Who are MITKI?
The Mitki is a group of Petersburg artists well-known in
wide and diverse circles. It this good? I'm not very sure
about it because in all centuries the number of those who
could appreciate genuine art has been rather small, and the
Mitki art is genuine.
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The creator of the Mitki
mythology, Vladimir Shinkaryov, by no means belongs to the
fighters for loud glory or for market demand . The thing is
that everything he does is inevitably talented. His "collective
image of a Mitki-man" is also talented; and because of its
simplicity and accessibility (at least, on the superficial level)
it became idolized by the crowd pretty soon. The excessively
loud noise and laughter around the Mitki has attracted
hosts of entertainment seekers and scared away many serious
spectators used to silent communication with art, to
contemplation. It took years for the truth to triumph. By their
life and work the Mitki has proved that they are not artistic
time-servers. If we follow the logic of "stardom" the Mitki
should have perpetuated the obtained popularity by
drifting along with public demand, by contriving newer and
newer sensations (the likely examples can be found in
contemporary Petersburg art), The Mitki remained true to art.
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The Mitki's gifts are versatile. Yet, above all, they are
artists. Their bright and life-asserting genius spreads into
other creative fields, always coming back, to the canvass,
enriching the palette with new untested shades. This,
actually, is the main quality of the phenomenon called "the
Mitki culture" incorporating all the internal heat, abundantly
generated by the culture of Russia.
art critic, Chief of Research,
Central Exhibition Hall
It is evident that the name of the group stems from the
first part of Shinkaryov's text (which now is seven times
thicker) that appeared in 1984. By that time both
V.Shinkaryov and D.Shagin were well-known figures of
Leningrad "underground". They have been exhibiting their
work since the middle of the 1970's within the Association
of Experimental Exhibitions (the first group of "the
independent"), including the home-shows. They met each
other in 1978 in the Kalinin House of Culture on the first (and
the last) day of the destroyed exhibition. Shinkaryov's book
"Maxim and Feodor", finished in 1981, was widely and avidly
read, though, naturally, in manuscript. The only thing known
about the author to most readers was the fact that he worked
in a boiler room. But to say of a Leningrad poet that he works
in a boiler room is trivial to the extreme. A student of the
Mukhina Art College Victor Tikhomirov has already read this
book aloud in the company of his friends and colleagues
Alexander Florensky, Alexei Semichov, Igor Churilov and
Andrey Medvedev. Everybody knows each other in
Leningrad; sooner or later their ways had to cross with the
path of Shinkaryov. Anyway the group was formed and the
name, as it often happens in the twentieth century, appeared
quite irrationally, out of a funny incident. Andrey Filippov
remembers that those of the artists who were already familiar
with the text of "The Mitki" began applying this name to all
Dmitri Shagin's friends; so the latter had to accept this
"christening" proudly. Victor Tikhomirov asserts that the
decision to be called "the Mitki" was reached during a bus
ride; the artists were returning from Ust-Izhora either after
hanging their pictures for the exhibition, or after examining
the premises where this exhibition was supposed to take
place. According to the version of D.Shagin himself his
friends simply extended to themselves the tender nickname
"Mityok" (Dmitri Shagin's father used to call him so) and
adopted the plural form of this nickname, "Mitki". The reason
for this was that all Dmitri's friends considered his father,
Vladimir Shagin, a outstanding painter, their father in spirit.
Already in the late 1940"s Vladimir Shagin, together with
A.Arefyev, R.Vasmi, S.Schwartz, V.Gromov, had laid the first
stone in the foundation of Leningrad "underground". "The
Elders" - V.Shagin and N.Zhilina-are exhibiting their works
together with the Mitki. Besides, the situation of the
curiously rhymes with today's situation. Then the Arefyev
circle was united by their love to the poet Roald Mandelstam,
now the community of artists is structured with the poetic
prose of Shinkaryov.
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Master of Arts,
Research Fellow
Russian Institute of Arts History
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