Opening at NY’s Cinema Village on March 11th and the Laemmle Music Hall in Los Angeles on March 18th, the documentary “The Desert of Forbidden Art” is the definitive treatment of the clash between the artist and the Stalinist system and makes a perfect companion piece to Chris Marker’s “The Last Bolshevik“, which described the plight of film directors such as Alexander Medvedkin, who sought to affirm his artistic integrity in a period of bureaucratic conformity enforced by the secret police.
“The Desert of Forbidden Art” is directed by Amanda Pope, a UCLA film professor who made “Faces of Change” about reformers in the former Soviet Union, and Tchavdar Georgiev, a Russian now working in the U.S. It tells the story of Igor Savitsky, a young painter who was born to an aristocratic family in 1915. When they followed their class instincts and moved to the West, Savitsky stayed behind and enrolled at the Moscow Art Institute. In 1943, the institute was relocated to remote Uzbekistan to escape the Nazi onslaught. The Central Asian culture fascinated Savitsky in the same way that Polynesia fascinated Gauguin. After falling in love with the people and their culture (to the extent of converting to Islam), Savitsky returned to the town of Nukus in 1950 with the intention of preserving folk art, including traditional costumes. Using some of the most amazing archival footage from the Soviet era you have ever seen, we see young Uzbeki females being forced to abandon their customs, including their beautiful clothing, and becoming a forcibly assimilated Soviet Citizen.
Not long after sinking roots in the area, Savitsky learned that Uzbekistan was a haven for artists who were determined to continue painting as if the USSR was still in its heroic phase, when artists such as Malevich and Rodchenko had free rein. Like Savitsky, they fell in love with Uzbeki culture and blended local folkloric elements into their overall avant-garde vision.
The film gives ample documentation of the output of these geniuses, whose work was preserved by Savisky, and their run-ins with the Stalinist machine that dictated Socialist Realism. The film relies on the testimony of Savitsky’s peers who are still living, the sons and daughters of the artists whose work he preserved, and a number of experts on his project, both Russian and English-speaking.
One of them is Stephen Kinzer, who first wrote about the Nukus Museum in January, 1998. The article titled In a Far Desert, a Startling Trove of Art is a good introduction to this amazing story:
SAVITSKY BEGAN collecting ancient artifacts, some of them dating from the third century B.C. Later he broadened his interest to include folk art and ethnography. He traveled from village to village persuading peasant families to sell or give him traditional costumes, jewelry and other artifacts that in the Stalinist era were considered signs of backwardness and possible treason. In 1966 he opened a museum to display his collection. Already, however, he had set his sights on bigger game.
During the 1960′s and 70′s, Savitsky scoured Moscow, Leningrad and other Soviet cities in search of works by Russian artists who had died unknown, some in labor camps or mental hospitals. Gradually he won the trust of widows and relatives, many of whom were happy to be rid of piles of rotting work. In one case he rescued an oil painting being used to patch a leaky roof.
Savitsky, who died in 1984, had the advantage of working almost without competition. Most Soviet museums were forbidden to display avant-garde art because the Government considered it not only hideous but degenerate. The few private collectors of the period bought no more than a handful of works. Only Savitsky, whose base in the Uzbek region of Karakalpakstan was almost unimaginably far from the centers of Soviet power, was allowed to collect, and he did so with boundless passion.
One might think that after the collapse of the Stalinist system in the early 90s that “freedom-loving” authorities would rally around the Nukus Museum. Sadly but not unexpectedly you see narrow-mindedness persisting. In a March 7th New York Times article timed to coincide with the opening of the documentary, we learn that Uzbek officials had given the museum 48 hours to evacuate one of its buildings two years ago. The problems, it would seem, have a lot to do with the disgusting chauvinism of the greater Russian nationality that convinced Lenin to break with Stalin just before his death. The Times reports:
More than a dozen years later the collection remains intact. But it also remains hidden from the public. After exhibitions in Germany and France in the 1990s, the Uzbek Ministry of Culture has consistently refused invitations to display the collection overseas, Ms. Babanazarova said. (One exception was three paintings now on view in the Netherlands.)
There has been no clear explanation for this policy, but it may reflect Uzbeks’ lasting ambivalence toward Russia’s imperial influence. Independent since 1991, Uzbekistan vigorously promotes native art forms like weaving and engraving. The works in Mr. Savitsky’s collection — many made by ethnic Russians — have no place in that campaign.
“Despite all the publicity, it’s dormant,” Mr. Bowlt said. “It’s a shame — there are so many extraordinary paintings by virtually unknown artists that deserve to be talked about, written about. It hasn’t happened.”
Uzbek authorities have shown bursts of support for the collection. In 2003 President Islam A. Karimov himself came to Nukus to inaugurate a new museum building, which Ms. Babanazarova called “one of the best buildings in the country,” and Mr. Savitsky received a posthumous state honor. And last year the Foreign Ministry of Uzbekistan financed its own documentary on the Savitsky Collection, which will be shown in Uzbek embassies in a bid to attract tourists to Nukus.
Nevertheless, one day last November when Ms. Babanazarova was out of town, officials backed up trucks to the museum’s old exhibition building and ordered workers to remove all the artworks, saying the building, which dates to the 1950s, would be demolished as part of an urban renewal project. David Pearce, chairman of the Friends of the Nukus Museum, a nongovernmental organization, said a deputy minister of culture assured him late last year that the state planned to build new space to replace what was lost, and that it would be ready by this fall. But months have passed with no evident progress.
Museum supporters — who include current and former Western diplomats — say they have no idea what the government is planning. Some suggested that Ms. Babanazarova had run afoul of officials because of her fierce defense of the collection or her independent contacts with foreigners.
“I think it’s sort of ignorance and circling the wagons, it’s fear,” said Amanda Pope, a director of the new American documentary, with Tchavdar Georgiev. “No one will explain.”
I strongly urge everyone to see this outstanding documentary in NY or Los Angeles. For those who still believe that socialism is preferable to capitalism, it is especially rewarding to see the work of Soviet artists who never gave up hope that their work was intimately tied to that belief rather than an “anti-Soviet” offense punishable by prison, torture or death.
