pictures courtesy of Justyna Orlovska from her website
"Off the Beaten Track"
In the field of art environments in Europe, there are some sites with a decoration mainly composed of dolls, such as those of Francis Barale (France), Daina Kučere (Latvia) and Margarita Travkina (Russia). This small group of creations can be complemented by a site in the Czech Republic curated by Lubomir Votava.
Life and works
Votava was born in the early 1960s in Havlíčkův Brod, a town in the Vysočina region of the Czech Republic.
Initially he worked as a tractor driver. In 1989 he attended a rally of the Republican Party, often referred to as extreme right and represented in the Czech parliament from 1992-1998. Votava joined that party, working his way up to become an advisor and bodyguard to the party's leader.
In that capacity Votava gained notoriety for some incidents, like he punched an opponent with his fists. Later he was convicted for being violent against a journalist, after which he left the world of politics and in 1998 retired to the small village of Rváčov, also located in the Vysočina region.
Votava settled in Rváčov in a simple house, built around 1870, initially inhabited by his grandparents and thereafter used by his parents as a summer home.
Rváčov was now in his late thirties and living on his own. Away from the urban hustle and bustle of Prague, Votava now focused on the quiet rural life in the village.
Especially pleased with the garden located between the cottage and the main road that crosses the village, he spent a lot of time maintaining it. He built a pond with his own hands and from ten kilometers away, in a wheelbarrow he carried a large amount of stones into the garden, some of these stones being three feet high
As a result, in 2016 the garden was reviewed in the Czechian magazineChatar Chalupář, a practice-oriented monthly magazine about housing and lifestyle.
But what would make him known, both in the village and beyond, was not the composition of garden, but the special way in which he provided house and garden with decorations.
From his early years a lover of old toys and discarded dolls, he started to decorate interior and exterior especially with dolls, which he obtained from people around who wanted to get rid of them, which he found in trash cans or which sometimes were just left behind by people, deposited at the garden's entrance.
About a thousand dolls cover the outer wall of the house and are attached to the branches of trees in the garden.
Varied reactions
His way of decorating house and garden, which is visible from the main road that runs through the village, has led to varied reactions among the residents, both appreciation and disgust or fear.
Votava has said he doesn't exhibit the dolls to scare passers-by. He wants to prevent them from ending up in the garbage and being destroyed. He has explained that for him dolls are a medium from which energy passes. Looking at some dolls he sees in their eyes the child that played with them many years ago.
This train of thought is reflected in most arrangements of the dolls, as demonstrated in the pictures above.
But an arrangement like the one in the photo above, in which dolls -partly without a head- are suspended from a rope around their necks, arouses less sweet associations.
So in presenting both the lovely and the harshness, this art environment shows an ambiguity. It is not clear if this ambiguity is intended or unintentional, but in any case it can confuse a potential visitor.
Documentation
* Article (November 2014) on the website of TN Nova, with a short video and a series of pictures * Series of photos with explanation (December 2015) on website Off the Beaten Track, editedby Justyna Orlovska
Videos * Detailed impression of the site in wintertime (November 2015, YouTube, 14'35")
* Video by Vladimír Havlíček (July 2019, YouTube, 3'57") with Votava talking about the collection
Lubomir Votava
House and garden decorated with dolls Rváčov, Vysočina region, Czech Republic can be seen from the road
In Saint-Salvadour, a commune of a few hundred inhabitants in the Corrèze area in central France, there is a small museum that exhibits granite sculptures created by Antoine Paucard, a retired mason who was born in that village and lived there most of his life.
Life and works
The son of one of the last millers in the community, Paucard was born on December 5, 1886. After his primary education, which he completed in 1897, he did not follow any further courses, but went to work.
Initially he probably had jobs in or around the village, but in August 1906 he joined the French army, becoming part of a unit based in Africa, the Regiment 3 of the African Hunters (Chasseurs d'Afrique). Paucard left the army in 1909 after an accident in which he lost an eye due to a horse kick.
He stayed in Paris for some time and then returned to his native village to start working as a farmer.
In 1915 Paucard married Françoise Cérézat. The couple would have a son and a daughter.
After World War I he became a mason, a job that in this period was important because of the post-war reconstruction. Sometimes alternated with farming, Paucard would continue working as a mason until his retirement in the late 1940s/early 1950s.
As a mason Paucard in particular focused upon building houses, and it has been reported that his predilection to express in a notebook what was on his mind, entailed that each completed house was celebrated with a song included in one of the 120 notebooks he filled between 1930 and 1975, scriptures that became part of his legacy.
Paucard has also manifested himself politically. In 1930 he joined the Communist Party. In 1933 he made a trip to the USSR, from where he returned disappointed. The book in which he explained this, Un mois en Russie, par un paysan de la Corrèze (A month in Russia, by a peasant from Corrèze), 1934, subsequently led to his break with the party.
During the Second World War, Paucard joined the French resistance and after the war he was mayor of Saint-Salvadour for a year.
In the early 1950s, now retired, he became somewhat disillusioned with politics, and he began to devote himself to making sculptures.
Creating a collection of sculptures
All together Paucard has created about thirty granite sculptures. As the pictures in this post show, these sculptures mostly portray people.
To indicate what kind of persons it concerns: the sculptures include famous French personalities, such as Charlemagne (= Charles the Great), Napoléon, Richelieu, the generals Margueritte and Nivelle, known from World War I. There is a sculpture of Saint Salvadour who also names the village.
And then there are portrayals of people from his family circle such as his father and his grandmother and sculptures that depict colleagues from his time as a soldier with the Chasseurs d'Afrique.
To conclude this small overview, it can be noted that Paucard has also portrayed himself. The image directly above shows two people, of whom the one on the right must be Paucard, while the one on the left is a friend named Roger Cronnier.
A special aspect of Paucard's artwork is that many sculptures are provided with inscriptions that explain the scene, sometimes in poetic form, like he also made creations with only text, as aphorisms or philosophical expressions.
Just a single example: in the image above, the text surrounding the globe and the text covered by the stone below read in French: De cette misère la Terre et de sa création, quels en sont le Mystère et ..... surtout le Destin? ....... Pas le néant sans doute, car il n'est qu'un Non-sens ¹
In English: Of this misery the Earth and its creation, what are the Mystery and ..... especially the Destiny? Not nothingness, no doubt, because it is just Non-sense
This indicates that Paucard's artistic qualities involved making sculptures as well as writing literary and poetic texts.
Paucard did not make his sculptures to sell, he kept them together and housed his creations in a separate shelter near his home, an accommodation he constructed himself and which eventually became a small-scale museum.
Just as Paucard's notebooks include all kinds of personal thoughts and poems, so his sculptures can be seen as just as many representations of persons who in any way were of significance to him.
And just as the notes in these notebooks joint together acquire a specific meaning, so the collection of sculptures in their mutual relationship gets its own meaning, as is the case in many art environments.
Paucard died on February 18, 1980 at age 94. He was laid to rest in the local cemetery in a family tomb that he had made himself in the 1950s.
His son Roland Paucard, who took care of the sculptures, in consultation with the mayor of the village, bequeathed in 2008 the collection of sculptures and all of Paucard's notebooks to the municipality. The mayor said that in this way the collection of sculptures could remain together and would not be spread over various regional museums.
After the necessary preparations (funds had to be collected to renovate the former courtyard of the school of Saint-Salvadour near the town hall and the collection had to be transferred to their new premises), the Museum was officially opened in November 2010.
The museum is open all year round and can be visited free of charge.
Efim Vasilyevich Chestnyakov (1874-1961) almost all his life lived in the tiny village of Shablovo in the Kostroma region of Russia, except for some years he was a teacher in other communities and a few years he had an art education in St Petersburg,
He was a complex artist, active in various artistic fields, such as photography, writing literary stories and fairy tales, making paintings, doing theater performances ....
He also made large scale miniature scenes with figurines and structures from clay, as shown in the photo above and the one below.
another part of the clay figurines
Life and works
Born on December 31, 1874 in a farmers family living in Shablovo, Chestnyakov at a young age already showed he had a talent for making drawings.
After his primary education, he followed from 1889-1894 a training, to become a teacher (1894-1899) first in a village near the town of Kostroma, then in Kostroma itself and later in the village of Uglets near the town of Kineshma in the Kineshemsky district (Ivanovo oblast).
When Chestnyakov was a teacher in the Kineshemsky district (1896-1899), he participated in the circle of local intelligentsia, he read books on philosophy and culture, drew a lot and painted watercolors. He also developed a passion for theater when in December 1897 in Kineshma a theater was opened.
At the end of the 20th century in rural Russia the Petruschka theater was in particular popular, a performance with marionettes and hand puppets, the main character being kind of a jester dressed in a red costume and sometimes with a long nose.
Later in his life the phenomenon of theater would be an important aspect of Chestnyakov's artistic activities.
portrait (around 1900) of Chestnyakov as a young man
During Chestnyakov's stay in the Kineshemsky district his talent for drawing was noted and friends raised funds which enabled him to move to St Petersburg, where from 1900 he would take lessons. both in the workshop of a well-known professional painter and at an art academy.
In 1905, because of rebellions in Russia, the Academy closed and Chestnyakov -his education not yet completed- returned to his native village, where he settled in a small house, as pictured below.
Chestnyakov's original house, built in the early 1900s
He was in his early 30s and his decision to return to his native village meant that prospects for a career as a professional painter would become less obvious.
It may be that he meanwhile had become aware that his artistic interest was much broader than just making paintings, and that this capacity, combined with his inner drive to contribute to a better future for people around, and especially children, could be better realized in a rural than in an urban setting.
Whatever this may be, the first quarter of the 20th century, was the period in Chestnyakov's life with the greatest artistic achievements, both in making paintings and in his other activities like doing theater performances, making clay figurines or writing books with fairy tales.
The miniature city
From a point of view of art environments, one of his various activities is very interesting, namely the making of a large collection of figurines of clay, an activity he started some years after his return to Shablovo.
Some 800 of these figurines, together with other small items, were combined into an ensemble that depicted a city named Cordon. It is a city with houses, palaces and streets, inhabited by children and adults.
The ensemble, situated in Chestnyakov's house, as such ranks as a work of art and can be referred to as an art environment in the category miniature constructions and scenes. Moreover, given the lavish decoration of the walls of his house with paintings, Chestnyakov's interior can also be seen as an art environment, but then in the category decorated interiors. .
Today this ensemble of clay figurines doesn't exist anymore; just some forty clay items have been left.
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picture of Chestnyakov's house, from website rusmir-media
the house, a copy of the original house, now is a museum
After another period in St. Petersburg Chestnyakov settled in Shablovo for the rest of his life
From 1913 until 1914 Chestnyakov once more stayed for some months in St. Petersburg, this time to get lessons from prof Kardovsky. But then the first World War began and Chestnyakov, who had been rejected for military service, returned to his home in Shablovo.
He would now stay in Shablovo for the rest of his life (1914-1961), focusing on the daily life of the inhabitants of the region, and without any relation with institutes and other artists in the Russian art world.
Chestnyakov remained active as a painter, showing a certain preference for rural and peasant life, depicting local people, often gathered in large groups and in settings with a specific atmosphere that characterizes his paintings.
He did not want to sell his paintings but kept them in his house, usually not framed, but nailed on battens. Sometimes he would give a painting to people living around.
The various pictures below of the interior of Chestnyakov's (in 2004 rebuilt) house, give some impression of his paintings.
this picture and the next one
screenprints from the March 2019 video
Chestnyakov transformed the ground floor of the house into kind of a theater, where he had performances and amused the children of the village with fairy tales, which he mostly wrote himself and which also have been published (such as The Magic Apple, a collection of fairy tales, illustrated with his own drawings, published in 1914).
In his performances in the theater his paintings could function as scenery, just as his clay figures could act as puppets.
The ground floor of his house could also serve as a Kindergarten for village children whose parents had to work.
The various elements of Chestnyakov's artistic and social activities were interrelated and ultimately formed a large coherent whole. An intelligent, selfless, well-educated man, Chestnyakov saw the poverty and deprivation of the villagers, and wanted to contribute, in particular, to a better future for the children. He dreamed of a City of General Prosperity, where everyone was happy.
the cupboard has a small selection of clay figurines
In the 1930s, Chestnyakov -at that time in his mid 50s- finished creating paintings. He continued to give his performances, also in neighboring villages that he visited with a cart full of attributes, including some paintings as decor.
Chestnyakov died on June 27, 1961 He was in his late 80s. Villagers carried the coffin to the cemetery four kilometers away in the neighboring village of Ileshevo, where Chestnyakov was buried in a simple grave, just decorated with an iron cross.
Discovery of Chestnyakov's paintings
Seven years later, in the summer of 1968 employees of the regional museum in Kostroma (some 350 km west of Shablovo) visited the Kologriv district, looking for unknown artists. An inhabitant of Shablovo informed them about Chestnyakov's legacy. which was left to waste in the now uninhabited house.
For the museum this was a historical discovery.
A number of the paintings was restored and added to the collection of the regional museum. The Museum of Local Lore in Kologriv, a town some 18 km south of Shablovo, also got a part of the paintings.
this picture and the next one
screenprints from the December 2019 video
In the following years, the village began to depopulate as residents moved to neighboring towns. Today, the former village still has about ten houses.
Chestnyakov's house became a House Museum
Chestnyakov's house survived as it was during his lifetime, until in 2002 an initiative group started collecting donations for its renovation. In 2004 the House Museum opened, in 2008 it formally became a subsection of the Museum of Local Lore in Kologriv
Attempts have been made to maintain the atmosphere of the original building as much as possible with the help of paintings and other parts of the former establishment that were still available. Various (former) residents of the village who owned artwork by Chestnyakov, also cooperated by making these items available to redecorate the museum.
The museum got its own administrator. In the 2010s there were discussions about the position of the Museum due to the recast of administrative arrangements in the region, but -as the videos below show- in 2019 the Museum was in full operation, lectures were held and thematic exhibitions and festivals took place.
* Thesis by Igor Sergeevich Shavarinsky, Театр Ефима Честнякова как культурный феномен: к проблеме синтетической природы творчества и его восприятия(Theater of Efim Chestnyakov as a phenomenon of culture: the problem of the synthetic nature of creativity and its reception. Thesis for an academic degree in cultural studies. Ivanovo, 2016
* Website about the artist, with a biography, a gallery of pictures and texts of some fairy tales
* Article (August 2007) on LiveJournal about the museum in Kologriv, with information about and pictures of artwork by Chestnyakov (and by Ladyzhensky)
* Article (undated) by Andrey Anokha about Chestnyakov as a photographer on website Starina44
* Article (April 2019) The Russian soul of Efim Chestnyakov on website Rusmir-media
* Article on Wikipedia about Chestnyakov's painting City of General Prosperity
Videos
* Short video with an aerial view of the (former) village of Shablovo, with some shots of the exterior and the interior of Chestnyakov's house (YouTube, March 2019, 2'39")
* Video of a meeting in the Museum at the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the birth of E.V. Chestnyakov. in two parts (Part 1, YouTube, 5'47", December 19, 2019)
