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Candidate of Art History
- an article for the catalog of the exhibition "Burning Color". 2005
In Russia, the history of secular painting begins only from the middle of the XVII century, when fine art, like a capricious child, abandoned all the heights of the ancient Russian tradition of icon painting and frescoes, which are already unattainable now. The search begins for other means of artistic expression of the eternal theme of all art - the idea of "image and likeness", the idea of deification of man and humanization of nature. And the artist Tatiana Yan goes through her own special part of this path in her work. She works as if she has set herself the task of bringing back into cultural use and protecting from oblivion, giving them the relevance of modern artistic experience, the surviving fragments of the great tradition of Eastern Christian art, each fragment of which carries the meaning of the whole. The artist's position is one of admiration for sublime beauty and chaste approach, pausing on the threshold, looking through the slightly open door and envying simple things: a bowl, fish on a platter, fruits, flowers that have witnessed the gospel events. By building fragmentation into his visual technique, in reality the artist expands the boundaries of the visible. The visible world of the canvas surface, its picturesque landscape merges in her images with the divine fabric of Existence, and thanksgiving becomes the main theme.Tatiana Yan's work is based on a view of art as evidence of a higher reality embodied in visible reality. She consciously moves away from the processes of the current state of culture, multiplying reflections of herself, like a mask, but reveals confirmations, signs of what is hidden – metaphysical reality.There, beyond the image, a living world breathes, full of earthly pain, contradictorily screaming about its imperfection against the background of the amazing beauty of Creation, the existence of which is threatened by the development of modern civilization. Here, in the space of art (the artist), concentrated work is underway to make up for the loss of the original harmony and sanctification of Being.
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