ASEAN-Russia: Foundations and Future Prospects

A Sentimental Journey through ASEAN (in the Russian Way)

285 A SENTIMENTAL JOURNEY THROUGH ASEAN (IN THE RUSSIAN WAY)1 Vladimir Anisimov INTRODUCTION As a professional painter, I strongly believe that my colleagues have something special to contribute to communication between the people. The language of a canvas and a drawing, a sculpture or an ornament needs no translation. Anybody who speaks it well is capable of sending messages which may be profoundly universal and typically local at the same time. A masterful artistic representation of a country, be it your own or a foreign one, will always carry something that a business report or a political review cannot convey — a strong, instantly appealing human sentiment. AIMS This is more or less what I felt when in 1991 I was setting up the Bureau of Creative Expeditions in my studio in downtown Moscow. The main idea behind the project was to make Russian art better known in the world and to speak to the Russians about the world in the language of art. EXPEDITIONS AND EXHIBITIONS Twenty years have passed, and as the Head of the Bureau for all this time, I can say that we have certainly tried to accomplish our task. There have 286 Vladimir Anisimov been more than thirty expeditions of Russian artists to such countries as Afghanistan, Cuba, India, Indonesia, Kuwait and Nepal. Pictures and other works of art created during these trips by both acknowledged masters and gifted novices were displayed at scores of exhibitions in these countries. In Moscow and in some other Russian cities similar exhibitions were held in the most prestigious galleries. Catalogues and albums were published, and wide media coverage was there too: the activities of the Bureau have been reported in almost 300 newspaper and magazine articles in Russia and abroad. All these artistic and organizational efforts could not be carried out without close cooperation with many governmental and nongovernmental bodies of Russia — not to mention the sponsors in the countries that we visited. INDONESIA Each of these trips is memorable, each place we visited is unique in its own way, but if I am to single out a country where we worked most often during the last decade, it is Indonesia. We arrived there for the first time in the year 2000, on the invitation of Megawati Sukarnoputri, at that time Indonesia’s Vice-President. After a month-long journey across Java, we had a large exhibition in Jakarta, at the National Gallery. Half of the exhibits were works that represented the life of Russia – its history, religion, small towns and big cities. The other half was composed of our artistic impressions about Indonesia’s amazing nature and cultural heritage, its dignitaries and common folk. As one trip followed the other, our Indonesian Collection kept growing. Today it consists of more than 3,000 works of art. Besides Java, our destinations were Sumatra, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, Madura, Lombok — and Bali, of course. In the spring of 2010, the Necklace of the Equator — such was the name of the exhibition dedicated to Bali — became the hit of the Moscow season. For a month, the works inspired by the stay of our group in Pulau Dewata (or the Island of Gods, as this incredible place is often called) were on display in the State Museum of Oriental Art. Thinking about our Indonesian experience, I cannot help but mention that at some point this journey culminated in something unexpected but deeply symbolic — a virtual meeting with a classic Russian nineteenthcentury painting. It all started when in 2003 Madame Megawati, at that time already the President of Indonesia, visited one of our Jakarta exhibitions. Obviously pleased with what she saw, she turned to me and said: “Bapak Vladimir, A Sentimental Journey through ASEAN 287 many years ago when I was still a little girl, my father visited the Soviet Union and your Premier Nikita Khrushchev presented him a picture by a well-known Russian artist. To our joy it appeared that my father’s close friends had bought another picture by the same artist from a private collection in Italy for decorating the residence of our Head of State. Their style and even size were almost similar. On father’s instruction, both pictures were hung in one room of the Bogor palace. Since then this room is called ‘Russian’.” As she remembered, on one of the canvases there was an incomprehensible signature, which was later covered with paint in the process...