Terra sebv s acta mvsei sabesiensi s

T. M. Stepanskaya 

 

204

fall, in order to live there and move down to inaccessible depths. The 

subconscious mind is fed by the images of imagination and feeds them.”

5

  

According to Vysheslavtsev, the correlation between creativity and labour 

varies across human activity: “The good is evaluated not according to the 

quantity of labour, but the quality of implemented creativity.”

6

  

“Labour is impersonal; it is a mass phenomenon, based on imitation. 

Labour is confronted by creativity, characterised by rarity, initiative, the 

beginning of causative range, release, finding paradise.”

7

 

Fantastical images do not have analogues in fact: a person feels their 

truth intuitively, he or she should believe in them. The subconscious mind 

obeys the imagination; everyday life and everyday consciousness are 

transformed by means of fancy. This is why the most sincere work of art is 

that of authentic fiction: “The criterion of truth in an image lies in its 

sublimating power, in the fact that it transforms life. In essence, creativity is 

a mythogenesis.”

8

  

Interaction between everyday consciousness, everyday life and art 

takes place when the viewer contemplates works at an exhibition on a 

different level; such dialogue between the viewer and the work of art is 

especially active at conceptual exhibitions. 

  

Dialectics of traditions and innovations in organisational practices of 

conceptual art exhibitions, in terms of developing artistic life  

Art exhibitions represent a valuable source of information for analysing the 

interaction of art, everyday life and everyday consciousness. Artistic life is a 

dialogue between art and its contemporaries. Nonlinear development, 

accompanied by periods of decay and activity, is typical of artistic life. 

Taking a special place in the cultural life of society, art both reflects culture 

and presents the required conditions for its development. Its historical 

dynamics are based on the dynamics of artistic production and 

consumption. Nevertheless, it remains unmistakable that the leading role 

belongs to artistic creativity. It is assumed that this dialectic is personified in 

the social relationship between artists and the public, and is implemented 

through their mutual activity.  

Towards the end of the 20

th

 century, the notions “conceptual 

exhibition” and “curator” began to appear in academic literature. Articles by 

art critics, primarily mainstream ones, were full of straightforward 

judgments about the fact that the painter is “a secondary-level participant in 

                                                 

5

 Ibid., p. 50. 

6

 Erina 2006, p. 52. 

7 

Ibid., p. 51. 

8

 Vysheslavtsev 1994, p. 56. 

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Conceptual Art Exhibitions as a Dialogue between Art and Its Contemporaries 

 

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the exhibition, while the curator has a decisive role” (D. V. Demkina). But 

who is in charge? There is no need for a curator without any pieces of art - 

such an exhibition would fail. The body, root, core and heart of the 

exhibition is, first and foremost, the artist’s creative work. The second issue 

lies in the fact that all is subject to the curator’s intensions. What should be 

done about the conception of the piece and the intension of the painter? It 

is now common to say that under the conditions of postmodern aesthetics, 

anything exhibited in a museum or gallery can be declared a piece of art, but 

a piece of art is that which is created using artistic means, in a state of 

inspiration, with the participation of the imagination. 

One type of conceptual exhibition dealt with in this study involves 

artists’ anniversaries; such exhibitions are based on constructing a general 

panorama whilst tracing the developmental line of the painter’s creative 

work. The anniversary exhibition space can be compared to a virtual world 

where past and present move freely, live in colour, submerging the viewer in 

communication with signs and symbols of the past and present. The 

anniversary exposition of the Altai painter V. S. Shubin (2011) (fig. 1) can 

be considered an example of this.  

 

 

 

Fig. 1. Opening of the exhibition of V. S. Shubin in the “Universum” Gallery 

of Altai State University (Barnaul, 2011) 

 

By his 75

th

 anniversary, Vitaly Semenovich Shubin was known as the 

creator of many fictional works presenting images of the spectacular 

Russian region of Altai. Mountain and plains, views of villages and towns, as 

well as images of contemporaries and figures belonging to Russian history 

form the main content of Shubin’s creative work. The painter was born in 

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T. M. Stepanskaya 

 

206

1936 in Kurochkino village, Kirov region. In 1966, he became member of 

the Russian Union of Painters. His works can be found in the State Art 

Museum of Altai Territory, the State Museum of Altai History and Culture, 

the All-Russian Memorial Museum (in the V. M. Shukshin conservation 

area), in various art galleries in the territory and in private collections abroad 

(Israel, USA, Italy, Ukraine). 

The exhibition’s warm, lyrical title Sweetheart Stories underlined the 

painter’s determination to create harmonious artistic images. Lyrical 

landscapes predominated. The presence of a considerable number of female 

portraits was also a feature. Portraits are a rare phenomenon in modern fine 

art, particularly those executed as per the principles of classical art; indeed, 

classical art was revived in this exposition. In his wife’s portrait, Shubin was 

inspired not only by the model, but also by the concept of European 

Renaissance, namely, that man is a paragon of nature. Nevertheless, this is a 

modern piece. The portrait is enriched with a semantically saturated 

background; it has a semantic field in which the form is not a task of artistic 

creativity, but “acts as a symbol of complex worldview notions ... the line, as 

a symbol, takes the main role, as it can speak.”

9

 Ultimately, the painter 

created a spiritual image of a beautiful woman, situated in accordance with 

the world around: the painter’s imagination was the main source in creating 

the image of his contemporary, based on revived Renaissance tradition.  

Viewers’ attention was also attracted by the narrative, multi-figured 

composition devoted to the Russian poet A. S. Pushkin. Extensive research 

carried out by Shubin in collecting subject matter for the picture 

contributed much to this piece, but ultimately it was a creative labour. The 

painter studied the interior of palaces, researched historical costumes and 

noted the various personages who might have participated in such a ball. It 

is an interesting picture to observe: its historicism is convincing and the 

poet’s image dominates everybody - he is the compositional and semantic 

centre of the work. The colour score is joyful and sunny, and the placement 

of the poet’s figure in the foreground seems to pacify the dynamic gestures, 

dramatism, active communication and emotions of the guests at the ball.  

Such narratives are rare in provincial art. Apart from Shubin, the 

theme of a ball attended by historical personages was taken up by the Altai 

painter A. A. Drilev (b. 1938) who taught at the St Petersburg State 

Academic Institute named after I. E. Repin, in Yu. Neprintseva’s studio of 

painting. Drilev’s large-scale work, A Ball of Highland Officers in an Assembly of 

Nobility in Barnaul in the Second Half of the 19

th

 Century (created 1999-2003) is a 

large-scale piece, set in the interior of great hall. The figures of attendees are 

personalised: among them are participants of a ball held in Barnaul in 1856, 

                                                 

9

 Kuznetsova 2012, p. 77. 

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