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| A BIRD OF PARADISE IN THE LATVIAN ART SCENE. Maija Tabaka Inese Riņķe | |
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The unusual personality and vivid talent of Maija Tabaka, after 35 years of active contribution to Latvian painting, still gives rise to debate as intense as it was at the beginning of her artistic development. Provocatively alien to the mainstream of Latvian painting of the seventies, her art retains to this day its aureole of an off-beat phenomenon.
The story of Maija Tabaka and her art includes all the elements essential to the biography of a genius. An intelligent girl from a family unconnected with art, she began to engage in drawing with encouragement from her father, attended Auseklis Baušķenieks' studio in the Castle of the Pioneers, entered the Graphic Art Department of the Academy of Art and changed to painting a year later. But she was expelled from the academy for breaking the rules. Small wonder: few students of the late sixties went as far as thinking up a theme such as "Pineapple Eaters" in a country where few had ever seen a pineapple (and it was undoubtedly also a paraphrase of the ideologically approved painting "Potato Eaters" by Vincent van Gogh). After this, she left home, joined a company of similar free-thinking individuals and moved to Moscow, where she met Amy Lorensen, the private secretary of the legendary Alexandra Kolontaya, studied the painting of the Old Masters of Western European painting at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, copied works by her favourite artists, tried and relinquished Cézanne and at the end of it all returned to her Alma mater. Success came to Tabaka surprisingly soon, most demonstratively in the international context. Thus, she participated in the 40th Venice Biennale, won a DAAD scholarship competition (1977), judged by the jury of the Kassel documenta of that year, and also became friends with Fluxus artist Wolf Vostell and with Valdis Āboliņš, an activist in the movement and an important figure in West Berlin art structures, entering into a long-lasting correspondence with them. 1978 saw an exhibition of her work at the West Berlin Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, followed a decade later by a solo exhibition in the Central House of Artists on the coast of Crimea. And following the exhibition of Latvian avant-garde art in West Berlin, her work attracted interest at the "heavyweight" galleries of Berlin and Munich, and later those of New York and Paris too. The avant-garde character of Tabaka's art was perceived by collectors and curators abroad. In addition to her works kept in the State Tretyakov Gallery, a traditional collector of work by major Latvian artists, her works are in the Peter Ludwig Collection, the National Gallery in Berlin and in the collection of Baltic non-conformist art of Nancy and Norton Dodge, and in the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in New Brunswick, USA. All of the above testifies to the need for a closer scrutiny of her art on the eve of a major retrospective at the Latvian State Museum of Art. Maija Tabaka's revolutionary distinctiveness in the seventies derived from her close association with subculture figures - nonconformist musicians, poets and artists. She was able to observe these attractive individuals at their legendary haunts, the Riga cafés Putnudārzs and Kaza. The people in her paintings personified the urban culture of the new age and demonstrated that which officially endorsed art was careful to hide: an interest in the private world and social escapism. Maija Tabaka was interested in young people who stood completely aloof from the ideals of the ruling ideology and were instead attracted more by the achievements of Western capitalism in rock and jazz, in contemporary design, art and undeniably also fashion. Everything was important in Tabaka's art: gestures and poses, long hair, make-up, stylish dress and stretched body proportions, but the main thing was the sense of freedom and independence that extended beyond the frames of the paintings. There is no doubt that fashion was important: it distinguished unequivocally the conservatives from the stylish and served as a means of declaring views. The tiniest detail of dress was appreciated by those in the know, and you divided society into your own set and the rest. The tradition of dandyism is known in Latvian culture since the time of Padegs and Vidbergs. Maija Tabaka herself always brought out her natural Hollywood looks, her distinctiveness by her dress. Tabaka's ability to pinpoint what was new and unusual in life was noted by another major figure - German artist Wolf Vostell, combining in his portrait of Maija Tabaka the image of a Romantic beauty with a coolly analytical gaze and a symbolic photo camera at centre. More problematic was the perception of her art in Latvia. Tabaka's outstanding professional ability was never in question. Rather, critics' suspicions were aroused by the unrestrained public enthusiasm for her work, so that the artist was likened in popularity to a film star. And not only that. Baffling was the unusually vivid appearance of these glamorous figures, as was her use of cinematic techniques: spotlighting the faces and attaching great importance to details, special costumes, staged unreal situations, the simultaneous representation of many layers of reality and the shocking identifiability of the prototypes for the paintings. In contrast to the open enthusiasm demonstrated by a public that had been estranged from reality, questions of "good taste" were brought up from time to time. Exploitation and manipulation of models is a traditional approach by artists, but confusing in Tabaka's case was the correspondence of the subjects in terms of appearance and character to the roles in which they were depicted, sometimes turning out to be overly provocative. In the distant seventies, Maija Tabaka had her fellow travellers. Alongside her there was an intellectually and artistically capable group who described themselves as the "French Group": Bruno Vasiļevskis, Imants Lancmanis and later Miervaldis Polis - heralds of the era of Postmodernism, with strict views on the importance of high standards in the craft of painting as traditionally understood. Already in their study years, this group expressed a radically different ideology in art. They developed an interest in various expressions of American Photorealism and Pop Art. They were influenced by compelling, visionary painting and approached with a serious attitude the history of Western European painting. Imants Lancmanis' "Suvorova Street", Vasiļevskis' existentially naked still lifes and the recorded fragments of street life by Polis and Purmale, imitating the accidental effect of photography. The participation of these artists in exhibitions at that time was a sensation. However, it was the art of Maija Tabaka in particular that brought about a conflict of views. And this is no coincidence. She was working in a very dangerous area of figural painting: portraits of her contemporaries. She had very large format works with vividly contrasting colour schemes. Tabaka's subjects were in opposition to the officially favoured style, with its characteristic heroes-of-labour themes and schematic, harsh images, aiming to symbolise the functions most essential to the system: to praise the work ethic and express the moral ideals of socialism. Paradoxically, abstract art, Surrealism and Hyperrealism and related phenomena were all put in the same basket as undesirable art movements. The subjects tackled by Maija Tabaka in her painting are complex and conceal a broader narrative, a story to be read in many ways. Her programmatic work "Morning in the Forest" (1971) is defined in her own terse explanation as presenting the contrast between urban youth and nature. But in terms of its spirit, it was most reminiscent of Eduard Manet's scandalous "Luncheon on the Grass" and introduced the public to a madonna of the new age Regīna Razuma, whose long, red lacquered boots, red lips and the child by her side constituted both a paraphrase of the classical theme and an expression of the new sexuality. One of the treasures of Latvian art is the gallery of outstanding portraits by Maija Tabaka, ranging from figures torn by conflicting passions - Andris Grīnbergs in the role of Münchhausen, Oļegs Tillbergs personifying the force of the earth and Yuri Tishchenko in the guise of Tolstoy, to the exquisitely mannered Imants Lancmanis in the painting "Wedding in Rundāle", which introduced carnival motifs and the conscious utilisation of costume as an instrument and a mask. A separate set is the so-called "West Berlin Series". While she was living in West Berlin, the city perceived as a signpost for Western capitalism, Tabaka was inspired to the composition uncovering the theme of identity "What is Your Name?" and the surprising painting "Jungle", dealing with pleasure that leads to self-destruction. Among her great successes is also the "Self Portrait", which shows her balancing on a tightrope - a successful formulation of her personal predicament. She herself says that the fantasies of the genius of Fellini have had a special influence, with the extraordinary, exotic exterior of his magical figures, special costumes, seemingly unconnected action and, first and foremost, the culture of the film shot. Also influential was a genius of literature of that time, Garcia Marquez, with his novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude". Maija Tabaka applied in her painting the principles of shot composition and the games with time that appear in other media. Here we may mention her portraits of world-famous playboy-spy Richard Sorge and the high-born first lady of the Soviet regime, a diplomat and outstanding individual Alexandra Kolontaya, and likewise the very successful portraits in an interior of Tatjana Suta and Tatjana Bēma. With the triumphant return of figural art in serious international art structures and the holding of a string of exhibitions in world museums, featuring work by major stars in figural art, along with a growing interest in the genre in Latvia, this is truly the right time to enjoy the phenomenon of Maija Tabaka. | |
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