Vladimir Molochnikov: “All my life I live only at the expense of my art”

Punks with scallops, Mamonov and Mama Solovyova

– You didn’t inherit this apartment, you earned it yourself. Where was your childhood?

– I was born on Petrovka, my grandmother lived there. My mother was the secretary of the party organization, she bought a large three-room apartment on Shchelkovskaya, where I spent my childhood. He studied at the school of working youth. Recently, a classmate whom I don’t remember at all wrote to me, something like this: “Misha, we considered you an idiot, your nickname was Bourgeois, we hated you. But now I understand that you were good, we just couldn’t appreciate you.” In general, I was lucky: my parents were quite wealthy people, and my childhood was cloudless.

– How did a graduate of an architectural college become a graphic artist? It’s a completely different scale.

– My mother graduated from MGIMO almost with honors, and my father is an athlete – he played in the Khimik hockey club, he had a black belt in karate, and he fought with someone all the time. Dad said: “Misha, you must be a man, if someone looks at you badly, come up and give him a nose.” But my mother decided otherwise. Since I suffer from dyslexia, that is, I write with errors, she said: “You will follow in the footsteps of your grandfather.” Grandfather graduated from the Art Academy in Kazan, was a GRU general, director of the Museum of the East, was friends with Mao Zedong and translated his works for Stalin. At the end of the 8th grade, she simply “bought” a Russian language teacher, so I passed the competition for an architectural college. When I graduated in the late 70s, I thought: “Why should I enter the Moscow Architectural Institute?” Mom suggested that I go to work in my specialty, and I got a job in the architectural workshop of Vladimir Ginzburg.

– A well-known place, and still afloat …

– Yes. We had cult figures in the brigade, for example, the architect Ivan Taranov. Igor Mukhin also worked there, with whom we became very good friends. Punks with combs on their heads always came to Mukhin, and in the evenings we went together to Pyotr Mamonov’s apartment concerts. In the summer I went to the North. I spent the whole year drawing, because the system was arranged in such a way that projects had to be handed in at the end of the year, and the rest of the time I could feel quite free. Mom was afraid that I would be, like Van Gogh, a poor artist. However, my work went well from the very beginning. The first ones in the Mars Gallery were shown and sold by art critic Inna Solovieva, mother of Vladimir Solovyov. A huge number of foreigners went there. I quickly earned money with my work for an apartment in Chertanov, and then I bought a workshop nearby so as not to go far. And then to this apartment. Very convenient in the center – whoever I have not been here! All my life I live only on my art.

Cockroaches and mysticism

– On the one hand, for many, the 1990s were difficult and impoverished, and on the other hand, the iron curtain collapsed, art gained freedom. What was this time like for you?

– Terrific. Life was in full swing. Vernissages, concerts, movement. We drank with some foreigners all the time.

Do you consider yourself a postmodernist artist?

– This is a very vague concept.

— Your creative credo…

– Microcosmism. This is when you look through a microscope and see further and further. The microcosm and macrocosm are very similar in structure – this has been scientifically proven. The first is just as infinite as the second. For me, art is meditation and philosophy. Look at this work – there are natives of Latin America, archetypes, Pavel Filonov. Each of my works is a meditation for me personally and for the viewer. Lama Zopa Rinpoche (famous Buddhist teacher, author of a number of books and spiritual head of the international network of Buddhist centers. – M.M.) gave me initiation and said: “You must draw!”. That’s what I do. Images appear by themselves.

– Very meticulous work, and addictive. What materials and tools do you use?

— I work with acrylic ink, which does not fade at all. Tools – titanium tubes – I use German ones. I have a whole case of mascara: Dutch, American, English…

Are there any problems because of the sanctions?

– Not. If you only knew how much I bought for the future! Graphic artists always buy more than they need. I have mascara from the 1990s. You never know what your hand will reach for – once, suddenly reaching for pink or silver …

– I want to quote the text of the art historian Vitaly Patsyukov about you …

– Vitaly was a fantastic person – he wrote a text about me, and then substituted the name of the artist Anatoly Chechik into it. He was furious. (Laughs.)

“… the life of an artist cannot be separated from his work – it is no less mysterious than his art and full of mysterious signs and mystical incidents – like a cast from his sacred masks and labyrinth structures.” I agree?

— Yes, this is the same text, and, yes, I agree. I am Buddhist. Mystical coincidences happen all the time in my life. Once I went to the passport office to register in this apartment. There was a woman who was yelling at everyone, I calmed her down. She thought I was a psychiatrist. When I said that I was an artist, for some reason she asked: “Do you draw peonies?” I say no, but I have a series with cockroaches. She became interested and invited me to show the drawings. And I bought four at once with cockroaches. Once I was sitting at a meeting on cultural issues, and next to me was a man who said: “How they load, how they want wine …” As a result, they drank, it turned out that he was the owner of one of the largest Russian companies. I also bought works. Or I met a man on the street who turned out to be an employee of the Pushkin Museum – this is how my works ended up in the Pushkin Museum. Antonova took them – she really liked them. Life constantly brings me into contact with people whose acquaintance is beneficial.

– And what wind brought you to Berlin?

– It’s also mystical. In 1998, my credit card was turned off, and for some reason I thought that I should emigrate to Germany. I collected all the documents and immediately received permission to leave. In principle, I lived well in Berlin. Once I was walking down the street there and I see a sign – “American Modern Graphics”. I found her curator, and as a result, my work ended up in the Kupferstichkabinet (the largest collection of graphics in Germany. — MM.).

– If everything was going so well, then why did you leave Germany?

— My first wife, artist Marina Gertsovskaya, died of cancer in Berlin. I began to travel to Russia more often, I had many exhibitions here. Once in Moscow he came to a party at the Dom club. My friends and I drank moonshine from a bucket there – the evening was devoted to this drink. I liked the girl in colorful tights. I have never seen such, apparently, out of savagery. I told her that I liked her, although I was wildly drunk. She ended up giving me three children. When the eldest daughter, who is now 12 years old, had to go to the first grade, I began to choose a school, and none of them suited me. I called the director of the school where my mother studied, and he told me that he would take all my children. So I returned to Moscow. By the way, my wife and I got married in Denmark, when we already had two children, and she was pregnant with the third. When we were standing in the Copenhagen Cathedral, the mayor of the city looked at us in surprise and asked: “Are these your children?” I answered: “And whose, do you see someone else here?” “Where were you before?” the mayor asked. “Yes, somehow the hands did not reach,” I answered.

Why did you get married in Copenhagen?

So the card lay down. Fate. It’s always like this for me – life itself leads to the right place.

Buddhism and the Toilet of the Patriarch

How did you become a Buddhist?

– Grandfather was the director of the Museum of the East, so I was interested in the East since childhood, I had access to literature. Somewhere in the 80s, I read Nikolai Abaev’s book “Chan Buddhism and Cultural and Psychological Traditions in Medieval China”. Thanks to her, I understood what Chan Buddhism is and how to calm my mind. But I am also connected with Orthodoxy in a certain sense. Once he made a toilet for Alexy II in his residence near Moscow. It was necessary to master the million dollars that the sponsors gave for the restroom, and I mastered it. Nothing stuck to my hands. Although the space is small and friends said: “Misha, you probably can’t handle it.”

– And what did you come up with?

— Made in neoclassical style. Used semi-precious stones on the ceiling. He made the only mistake – he made a month with stars on the ceiling. Alexy said that this would not work, they say, a Muslim symbol. I redid it.

“You are a member of the German Union of Artists, but you are not a member of any of ours. Why?

– This is a professional organization in Berlin, which included Joseph Beuys. I see no reason to join our unions, although they offer.

– And they don’t cross out German now – in connection with recent events?

– Not. Moreover, my works are included in the exhibition of the Vienna Museum of Applied Arts MAK. These are objects from their collection. Prior to that, my work was exhibited at the Ludwig Museum in Cologne. So from the German Union of Artists there is a sense. My works are in many collections around the world, and they are constantly exhibited in Europe.

– That is, the story of the abolition of Russian culture in the West passed you by?

– I live my life, no one pushes me.

— How, in your opinion, is the art market changing in the new reality?

– Life goes on. People sell and buy. Many export colossal collections to other countries, as Peter Aven did. An acquaintance of the collector recently called from New York and said that he was going to show his collection in Russia, and then in Spain and the USA.

“However, what is happening now is a traumatic experience for humanity. The reaction to the First World War was the emergence of Dadaism, and after the Second World War, the era of postmodernism began. What could be the result of the current conflict? Some new era in art will begin?

– I started in the era of conceptualism, but who will remember it tomorrow? I recently met Leonid Bazhanov, who told me that I should paint like Chuikov – paintings one and a half meters by one and a half meters. And Iosif Backshtein once upon a time, looking at my work, said to me: “How beautiful, but this is not art. And yet, at one time, these two people gave me a start in life. I just do what I like, without regard to styles and trends. Any “isms” are coming and going. In Buddhism there is no time, there is only now. Tomorrow is unknown, and I have already forgotten what happened yesterday. Is there a present moment? I don’t think so. Buddhists live in the moment. Now we have drunk good coffee – and it’s great. Pay attention – at the exhibition of the Morozov collection “Brother Ivan” in the Pushkin Museum there are estimates that indicate at what prices the paintings were bought at that time. There were small prices for the works of artists, which are now worth a lot of money and which everyone now knows. And now we don’t even remember the authors who were sold for fabulous sums. There is no eternity, but there is infinity.