Key to the Collection

I have used the threadbare and somewhat pompous word “patron” with some misgivings. Yet it is precise. For a patron is not simply a collector who gathers works of art for his own pleasure or a philanthropist who helps artists or founds a public museum, but a person who feels responsibility toward both art and the artist together and has the means and will to act upon this feeling.

Alfred H. Barr Jr.

Introduction to

Out of this Century. Confessions of an Art Addict

by Peggy Guggenheim

According to some researchers, people are genetically predisposed to collecting, which seems to be kind of instinctive¹. For thousands of years, people collected not only objects that were of practical value, but also those that could not be directly used for material purposes and yet had some special properties. For example, the inhabitants of the Hyena Cave (Arcy-sur-Cure, France) collected stones and shells of unusual shape and colour, which demonstrates that our distant ancestors had a sense of beauty.

These days, deliberation about the phenomenon of collecting and the figure of the collector is becoming increasingly relevant. When acquiring artworks, collectors get the right to interpret, systematize, promote, and preserve them, all of which has a direct influence on the concept of art as such. This influence may be expressed either in a change in artistic values and their hierarchy or in a distortion of evaluation criteria, when, say, market considerations (how much an art piece costs) prevail over aesthetic judgement (what we expect from an artwork and why we like it).

The collector in today's world is a mysterious figure staying in the background, and the viewer can’t help having questions on what guides collectors’ choices and on the personality of a collector. There are not so many examples of a collection of contemporary art that, while representing a variety of cultures, also allow drawing rational distinctions based on the geography of works. A more common case is a geographically based mono-collection that is aimed to support domestic artists working here and now (or a little earlier).

Even more interesting is a collection that actually has two extensive composite parts, Latvian and Russian, with the inclusion of works by Cuban artists.

The Russian side of this collection is represented mainly by St Petersburg painters, Alexander Dashevsky, Vlad Kulkov and Vladimir Migachev, which is most likely due to fact that Raivis Zabis, the mastermind and founder of the collection, spent quite a long time in this city, where he was getting acquainted with the artistic environment and institutional structure. A certain collector's toolkit that was acquired then and there had a major impact on the principle of selecting artists and works. 

St Petersburg has always been considered a kind of pictorial Mecca, a triumph of colour and, in most cases, an obligatory artistic school base. It’s curious enough that although artists living and working in the northern capital commonly treat the latter as a cornerstone, sometimes it becomes a point of controversy, prompting an internal argument on how important it is for an artist to follow pictorial principles. Thus, Alexander Dashevsky's project A Pack Of Malingerers/J10, timed to the anniversary of the author's collaboration with his alma mater, Anna Nova Gallery, and conducted under the supportive guidance of curator Anastasia Kotyleva, conveys the following message: “Easel figurative painting on the territory of contemporary art is always under suspicion… Doesn't its mimetic nature help to discourage the viewer, accustoming him to passive contemplation, enjoyment of mesmerizing resemblance? Doesn't it fit too easily into the interior, indulging the tastes of collectors?” ²

And this is an important reference point for looking at the pictorial part of the RZ Collection. On the one hand, we see works by artists keen on colour and canvas painting or works created in the phase when artists were keen on such; on the other, there are attempts to break out and go beyond the canvas by experimenting with materials, for example, a work by Semyon Motolyanets representing an art object of natural stone, created following his stay in the Latvian art residency.

Another example is Anna Zholud who is represented in the collection specifically by paintings, although she is more known for her multi-piece metal installations, which look like images drawn in space with an imaginary black marker.

Worth noting are subtle, touching and very personal paintings by Nadezhda Kosinskaya, who since then has evolved into making much larger pieces with nails, as if drawing pencil lines by placing nails on a surface. This collection presents several drawings and a painting by the artist.

These experiments with the space of the canvas, or rather going beyond it, are echoed by works of Liudmila López Domínguez and Humberto Díaz in the Cuban part of the collection.

Also interesting to note is the line of body images in the collection. Namely, figurative painting with a well-defined contour line in works by the already mentioned Dashevsky, Kosinskaya and Podmarkova who also lived and worked in St Petersburg at the time when her works became part of the collection. Then there is a body image by Lauris Ozols (with a vigorous colour spot), as well as female images of Ilgvar Zalāns, Ieva Caruka, Dace Dēliņa Lipska and others.

Worth mentioning too are numerous landscapes in the collection. On the Latvian side, it is probably due to the fact that this genre is particularly well-developed at the Latvian Academy of Arts in Riga, as testified by works of a number of rectors of the Academy. For artists who lived or were trained in St Petersburg and Russia in general, this is also a common genre, as it echoes the format of painters’ training — lessons at art schools and colleges that help students to master painting techniques.

Of particular importance is the correlation of the pictorial language in the Russian and Latvian parts of the collection. The language is extremely similar, a complex colour scheme and a dark, sometimes gloomy palette.

Said likeness may be due to centuries of cultural ties or a similarity of mentality; otherwise, it may be a good illustration of how the figure of the collector directly influences the artistic process which in this case is a multi-geographical selection of technically and semantically close works. One way or the other, it is fair to say that both parts of the collection are remarkably consistent, that they are technically close and conceptually complement each other.

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¹ Tatiana Nesvetailo, art expert, senior researcher at the State Russian Museum

² Curator's text by Anastasia Kotyleva for the project at Anna Nova Gallery.