Savitsky’s Legacy: The Desert of Forbidden Art

Nearly any art the Soviets would suppress, Igor Savitsky collected—using their money. In a remote corner of Central Asia, Savitsky built the Nukus Museum to house an extraordinary collection of Soviet modernist and Uzbekistani folk art. This unlikely institution and its visionary founder are introduced to the world at-large in Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev’s fascinating documentary, The Desert of Forbidden Art (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Frankly, as the son of aristocratic stock, Savitsky was fortunate simply to be living in relative liberty during the Stalinist era. After being rudely disabused of his own artistic ambitions, Savitsky returned the scene of his happiest times, the remote Uzbekistani autonomous republic of Karakalpakstan, where he had served as a sketch artist on an archaeological dig. Savitsky soon began collecting the local folk art considered verboten under Stalinism. However, his greatest acquisitions were the explicitly banned work of Soviet avant-garde artists who had come to Uzbekistan in the 1920’s and 1930’s to avoid the secret police’s prying eyes.

Figures like Alexander Volkov and Alexander Nikolaev synthesized modernism and the exotic Central Asian art into something new and unique to the region. Clearly not working within the Soviet Realism style dictated by the state, their art was quickly banned. Many, like Mikhail Kurzin, were interrogated and even imprisoned. Yet, somehow Savitsky managed to convince the Karakalpak party boss to fund his proposed museum, (which he did through embezzlement).

While Savitsky’s subversive institution might sound like just another ironic episode of Cold War history, the quality, diversity, and volume of art he collected there is absolutely staggering. Pope and Georgiev choose some genuinely striking highlights to spotlight throughout Desert, but they could only scratch the surface of the 40,000 some works he amassed. However, an estimated 97% percent of the Savitsky Collection is in dire need of restoration.

Not just a remarkable history lesson (though it is surely that), Desert is also a call to action, urging viewers to support the museum. The staff, though passionate, is woefully underpaid, and the building’s environmental controls are essentially non-existent. The Islamist specter also looms over the Nukus Museum. Though not yet directly threatened by Taliban-style militias, Uzbekistan is a Muslim country that shares a border with Afghanistan. Indeed, the Nukus curator is all too aware of the fate of the Bamiyan Buddhas.

Truly, Desert is a revelation several times over. A genuine cultural hero, Savitsky and a handful of highly placed allies saved a treasure trove of exceptional paintings and graphics. Pope and Georgiev tell his story beautifully, featuring work after work of power and originality evident even to the untrained eye, as well as the smoothly polished voice of Sir Ben Kingsley, which well serves Savitsky’s words. Perfectly ending on a note of gentle irony, it is hard to imagine a more insightful or informative documentary will be released this year. Highly recommended for all audiences (and to art lovers in particular), Desert opens this Friday (3/11) in New York at the Cinema Village.

When Paris was Paris: The Luminous Years

They listened to jazz, haunted cafes, and revolutionized art, music, and literature. In the early Twentieth Century, a remarkable creative vanguard collected in Paris. Something of a trailblazing cultural documentarian in her own right, writer-director-producer Perry Miller Adato profiles the diverse cast of cultural icons whose collaborations and rivalries produced what we now term “modernism” in Paris the Luminous Years: Toward the Making of the Modern (trailer here), which premieres on most PBS stations this coming Wednesday.

According to Luminous, the future began in 1905 when Matisse made his first sale (to Gertrude Stein). Yet, it was the 1907 Cézanne retrospective that propelled close friends and fellow painters Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso to develop Cubism (as it is now referred) on their canvasses, sending shockwaves through the art world. A few years later, The Rite of Spring caused a legitimate riot at Serge Diaghilev’s Ballet Russes. Though Stravinsky’s dissonant music is often singled out for scorn (or credit), Nijinsky’s choreography was nearly as avant-garde.

Soon, the Americans arrived, including Ernest Hemingway and Josephine Baker. Ironically, one academic asserts Langston Hughes likely discovered jazz, the music that would shape and inform his greatest poems, while working as a busboy in a Parisian jazz club.

While Adato thoroughly covers all these big epochal moments in the birth of modernism, Luminous is best at making connections between artists and disciplines. Poets like Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau befriended artists like Picasso and Chagall. Artists like Miró and de Chirico designed sets for the Ballet Russes. Within disciplines, innovative classical composers like Mihaud and Satie incorporated American jazz into their compositions.

Unlike customary practice for many documentaries, Adato avoids gratuitous use of celebrities as talking heads or narrators. No offense is intended to Concetta Tomei (best known as the dead mother in Providence), whose voice-over work is clear and pleasant, yet happily never distracts from the ample illustrations of the art under discussion. While eschewing big names, Luminous’s on-camera academic commentary is all completely on-point and rather informative.

Luminous is the sort of programming PBS always claims to produce when its federal funding is in jeopardy, but is all too rare on its schedule. It really is all about fine art, music, and literature, with only the briefest of political commentary mixed in (but even that was unnecessary). Smartly written and well produced cultural history on film, Luminous airs on most PBS outlets this Wednesday (12/15) and will be available on DVD the day before.