News

2011-12-05

Paris

Exhibition dedicated to death centenary of M. K. Čiurlionis in Paris

On centenary of his departure, Čiurlionis is still coming, arriving.

Some pundits have said, he came too late. Some said - too early.

But it was not his choice. He came having something special to say, about something unknown, yet undiscovered or treated improperly. The feeling of a mission, the role of a messenger was within him supporting a little bit during difficult everyday's challenges. Therefore he concluded that, despite all desire to be understood, he cannot lie, making concessions against his own lege artis.

No surprise that, like Nikolas Roerich had later remembered, reminding about media environment in Sankt Petersburg around 1909,  Čiurlionis was met and followed by torches of the wild people.

And he is still coming only the torches of the most brutal mockery are put aside.

He continues to bring friendly his legacy to us like donation of light and warmth, like a unique knowledge born in excitement and suffering. It is about man and man's world. The visual art about the invisible, such was his art deeply rooted in the Earth beneath the skies and heavens, existentially authentic and linked to endless discoveries of the human future.

When his pictures became known to the public, there were a lot of those torches and misunderstanding, but sometimes also a little effort to find any description, if not definition.

Among the modest ones: that possibly is a new sort or way of art, to which we don't yet have a key.

It is not about ours world, etc.

I remember a short reference in Polish press when Čiurlionis art was defined as abstract. But those were not yet the times of abstract or non-representing art like the later well-known trend of abstractionism. In those years the term had to be rather related with some new art, which is not about objects to be understood as being concrete around us. Not that concrete which could be touched by fingers or consumed by jaw.

But what a stupid idea would be to say that music is abstract while being full of authentic, thus concrete, contents.

Feelings and ideas about life – both external and internal – and modelling of the Universe in perfect musical structures – this music presented throughout ages of human culture, and composer Čiurlionis was fully aware that all arts had that common source and denomination in the human soul. While seeking for the forms of complete expression, a variety of interferences is possible and natural. The whole space of forms being included.

It all could be called the world of ideas, and one of his contemporary Russian critics had indeed defined  Čiurlionis’ art as painting of ideas.

But when we look at music as such – hey, it is the most ancient conceptual art! It is, while presented objectively in a form of score. Then a co-author has to come, the reader of the scores, the performer or a listener who becomes performer as well in his own way, and as Čiurlionis supposedly understood things, the story in visual arts is on the same track.

And now, while at this exhibition of reproductions we observe only the scores, we stay unable to catch and enjoy an author's touché left on paper or canvas by his brush. I am sorry to point out it.

Anyway, the construction and poster-like appeal, both architecturally symbolic, go on bringing us another fundamental part of Čiurlionis’ conceptualism. That is what gives us delight, if not deprived of imagination, even in reproductions. Who wishes more, let him/her listen his music and come to Lithuania.

Vytautas Landsbergis