Henry Khudyakov (Russian, 1930-2019) The Shirt, 1984 (acrylic and dye on fabric)

Henry Khudyakov (Russian, 1930-2019) The Shirt, 1984 acrylique et teinture sur tissu 82.5 x 45cm (32 1/2 x 17 11/16in). acrylic and dye on fabric Footnotes: Provenance Acquired directly from the artist in 2013 Private collection, USA Exhibited Jumbo Love©Henry Khudyakov, Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, 2019 The same Shrirt is in the collection of the Center Pompidou, Paris, The State Russian Museum, St Petersburg, MMOMA, Moscow. Genrikh Fedorovich Khudyakov (b. 1930, Cheliabinsk) explores both verbal and visual disciplines. After graduation from the Department of Philology at Leningrad State University in 1959, Khudyakov emerged as a highly experimental poet who, writing under the pseudonym 'Autograph', tested the limits of 'meaning' and enunciation. He continues to use verse as a creative stream of consciousness, a 'salubrious gymnastics', which he often distributes amidst hand-made miscellanies – one reason why, with his linguistic expertise, Khudyakov turned to the sophisticated poetry of Boris Pasternak and Marina Tsvetaeva and, with his knowledge of English, not just spoken, but also syntactical and grammatical, to the poetry of Emily Dickinson. No doubt, Dickinson's subtle connection of the minutiae of everyday life with the divine firmament appeals to Khudyakov who, through his application of material fragments, builds not only an impressive poetical inventory, but also an entire Cosmic Grotto of artistic ready-to-wears. Arriving in New York in 1974, at the zenith of flower children, punk and psychedelic art, Khudyakov focused attention on 'clothes', especially blazers, as carriers of esthetic expression. Here were 'softwears', resplendent mosaics of textiles, strips, buttons, pins, even chewing-gum wrappers and can labels composed as ambulatory collages, irrespective of their ultimate destination. A major stimulus to Khudyakov's colored vestments and fabrics was the nocturnal skyline of New York City which he saw, flabbergasted, from the top of the Empire State Building shortly after immigration, which is to say that his luminous jackets, neck-ties, pants, and banners may be read as vertical transmissions of the horizontal Manhattan cityscape at night -- as well as homages to the T-shirt and the shopping-bag. Like the city after twilight, much of Khudyakov's designer clothing is also fluorescent, shining in the dark, thanks to his liberal use of acrylic. Back then the contrast between this swinging citadel of Capitalism and Communist Moscow was vivid, indeed: Brezhnev's Moscow was dark and silent where traffic was spare, streetlights were wan, television was black and white, dress was sober, and the low lamps of communal apartments were weakened further by the gigantic abazhury casting their eerie sodium glow over the meager furniture, the checkered table-cloth and the rationed sugar. No commercial neon, no car lights, buildings in disrepair, monuments of cold granite to the high and mighty, the cult of secrecy and disinformation, the vast emptiness of the boulevards and construction sites, the staidness of the Party machine – all these conditions created the manifest impression of a wasteland and a Dark Ages. In emigrating to America, therefore, Khudyakov passed from shadow to light and expressed this luminous discovery in blazing blazers, waistcoats, trousers, shoes, and wall-hangings which undermined – and continue to undermine -- all academic rules about color combinations and complementary hues. Moreover, he returns to his compositions over long intervals of time, sometimes as much as thirty years. The results are glamorous in their dissonance and jarring in their syncopation. But even if Khudyakov seemed to be placing American illumination above Soviet obscurity, he was not a political renegade, but an artistic dissident who was totally indifferent to the pillars of power, whether Eastern or Western. With his sartorial icons, he confronted and challenged the sobriety of Soviet society with its dismal masses and anonymous clothing: his dazzling kaleidoscope of red and yellow fabrics, eccentric and chic, could only elicit opposition and censure within the greyness of Brezhnev's Russia. Certainly, Khudyakov's suits constituted an anti-uniform which questioned the legality of the omnipresent militsiia, the Red Army, the factory worker and the KGB, and, on this level, inevitably, was considered to be dissident and disruptive, the moreso since he was represented in numerous émigré publications such as Apollon-77, A-Ya, Gnozis, and U Goluboi laguny. Even so, today Khudyakov is remembered more for the brilliantly colored ensembles which he designed, created and wore, than for his radical poetry. Reserved, if not, gruff, but with an unrelentingly sardonic humour, Khudyakov lives as a vitrine of his own variegated art, a taciturn vehicle of loud vestments and, with his noble stature and high forehead, he enters upon the world stage or, more often than not, retreats to the 'Cosmic Grotto' of his apartment and studio. In some sense, Khudyakov marks the culmination of a dress parade which distinguished much of 20th century Russian Modernism. There was Sergei Diaghilev with his artificial, besilvered forelock and immutable suits from Saville Row, Konstantin Somov with yellw suede shoes, David Burliuk, Vasilii Kamensky, and Vladimir Maiakovsky with their fancy waistcoats, extravagant neck-ties and top hats, Sonia Delaunay's Simultanist robes, fashion accessories and intérieures with their loud stripes of red and blue, even the Constructivists such as Liubov' Popova, Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova with the colorful geometric patterns of their workaday clothes. True, the rapid development from an ornamental to an architectonic conception of fabric and dress design was stimulated by the activities of many avant-garde artists involved directly or indirectly in applied art before the Revolution. In 1912-13, for example, Natal'ia Goncharova made patterns for embroideries and over forty designs for ladies' dresses, some of which incorporated abstract motifs. In 1915-16, Ol'ga Rozanova, one of the most original adepts of the abstract system of Suprematism, applied her dynamic combinations of color planes to textile design. In 1916 the painter Kseniia Boguslavskaia, wife of Ivan Puni and, with him, co-organizer of the legendary exhibitions 'Streetcar V' (Petrograd, 1915) and '0.10' (Petrograd, 1915-16), contributed an entire range of designs for embroideries, cushions and handbags to two exhibitions of the Association of Independents (Petrograd) and the World of Art (Petrograd). The culmination to this pre-Revolutionary involvement of the avant-garde in the design of textiles, clothe, and related accoutrements, was the series of three specialist exhibitions in Moscow, i.e. 'The Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative Art' (1915), 'The Exhibition of Industrial Art' (1915-16) (both at the Lemercier Gallery, Moscow) and the 'Second Exhibition of Contemporary Decorative Art' (1917) (at the Mikhailova Salon, Moscow). Among the contributions by Exter, Malevich, Popova, Evgeniia Pribylskaia, Puni, Rozanova, Nadezhda Uda'ltsova and Georgii Yakulov were designs for drapes, cushions, carpets, dresses, handbags and belts. Of course, these items were oriented towards a bourgeois, affluent and leisured class, and, while sometimes inspired by peasant motifs (as in the case of some of Rozanova's dresses), they were not intended for the mass market. All this is to say that, although the artists of the avant-garde rarely designed vestments for their own use, they did anticipate Khudyakov's basic premise that the clothed body function simultaneously as a private For further information about this lot please visit the lot listing