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Streetsense explores how some Russian artists perceive, portray and assist beggars.
Throughout Russian history, whether in Tsarist, Soviet, or contemporary times, it has almost never been safe to paint subjects which many people would prefer not to know, regard as offensive, in bad taste, or even taboo.
Further, discussing--never mind depicting in art--homelessness in the Soviet era was forbidden. This was because the prevailing ideology of the powers claimed that the Soviet Union had supposedly “abolished” homelessness and that this was something which only existed as a product of capitalism in the west. {This was despite the fact that in reality millions of homeless orphans and beggars roamed the streets who had been displaced by famine and civil war…after the Great Patriotic War there was a staggering estimate of 20 million homeless.} Indeed, the historian Orlando Figes stated, “As late as the 1950's, there were still millions of people living in the ruins of buildings, in basements, sheds or dug-out shelters in the ground” {Orlando Figes, “The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia,” London: Penguin Penguin, pages 456-457}.
The homeless and beggars were denigrated as parasites, work shy, shirkers, wasters, and criminals. They were often arrested, detained, sent to special work camps, and driven out of Moscow beyond 101 kilometers in distance. In the 1990's and into the 21st century, the police would round up the street homeless, put them into special buses, and drive them out of Moscow. However, the beggars and homeless would always return. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian artists felt freer to tackle taboo topics.
Of course, true artists never play safe! During the Soviet times some avant-garde artists such as Robert Falk painted a beggar {The Beggar, 1924} and Nikolai Dormidontov painted two oppressed musicians who look like very vulnerable invalids against a background of desolate tilting houses and twisted crooked trees {Musicians, 1931 -1934}. The way those painters depicted the poor suggested they deeply sympathized with them.
Although the Soviet state adopted a hostile view to beggars, this was not always the case throughout Russian history. For centuries, beggars were not so stigmatized or frowned upon. The tsar Alexander the First even passed a law which made it an offence not to give money to a beggar! Not to render alms to a beggar was deemed a great sin. According to the folklorist Andrei Sinyavsky, beggars were compared to mighty Russian warriors called “bogatyrs.” This is because those beggars wandered from place to place, reciting prayers and special “spiritual verses.” Many of those wandering beggars were either invalids or blind. They asked people to give them money in the name of Christ. In one famous Bylina, 'Forty Beggars and a Beggar,' a line states:
“You are not wandering beggars;
You are mighty Russian bogatyrs.”
Andrei Sinyavsky argued, “Yet they are not bogatyrs but beggars. They do not perform military feats, though they possess the strength of bogatyrs. They also possess miraculous holy powers . When their leader breathed "with his holy breathe" on the young princess who slandered him and so fell deadly ill, he cured her. In spite of these powers, these beggars collected alms on their way to holy places.
But they never humiliated themselves; if they took one ruble, they took a thousand {Andrei Sinyavsky, “Ivan the Fool, Russian Folk Belief, A Cultural History,’ 2007, Chicago: Glas, pages 255-262.}. Whether those pilgrims would consider themselves homeless or beggars is a valid question. Lest we romanticize such pilgrims, it is worth looking at Ilya Repin's famous picture “Religious Procession in the Kursk Guberniya,” 1880-1883…
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…where he showed beggars and invalids being whipped by those escorting the march. The art movement known as 'The Wanders” had no hesitation in exposing how the poor and the beggars were harshly treated and abused by those in power.
Russian artists could paint pictures of beggars for all kinds of reasons. Those reasons were not always simply protest or anger at injustice. Some Russian artists such as Robert Falk certainly paid his models well to help them, but he was also fascinated by them and regarded them as special. Robert Falk stated, "I don't like painting successful people. For me unfortunate folk have a kind of mysterious magnet draw." He did not paint portraits to court popularity or make a lot of money but because "I like to paint my kind of people." His kind of people tended to be from all backgrounds: beggars, circus performers, old women, and dying servants. What he was seeking to do was to depict the inner soul of the person through the deft use of incredible color. And Falk succeeded! One official visiting his studio declared, "Yes Falk always wins with color. What incredible color, look at that !"
There is an amusing story about how Falk came to paint a beggar he encountered on the streets. His third wife Angelina Shchekin Krotova wrote about this in her memoirs. In the picture titled “The Beggar,” 1924} the subject stares at you with piercing and intelligent eyes from a strangely shaped Socratic skull. Falk first met him when he noticed the beggar was cursing and swearing at a crowd in the city. He was ranting against the Soviet state for making him poor and destroying the peasants. Falk was moved by this man. He immediately started to sketch him. But before Falk could finish, the beggar shouted at him "Hey, artist, do you want to paint my portrait? What is in it for me?" The beggar offered to be a model for a staggering fee. Falk agreed. But when he invited him to his studio the beggar robbed him of many of his possessions. The last straw came when the beggar stole his tool box. Despite an attempt to track down the beggar, Falk never saw him again. There is no doubt that Falk sincerely sought to help the beggar, but things backfired.
The artist Tatyana Nazarenko had much better luck in painting beggars. In the 1990's, she was involved in a project called “Underpass” where she drew cardboard cut outs of figures of homeless people and beggars she had seen in the underpasses of Moscow. At the exhibition where those cut outs were shown she stated, "A woman started shouting, 'This is disgusting. Where did you see people like this? Beggars like this?' I thought: 'For crying out loud! To see people like this, all you have to do is go down into the metro and just look around! Or here they are, my veterans of the Soviet war in Afghanistan."
Tatyana Nazarenko ,whose pictures can be viewed at the second building of the Tretyakov gallery at the Modern 20th century exhibition, thinks artists and people should not shun the harsh reality of grim poverty and suffering that goes on all around us. Tatyana has heard stories that many of the beggars who are driven around in wheelchairs could be hostages of ruthless gangs who are seeking to profit from their misery...
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But she states, "You give them money whether there are criminals behind them or not. I don't care about that. What I want is not to feel sick at heart knowing that I passed someone by and did not help them. Sometimes I turn around and go back to give money to an elderly beggar who looks like my mother. I say to myself, ‘My goodness, how she looks like my mother.’ {“Tatyana Nazarenko” in “The Tretyakov Magazine,” # 4{65}2019, Moscow.}
Some of Tatiana's cardboard pictures were so lifelike that "People came and sat down next to them and hugged them, only to see that the figures were not real."
One question which artists and many people ask is "How much money do artists make from begging?" I have asked beggars this question and they tell me "Not much." For all the walking about the metro they do, people tend to give them a few coins or notes which often don't add up to much. The stories of beggars making a fabulous fortune are almost certainly invented by some journalists. When Robert Falk asked a beggar whether he got less money for swearing at people passing by, the beggar answered, "On the contrary, the more you swear and curse, the more that kind people will give to you."
That was not Daniel Ogan's experience in the 1990's. He told me "I once noticed how very angry and aggressive beggars were behaving badly and passengers on a train did not give them a single ruble. But when a very polite person came and asked for money practically every passenger she passed gave her something."
In 1996, a magazine called “Capital” conducted a survey to find out which words were best to write on a placard asking for help. For instance, some placards would say, 'I'm ill and need to pay for medicine,” or “I need to buy a train ticket to go home,” or “I need money for food,” or “I lost my home” or “I'm hungover, I need a drink.” The placard asking for help with a hangover got the most money. Tatyana remarked that this was because "all those people, so content they were, could relate to the pain of being hungover, and gave the beggar money."
The artist Tatyana Nazarenko has painted pictures of refugees, the horrors of war, the homeless, beggars and the immense suffering of women in the worst circumstances.
One thing is certain. An artist does not simply need to be talented, devoted, hard-working and highly skilled. He or she needs a fearless audacity and integrity. This can only come from the deepest part of a person's soul.
Perhaps many artists feel an affinity with beggars and the homeless because they too have experienced much lack of acceptance, loss, dejection, rejection and misunderstanding from the public.
Pictures:
1 - “Beggars Singer (Pilgrims)” by Viktor Vasnetsov
2 - “Religious Procession in the Kursk Guberniya,” 1880-1883, by Ilya Repin
3 - “Company,” c. 1990, by Tatyana Nazarenko