Erik Bulatov (b. 1933)

Freedom is Freedom II belongs to a series of twelve paintings (1999-2003), eleven of which (including the present work) feature text from poems by Bulatov’s friend, the minimalist poet Vsevolod Nekrasov (1934-2009). An exhibition of this series entitled I live, I see was held at the State Tretyakov Gallery in 2006.
Like many artists and writers in Eastern Europe, Bulatov’s work has evolved in accordance with the world around him. A staunch Komsomol member as a teenager, he gradually came to understand and despise the restriction of art in the USSR. Although classified as a non-conformist (the group of artists working outside of the Soviet-prescribed agenda in the 1960s-1980s), Bulatov rejects the Sots Art classification of his work. His interests have never been restricted to Soviet society or indeed any society; he is interested in issues that transcend the social order and exist beyond a simple dialectic of Soviet vs. Anti-Soviet.
There are certain pervasive aspects visible throughout Bulatov’s oeuvre. He describes his mission as being ‘to show and prove, that social space, however meaningful and aggressive it may seem, is actually boundless. [Social space] has limits, a border, and human freedom and in general the meaning of human existence is on the other side of that border. The space of art is over there, on that side of the social border.’ In much of his work the placement of text over image defines that space. In Freedom is Freedom II the word ‘freedom’ stretches away from us enticingly into the sky, providing access to this space beyond.
Bulatov’s 1988 solo exhibition in Zurich marked a turning point in both his career and indeed his life. In 1989 in the wake of the exhibition’s success, he moved to New York, prompting a rapid exploration of contemporary art, particularly American Pop Art. Bulatov developed a keen interest in artists such as Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) who incorporate text into their work and whose influence can be felt in the present work. Freedom is Freedom II also recalls Christopher Wool’s (b. 1955) seminal Apocalypse Now (1988, Private collection) in its easy conveyance of the Pop and Dada collagist aesthetic. Where Wool’s source material is a Hollywood blockbuster, its text appropriately referencing the value society invests in property and ownership, Bulatov’s work is arguably, by this point, less cynical. In Freedom is Freedom II Bulatov takes an unimpeachable truth, repeating it almost like a prayer. While the use of language in art encompasses a New York slant, the political charge to language is an idea intrinsic to those raised in the Soviet era. Nekrasov’s critique of the official Soviet language and hackneyed phrases utilised by the government made his poetry unpublishable in the USSR.
Bulatov’s change in context and geopolitics precipitated the present work: an insistent meditation on universal truth and freedom without strictures. The sky serves as a multifaceted metaphor, as do the clouds: shape-shifting, divination, God, eternity, space, transience, as well as the lingering connotation of its etymology: the Latin ‘nebula’, cloud (and ‘Nebo’ meaning sky in Russian, from a common Proto-Indo-European root,) giving various Indo-European languages an equivalent of the world ‘nebulous’. Against this web of associations, the repetition of ‘Freedom is’ serves to reinforce the meaning of this image: a boundless, endless, exultant human freedom. In Nekrasov’s poem six lines repeating ‘Freedom is’ is followed by a seventh: ‘Freedom is freedom’, evoking Gertrude Stein’s ‘Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose’ from her 1913 poem Sacred Emily. In Bulatov’s image this closure is absent. Traditionally translated as ‘Freedom is freedom’, if the words are read sequentially, each line might be translated as ‘Freedom exists’, with the painting’s size conferring an additional authority to this statement. Is it a celebration, a reminder or something to be repeated until it comes true? Repetition becomes a way to truth and away from an oppressive language and aesthetic by clinging to very basic human ideas. As the Soviet-era Polish poet Zbigniew Herbert (1924-1998) wrote: ‘it didn’t require great character at all/our refusal disagreement and resistance/we had a shred of necessary courage/but fundamentally it was a matter of taste’.

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