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| 100% Laganoffskaya Jānis Borgs, Art Critic A partly telepathic dialogue with conceptualist Leonards Laganovskis in connection with his solo exhibition Normal 17.04.-31.05.2009. The Latvian National Art Museum exhibition hall Arsenāls | |
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Leonards Laganovskis: I dramatically missed the opening of my own show. Many probably thought that I was becoming a prima donna - being deliberately late and making others wait. But in fact I was simply caught up by some technical problems with my latest concept. Despite its non-material nature, conceptualism is full of such problems. I decided that seeing as it was such an important event, I should do some work with national symbols. And I thought of our famous smoked sprats which are the subject of such controversy from time to time - some say they taste great and are Latvia's great pride and joy, while others consider them chemically tainted and not worth buying... I made arrangements well in advance with some fishermen, who promised to catch and process some sprats in line with the concept and in sufficient quantities for the exhibition. But everything was delayed until the last minute... I arrived an hour late at Arsenāls and put up the final items: a cubic metre of sprats in oil and a sprat metre as a benchmark of Latvian values. Meanwhile the invited guests were patiently waiting, sipping apple juice... | |
 Leonards Laganovskis. City vodka. Dogotal prints. 41x61,5 cm. 2009 | |
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Jānis Borgs: Let's talk about conceptualism. For me, it all started at the turn of the 1960s-70s. I was a student at the Academy of Art, up to my ears in modernism. I was a passionate follower of this movement, I felt at home with it. At first everything came to us through the Polish people, chiefly via their outstanding magazine Projekt. Then I got my hands on a number of books. And finally, the greatest impression "exploded" on a visit to Warsaw, in about 1973. I was on a trip with a youth group, but I went off on my own to the famous radical art gallery Foksal. They specialised in conceptualism, even the great international guru Wieslav Borowski was active there. I was the only visitor to the gallery, and I studied the exposition for so long that the Foksal people began wondering - who is this weirdo? I had a conversation with Borowski, the Poles filled my bag with conceptualist literature and exhibition catalogues, and I went home happy. And for a period I actually practiced this movement. But I have to admit that it was total loneliness, there was a complete absence of people with similar views and fellow collaborators, except perhaps for my art teacher Ojārs Ābols. But you belong to a slightly younger generation. How did you get there? L.L.: I graduated from the Academy of Art in the late 1970s. I studied stage design and was a part-time painter. Almost all of the great and the good of painting at the Academy have touched me: Indulis Zariņš, Boriss Bērziņš... I remember Vladimirs Kozins giving me his "blessing" on graduation day: "...You, Laganovskis, leave figurative painting alone. Still life is your element. You do it very well..." On leaving the Academy, the early 1980s were a prolonged period of confusion and consolidation. My great misfortune was that in the course of my life I never found an older guru who could have helped me find my way more quickly. So I associate my launch into conceptualism with Hardijs Lediņš and his associates. We had endless discussions about contemporary art, about post-modernism. And then there were the musical activities, performances, happenings... followed by all the German contacts. Oh, those wonderful West Berlin exhibitions, the Lettische Avangard period. J.B.: With regard to conceptualism, my first real like-minded associate was Valdis Āboliņš, head of the West Berlin NGBK (Neue Gesellschaft für Bildende Kunst). A great and true friend. We had an impressive correspondence, which Valdis interpreted as an expression of mail art. He had connections with the guru of the avantgarde world, Joseph Beuys himself. Valdis spoke ironically about conceptualism. He said that nobody could outdo the greatest conceptualist of all, Karl Marx and his Das Kapital. Valdis considered himself to be a Marxist, and after visits to Soviet Latvia he was baffled that none of our local communist bigwigs had studied Marx in greater depth, and were surprisingly weak on Marxist theory. He considered them to be decorative pseudo-communists, who loved drinking from early morning onwards. L.L.: Yes, Germany is like a second homeland to me. I lived there for over five years. In fact, that's where I really became the artist-conceptualist I am today. I earned quite a lot of success and recognition in Germany. It's a country full of intellectuals. And it has a very high level of education in general, including the humanities. You can have a serious discussion on art with representatives from virtually any profession: a doctor, engineer or teacher will have an impressive grasp of seemingly elitist artistic questions. I always had to keep on my toes when I was there. Germans were completely comfortable with my mentality. A Latvian is both an Easterner and slightly German at the same time... A centaur? They believed that my great advantage was in being a mediator or "bridge" between east and west, because I was equally close to and understood both Russians and Germans as people. The German Foreign Ministry has entrusted me with undertaking cultural missions with Russian artists under the auspices of German programmes. They believe that I understand the Russians better, and that I don't have problems with them. The superorganised Germans cannot fathom the Russian principle of "it'll work out somehow", while the Russians are in eternal wonderment how a Mercedes can always function perfectly and never break down... By "Mercedes" I mean the whole German perfectionist system. J.B.: To me it seems that Germans and Russians do have a few things in common. Firstly, they like being together, living together in groups, villages, whereas Latvians prefer living in isolated homesteads, individualism. They are loud and noisy, whereas Latvians are shy and reserved. And a feature of their respective artistic scenes is the wide ranging, endless and passionate theoretical debating. All night, to the point of exhaustion. I've never come across a Latvian intellectual or artist sinking into such endless theorising, such blathering on about art. Sometimes you discuss something, but then you move on to subjects of general interest, easy talk. L.L.: Maybe it just seems like drunken blah-blah. I would compare this process to threshing grain or panning for gold. You have to thoroughly discuss all the aspects and angles of an issue to get a hand-ful of grain or a few specks of gold. And there's no shortage of that in Russia or Germany! It seems to me that Latvia has reached a stage of profound intellectual weakness, impotence even. Our reserves of gold are miniscule. Just look at our media scene. Do we have even one newspaper that could hold a candle to Die Zeit or Der Spiegel, or a broadcasting network whose quality approaches that of the BBC? Media such as those will analyse an issue right down to the bone, so that not a smidgen of uncertainty is left. With the exception of a few programmes, our media is gutter press or tending that way, or is simply trivial. There's so much that is inclined to a retreat from intellectualism, to mere entertainment. | |
 Leonards Laganovskis. Podium. Watercolour on paper.30x40 cm. 1988-2009 | |
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J.B.: In many of your works, you use anglicised expressions of Russian words. For example, in that vodka "labels" series, whose origin obviously comes from Moskovskaya vodka. Some might crudely interpret this as an expression of Laganovskis' Russophilia in combination with vodka drinking. L.L.: That would be a very shallow view. I'm not a particular consumer of vodka and generally I drink in moderation. And if I sometimes use pornographic motifs or black humour in my work, it doesn't mean I'm a sex maniac or Frankenstein. Naturally, I believe that sex is the great engine of progress in the world. But it's only one of the vital aspects of existence. And I would consider myself to be even less of a Russophile, despite the fact that I count many Russian artists and intellectuals as my friends, and we understand each other extremely well. And I genuinely enjoy the peculiarities and constructions of the Russian language and its slang. Languages, their interaction, paradoxes, correspondences are an inexhaustible source of inspiration for conceptualism. This series on the Westernisation of Russian words (and vice versa - the Russification of Western words) that you mentioned is a conceptually ironic study in the field of globalisation. Here we can see how the major cultures mingle and interact. J.B.: Sarcastically ironic works with references to Soviet totalitarian culture and so-called socart play a fairly big role in your art. You make quite a lot of use of Soviet-era cultural stereotypes and matrices, which are diversified by your art, imbuing them with the totally different role of social criticism. L.L.: That's true, I wouldn't describe myself as an admirer of the Soviet system. However those matrices are still so quaint and comic in such a revealing and paradoxical way, that they still create inexhaustible opportunities for the artist. In this context I've started a new series of works which can be seen in the exhibition, which are seemingly traditional graphics with architectural imagery. If you don't look carefully and deeply you could miss their essence. For example, there are some scenes from a movie screening with tiny subtitles on the screen: "... all these Russians moved over here...", "...where have these bugger Latvians led us to?", "...too many of these Latvians around..." and similar phrases, that reflect the ethnic tensions simmering in our society which we sometimes in well-behaved manner try to ignore and leave unresolved. These sorts of phrases sampled from everyday life are seemingly hidden in a benevolent and amiable architectural graphic form. It all seems decent and polite, and you could even put this sort of work in your bedroom. But somewhere deeper the problem keeps smouldering away. Like a cigarette in a sleeping person's bed. J.B.: I love your fantastic combinations of classic texts. I remember the entire Bible in one square metre! And now, here we have all of Shakespeare in about five square metres! Of course these works can only be read theoretically. The main point is the conceptual awareness that you can view it all in the blink of an eye. L.L.: There are some technical miracles underpinning it all. I made the Bible square metre about nine years ago. Using the most powerful computing technology available at the time, the work took about two months to complete. And even that was on the extreme edge of what was possible. I squeezed more out of the computers and printers than they were really capable of. Now I was able to do the Shakespeare five metres in just five hours. What incredible progress! I could do God knows what else, but new ideas are always limited by technical barriers. Computer muscle power still multiplies tenfold every decade, however the imagination develops even faster and further. Thankfully, for now at least, it's not the other way around. Working with technology, I keep encountering unexpected surprises. In the exhibition there were two large-scale screen prints with an image like distortions on a TV screen, a sort of test pattern. Initially I was moving those pixels around by hand, one by one, carefully setting it up like Georges Seurat and his pointillism. Then I had the idea to create a negative of the image. And guess what! It was a negative, but very similar to the positive. A feminine-masculine pair, like a Yin Yang circle. And an enormous philosophy emerged from those pixel "distortions". Modern technologies play a decisive role in my work. I'm a huge fan of surfing and downloading things from the Web. It's the main element and environment of my inspiration. J.B.: But not all of your works have been created using high technology. There's something more down to earth and traditional about them. There's a wealth of painted portraits. A totally unex-pected Laganovskis, about whom "normal" could no longer be said, as asserted by the name of your exhibition. And those wine paintings in thick frames. What is that a metaphor for? L.L.: In fact, they aren't wine paintings done on something, rather it is real liquid wine hermetically sealed between two glass plates. One of them is a mirror. I listened for a long time to all sorts of poetic language and wine tasters' raptures about the mystical colour of wine. Then I decided to put this to the test in my conceptual series, directly and almost scientifically. I've been conducting these sorts of tests for a decade now. And with various types of wine. You can see the resulting diversity for yourself. And then you look through the layer of real wine and see your own reflection, and everything is concrete and direct - that, you see, is the colour of each particular wine without all the poetic embellishment. And at the same time it's a lot like a painting, a water colour. In addition, as the years go by the colour of the wine keeps changing. Here again is the idea of change and impermanence. As you know, the main thing in conceptualism is the appositeness of the concept rather than aesthetics or literary values. We don't deal in pretti-ness, but rather we sense the world through the concept. As for the portraits, you might well think: "See, Laganovskis is fed up with dreaming up overly clever stuff. He's finally tuned to "classical values", and his academic skills are being put to good use." But all is not as it appears. I created all of these images while spending time in the Riga Bohemian nightclub Pulkvedis. I took snaps of people's faces, mainly girls, using a small camera that looks like a cigarette lighter. People didn't even notice what was happening, and that's what I needed - authentic facial expressions. Because whenever people are photographed openly, they always put on some sort of posed, façade-like expression. Here, however, the faces were completely natural. I put all of that onto fabric and painted using my own invented technique, a mix of acrylic and water-based paints. That's where the lightness and airiness comes from. So the concept is an unposed portrait. And I haven't betrayed my artistic principles one bit. J.B.: In this exhibition we can also see your eternal subject - various "designs" of podiums... L.L.: Yes, this really is an important subject for me. Like daily exercises or scales for pianists. A podium is a symbol of bureaucracy and international kafkaism. I have hundreds of drafts and sketches of ideas for them. For a time I was a player of bureaucratic games myself, serving as the Chief Artist of Riga. In spite of the many surreal processes involved, bureaucracy does have its own logic and predictability. Somehow the irrational is balanced out by the rational. In other spheres of life this balance is much more fragile. But for an artist with a sensitive and free-thinking nature, the bureaucratic environment is an enormous and burdensome trial. J.B.: Do you feel understood? What place does conceptualism have in our society, in your view? L.L.: I can't claim to be an artist beloved by the nation, with throngs of admirers clamouring to get into my exhibitions. Conceptualism is after all a distinctly elitist and intellectual art form. But I have my band of supporters, and that gives me satisfaction. I don't need mass adoration. And I also appreciate frank and open talk, where people say exactly what they think without hypocrisy or flattery. I like the bitter truth and the cold shower of criticism. Although a kind word is just as pleasant, if it is deserved. But each artist's individual achievement is what earns them their place in society. Great ideas shake up the world. Christ and Buddha, for instance. Can they complain that their ideas are losing importance? J.B.: Conceptualism is actually based on the work of the Dadaists at the time of the First World War. Let us remember the great Marcel Duchamp. On the same street in Zurich where the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire was located lived a certain Vova Lenin. Neither knew of each other's existence, but I have read books in which Lenin is described as the world's greatest Dadaist. Someone always turns up who fulfils the conceptualist idea much more impressively than any artist. Wasn't this the case with Mohamed Atta in his 9/11 campaign? It's a sinful thought, but who has succeeded in a more effective fulfilment of his idea? Perhaps, indirectly, Einstein or Oppenheimer through the Manhattan Project in the 1940s? If we pursue this line we can arrive at Adolf the Terrible... and other monsters... And it was in both deliberate and unconscious Dadaism that all of this activity with word symbols could be found. It was precisely there and then that what we now call conceptualism emerged. You could well ask: which artists' works are not based on a concept? You can't even fart without a concept. Nevertheless, this prioritising of the non-material idea is a movement with a long history. Personally I'm fascinated, for example, by the German and American Fluxus artists of the 1960s. One of the leaders was a Lithuanian, George Maciunas. That's where John Cage came from. It's a grand tradition, which winds its way through the 20th century to the present. L.L.: That's the way it really is. It all began with the Great Dada. And everything else, including what I do now, is just a sort of neo-neo Dada... Kunst - 100% dadaistskaya laganoffskaya... /Translator into English: Filips Birzulis/ | |
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