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The Bloodied Apollo: Painting\u2019s Chaste Orgy
<\/h1>\n\n\n\n

by Ivan Chechot<\/h2>\n\n\n
\n

To the sweet and lustrous garden leads the star<\/i><\/p>\n

There to greet you a lion maned with fire,<\/i><\/p>\n

A blue ox with girth filled in with eyes<\/i><\/p>\n

And the golden eagle there of Paradise<\/i><\/p>\n

Remembrance of whose gaze is everlasting light.<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

The lines of this popular song not only stand in for the somewhat dated and local, Petersburg, flavour of their time so much as they make use of biblical vocabulary. They at once immerse us into a fabulous, lyrical, image of what we expect of paradise. They\u00a0enkindle the motif of an encounter<\/b>\u00a0with the chaste spirits and bodies of these sacramental animals frolicking under grace\u2019s golden sky.<\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

Dmitry Margolin\u2019s new exhibition, aptly titled \u2018The Streetwise and the Celestial\u2019, cannot help but set before us paintings and sculptures that demand we reexamine the thematic encounters of men and women. This is related to Margolin\u2019s massive sculptures \u2018Figure of the Crucified Christ\u2019, \u2018Kouros\u2019, \u2018Christ-Apollo\u2019 and \u2018Dark Eve-Sophia\u2019 (names I have given them myself).<\/p>\n

Here I shall trace the\u00a0motive of encounter and co-presence, a twosome nature<\/b>\u00a0in Dmitry
Margolin\u2019s work. In this I shall glance through his engravings, consider his published drawings, and reexamine his paintings.<\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

In a painting that comes a little earlier than the sculptures, Lovers in a Landscape (2016), a man and a woman are fixed in the act of running towards one another. They are unattractive, no longer young, a little freakish (like drunks or drug addicts), they pay no heed to anything that surrounds them. In the bushes to the left is a dirty and extravagant rape, a murder transpires in the distance with barking and running dogs and the cries of a nurse. We are in some suburban \u2018sanatorium\u2019, or a rehab clinic. The couple are looking at each other with joy and intensity. The painting\u2019s palette is bright and springlike.<\/p>\n

This motif of the couple appears in the artist\u2019s work virtually from his first exhibition. One can recall and appreciate his paintings of a mature man and woman in mundane settings, man and wife most likely (prototypes of the artist\u2019s mother and father). Lives spent together have spent them out \u2013 from age or God knows what else. There is already here an implicit religious subtext. These paintings make up the cycle he calls Job and his Wife (2011-13). Man and wife who have had more than enough of each other, but they live on and on in a fate knit together. This fate and its domination bleeds into the tightness of the space and the heaviness of the palette.<\/p>\n

In another painting, Veliky Ustyug, 15 Krasnaya St. \u2116 16 (2014), the artist presents the marital pair in their living quarters before the glow of a television set. The male figure is no longer young, but has a formidable presence. Crutches rest on the chair behind him. She, with a rounded face and high cheekbones, a ponytail bunched up on the top of her head, leans on a rickety table with a cutting board. A rug with swans on it is tacked to the wall, indicating that these are perhaps not the town\u2019s poorest citizens. The artist relates that he added the rug to give a coziness typical for such a scene and that it was not there \u2018in nature\u2019. A knight\u2019s shield appears on the television, more than likely it is a showing of Eisenstein\u2019s Alexander Nevsky. The light breaks through red, rusty curtains. The artist painted this couple several times together, separately, with different details, all in the same room. He added a wall clock, a lamp over the rug, and always the husband\u2019s spectacles lying on the far end of the windowsill. To be together, ageing, wearying, eyes fixed on one point, playing out the film of a life spent together. This is how one might describe the subject matter of this expressive, symbolically rich scene of daily, domestic life. The artist has made this couple into something partly grotesque, but yet also imparting it with a certain grandeur, finding value and significance.<\/p>\n

On his way to the Solovetsky Islands, the artist made several drawings in the small town of Kem\u2019 on the banks of the White Sea. In Kem. 2014-16, Margolin often captures couples or simply fuses two heads, two half-figures, two women, two fellows, a man and a woman sitting on different ends of a bench.<\/p>\n

I think that\u00a0a single person occupying a distinct and defined setting<\/b>has no place in Dmitry Margolin\u2019s creative work. The artist tends to depict a few, even many, figures. He seeks out crowds in spaces where people coexist, intersect and bunch together. And often these are groups of people and couples. One suspects that this is no mere extension of the art-school requirement of creating \u2018compositional\u2019 works, but comes from somewhere deeper. Rather it seems this is the artist\u2019s experience of the crowded tumult of our mundane lives with its burdens and its blessings. Perhaps this is the self in its original understanding as a double, as a triple: \u2018there is no \u201cI\u201d without mother and father\u2019, without brothers and sisters, neighbours, classmates, rivals or doubles, without, in the end, God. This coupling and pairing of people, so it seems, must include then the possibility of encounter just as a meeting in its purest sense requires singleness, or a solitude, at is start. However Margolin\u2019s work shows that he senses very acutely what an encounter means. And this, furthermore, always resembles the second meeting, after the first one that did not somehow find its proper end.<\/p>\n

In 2016 Margolin created, in my mind, a very successful suite of six etchings on David and Bathsheba. This cycle is made up of different figures and scenes where, in two of them, one senses something of the Max Klinger. Here the man presents himself as the triumphant\u00a0champion of the boudoir<\/b>next to his gaunt, frigid lady-friend cast in, so it would seem, deadening television light. He is then\u00a0the old king<\/b>pressed up against a taut, pregnant belly, her head looming over him shrouded in a mysterious, crooked smile. He is the infant\u00a0nurse<\/b>\u00a0beside the bed of the voluptuous wife, examining herself in the mirror, pregnant again. And finally\u00a0a hobby horse<\/b>\u00a0for a small band female figures with victorious, raised hands. This final motif recalls the ancient prototype \u2018Aristotle and Phyllis\u2019 with a woman mounted on the bridled philosopher\u2019s back.\n\nIndeed there are couples in ancient compositions as well. The Wedding of Dionysus and Ariadne (2016) is presented as a festive meeting, one that the bride does not anticipate; but proper to a god who is always ready for new encounters. Diana and Actaeon (2016) is another painting indirectly related to an encounter. According to the myth, this is a meeting which leads to the destruction of one of its participants. In fact, it matters not so much that Actaeon transgressed the law and transgressed the border of Diana\u2019s sovereignty and chastity. Rather it is her revenge for the encounter, she hunts him down and at once is forever with him connected. This is how it looks in the painting and in the ancient and contemporary texts on the subject that convey the myth. The contents, however are different. In fact, the paintings, engravings and sculptures of this contemporary artist are not illustrations and not attempts to uncover the true sense of traditional themes. They have their own meanings taken from the artist\u2019s life experience, taken from our times, and taken from torments and joys of both.<\/p>\n

In some cases Margolin\u2019s women stand over men with a question, a reproach, waving their sword of Damocles above him (consider, for example, Job and His Wife (2011, etching). On the other hand, in the etching Daniel Kharms, Hindrance (2012), a pathetic little man, mangy, in a jacket, kneels before a young beautiful girl, her vulva shamelessly visible through her clothes.<\/p>\n

In another etching from this series Daniel Kharms, The Crone \u2013 II (2012, Etching), a foul, sinewy man in a mocking pose looks into the face of an elderly lady who appears to be a prostitute. She is either drunk, or already dead. In my opinion, this is one of his finest etchings.<\/p>\n

The range of encounters<\/b>\u00a0in Margolin\u2019s figurative world is wide and multivalent. There are encounters of love and marriage and those that turn into rape and murder, settled by the dominance of one over another, by humiliation and mutual degradation. Meetings can be\u00a0anti-meetings<\/b>encounters of betrayal, such as that of Christ Taken into Custody and The Kiss of Judas. This subject is also about encounters that are no longer initial ones. Christ and Judas knew each other long before the kiss of betrayal, they were members of the same circle, the same community of apostles. Their final meeting was as fateful as a meeting of friends who have become foes.<\/p>\n

In the large canvas Crucifixion (2016) two figures are standing next to the cross. They seem to be husband and wife. According to iconography, these two should be the Virgin Mary and St. John. In their place stand the \u2018parents\u2019, Mary, with garments in heightened tones, and what appears to be an elderly Joseph the carpenter \u2013 at least that is who he inevitably seems to me, though his presence is not mentioned in the Scriptures. Both figures are looking in one direction, these are figures in a pairing, and above them hangs the Son of God, and simply their son. They meet him in this most tragic of situations and see him as if for the first time.<\/p>\n

Let us look at a few more of Margolin\u2019s images of Christ made before his sculpture of the Christ-Kouros.
His figuration is traditional in scenes of the Nativity and the Worship of the Magi. The swaddled infant here is a glowing bundle. Margolin\u2019s Christ appears also in the expressionist paintings of his Passion cycle. Let us assemble some of the motifs from his paintings and engravings associated with the Passion.<\/p>\n

Here, in one, he gazes at what happens before him with wide-opened eyes. His complexion is cadaverous and dark. On either side the thieves are painted in all sorts of flesh tones.<\/p>\n

The impression of Christ is completely different \u2013 a white and grey bony corpse covered in bruises and traces of beatings.<\/p>\n

For Margolin, Christ\u2019s eyes are always open. In a number of cases Christ is ugly with an gainly body and a large dark mask of a head. In others he has a nearly black, shaggy figure and a hazy silhouette.<\/p>\n

There is also another form: an average-sized fellow with parted hair and an attentive gaze. A typical fellow.<\/p>\n

Especially \u2018effective\u2019 (what else can one say, such is the consequence of expressionism) is when Christ, extending his arms in ecstasy, embraces the world. Like Icarus, soaring into the sky, a desperate and credulous diver into the abyss. The ecstatic contour of Christ\u2019s body is present in both the artist\u2019s paintings and in his etchings. Christ was at once a congealed knot of pain and a star-wound, fully within the spirit of expressionism and Western mediaeval mysticism alike.<\/p>\n

Such were Margolin\u2019s images of him before he took up sculpture and moulded his first Christ. Suspended on the bare wall, crucified, but soaring in space. Then he was simply the Kouros, a name once given Apollo (from our art history we can recall the \u2018Apollo of Tenea\u2019). A crucified, small, tender, unathletic man, resembling northern European peasant sculpture of the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries, helplessly borne up to the heavens. But the Kouros is different \u2013 he appeared and arose, he heads towards us, unflinchingly, like a young soldier, a bridegroom.<\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

It is impossible to say why this artist over a period of time set painting and engraving aside and took on the laborious and grimy work of sculpture. Of course he was attracted to the\u00a0prospect of creating real volume<\/b>, the possibility of being liberated from the two dimensions of drawing, which, no matter what you do, still remain in the realm of\u00a0signs<\/b>\u00a0cast in silhouette, shade, stain, and the like. To make your own kouros! Seeing him in the studio, approaching him at close range, putting your hand on his breast is to realise with delight that he is present there in that space, on his own \u2013 like you yourself, each living their own life, always the other, each on his own. For the sake of this encounter the artist took up the \u2018task of Rabbi Loew\u2019. Many recall their first impression of when this kouros settled himself in Margolin\u2019s austere studio. Now not only was Dmitry living there, but Christ on the wall and this white young fellow of poured stone.<\/p>\n

The artist was intrigued by the task of creating new reality, looking for a sharper sense of a\u00a0decisive separation of the work from the author<\/b>, sharper than what takes place in an image set on a planar scale that requires the viewer to be drawn in by its fictive depth. The Kouros emerged right here, in his hands. It was first a framework, then a rough shape, and then an extended arm, a round, firm rear pushing out into space. He comes to meet you, a real, honest thing, other and at the same time like you. However,\u00a0sculpture as such<\/b>\u00a0\u2013 merely volume where all else is accomplished by light and the rotation of the viewer \u2013\u00a0could not on its own captivate the artist<\/b>. Both Christ and the Kouros were painted in the style of a painter, with layers of shading and tone. Their eyes sparkled, the face, mouth were played with life. They could not go without bloody wounds in the side, stigmata on the hands and feet. The result was a kind of sculptural painting. Generally speaking this was something new, beyond the requirements (the so-called laws) of traditional forms of art. This is not a \u2018coloured object\u2019, not a \u2018polychrome sculpture\u2019. Here we have an unlicensed simulacrum born from the\u00a0anarchic coupling of sculpture and painting, slipping away from established models.<\/b>What results is an amalgam of two natures. Proportions are not evenly sculptural as they are in parts expressive, in parts plastic, and as a whole executed in a mimetic and coloristic manner where movement is greater than stability and architectonics play no role whatsoever. This is \u2018dilettante\u2019 sculpture,\u00a0the sculpture of a painter<\/b>\u00a0and for painting. The painting is done as a painter would do it on a plane, with expressionistic strokes. But that is not what matters most. It seems to me that significance comes in striving towards a synthetic, diverse\u00a0life for the image in space.<\/b>Elements of colour and emotion \u2013 no, rather,\u00a0sensation and colour<\/b>\u2013 are inexorable from this space, conveying its sense of fullness and freedom in the image.<\/p>\n

Indeed sculpture and its laconic quality has a role in Margolin\u2019s creativity in general, directing his search along the path from expression to harmony<\/b>, as we see in the Christ-Apollo. Metaphorically, one may put it this way: the Kouros (Greece), taking on colour and pain, \u2018gave birth\u2019 to Christ. And here he is, coming to us in what amounts to an encounter, as I have said many times already. The Christ-Kouros, wounded, bloodied is in the model of \u2018Ecce Homo\u2018, \u2018This is the Man\u2019. All these transformations may be understood in the sense that the Christ-Man and the Christ-Sculpture held concealed within them Adam and Apollo. As Adam, Christ is warm, physical. As Apollo he is pure, white and stern.<\/p>\n

But the process of engendering images did not stop there. The artist, as a demiurge, wanted to give the Kouros a helpmate, as God gave one to Adam, Christ has the Bride, and Apollo \u2026 but who to give to Apollo? Daphne, Echo, the nymph of shadow? This last figure, Apollo, clearly adds to the layered symbolism of the other figures an impenetrability (Noli me tangere) and sovereignty, a decidedly internal centrality and even a certain neutrality in relation to everything that occurs on the outside of him. This Apollinian hue suits perfectly the image of Christ as expressed in his mystery.<\/p>\n

\u2026That<\/b>\u00a0was moulded and filled with eyes through painting. A surprising, dark, oriental female figure. Both statues stand independently on rotating pedestals. They can be turned toward one another, they can be parted and turned in different directions, set on parallel courses to catch up with each other eventually, one made to lead, one to follow. It is superb that this is possible. The figures\u2019 movement evokes the dancing machines of Daedalus, speaking of the couple\u2019s universality as models of the dialectics of human relations.<\/p>\n

Having played out these figures in the studio, Margolin returned anew to painting and created on a large canvas what could be a perfect setting for the idealised encounter between this wedding couple. This was his The Bridegroom and His Bride and it, indubitably, represents Paradise. However this is not the Paradise before the Fall of Adam, but at the end of time, when the Saviour finds His Church, enters Her and then, with the Church and the New Heaven, becomes all.<\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

Let us focus more narrowly on the sculptures one-by-one, become aware of their deeper sense. They, after all, are very important to the artist himself.<\/p>\n

The Apollo-Christ is autonomous, muscular, handsome. There\u2019s something about the boy in him. Indeed, he is prohibitively shy for a kouros, and utterly free of pride or an active origin. Taking the same statue as Christ forces one to see\u00a0the sacrificial kouros in the young man<\/b>Like Christ he is stern and at once\u00a0open and closed<\/b>. The gesture of his hands is directed to a person, he takes the gesture to himself and gives it from himself, from his generosity. One recalls the words of the Saviour: \u2018Suffer little children and forbid them not to come unto me\u2026\u2019 It is very easy to see in the statue just the kouros, a young fellow.\u00a0The machine and doll of the body<\/b> is not concealed, the frame and parallel lines in the design stick out. In his contour there is something unconscious in him, erect and unintentionally proud<\/b>And all this clothed with a pleasant bodily softness which stems either from the lightness of skin tone, or from the Christ, or from another \u2018paired\u2019 person the milk on whose lips is not yet dry. Actually making a Christ is not an easy subject once a sculptor has fallen in love with antiquity. He is either too much the muscled athlete, or the refined, anaemic pretty-boy, or too cold, or, on the other hand, maudlin and and transparent, like I. G. Dannecker\u2019s lovely sculptures of the classical era (by which I mean his statue in the Chapelle pavilion in Tsarskoe Selo, now in the Hermitage). Indeed, how to make Christ good, but not congenial, embodied, but not coupled and seductive, not decorous, but majestic, but more than majestic, indeed, divine? For the old masters, including Michelangelo (Il Renditore in Rome) it was no easier than it was in the nineteenth century, much less the twentieth.<\/p>\n

The hero here is the Risen Christ. This means the crucified, suffering, dead, buried, released from the tomb Christ who now heads towards an encounter with us. The first who meets him is a girl. Perhaps for her he is merely a ghost, a vision. She takes a decisive step in his direction, her hands extended towards him, fingers spread. Does she wish to touch the Lord? All these motifs are related in St. Mary Magdalen who met the Risen Christ in the form of gardener early on the morning of the Resurrection. Such a subject attracted many western artists. D\u00fcrer gave Christ a spade in his \u2018Small Passions\u2019, Hans Baldung Grien did the same with a more painterly flair in his Christ the Gardner\u2018 (1539, Darmstadt).<\/p>\n

The sculptures of the kouros and the girl, relatively independent of one another form a group with different meanings pertinent to each. They can be interpreted not only in a Christian fashion but as Cupid and Psyche, and Apollo and his nymph (Echo, or Daphne). For this it is enough to rotate the figures, set the man in front and the woman behind; or, conversely, to turn the girl\u2019s figure so that Apollo is chasing after her. In the Greek myth after the antics with the oil lamp Eros (love) and Psyche (the soul) were reunited by Zeus\u2019 will. At the start Psyche (like Elsa from Lohengrin) had no right to know who her groom was or even to see him. However, the myth ends with a complete\u00a0fusion of soul and love<\/b>, the fruit of whose marriage was the goddess Volupia (Latin Voluptas) \u2013 the embodiment of voluptuousness and pleasure, love overflowing with eros and the eros ensouled.<\/p>\n

The girl or young woman, the bride, as the artist himself calls her, does not look at all like an untouched maiden, neither literally nor in the sublime, spiritual sense of the word Virgin. To lay out other words that run through the brain when you \u2018glance\u2019 over it \u2013 and it is so fashioned and detailed that it is impossible not to succumb to voyeurism \u2013 you find extraordinary combinations and modulations, the origins of which lie in modern mass culture. There is no escaping this, and in searching for beauty in life \u2013 and not in a Museum or with a semiologist \u2013 you have to first recognise its virulence. Then it must be deprived of the elements of the coldness of the product, you must sublimate and elevate the low. We evoke such words as \u2018mulatta\u2019, \u2018mannequin\u2019, \u2018a well-groomed lady\u2019, \u2018model\u2019, and maybe even \u2018nightclub\u2019. Then there is \u2018manicure\u2019, \u2018pedicure\u2019, \u2018peeling, stretching and Pilates\u2019, \u2018the high-dollar intimate styling\u2019, \u2018tanning salon\u2019, cool \u2018makeup\u2019 and even the \u2018do\u2019<\/b>\u2013 the \u2018hairdo\u2019, \u2018do-up\u2019 the chin or the eyes. Perhaps there is also something \u2018done up\u2019 in the narcotic dilation of the beauty\u2019s eyes, and in her slightly frazzled appearance. \u2018Done out\u2019, \u2018done over\u2019, \u2018done up\u2019.<\/p>\n

But no, here there can be none of that! This is at least Magdalene, or Pharaoh\u2019s noble daughter. Her outlines are set deep in the layers of a memory filled up with history and sublimity, with an appreciation for ancient Egypt. The Pushkin Museum\u2019s \u2018Wooden Spoon for Anointing\u2019, with its handle made in the form of a diving girl, was not for a make-up, but for sacred cosmetic rituals<\/b>. Dark olive skintone evokes associations with embalming, with the Book of the Dead, with Isis and Osiris (the latter always in white as the colour of the funeral shroud). And here again that impudent spirit of Mephistopheles points to empirical reality: a \u2018hang loose\u2019 gesture, \u2018drying her nails\u2019 after a manicure, a meticulous \u2018depilation\u2019 job.<\/p>\n

This is, of course, the first Eve, the modern Eve, and then it is something much more spiritual, and even utterly spiritualistic. The name Eve, and the word \u2018chava\u2018 from which it comes means, incidentally, \u2018the source of life\u2019. In Islam there is a version that this word refers to a red russet colour of a dark shade<\/b>, perhaps indicating the colour of a swarthy body and the colour of the earth.<\/p>\n

For us, the earth is not only one of the four elements of ancient natural philosophy, it is also the\u00a0rubbish of modern civilisation<\/b>In the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, no small amount of art has been made from rubbish, and artists are more often apologists for it than they are its critics. Very rare that garbage is taken as earth from which by beneficiation (a mining term) you can extract something valuable. One of the Margolin\u2019s strategies as an artist is, in my opinion, \u2018the work from the black\u2019 and the \u2018red\u2019, the nigredo. In the everyday and in the street, in the low and repulsive he is ready to find the beauty of the material, ore to mould into noble art. What conditions the latter is not the choice of noble materials or themes, but an unoccluded, pure perspective. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The Bride is intentionally executed in thick paint. The statue is dainty, charming, awkwardly graceful. It is beautiful and different from different sides, in different lighting. And most surprisingly, as an image it is completely pure! Yes, she looks you in the eyes, almost fawning, she wants to please, and how charmingly genuine it is that she does. In the end one must see in its shape not so much \u2018fashion\u2019 as the splendour, the elegance of love. She is naive and virginal, but she has a sex, and it is a real womanhood \u2013 undeniable and intoxicating. For us it is no complicated, dissembling gender. Incidentally, Christ-Apollo\u2019s sex is barely noticed, a clay miniature, as in the statues of the ancient gods and Donatello\u2019s \u2018David\u2019, that of a plump and awkward boy. Margolin\u2019s Christ has something of the old battle-axe about him, thick-thighed and with a womanish face. He is just like the girl, fashionable and silly, a fop and a na\u00eff. The first is one who \u2018women lost their heads over and men called a fop but secretly envied<\/b>\u2018 (from Turgenev\u2019s novel Fathers and Sons, emphasis is the author\u2019s); the second is the exact opposite of the first \u2013 it is the figure\u2019s invincible spontaneity.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The painting \u00abThe Bridegroom and His Bride\u00bb<\/b><\/p>\n

In the background of a large emerald green canvas, reminiscent of a bright fleecy carpet, there is the\u00a0fountain of life,<\/b>\u00a0eternal youth, around which animals are strolling: a blue horse and two deer. In the foreground our attention is drawn to a bull in dark violet, a tiger with cubs, birds.\u00a0All the animals have their little ones<\/b>The cat with kittens, the tigress has her cubs. Margolin comments: this means that the people depicted here will also have children, but their\u00a0love will be in all its fullness<\/b>. Special emphasis is given to the animals\u2019 eyes, they all indeed have a\u00a0gaze<\/b>. Some are given in pairs, like two herons of different shades in the background. The crocodile nearly dissolves into the greenery, open-mawed with unblinking eyes. Then there are the brilliantly coloured birds, perhaps pheasants. It seems they have walked out of an old master painting. The background of the space in the left part of the picture is closed by a thick green copse, on which hang plump yellow and rubicund apples. To me, this emerald wall with large glossy leaves recalls much the art of old, but especially the baroque park paintings of Somov that have the bosquets of Tsarskoye Selo cast in the white nights of the far north, or at dusk. The beautiful sky at the top right with its\u00a0languid shimmering and sweet longing<\/b>.<\/p>\n

In the centre of the composition: a meeting. We meet our old friend: the kouros, Apollo, Christ. His figure illuminates in the painting\u2019s tinted dusk. Impulsively rushing toward him is She, our dark, Egyptian maiden. Her figure against the dark background seems even thinner than in the sculpture. An awkward, wooden girl, sincere to the point of naivit\u00e9, and hot with desire, it seems she\u2019s just about to grasp Christ\u2019s hand. The artist himself says that he depicts here not just a meeting, but a very important one,\u00a0the most important love meeting<\/b>Christ and the Church, Christ and the New Eve, Christ and the Wisdom of God. The whole future of the world depends on this meeting, of humanity and of the Saviour himself. Margolin says that their entry into one another (which here he does not directly show), their love, must be shown as a\u00a0fully human act, in the spirit and in the style of the Song of Solomon.<\/b><\/p>\n

The painting has indeed been given in a luxurious style, in a jewel-like palette. Yet at once it is also dominated by a placid tranquility, the leaves are not rustling, the beasts breathing evenly. The protagonists preserve a certain restraint, even timidity. I think, as such a complex theological subject, the union of Christ with his Bride the Church after the end of the world has never been presented with such a besotted iconography, with such sensuality of colour, warmth of air, with such chaste voluptuousness. Margolin\u2019s painting is decorative, but not only that, it is \u2018primitivist\u2019, but also free of all formulaism, full of plasticity and an exquisite scent. This is a \u2018romantic work\u2019, the expressionist Margolin here has stepped backstage. What is most important is sensibility, emotion, filled with emotive tenderness. The animals remind one a bit of Franz Mark, but with out the demonism. They are not crystals of limpid stone, no death haunts them here. The animals have been transported beyond the bounds of time. The painting reminds me of some of the works of Margolin\u2019s great predecessors in terms of its spontaneity, love, orotundity and mystery. His toll-keepers are Rousseau and Blake with their tamed monsters and voluptuous chaste virgins and youths. There is nothing at all wrong with the fact that the painting did not come off completely, and that it has something in common with those felt wall-carpets with swans. Margolin\u2019s art is too alive and quivering to be perfect, too hot to win over a Beckmesser.<\/p>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

Here we would like to present a few uplifting patristic citations related to the theme which our painter and sculptor has conveyed in such a free, poetic manner. After reading these excerpts, look at his images again, not only those that are discussed in detail, here but also at others presented at the exhibition. I would venture this might enrich your understanding and at once sharpen some other questions that might arise.<\/p>\n

\n

\u2018And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.\u2019 (Gen. 2.25)\u00a0(\u0412\u0435\u0442\u0445\u0438\u0439 \u0417\u0430\u0432\u0435\u0442)<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

By beauty understand the splendour of the soul: not that which hand could write or time despoil, but that seen by the eyes of a chaste mind.\u00a0(St. Gregory Nazianzen, 16, 203)<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

God is both the bridegroom and the archer. He treats the purified soul as a bride and as the shaft aimed at a good target. He allows his bride to participate in his eternal incorruptibility\u2026\u00a0(St. Gregory of Nyssa)<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

He girded in chastity lives under the light of a clear conscience for the lamp of boldness illumines a life where the soul from the font of truth dwells in vigilance and does not succumb to deception, not driven to madness by any senseless ravings.\u00a0(St. Gregory Nazianzen).<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

Whoever has seen even a particle of chastity \u2013 marvellous and above all comeliness \u2013 and has not been captivated by love himself, he must, in my judgement, be ranked among those who are not lovers beauty.\u00a0(St. Isidore of Pelusium, 60, 286).<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

\n

That land is of the living where night does not exist and where there is no sleep, the imitator of death. In that abode there is no material eating and drinking \u2013 the adjuncts of our frailties. There are no sicknesses, no pains, no medicines, no courts of law, no businesses, no crafts, and no money \u2013 the beginning of evils, the subject of wars, and the root of enmity. It is the land of the living, not of the dying out of sin, but of those living the true life in Christ Jesus.\u00a0(St. Basil the Great).<\/i><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

***<\/b><\/p>\n

\n

In Holy Scripture the relationship between God and the person or God and a people is very often depicted in the the imagery of marriage. The Covenant itself often carries with its the nature of a marriage contract. Israel\u2019s infidelity to the Covenant is always being compared with fornication and adultery [\u2026]<\/p>\n

In the New Testament, when Christ establishes the new Covenant in His blood, the Covenant acquires its final completeness: the fullness and indissoluble unity of the Divine Lamb and his Bride the Church. Christ calls himself the Bridegroom of the bridechamber (Matth. 9:15), and his mission is the bridal feast. [\u2026] The Apostle Paul in his ecclesiology develops the conception of the Church as the Body whose head is Christ. We are all made up of one Body where each member has its purpose. There is a unity of many members in one Body. The nature of entering the Church is the entry into Her Body. \u2018I am the vine and you are the branches,\u2019 says Christ (Jn. 15.5). And just as Eve is born from Adam\u2019s rib, so is the Church born from the Saviour\u2019s pierced side. [\u2026] Husband and wife are an inseparable unity, becoming one flesh. No longer two, but one flesh. Like the body of Christ! [\u2026] Husband and wife constitute an indivisible Whole, like the Church with Christ\u2026 If the wife refuses to obey the husband, they lose the basis of their nature \u2013 for Eve was born of the rib and, rejecting her husband in willfulness, rejects her own nature. It is also necessary that husbands love their wives, as Christ loves the Church and this means to the end, even unto death. Then wives shall have faith in their husbands. In this way the Covenant connects us to God not only through some conditional contract, but penetrates every aspect of our lives to our very essence, like the bonds of marriage. Amen.\u00a0(Fr. Vasiliy Zazdravnykh)<\/i>.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

About Dmitry Margolin<\/b><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Socially<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    A paid government employee, a school teacher. A family man, without real estate or inheritance (save for his genes and cultural traditions). From the Soviet intelligentsia. He sits in his studio and \u2018paints\u2019, sculpts, draws, and prints. He is an artist, surrounded by his students, and does not spend too much time with friends. One would be lucky to find five who give a good assessment of him. He sits and \u2018paints\u2019 and says that after an hour and a half of work, all is well. Sometimes when he crawls his way out, he asks: \u2018Why does no one need me?\u2019 \u2018Why don\u2019t I sell anything?\u2019 But these questions are again drowned out in paint, squeezed out by the amassing canvases, unless another painful question arises: \u2018Why does the work of other artists turn out so alive, beautiful, truthful \u2013 artists like Rembrandt, Vel\u00e1squez, even Jan Sten? Is my faith in art less than theirs, the images that appear before me weaker, my hand cruder, my head in a fog?\u2019<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. Culture, education, interests<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Heir to the Soviet and post-Soviet intelligentsia and Perestroika. A reader of serious books. Reflective. Speaks beautifully. His formal education is fully in the arts, that of the Arts Academy, of St. Petersburg. He has not spent much time abroad and set the \u2018contemporary\u2019 to the side. His interests go beyond the conventional. They include painting and religion (if the latter can truly be called that). He is an active and earnest member of an Orthodox parish. Teaches a catechism class. He understands the shortcomings of his awareness in the diversity in art and willingly seeks to fill the gaps. Interested in theology. Critical of official Church policy and pseudo-culture. Not an intellectual, fashionista, dandy, or a terrorist. Minimally represented on social networks. Politically \u2018liberal\u2019 and probably not a \u2018patriot\u2019, but rooting for Russia. A Petersburger on all counts. You could not make a Moscow artist out of him even if you registered him at an address on the Lenin Hills.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. Nature and Temperament<\/b><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        By nature lively, cheerful. Well regarded by young ladies and full-grown men. Quick to smile and laugh. Also well-known (among his students) for loud and caustic remarks. A hard worker who does much with his hands. Undiscouraged, an optimist. But needs support. This he receives from a few friends and, of course, his wife. Margolin does not speak of her often, but when he does it is clear that the \u2018Wisdom of God\u2019 is on her side. Without the feminine foundation, charming all that surrounds it, it is unlikely that he could live and \u2018paint\u2019. In his nature he has nothing of the labourer, nor of the soldier, nor is he an ascetic, a pedant, a nomothete. Yet he is tenacious, persistent and driven. Apollo and Dionysius are mixed in his blood in equal proportions. His Dionysius is torn apart only in the imagination. His Apollo is not a murderer. His Russianness and Jewishness stand behind one another, one cooling the other, one heating. But the disquiet, the fire of both flares up in the effort to test extremes in painting and the imagination. He thirsts for Harmony and Salvation. He thirsts for peace of mind in the full riot of life and creative work.<\/p>\n

        \u00a0<\/p>\n

        Conclusion.<\/b><\/p>\n

        What is essential to art for Margolin?<\/b><\/p>\n

        For Dima, it seems to me, what is most central is what is traditionally called, though not often enough, \u2018images\u2019. His images are always of someone and something, and he always strives not just to depict and bear the object in mind but that it take place in the picture. Once the image has been established it must then have its own momentum, its internal complexity, and diverse members. All this must be seen, concretely depicted and unique. Perhaps he would even claim that the image will come to have its own mythic allure and draw us into it. For Dima the \u2018quality of painting\u2019 is very important, but not for itself and certainly not for \u2018commercial presentation\u2019, but by the virtue of its own content. He is in no sense a designer, a stylist, and yet neither a conceptual inventor. In my opinion, quality for him is something that can grab the viewer by the throat and shake them.<\/p>\n

        As a man and as a painter, Dmitry is extremely direct, he sees his art always as if for the first time. This ability to catch fire and leap into action is an invaluable talent. This is plain to anyone who has heard his laughter and manner of speaking, he is rich and generous in both. For him the departure from academic art is a decisive break with formalism, with duty-bound procedures and emasculated pseudo-mastery. His directness sometimes keeps Margolin from making ends meet, but it also distinguishes him from many others, especially against the background of the current and general fashionable relativism, veganism and hackneyed ideas.<\/p>\n

        The first and most superficial layer of this directness is in Margolin\u2019s pull toward spontaneity in the spirit of expressionism and primitivism. This comes out in a certain caricature and grotesquery in his figuration. The apposite of this is his utterly direct pull toward the beauty of painting and a number of organic motifs. Thus we have the louche beauty of scenes of debauchery, murder, and in scenes of bliss. The artist does not shrink from such beauty, sensing it acutely and sincerely and fearlessly scuffles on the border of trash and kitsch. But this is only superficial directness. His actual directness has, it would seem, a deeper source. This is the goodness and generosity of the soul, her ardour toward the lovely. The directness of the good, on whose side this artist stakes his claim, making even his orgiastic, monstrous or sardonic scenes something chaste.<\/p>\n

        The indecency of Margolin\u2019s paintings and sculptures comes not from their bold motifs but that they are too\u00a0indecently revelatory, indecently sincere for contemporary secular society<\/b>These are confessional works, revelatory lyric, repentance and declaration in love and aloud to and in front of the world. His paintings \u2013 huge, rich and direct \u2013 are not set for the parlour or a gallery-salon where gather the sceptical public. It is hard to imagine them in today\u2019s vain market for \u2018serious art\u2019, for so much are they written with an almost childlike joy of working with paint, with so much faith that we must conjure up some other word with more sincerity in it than any we have now. Indeed these works of art are not addressed to experts or the \u00e9lite. They will be of interest to many, from children to \u2018backward pensioners\u2019, from those looking for sharp impressions to those accustomed to deep contemplation.<\/p>\n

        How to become wise while remaining direct? \n\nHow to ward off the temptation of that despondency called middle age? \n\nHow to get away from the bald calculus of success and even the calculus of perfection?\n\nPerhaps the bloodied Apollo may help? But could it be the calculating Apollo, with his laws, modes, proportions, intervals, and forms that boils in the blood of the artist?<\/p>\n

        There is no Apollo at all in the blood. There basks and plays a child, ripens a cheerful sacrifice, his blood has a\u00a0Russian lad and the spices of the middle east<\/b>, as Vasily Rozanov had it. Here Apollo is merely a supporting character, a medium for expressing a different ideal. In the true pagan Apollo one would hardly hear the rush of blood. He knows no pain or collapse, he only suffers regular bouts of angst from the inaccessibility of an abstract object of desire, from the eternal inconsistencies of dances and ditties that do not suit his rigid constraints. Margolin\u2019s bloody kouros is a double image: a symbol of the twilight of Apollo, but also his new sunrise, already as a man suffering in holiness. The presence of this Apollo, his distantiation and sovereignty, are the foundation and guarantee of chastity. Yet this is such chastity as that which plays the role of a frame for the appearance of immediate life in the unity of love, in the synthesis of pattern and color, male and female principles according to the law of Divine Economy.<\/p>\n

        ***<\/b><\/p>\n

        \n

        \u201cIt is extreme purity to hold all persons in the same regard as inanimate things\u201d (St. John of the Ladder).<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

        This strict definition of chastity is not for our artist or his images. They are never like inanimate objects. Life plays in them. Their purity does not exclude their sensual physicality. Dmitry\u2019s paintings are real feasts, orgies of colour and flesh, in them all restrictions are removed, and there are no taboos. But, for the orgy, as skilfully writes a great historian of religion and mythology: \n\n\u201c\u2026their excesses fill a definite and\u00a0useful role in the economy of the sacred.<\/b>\u00a0They break down the barriers between man, society, nature and the gods.\u00a0They<\/i>help force life and the seeds of things to move from one level to another, from one zone of reality to the rest. What was emptied of substance is replenished; what was shattered into fragments becomes one again; what was in isolation merges into the great womb of all things. The orgy sets flowing the sacred energy of life. [\u2026] Man hopes, by identifying himself with formless, pre-cosmic existence, to return to himself restored and regenerated, in a word, a \u201cnew man\u201d. The very nature and function of the orgy indicate that it reproduces the original act of Creation, ordering Chaos.(Mircea Eliade.<\/i>Patterns in Comparative Religion, 1958, emphasis is the author\u2019s).<\/p>\n

        Dmitry\u2019s picturesque orgies \u2013 the sensuality of his Bride and Bridegroom, his immersion in the lowlands of the body and soul in paintings of debauchery that derive no less from the purity of nature and of the artist\u2019s thoughts than this \u2013 all these appear as a\u00a0cleansing carnival<\/b>They are not frights, they are played out under the artist\u2019s strict control marked by a lively sense of humour and inspiration. This carnival awakens forces of regeneration, forces of life. And this is so worthwhile, so encouraging against, in Pushkin\u2019s line, the backdrop of \u2018lush nature withering\u2019 that marks Petersburg\u2019s graceful cultural autumn in our days.<\/p>\n\n

        Tsarskoe Selo, 2018<\/i><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n

        \n\n\n

        From The Streetwise and the Celestial. St. Petersburg: Svoe Izdatelstvo, 2018.<\/span><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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