This story seems to be funny - in fact, the security guard who was entrusted with protecting the paintings took it and added eyes to the figures on the canvas! It seems to be even fun, but some kind of tragedy comes through in this fun. The tragedy of fate, the tragedy of a man who ended up in the wrong place, because there is no place for him in the world.
Let's start with how this incident was covered in the media. The wording everywhere sounded like this: "The guard painted eyes on the picture of Malevich's student." As if there are no artists except Malevich, if Malevich is not mentioned, then no one will read the news. Meanwhile, the eyes appeared in the painting by the artist Anna Leporskaya "Three Figures". And I must say that Leporskaya, even without Malevich, is an artist worthy of attention and recognition.
She certainly was a student of Malevich, and this can be seen with the naked eye - the same painting “Three Figures” fits into the pictorial series, where there are “A Woman with a Rake”, and “In the Haymaking”, and “Girls in the Field”. This, however, does not mean that Leporskaya's work is exhausted by stylistics close to Malevich. One can recall her very original work of the "Air Defense Group on the Fontanka" in 1942. Anna Leporskaya spent the whole war in Leningrad, where she continued to paint and work at the factory, receiving injuries and diseases associated with time and circumstances - frostbite, dystrophy, scurvy. Wonderful airy and seemingly endless watercolor by Leporskaya "A cloud over the hills", which echoes the painting of the service of her own authorship "Sheaves". In general, Leporskaya fully realized herself as an artist of the Leningrad Porcelain Factory, where she created stunning works of painting on porcelain and designing the services themselves. I describe all this for so long in order to make it clear: Leporskaya is an outstanding Russian artist, and not just a “student of Malevich”.
And now her work "Three Figures", which belongs to the collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, was exhibited in Yekaterinburg's "Yeltsin Center". Anyone who is familiar with the history of Russia will say: a good place will not be named after Yeltsin, and there is no need to bring paintings there. Nevertheless, the exhibition “The World as Non-objectivity. The birth of a new art”, dedicated, of course, to the work of Kazimir Malevich, was a success. For all, except for one work by Anna Leporskaya.
On December 7 last year, an employee of a private security company entered the service, it was his first working day. At some point in the shift, the guard got bored, he took a souvenir pen from the Yeltsin Center, went to the painting Three Figures and painted on the eyes of two figures. The next day, the security guard quit, locked himself at home, and did not speak to anyone for a long time.
With the picture, most likely, everything will be in order. Ink from a ballpoint penetrated the layer of titanium white, but according to the experts of the Tretyakov Gallery, the painting will be completely restored for 250,000 rubles, since it is insured for 75 million.
The painting is saved, but the guard's life is ruined. Not that I want to protect him, but I would like to comprehend his actions.
As of spring 2021, about 700,000 people were licensed to provide security services in Russia. But, apparently, in 20,000 operating security companies, licenses are not distributed per capita. It is unlikely that every security guard has such a license. And this leads to another estimate - there are more than two million security guards in Russia.
And who is a security guard? This is a person who, to put it bluntly, is not burdened with intense activity. Even a security guard working on transport. I remember a couple of years ago, a drunken and extremely unbalanced giant was rowdy in a crowded train. Passengers turned to a passing and on-duty security guard. “But I’m not a policeman, I can’t do anything,” the guard answered honestly.
At 90%, the work of a security guard is a kind of benefit. A person receives money simply because society needs somewhere to attach two million healthy men who can't do anything. Handing out small amounts just like that is dangerous, it threatens with degradation. And the security service still assumes that a person must come to work. Dressed, healthy, sober, clean. This is the maintenance of a person at the level and its easy financing.
It is not surprising that a person working as a security guard experiences a certain lack of self-realization. And if this person is in the middle of works of art? After all, works of art are the pinnacle of human activity, the peak of the realization of creative potential. And here the guard sits, and around him everything is only beautiful and refined. Is it any wonder that he wants to partake of it? To become an element of this light but rich, this beautiful but strict, this meaningful and sensual world of art? This is quite natural. And then the guard decided to take part in the creation of the picture, to become equal to the creator, and even surpass him - after all, he supplemented the already existing, ready-made and recognized as a classic picture. The figures in Leporskaya's painting didn't have eyes, now they do.Man's desire to create is immanent in his nature. It is an integral part of the very human essence. Moreover, this - man's - function, because he was created in the image and likeness of God, that is, in the image of the creator. Another question is that the function of society, among other things, is to protect what has already been created from those who want to improve it. Society has learned to exhibit paintings in galleries and has even learned to protect these paintings with the help of millions of guards. It remains only to learn how to protect the paintings from these guards. Perhaps those who protect art, in addition to salaries and clean clothes, also need art therapy. To relieve stress, itching and the desire to draw eyes where they should not be.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the editorial position.
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