEET?”
Once I saw an artist, he was sitting on the ground and he was drawing something under a spring rain. Madly [devotedly], absent-minded, he was drawing with chalks.
I asked if I may take the photo. Silence. He kept drawing. I took a photo.
That “DRIVE SLOWLY” is right on point! “This HOMELESS is my DRIVER!”
It took me six months to implement the idea of a HOMELESS DRIVER!
The first big work is TRIPTYCH. Very sophisticated collage. Made of the many multicolored black-brown-bright-colored pieces of plywood, all the figures are pierced by hundreds of black pieces of wooden nails! Like a wild creature! Namely WILD! CREATURE!
On the left on the triptych – on a large plywood sheet lies our TESLA driver.
He is covered with the American flag, a dog has perched on his feet. A huge pile of hair, headphones between the hair. Above him, riders on motorcycles bailing out are carved on plywood.
There are many, many cans of beer under him. Beer cans imitation is like a DREAM of a free man! DREAM with music, half-drunk, happy, CAREFUL!
The central figure is an African … pierced by nails, (nails are the symbol of FERTILITY and JURISPRIENCE) and a PLANE with a big eye, that flies through a hole in the stomach … The figure is moving with dancing motion.
The right side of the triptych ends with a figure with a belly full of ELECTRONICS parts, they are covered with white ribs, the figure glides on the BOARD, on the top there is a huge UMBRELLA from paper drawings of female hands covered with HENNA – DESIGN from books – recommendations on how to apply HENNA to female hands, feet before a wedding.
Another work from the HOMELESS SERIES is a lying figure TATTED-UP. There’s a bucket on his head. The homeless man is sleeping, and as night DREAMS long figures, sculptures of African dreams are coming out of him.
In the image of the third magic figure of the HOMELESS, the FIRE is used! It is burned around circles!
The figure of “Leonardo da VINCI’s MAN, in the CIRCLE”
Below there is an inscription that goes from RIGHT to LEFT, as Leonardo Da Vinci wrote!
– “A HOMELESS ARTIST LUCIANO DULFANO DA VINCI!”
The collage on plywood is large in size 72 x 72 inches ….
The total number of works on plywood is about twenty. Large sizes, average 42 x 72 ” inches.
EVERYDAY! EVERY HOUR! EVERY MINUTE …. is STRANGE!
All people look closely at: life! Study! Wedding! Wealth! Fortune! Success!
They live in ORDINARY time and wait for IMPROVEMENT OF TIME! Tomorrow will be better!
They do not wait for this STRANGE TIME, they live in it! Every minute, living with MOTIVATION, with IDEA, with DREAM, with LOVE, with ANGER to injustice, to evil, to racial, national inequality!
But the artist, poet, writer, musician, composer … constantly live in STRANGE TIME!
For the first time in the world, THE WORLD RECOGNIZED ITS FRAGILITY!
Even two world wars did not hit absolutely the whole world! All five continents!
Now totally the people of the world are talking at a distance of two meters! Wearing masks! There are no wars on all five continents, only one news, one interest: CORONAVIRUS!
This powerlessness can strengthen humanity. To create a more harmonious world, more convenient for CHANGED LIFE! More serious, human, mundane MOTIVATIONS of life will appear.