Perfect artwork

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On a trip through Russia, I visited the Sakharov Museum in Moscow, which is a museum dedicated to Andrei Sakharov. He was a nuclear physicist and later a human rights activist in the Soviet Union. 

Before I got to the permanent exhibition of Sakharov's life, there was a temporary exhibition on Moscow Conceptualism from the '70s. It suited me very well since I had just read a bit about this period. 


At that time the Soviet Union was led by Leonid Brezhnev, who had taken power from Nikita Khrushchev, and tightened the grip on Moscow's art scene. However, the artists were not as persecuted as they had been under Stalin, but they could not exhibit their art in public. It is said that there was an unwritten agreement between the KGB and the artists that they could do whatever they wanted as long as it was kept private. It was therefore an underground art, where a small network of artists shared ideas and held small exhibitions in their apartments. 

The exhibition in the Sakharov Museum was also quite small and only in one room. It was a remake in the sense that the same exhibition had once been held in a private apartment, but also in the sense that most of the artworks had been lost over time and therefore had been made again. 

For me there was one particularly interesting piece. It consisted of a large piece of paper with black text - see photo. Fortunately there was an English translation, which I've written here:

"

Artwork only to be imagined.

In my artistic work I often come back to the same question:
Why do I always like my original idea better than the final artwork?

Lately I have concluded that the answer lies in the relationship between the idea and the form. The form is only a representation of the idea and as a consequence parts of the idea are lost in the translation into a form. If I were to create an artwork without any loss of meaning it would be necessary to make clear for the viewer that the artwork is not within the form.

For this reason I have chosen to work under the title: Artwork only to be imagined.

Ironically I have had problems executing this work. Using this title I have tried to make collapsed sculptures and unfinished paintings. By showing a failed or unfinished object the viewer can only imagine what the artwork was meant to be like. He can only try to understand my idea instead of judging the artwork by the object. However none of these forms seemed to represent the idea without distortion. There seemed to be too many misleading choices in the execution. The object still received too much attention and the materials and their shapes and colors seemed to get in the way of my true intension.

I have to find a form that leads the viewer as close as possible to this idea, but still lets the viewer know that he will not be guided all the way. Therefore he himself must try to imagine the essence of the artwork.

This text may be the closest I can get."



On the way out, after having seen the permanent exhibition, the man at the ticket-sale asked me if I liked the temporary exhibition - probably because I had spent a long time in the room. I liked it very much and mentioned the text above as my favourite piece. He told me he had been involved in the arranging of the exhibition. The text was from the early 70s and in artistic circles it had gone from mouth to mouth and had been nicknamed "the perfect artwork." This title should be understood with a certain irony, since perfection was not necessarily a positive word. I left the museum wondering if the work itself was meant ironically as well.

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Photos

Artwork only to be imagined
The English translation.