Corrections or additions?
This feature by Nicole Plett was published in U.S. 1 Newspaper on
May 27, 1998. All rights reserved.
From Russia: Gennady Spirin’s Watercolors
The dazzling delights of Princeton’s blossoming
rhododendrons
are nowhere found in Russia’s middle zone, the region around Moscow
where artist Gennady Spirin spent his formative years. Arriving at
the new Firebird Gallery on Witherspoon Street, he says the beauty
of the day’s riot of purples, pinks, and magenta flowers is so
wondrous,
it’s "like purple beams to the eyes." Yet from a first glimpse
of Spirin’s marvelous watercolor paintings — packed with bejeweled
princes and princesses, courtiers and villains in tall hats and fur
coats, and a menagerie of graceful birds and wild creatures —
we can be assured that this artist has never lacked for visual
stimulation.
At the Firebird Gallery, itself named for the fabulous creature of
Russian folklore, Spirin stands surrounded by the framed originals
of his astonishing watercolors, which he discusses — in Russian
— with translation provided by gallery owner Tatiana Popova.
Spirin
moved to Princeton with his family in 1991, yet still doesn’t think
his English is equal to the task; this proves true when the
conversation
becomes most spirited, turning on the intriguing issues of his career
in art.
Spirin and Popova met by total chance — as neighbors in Washington
Oaks, a residential development across from Jasna Polana off Route
206. Popova, who moved from Moscow in 1994, has a background in
finance
and business and thought the award-winning children’s illustrator
should have more exposure for the unique works that become treasured
items on children’s bookshelves everywhere. She originally showed
Spirin’s works during the Christmas season, in rented space on Nassau
Street, and opened the doors of her Firebird Gallery in April.
At the gallery, two new projects by Spirin are in the spotlight. One
wall is lined with the watercolors that will be reproduced as plates
to his forthcoming children’s book, "The Crane Wife," one
of Japan’s most-loved folktales, to be published this fall by Harcourt
Brace.
Also on exhibit is "Princeton University in the Spring," an
illustration commissioned by the Princeton Alumni Weekly for the cover
of its reunions issue. With views of the romanesque Alexander Hall
and historic Nassau Hall seen through a veil of leafless trees, Spirin
manages to bring a fairy-tale look to the familiar campus. A tiger
lounges nonchalantly on the lawn, and an orange and white striped
hot air balloon bearing the Princeton crest hovers overhead.
The new watercolors and the limited edition Princeton poster ($65)
will be featured at the gallery’s opening reception, Friday, May 29,
from 5:30 to 8 p.m. The show remains on view to July 12.
For "The Crane Wife," Spirin has illustrated
the story of the Japanese sail maker, Osamu, and his beautiful wife,
Yukiko, who has the magical talent of weaving the wind into her
husband’s
sails. Mysterious natural spaces and beautiful long-necked white
cranes
that haunt the warp and weft of Yukiko’s loom, and a snowy seashore
landscape are all part of the picture cycle. Spirin’s lyrical
renderings
of the powerful tale of love, greed, and betrayal are a stylistic
departure for the illustrator of Russian and European tales.
"I know many cultures, but Japanese culture is new to me,"
says Spirin. His access to the culture came not through travel —
he has yet to visit Japan — but through a total immersion in its
rich graphic arts tradition, with particular interest in Japanese
medieval sources. He says Russian museum holdings in Asian art, which
he has known since his youth, are extensive, particularly those of
Moscow’s Museum of Eastern Art and the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.
The fact of his not having visited Japan, he believes, is liberating
in a way. It frees his imagination to interpret the folktale.
"Simply, it’s very interesting for me to switch to a completely
new subject in a completely new language of art," says Spirin,
with enthusiasm. Japanese art combines flat and three-dimensional
elements to convey the subjective idea of the story and the artist’s
specific point of view. "The general and the specific view must
be combined." Citing Aristotle’s precepts on the virtue of
emulating
a worthy tradition, Spirin says that by internalizing his sense of
the Japanese art tradition, he creates something new.
"This gives me a fairy-tale freedom to create," he says, a
feeling he illustrates with a comparison: "It’s like kasha
bubbling
in the brain." He aims to be true to his models, but "the
self-expression of the artist should not be lost."
The amiable Spirin is short of stature, with lively eyes, and a wide
face embellished with a bushy, white-gray beard and mustache. Although
he’s said to deny it, the resemblance to his portrait of the Tsar
Saltan for his 1996 edition of Alexander Pushkin’s classic fairy tale
of that name is striking. That the Tsar in question is a good man,
and kind, yet trusting enough to be deceived by his wife’s wicked
and jealous sisters, only serves to confirm the resemblance.
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Spirin’s Biography
Spirin was born in the small town of Orekhovo-Zuyevo, outside Moscow,
on December 25, 1948. Neither of his parents had artistic interests,
but his grandmother was a vivid storyteller who left the boy with
many tales, from the Tsar Saltan to Gulliver. He has one brother who
works as a driver in Russia. Spirin’s artistic talent was identified
at an early age. At 11 he won a place in the highly-competitive
Surikov
School of Fine Art in Moscow, a residential academy named for a famed
Russian artist and connected to the Russian Academy of Fine Art.
During the 1960s Spirin spent seven years at the Surikov School
specializing
in figure painting and multi-figured composition in oils, and this
rigorous and exhaustive study is evident in his paintings today. The
turbulent times, which included the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia,
brushed him only lightly. These were happy years, although friends
who were drafted into the army told him of their searing experiences.
In his final year at Surikov, his career took an unforeseen turn when
he suddenly developed a severe allergy to the oil medium, and could
no long enter the painting workshop. "I tried changing thinners,
I tried different paints, but nothing worked. I finally had to switch
to tempera," he says, adding that this accounts for his eventual
mastery of all the paint media.
Adding to his life changes at this time, Spirin caused
a scandal by declining his assured place at the prestigious Surikov
Academy, the post-graduate wing of his school, and applied instead
to Moscow’s Stroganoff Institute of Art. "I had been working at
Surikov already for seven years, I already knew and had worked with
all the professors there. I wanted new influences." He was also
attracted to the wider and more progressive curriculum at Stroganoff,
where he proceeded to study for five more years, graduating with a
diploma in painting. Following graduation he completed one year
compulsory
military service. By this time he had married his wife, Raisa, and
the couple were parents of their first son, born in 1977. It was time
to earn some money.
Spirin’s first book illustration project was in 1980, completed under
contract for the Soviet Union’s leading (and only) children’s
publisher.
He continued working with the company until 1984 when he went
independent.
By this time his protean work was becoming well known at home and
abroad.
The family came to the United States at the invitation of two
publishers,
Dial and Philomel. Although he might logically have made his home
in New York, he was much more attracted to the more rural lifestyle
of his childhood. And Princeton happened to be the home of his editor,
Ann Keay Beneduce, who was pleased to help the family get settled
here. Arriving with their two sons, now 21 and 15, the Spirins’ third
son was born in Princeton in 1993.
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Spirin’s Working Process
When Spirin turns to talking about the process of creating his
spectacular
illustrations, many of which extend across two big storybook pages,
unencumbered by any text at all, his eyes begin to gleam — there’s
the air of the rebel in this artist who refuses to create preparatory
sketches. "Doing sketches is not interesting," he says.
"Once
you have a satisfactory sketch, you must do the same thing all over
again. I don’t want to repeat the same thing."
Working at home — he has never had a separate studio — his
rich and fantastical paintings are created on Arches watercolor paper
which he first wets down and stretches "as tight as a drum
head."
He then leaves the paper to dry, its pebble surface now considerably
smoothed; and he applies his watercolors onto dry paper.
So there are no preparatory sketches. Spirin tackles his paper with
pencil in hand, drawing in his composition fully. Yet the artist who
insists on spontaneity won’t be bound by these lines either. For once
he starts to apply his paints, the pencil lines are obscured. And
he proceeds with enthusiasm and expressivity, unhampered by the idea
of painting within the pencil lines.
Here Spirin launches into an animated and extended speech in Russian,
which Popova strains to retain. "He says everything should
live,"
she says. "It’s an act of creation. And even though the pencil
drawing belongs to him, he wants to cover it and to do something
new."
The illustrator of 30 story books, Spirin was awarded the Golden Apple
Award at the Biennale of Illustration in Bratislava in 1983 for
"Marissa
and Gnomes." Since 1992 he has won four gold medals from the
Society
of Illustrators in New York for "Boots and the Glass
Mountain,"
"The Children of Lir," "The Frog Princess," and
"The
Tale of Tsar Saltan." And the New York Times has given its Best
of the Year designation to four others including "Gulliver’s
Adventures"
in 1993 and "The Sea King’s Daughter" in 1997.
One of Spirin’s most popular books in the United States is E.T.A.
Hoffmann’s "The Nutcracker," published by Stewart Tabori &
Chang, 1996. Seeing Spirin’s lively but slightly fearsome painting
of the Nutcracker doll, Saks Fifth Avenue commissioned its own, more
cheerful Nutcracker for its Christmas advertising campaign last year.
The image was used extensively in window and floor displays throughout
the New York store. This year the decorations will move to the Chicago
store.
Returning to Spirin’s picture cycle for "The Crane Wife,"
the conversation turns again to its radical departure from his
accustomed
style that so vividly evokes the pomp and mystery of medieval Russia
and Europe.
"The Japanese understand the world through graphics. Even their
written expression, their calligraphy, is graphic," says Spirin.
And because Russia is placed between Asia and the West, and home to
both cultures, he believes he’s in a good position to appreciate them.
Further, he notes that on a visit to the Louvre, he was struck by
a 15th-century Madonna by Jan van Eyck that looked as if it could
have been painted in Asia. He names other early Renaissance artists,
such as Pieter Brueghel (Hieronymus Bosch is also clearly an
inspiration
for some of those conniving courtiers), who bring a decorative graphic
thrust to their compositions.
"Art is free to influence anyone, and the exchange can only be
mutually beneficial," says Spirin. The goal is a co-mingling of
styles, "but without losing one’s own identity."
— Nicole Plett
Witherspoon,
609-688-0775. Reception and unveiling of the Princeton University
Reunions poster. Free. Friday, May 29, 5:30 to 8 p.m.
Gallery hours are Tuesday to Sunday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., and by
appointment.
Corrections or additions?
This page is published by PrincetonInfo.com
— the web site for U.S. 1 Newspaper in Princeton, New Jersey.
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