Emelyanov (Alexander), Folk art environments of Russia, from previous to later creations

In this article written at the end of 2016, Alexander Emelyanov discusses the state of affairs regarding the documentation of folk art environments in Russia as it has developed so far, based on what has been published to date in Outsider Environments Europe.

In the field of art environments Emelyanov himself is known from the site he created in the garden around his house in Samara. Russia

Alexander Emelyanov

Folk art environments of Russia – from previous to later creations

Generally spoken people all over the world somehow like to embellish their home and/or their garden. But occasionally it may happen that such an activity becomes an intensive long-term project in which the occupant of the house undertakes the embellishment of the property in an artistic and passionate way and on a relatively large scale, in this way transforming the property in kind of an artwork.

In Europe such a specific manifestation of (folk) art is denoted as creating an outsider art environment, in the United States one speaks of visionary environments or singular spaces. Currently In Russia there is no specific term, as there are no experts such as art historians or other scientists engaged in holistically studying this phenomenon. We use the term folk art environments or scenic folk art.

The lag in the emergence of folk art environments in Russia in comparison with European countries and the USA is primarily due to the long era of communism in the USSR with its alienation of man from all types of property, including ownership of housing and land.

In this report we briefly present the origin and development of folk art environments in Russia and the main authors in this field of folk art. With regard to Russia a description of some ten folk art environments is available on the weblog Outsider Environments Europe.

An analysis of the material collected there about these sites in Russia, allows to distinguish two periods of development, an initial one and a modern one. Like there are also two forms of environments, simple ones, with a classic, unambiguously character and complex ones, which have a more contemporary, complicated and mega character.

Folk art environments that originated in the former USSR and in subsequent Russia rest on two pillars: the historical and traditional handicrafts, such as wood carving and the alternative creativity of amateur artists.

The folk art environments that initially emerged in the USSR mainly were gardens with wooden sculptures, such as the Home museum of wooden sculptures in Kondrovo, created by Alexei Ivanovich Rudov from the late 1970’s on..

In the late 1980’s Egor Federovich Utrobin from Parmalayvo also created such a folk art environment by displaying around his house some fifty wooden sculptures he sculpted from large tree stumps left in the woods as unusable by loggers..

A currently still famous early creation is the House of the blacksmith in Kunara, created by Sergey Kirillov between 1954 and 1967, an exemplary embodiment by an authentic master craftsman. The style of the decorations of the house’s exterior still has a classical russian connotation as often found in the way farms and houses in the countryside are painted, but the wooden sculptures on the corniche testify that the artist follows his own approach..

Another folk art environment that has associations with the classical russian way of decorating farmhouses in the countryside, is the decorated house and garden of Anatoly Lobanov, located in Leshkovo. This project was begun around 1970 and it has the peculiarity that the decoration consists of small pieces of colorful plastic cut in the form of circles, polygons or stars, a material the artist could easily obtain as he worked in a plastics factory.

The use of plastic by this artist is in line with a shift in the materials used in creating art environments, whereby besides wood also other materials became used..

The folk art environment Children’s town in Teykovo, a project intended to embellish the residential area of the city which was realised in the first decade of the 21st century by conscripted soldiers of the local garnison, demonstrates this use of other materials than wood, for example metal items, plastic tubes and concrete. Partly dugged in rubber tires were used to foreclose the creations

Apart from rubber tires these materials are also often used by creators of folk art environments in Western Europe.

The use of concrete is predominant in the sculptural composition the Queen and Mikhail Kutuzov in the negotiations, located in Sudbodarovka, created by the self-taught artist Petr Leonidovich Zhurilenko..

A new modern phase in the development of Russian folk art environments begins with Eugene Malakhin from Yekaterinburg, who was trained and worked as an engineer, but later in life became a self-taught artist. In the late 1980’s as old Man Bukashkin he formed a collective of artists that with a variety of materials and various forms of creative expression, music included, organized artistic happenings in Russian cities. Malakhin would become the major non-conformist artist of Yekaterinburg of the 1990’s, who with the slogan Paint the garbage embellished fences, garages, garbage bins and walls of buildings with paintings and murals, in this way producing a folk art environment that can be designated as a “mega environment".

Another folk art environment within this new contemporary phase is the project around the Aqueduct, a singular architecture created by Alexander Emelyanov in the garden of his house in Samara. Educated as a medical doctor, for ten years as a self-taught “sunday afternoon” artist he made paintings, but then he paints and decorates the family home inside and outside, creates a sculpture park on the garden around the house and transforms a nearby deserted plot of land into an art environment.

Since the weblog Outsider Environments Europe only reports about folk art environments located west of the Urals, above discussion of developments in folk art environments is based upon what has been documented about sites in this part of Russia. Given the growing interest in folk art environments, it is conceivable that in the future currently still unknown sites are discovered. It will be interesting to see to what further inferences this could lead.

added to OEE texts april 2017