NEW BARBIZON

The New Barbizon Group was founded in 2010 by five painters, born in the former USSR, who live and work in Israel. The group’s name refers to the Barbizon School of painters who were active in 19th-century France and championed landscape painting from direct observation, outside of the studio, linking painterly realism with a blunt view of social reality. When, in the early 21st century, the members of the New Barbizon Group adopt the name and the declarative character of the historical Barbizon School and celebrate painting by observation, their act has a confusing effect: is this a tribute per se, or a critical stance that makes sophisticated use of the tribute? Are they being conservative or subversive?

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Should painting from reality be considered a contemporary

practice?

Text by Nicola Trezzi (2017)

How can discipline generate total freedom? How could constraints liberate a creative force? Can individuality and collectivity coexist? These paradoxical questions are the foundation of The New Barbizon, whose members are five painters working together in Israel since 2011: Zoya Cherkassky, Olga Kundina, Anna Lukashevsky, Asia Lukin and Natalia Zourabova. 

    Avoiding imposed labels through a self-proclaimed act of “individual collectivity” and inspired by The Barbizon School, this group of painters — who pair their independent studio practices with projects developed together—decided to twist the legacy of en plein air in order to create situations in which “fine art rules” such as outdoor painting, still live painting, portraiture, and learning how to draw the human body are celebrated and questioned at the same time. For the New Barbizon mastering these techniques comes from the desire to deconstruct and analyze them conceptually. In other words their painting practice is not only rooted in these techniques but also in the performative, social—or socialist—environment through which these very techniques were delivered to them during their education. In other words their work is not only about the fine art academy learning processes related to painting and drawing but also to their social context, such as the collegial spirit of the class, the voyeuristic relationship with the model, the notion of “same but not the same”, and the dichotomy original versus copy. In their case collegiality becomes a key element of their modus operandi; voyeurism is at the base of many of their activities, among others a drawing club in which they recruit models through various social networks; originality is put under scrutiny through a multiplicity of signatures all dealing with the same subject; authenticity is reconsidered and understood as a word with many meanings. 

    The fact that all the members of the New Barbizon were born and studied in traditional art academies in the former USSR add a double conceptual layer to their work: on one hand they bring a socialist and collective spirit to the Israeli artistic scene, which is mostly dominated by individualist forces; on the other hand their Russian identity and painting activity reinforce their position of “isolated majority.” According to Google, 47.5% of the Israeli population is Ashkenazi and within this percentage almost half, 20.9%, is Russian (it increased after the fall of the Berlin wall); Russian, together with English, is the most spoken language only after the official ones, which are Hebrew and Arabic. At the same time these data don’t match the art scene at all; the presence of Russian Jewish artists, collectors, curators, critics and gallery owners is extremely low. A similar equation can be applied to painting: while many Israeli artists are practicing painting, mostly figurative, very few are taken into consideration by the intelligentsia and recognized by the institution. 

    Considering all these elements we see the work of The New Barbizon as deeply political. Using a double marginal position, the artists take the most conventional and conservative language—not panting, but “painting from reality”—in order to twist it and reformulate it, so that it becomes a tool through which, in reality as much as in their paintings, the excluded ones (Israeli foreign workers, African asylum seekers), and the forgotten ones (Russian new immigrants) are moving from the background of the picture to its foreground. The birth and affirmation of ideology has reinforced a system in which the notion of individuality is always juxtaposed to that of collectivity. Through the traditional understanding of authorship, signature and authenticity artists have mostly acted and have been perceived either as individuals or, in few sporadic cases, as collectives. 

   However in our current time, a time dominated by porosity, a time in which ideologies have become personal—and therefore anti-ideological —it is possible to find a way in between. In other words artists can position themselves between individuality and collectivity, between solitude and communality. Interestingly enough the most interesting examples of this “oscillatory act” has come from artists whose preferred medium is painting—the most individualistic above all media. Following these premises The New Barbizon continues an interesting wave that includes BMPT in Paris, Sigma in Timisoara (RO), Ładnie Group in Krakow, hobbypopMUSEUM in Düsseldorf and London, Grand Openings in New York, Rafani in Prague, and JANDELA in Yogyakarta (ID).

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Nicola Trezzi