Lot 77: m - FARID BOGDALOV, B.1963

PROPERTY FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION, FRANCE

PO NULYAM [LOVE ALL]

PO NULYAM [LOVE ALL]

38.5 by 60cm., 15¼ by 23½in.

signed in Cyrillic, titled on reverse and dated 1990; further dedicated with date 30 July 1990

oil on canvas squares laid on board

PROVENANCE

Acquired in 1990 from the artist by the present owner

NOTE

Farid Bogdalov belongs to the Moscow conceptualist school and is famous for projects such as 'White Act', 'Fish of the Moscow Avant-Garde', 'Mirrors' and 'All stars' amongst others. From 1990, together with Georgy Litichevsky as part of BOLI (BOgdalov and LItichevsky) he conceived the art program of "impossibilism" (impossible art), based on the idea of the impotent character of contemporary art. Bogdalov appeals to his audience by introducing elements of chance and fate and often uses the symbol of the die. For him, making art is like a game in which each artist tries to outplay the other, but neither ends up ahead, that is, qualitatively any better or intellectually more meaningful, than the other. This idea of a game for game's sake is represented by 0:0 (Love all). The message conveyed by his art is that of the nihilism of postmodernism, in other words that one modern image is as good as any other, and one traditional image is as good as any modern image (D.Kuspit, New Russian Art: Paintings from the Christian Keesee Collection, Pasadena: Curatorial Assistance, 1994).