INTERVIEW WITH LEVAN CHOGOSHVILI

Irine: The 12th issue of Danarti is being printed along with a talk that DaviD Kakabadze gave in relation to his sketches of ornaments in Georgian architecture. This talk addresses the imagery in Georgian ornaments from ancient times to the 17th century. In his study, Kakabadze describes and chronologically arranges the different monuments, employing the methods that are often used by the art historians in approaching the works of di erent artists or ages. For example, when analyzing the work of Kakabadze, his works are divided into genres, according to the years of their creation, conclusions are drawn, connections are made with the local traditions, with European modernism and so forth. But if we want to establish the role that the material he has researched plays in his “made pictures”, typological classification will not take us too far. Such a method of studying the history of art is often not suficient for reading the method of its work- ing as a form of thought according to which the picture is made. I think that a different approach is needed here, probably similar to the way the painter works. Do you believe it is possible to describe this method of organizing space and time, objects and knowledge? Or can such be applied at all in attempting to study the creative work?

Levan: When David Kakabadze studies Georgian ornament, on one hand he is searching for an identity. At the same time, the topic represents for him a general subject of research. He is less interested in ethnographic material, but rather the classical religious architecture and ornament, being concerned with professional art in the Eastern Christian tradition. Georgian professional art is not characterized by naturalism, being similar in this respect to Near Eastern and Byzantine art; an ornament is physically at in case of relief, as well as in painting, less foliaged (as it is in the case of Western art), because in this case background is not merely surface, but a symbolic space representative of the world’s eternity. Background of the ornament is almost entirely effaced, which is so typical of whole Eastern-Byzantine tradition. Kakabadze’s interest in ornament was far from accidental: it distinctively shows the rational worldview that characterizes Georgian art, which constitutes its a nity with classical art. Romanticism, though present in all art to a certain degree, is restrained here. Naturally, Kakabadze’s art does not imply the direct quotation of external signs and images, but his portraits, abstractions and landscapes are marked with those same qualities: classicism, rationality, restrained romanticism. His serial works show a quality typical of Georgian ornament: a sense of unrepeatable in the repetition, which communicates the cosmo- gonic idea of sun’s eternal and cyclic movement and uniqueness of each single day.

Irine: Not only is it interesting with what scruti- ny and principal approach Kakabadze studies the ornaments, but also, how he employs the studied material in his own work. This is what he writes in one of his texts: It is through a relief that the real existence of an object in space is discerned . . . Downfall of art is typi ed by the loss of the speci c way of depicting space and a strive to- wards materialistic and naturalistic forms. It seems noteworthy that it is exactly the question of space that interests Kakabadze in relief, - the efect of light on the surface of the worked stone discerned by the eye. He studies the principle of constructing objects, using its synthesis at di er- ent points. For example, in Salt for Svanetia. Nor is it coincidental, that Kalatozishvili touches upon such a problem – A filmmaker who comes from painting is prone to aestheticizing the lighting techniques and does not use them as a technique for constructing the body. As for optical objects, those are deffinitely ones which have a primary signi cance in the storyline. This is precisely what Kakabadze does – instead of aestheticizing, he uses light for plasticity. There are other painters – or the works of later periods – who use the art forms of the past in a more crude and straightforward manner. Do you believe this approach that Kakabadze and Kalatozishvili talk about is typical of Avant-garde? What is the relation between the ornament and the cinematographic approach ( lm ear/eye)?

Levan: In Avant-garde, light and lightning have always had a conceptual significance and espe- cially so in cinema (for understandable reasons). Kakabadze, too, not only willingly distinguishes form as plastic, but also underlines the dominance of a specifc gure in terms of content, theme and conception. This resembles the analo- gous purposefulness of a stream of light owing into a narrow window of a Georgian church – a process that manages the conceptual structuring of space. This distinguishes it from Byzantine church, where light has an illusory function.

Irine: Beno Gordeziani writes about Pirosmani: Some, who are ignorant of Georgian culture and life, have formed an opinion about Pirosmani that he is the best illustrator of life in Georgia. This is untrue. I think, the same can be said about Kakabadze; in his own words: Art is dependent on the local conditions, local requirements and, in general, on the state of life where it develops. This is why it has a local appearance and local forms. I nd it signi cant that Kakabadze, as well as Gordeziani and others (H2so4), on one hand, commits to a certain reassessment of local art and a painstaking study of its form, while on the other hand, rejects the method of romanticizing past and considers its replacement with the classical. He reads the rhythm of local life in the objects created by people, which is probably the reason why he can create a Soviet flag based on the relief fragments of Beka Opizari. In a way I believe that this attitude is also close to the development of the political thought. Do you dis- cern such relations in the artistic method? I am also interested how these forms of thought and work on material are altered in Soviet time and whether you see a similar relation to the past and localism today, in the practice of diverse painters or artistic groups?

Levan: While observing and studying the values of past, unwittingly and naturally Kakabadze still romanticizes it to a certain degree (portraits, land- scapes, “Imereti my Mother,” “Still-Lives of Imere- ti” etc.), but insofar as his thinking is classical and rational, he employs the method of rational reassessment of the past, maximally drained from any sentimentality. As for the ag: it criticizes the emblem created by Charlemagne and claims that the principal symbol of Georgian independence was formed by certain analogies with Russian iconography, even performing an analysis of iconography, claiming that it is the image borrowed from the Russian icon of St. George. Even though, to my mind, Charlemagne’s emblem does have some virtues, it is curiously similar to the historical emblem of Cappadocia, which is characteristic and significant, if we consider that Cappadocia was an ancient country of Meskhs. Thus, he had studied the emblem and also used it as a national basis for the flag. Had it truly been the Georgian flag and not the “red Soviet sheet” – as my grandfather, Rezo Gabashvili, used to call it, - the work would probably have been stronger. People tend to forget that the inception of modernism and Avant-garde coincided with the rise of nationalism, which, in itself, was derived from the “romantic nationalism.” It is not accidental that the great gures of modernism – D’Annunzio, Marinetti, Ezra Pound, Toscanini, Hamsun, Heidegger etc. – ended up in exile after the World War II. Along with these were Emil Nolde, early Picasso and even young Thomas Mann, Peguy and Apollinaire (those two were themselves the victims of the WWI). Also Blok, Gumilyov. Even Ilia Zdanevich, who didn’t exchange his passport of independent Georgia until his death and set against his Russian colleagues, from the perspective of imperial nationalism, as the defender of national and cultural values of Georgia. The list could go on forever. The same thing is happening not only in the West, but also in China, India, the United States and Africa. Thus, one of the progenitors of Avant-garde is the idea of nationalism. This is not the case with dada, which came as a reaction to the absurdities of war, created largely by the ex- iled escapees of the war. But those artists themselves would go back to the national ideas, at later points as well as before. While Soviet Union performed a profanation of all ideas, including national. Thus all artistic forms, whether national or social (even jazz, officially borrowed from the West), would gain the false and vulgar face. Even in the case of Kakabadze, not to mention the less- er artists. As Akhmatova once wrote, even dissident and underground art is marked with the seal of forced labour. It is worth noting that anything religious or national, in Soviet Union, was bound to be perceived as against to dictatorship, as opposed to the leftists of the period. Therefore the paradox that left-wing, religiosity and nation- alism merged in the dissident anti-Soviet “underground” art – this, by the way, was its a nity with the Western art. It is because the system has not vanished, but continues to exist, that the prevalent problems in the current art of our region are identical to those of the second part of the 20th century. Pseudonyms change, but of course that amounts to nothing.

Elene: We live in a post-post-Soviet time. Because of its specific past Georgian culture has undergone multiple phases in search of its iden- tity. Collapse of Soviet Union has naturally lead to the emergence of an art loaded with nation- alist signs, often characterized by populism and presented in popular art on the level of kitsch. Naturally, this tendency for nationalistic strive was evaded by the then young generation of artists, part of who found salvation in the academies of the Western European countries. This was the first step towards the “universalization” of their visual language, perceived by some from today’s perspective as “westernization”. A part of those artists, having returned after this “western” anti-identity politics, is again enriching the language with the history of their own culture. There is a new, slight tendency of turning back to the signs related to the national identity. This is the case not only in Georgia, but also in the con- temporary arts of Kirgizstan, Kurdistan, Iran and other marginalized countries. What are the artists today looking for in the history of their own cul- ture?

Levan: History of art, as a eld in Humanities studies was invented in the Western Europe. Therefore, that’s not only where the history is being written, but also the criterions for the assessment of art. So it is only natural that to this date the West remains the center towards which artists from all places strive. Without this strive, to speak in sports terminology, no non-Western artist can penetrate the “highest league;” and even more than that: they cannot even be evaluated. And what’s worse, the artist who is far removed from the system that establishes and controls the contemporary process, that is the center, is cut o from current problematics, is forcibly marginalized; nor is he able to oppose the existing system, being unable to grasp what the situation is. The same goes for science, which is more understandable. Thus the longing artists experi- ence for the West is totally natural and necessary, similar to the way everybody went to Paris at the beginning of the 20th century. Thus, establishment of national identity doesn’t imply, in Kakabadze’s case, “ethnographisation of art,” – what the Soviet Union was establishing ideologically, with this appropriate slogan: “formally national, essentially socialist.” On the contrary, Kakabadze is oriented on the new, both in terms of language and form, so as to be a “part of the modern life.” Whether consciously or not, the national will necessarily manifest itself in the newest form, as Georgian folklore and mythology are manifest in Iliazd’s writings.

Elene: These processes are often accompanied by the problems of so-called “self-exoticizing.” One form of critique claims that such art is still produced for the “Western perspective,” to be marketable in the West as a fresh product, a product of exoticism (a group such as “Slavs and Tartars” can be a good example of such a cri- tique). How to you position art in relation to such a statement?

Levan: As for “self-exoticization,” of course this, as anything else, includes both astute discoveries and banal, tasteless executions. West, in spite of “globalization,” still demands from its central po- sitions exoticism on the part of “peripheries,” but only as far as it is acceptable and comprehensible for the West. Thus, to this day this is primarily the problem of the West, as was pointed out by Hans Belting. Almost every famous non-Western artist is accused of writing for the West; including the Nobel Prize winners North and South from us. Whether this accusation is just is another, and a very arguable, question.

← Levan in collaboration with Archil Chogoshvili, Constant i.e. changable, 2015, digital film, duration 10 min.