Thoughts of Light: Erik Bulatov’s Creative Work

Abstract

This article discusses the question of white, light, and the limit of a painting in the creative work of the contemporary artist Erik Bulatov. The author shows how, based on theoretical and practical knowledge of Malevich’s and Favorsky’s painting, Bulatov creates in his canvases a unique space of painting that extends in both directions from its surface, i. e. towards the viewer, and into the depths. To achieve this, Bulatov used words addressed to the viewer that were simultaneously placed between the viewer and the painting (‘Glory to the CPSU’, ‘Danger’, ‘Do not lean’), thus freeing up the space of the painting itself. This leads to a break with the boundaries of social space, which is achieved with the help of the poet Vsevolod Nekrasov’s words “I walk”, “I live and see”, “Freedom exists”. In his work on the structuring of pictorial space, Bulatov draws on Р. Florensky’s textbook provisions on linear and inverted perspective (in Iconostasis) and the narrowness of the Universe and the openness of the Empyrean (in Imaginaries in Geometry), as well as Malevich’s supremacist manifestos, which called for the painting to be freed from the frame and, at the same time, from the materiality of the consumerist attitude towards painting. In this regard, Bulatov developed a theory of two types of light in his paintings: the light of the surface of the painting (illumination of this surface by the light of the space surrounding the painting, i. e. lamps, windows, etc.) and the light from within the painting, i. e. the light of space, which is actually white light, i. e. the light of absolute infinity.