Feature:  Valentin Melik: An Artist with a Passion

Source: George Melick, The Griffin

Date: April 22, 2005

When we imagine classical artists, we see them as old, bearded men, in fluffy, feminine clothes, who worked centuries ago.  What a difference to our perception of contemporary artists!  Contemporary, edgy, individualistic in art, dress and opinion, this is how we see them.  They are unique, they innovate, they push the envelope.  A stark contrast to our opinion of contemporary realists yet again.  In our minds, realists are conservative, bitter old men who loathe progress.  They earn for the days of witch hunting, where neither technology nor abstraction defined what they create, a time when they didn’t have to compete with a digital camera.

An emerging artist, Valentin Melik, shatters these stereotypes.  He is a third year student at the Russian Academy of Arts in St. Petersburg.  He is twenty-one.  His art is realistic, yet abstract.  People know exactly what they see when they look at his art, yet Valentin asks them to think.  Contemporary art, especially abstract art, emphasizes the intellect.  It asks the viewer to question, interpret, judge, and then, to generate an emotional response.  Valentin’s art focuses on the emotional reaction first and foremost. 

When Shmitty, a county truck driver and a Civil War buff, sacrificed time to sit for his portrait, he never expected to stand speechless before it.  And he stood there, and watched.  Shmitty was so captivated by his portrait, that he didn’t notice Valentin’s family nagging him for his opinion. 

Valentin’s work leaves a powerful, emotional impression.  Happiness, tranquility, beauty, fear, sorrow, power – life itself, read instantly and penetrate to the bone.  Only when the initial reaction subsides can viewers pull away, and ponder exactly what they see. 

Is it natural to wonder why a young man chose to pursue rigorous academic study?  Why has he slaved for five years in the Academy’s high school before slaving in the Academy itself for two more years?  Shy does he leave at nine every morning and return home at eleven at night, studying only drawing, painting and subjects directly relating to them, six days a week? 

“To paraphrase Salvador Dali,” says Valentin.  “If a person thinks he can create great art without knowing its foundations, then let him rot in his arrogant stupidity.”  Valentin believes that everyone needs to study the underpinnings of their craft.  This is acutely important to the fields of visual art, dance, music and architecture.  The fundamentals of these arts are classics,  And “based on this understanding, I choose classical study, so I can build and expand on it,” he says. 

When Valentin is asked to describe his art, he has a hard time answering.  They are student works, he says, they are assignments.  The reaction is usually an “oh,” a disappointment or disenchantment of some sort.  It took a probing question to explain exactly what he meant.  His classical, structured study does not deny or lessen his creativity; it only asks his art to follow classical guidelines.  When the Academy assigns Valentin a theme to draw or paint, it is like asking a question.  Valentin is challenged to answer it.  They assign a theme “waiting,” Valentin must paint his response.  How does he see “waiting?”  When we look at “The Wait,” we see his answer. 

“The Wait” carries a message, awaiting a life or death decision from a Roman emperor in a gladiator circus.  It critiques the past, the blood sport of Rome, and the present, the reality TV culture, where suspense rises just to be cut short by a commercial, where people take part in the less bloody, but no less repulsive games for fame and money.  This is but a part of what the viewers see, when they ponder its meaning. 

Every piece Valentin produces is charged with emotion and meaning.  It is exclusively his own.  It doesn’t matter whether he is assigned a theme or he finds inspiration in a blob of ink. 

“A painter has only one language,” Picasso once said.  Maybe that is why Valentin succeeds in painting and fails to talk about it. 

In seven years, Valentin created more than 400 pieces.  His art graced Buffalo galleries, offices in Moscow and St. Petersburg, private estates in New York and Virginia, a subway station and the archives of the Academy.  He won numerous art competitions.  He can draw and paint portraits, landscapes, still-lives, and many more subject matters. 

© 2011 valentin melik