Oleg Maslov - Epic Sentiment

If any single movement or institution could be said to define Russian visual art in the anarchy of the post-soviet 90s, there could only be one candidate: the New Academy of Fine Arts.

Located just off St. Petersburg’s main street, occupying a crumbling floor in the cavernous labyrinth of the infamous artists’ squat known as Pushkinskaya 10, it was organized in the manner of a pseudo-seat of higher learning. Artists were referred to as 'professors', acolytes were ‘students’, classes conducted to timetable and new work presented during a weekly open exhibition.

Disciplines included photography, video art, performance, happenings, but mostly - and unfashionably - painting, which adhered to strict neoclassical guidelines extracted from the ancient Greeks and Romans, 17th Century Old Masters and fin-de-siecle decadence with a heavy helping of Socialist Realism. Everything produced there was doused in a deluge of kitsch, self-parody and the highest of high camp - though at the same time the Academy purported to be on a serious mission to promote the ideals of classical beauty and save Russia from the degradation of corrosive and ugly Western modernism.

Leading the charge was ‘Professor’ Timur Novikov, the controlling mastermind and the architect of all this madness, whose neo-classical doodles on fabric provided the original inspiration. Former drummer of legendary rock group Kino, Georgy Guryanov, contributed Soviet-style portraits of muscular female Javalin throwers and sailors. And giving proceedings more than a hint of Warhol’s factory was ‘visiting lecturer’ and infamous drag artist Vlad Mamyshev Monroe, who pranced around the Academy in full Marilyn Monroe get-up, generally surrounded by a bevvy of queens and sundry club kids.

But none of the Professors quite encapsulated the ethos of the Academy more than Oleg Maslov and Viktor Kuznetsov. Their immense collaborative canvasses featured excessively camp, deliriously mannered depictions of the Greco-Roman world, often with their own limber bodies homoerotically inserted into the frame. Modesty was preserved by loin-cloths, thrusting cod-pieces or sometimes not at all. According to Maslov, their influences also managed to span flemish masters Rubens and Van Dyck, baroque still life wunderkind Frans Snyders all the way to gay ironists Pierre et Gilles. Less about a ‘kvir’ aesthetic - as both artists are not gay in real life - than about transgression and protest, taking a stance at a time when homosexuality was still illegal in the Russian Federation.

The New Academy, almost despite itself, became the most cohesive and internationally recognised of the groups to emerge in the post-soviet era. St. Petersburg was suddenly overrun by collectors, as well as by luminaries such as producer guru Brian Eno, who briefly relocated. But the spotlight swiftly moved on. And many figures in the movement would burn out in subsequent years - finally and conclusively. Novikov first went blind then wasted away, while other prominent Neo-Academists also fell victim to fatal excess. Monroe, like a doomed film-noir heroine, was found face-down in a swimming pool in Bali. Viktor Kuznetsov has been afflicted by a debilitating illness that has left him housebound.

As a result, Oleg Maslov now numbers among the very few living survivors of Neo-Academism. Leaving it behind, he says, has given him the freedom to strip away the irony, the exaggerated camp and the kitsch in order to embrace the ‘new optimism’ that shines through his latest portraits and groups – arguably his best ever work. The Neo-classical backdrops have been ditched, colours keyed down a register, expressions more watchful. Cod-pieces have been consigned to some forgotten drawer. 

Then there are the glorious, effusive, gleeful flowers, which some have read as a retreat from the ideological jostling and culture wars of Maslov’s past life at the Academy - which in many respects they are. But they also hark back to the early work of Warhol whose silk-screen blooms are here in spirit, hue and intensity. They recall too the floral still lives of Hockney, another of Maslov’s long-time influences and passions. And these are resolutely not the ostentatious Oriental Poppies or Petunias of O’Keefe or in any other way flashy and impressionistic. They are simple, honest flowers that might be found in any humble dacha along the vast landmass of continental Russia - Echinacea and Zinnias that connect us to the countryside and the earth.

In taking us on this journey - from frenetic madness of the 90s to a more settled, liberated self-reflection - laying wreaths for fallen comrades on the way - Oleg Maslov has profoundly demonstrated the meaning of the Epic Sentiment that gives this extraordinary exhibition its energy, life and title.

Written by the Guardian journalist John O'Mahony