Сoncept of M. BOICHUK and the Features of Ukrainian MODERNISM

Abstract

The article is dedicated to the place and significance of the ideological and artistic concept of M. Boichuk in the formation of Ukrainian modernism, which, despite connection with the global European trends, has clear originality, conditioned with historical, social and cultural processes in Ukraine. The heritage of M. Boichuk and the art school created by him has reflected the demonstrative tendency towards the national self-determination and national culture creation. This trend has distinguished Ukrainian modernism in the context of European directivities. Unlike the European modernism, the main ideas of which are related to the affirmation of the self-worth of individuality, subjectivity and open self-expression and polemics against artistic traditions, modernism in Ukraine affirms the national originality and diversity of its culture. Founded in the conditions of statelessness and indeterminacy of the national heritage, the concept of M. Boichuk has determined the essential principles of the national tradition, where folk art and the Ukrainian Middle Ages with its unique icon painting become the main phenomena. The invention of traditions, their formalization and ideological substantiation, those have become the basis of Boichukism, describe the Ukrainian cultural space, are considered to be an impulse for the further development. M. Boichuk’s school has several stages of its history. The first period includes 1908–1910–1917 (from the Revival of Byzantine Art group created in Paris to the leadership of M. Boichuk at the studio in the newly founded Ukrainian Academy of Arts in Kyiv). The second one – 1918 – mid‑1930s, formed in the post-revolutionary Soviet decades, those have subdued it to their ideological program. Constantly preserving its defined formal and figurative principles, M. Boichuk’s concept has also reflected the ideas of the National Ukrainian Renaissance and the Soviet Korenization and Ukrainization of the 1920s. M. Boichuk’s school and the artistic movement founded by it have been abolished with the establishment of totalitarian power in the mid‑1930s. Their significance goes beyond art, relates directly to Ukrainian culture creation.