Song of Protest by Peter Yemts

Bells of Chernobyl

Once outside the perimeter, where an outsider’s entry is strictly forbidden, he came out from there completely different. It was Chernobyl that made from Petr Yemets artist, which we know today. Chernobyl gave him a supertask: to pass through his own heart, blood, and bones thirty-kilometer exclusion zone to show people what they would never have seen without his works.

In the late 1980’s, journalists called Petr Yemets a stalker of the Chernobyl zone, a guide who leads people to an anomalous territory. And it is really true. We follow him on the roads of Chernobyl, overgrown with radiation weeds and bombarded with poisonous apples. Together with the artist, we go through the ways of despair, screaming, and tears.

At first, he painted mainly landscapes and portraits of the liquidators; real landscapes and familiar people who lived and worked next to him. But gradually Petr Yemets moved from the realistic manner of drawing to signs and symbols: pictures of nature, people’s faces, if they do appear, are necessarily combined with abstract or surrealistic motifs.

Petr Yemets  on plein air in the 30-kilometer zone. 

1986

Many of those who used to live or work in Chernobyl, visiting the Petr Yemets’ exhibitions, recognized familiar places in his paintings since all the landscapes were painted by the artist to the smallest detail. But it is so painful to look at this now dead land (“Abandoned Houses, Rudnya-Veresnya Village”, “Grandpa Maxim’s House”). No one will return to the abandoned house, repair the leaky roof, get rid of the weed.

Petr Yemets. "Grandpa Maxim’s House". 1986

There was a lot of things, but most of all I was struck by the communication with the locals who secretly made their way into the zone, found their former homes, persistently wanted to go back, cried for a long time. Those places without people got wild very quickly.

A very short time will pass, and these villages will disappear from the earth’s surface forever. People will destroy them consciously: whether in order not to attract marauders or foreigners not to see the conditions peasants of Polesie used to live. But so far no one knows about it and the fresh summer air, filled with the sun and grass, is flowing over the yards. But the artist is not limited to the lyrical landscape. Some of the pictures from nature are depicted by the artist in the atmosphere of a real funeral.

Talking about the history of the canvas “The Burial of the Red Forest” creation, Petr Zaharovich recalled ‘I stayed there for about an hour. I felt dizzy, some sweetness filled my mouth and there was a strong smell of acetone. The American, with whom I subsequently communicated, said ‘If you stayed there for twenty minutes longer, we wouldn’t talk with you now.’ The dose that killed the forest was also fatal to humans.’

This American was an adviser of US President George Bush Sr. Seeing the picture of Petr Yemets, he took out his own slides, found one of them with a burned red forest taken from the satellite and asked with a smile ‘So who “copied”? Was it me or you?’. The similarity of documentary photography and art canvas was amazing.

Adviser on nuclear physics and astronautics of US President George Bush Sr. at Petr Yemets’ exhibition.

 
The picture “The Burial of Contaminated Equipment” is close to “The Burial of the Red Forest”. The sound of the violet-black sky is enhanced with the help of a contrast, bright ocherous flashes. The yellow color of sandy hills is covered with a red coating of radioactive dust. It seems that everything happens in a closed, compressed space. This is the atmosphere of hopelessness and despair. It is the cemetery of advertized civilization...

Just as the local residents recognized familiar places in the pictures of Petr Yemets, people depicted by the artist in the late 1980’s could be recognized in the characters of TV shows, seen on photographs in the newspapers. And some people seemed to leave the oil portrait and were lost among the visitors of the art exhibition. In particular, they were senior sergeant O. Krat, battalion commander V. Galaburda, captain I. Yakovlev, and head of the pioneer camp “Skazochniy” I. Lerner.

There were many generalized images too, although they were also created from specific people: “Signalman”, “Warriors-repairmen”, “Dosimetrist”, “Electric Welder”, “Builders from the Military Battalion”, “Saint”. They are documentary accurate, but not as dead as photos. In many pictures, there are fantastic figures of gas-masked people. The powerful expression of colors, interesting perspectives, unexpected prospects show a peculiar author’s interpretation of what was happening around.

Petr Yemets. “Saint”. 1987.

1987

Just like in 1986, Petr Yemets paints a lot from nature, fixing all the seasons on the canvas. At first glance, his landscapes are charming and lovely views of nature, but in fact, it is a deserted and terrible 30-kilometer zone (“First Snow. Camp “Skazochniy”, “Hives”, “Breath of Chernobyl”). But altogether with the magical rural landscapes, we can already see the canvases with the first consequences of desolation: “Chernobyl Madonna”, “Spring on the Grave of the Village”.

When the question arose of what to do with radioactive villages, bury or burn, they decided that it would be easier and cheaper to burn than to hide thousands of houses in deep repositories. The operation of burning the villages was called “Experiment.” I was one of those who supposed to be in the unit to be the first to “experiment”. We were trooped in front of gasoline-dumped buildings; the torches were lit. One of us voluntarily agreed to bring a fire to the first hut, but here came an elderly man who was also mobilized for the elimination of the accident’s consequences. He pushed the volunteer away and went into the house. We were silent. In a few minutes, the man came into the yard, holding icons of Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary in his arms. ‘Now you may burn the house,’ he said quietly and sadly.

It is noticeable that the artist often depicts apples (“Silver Day”, “Apples in the Snow”); these fruits are the most mysterious and ambiguous symbol in painting. They reveal a lot of meanings and unite many opposite interpretations. For many centuries the apple personifies both the good and evil; but apples have long been a symbol of prosperity, joy, and well-being for the Slavs. However, in the zone, they are useless to anybody because life itself has been cut off here. Chernobyl apples will appear more than once in other, not landscape paintings of the artist, in particular, in the “Last Song of Protest”.

Petr Yemets. “Apples in the Snow”. 1987.

While in the zone, Petr Yemets watched people changing right in front of his eyes. He saw life and saw death, witnessed the heroism of some and the cowardice of others. All this gradually changed the artist at a deep level. A new vision of the world was structured in the mind.

The artist is increasingly serious about who we are, why we live and what we doomed ourselves to. His reflections Yemets shows us in an enlarged, hypertrophied form, as if through the eyepiece of powerful optics. He does not just create an idea but remelts it to the level of a highly artistic work. Here the first Yemets’ symbolic painting “Bells of Chernobyl” appears, which gave the name of the entire Chernobyl series.

The second picture by Petr Yemets, which marked a new line in his work, is called “Requiem to the Holy Land”; it is a sea of funeral candles on a trampled, deserted land. In 1991, Petr Zaharovich created another version of this composition, where tear-stained candles blazed brighter and the requiem sounded even more powerful against the background of the mourning black sun. And almost 25 years later the artist returned to this topic. In 2016, he decided to paint another requiem. But now it concerns not only Chernobyl.

It will be a completely different picture. I won’t leave any flashy colors anywhere, I’ll muffle the tones, blur even the flame of the candles, because the image itself should be talking to the viewer, and not I should be chatting. Do you recognize the background? Yes, these are the twin towers in New York.

Unfortunately, the artist did not have time to finish this work; death took the brush from his hand, but the canvas clearly shows the artist’s intention.

Petr Yemets.  “Requiem to the Holy Land”. 1988, 1991, 2016.

1988

“God Save Us” is another picture that has undergone the same dramatic changes as the “Requiem to the Holy Land”, and which was “corrected” by the artist several times.

First painted in 1988, it was one of the brightest works in the Chernobyl collection of Petr Zaharovich Yemets. It was loved by journalists and often taken as an illustration for publications in the newspapers of the late 1980’s - early 1990’s.

The artist very carefully painted out a trident-shaped-pine, a kind of symbol of Chernobyl. But here, over the tree, the image of Holy Virgin appears. In the first variant, this image is light and clean. The holy protector crosses the earth and gives hope. It seems that the artist himself believed in saving, back in 1988, when the deadly Chernobyl bells were ringing over the devastated earth, and people were fighting the atomic element.

But thirty years had passed, and Yemets almost completely repainted this picture. The pine has disappeared into the haze and no longer attracts our attention. The blood-red stripes appeared on the blue sky, and the face of the holy patroness turned black...

One of the friends said ‘It was one of those pictures that we took from the radiological center. One day I went to see him, and Petr Zaharovich was hiding a tree in the fog with wide confident strokes; the picture was changing right before our eyes...’

Petr Yemets. “God Save Us”. 1988. 2015.

He did not explain why he did it, but it’s clear that it was no accident, because behind each of his canvases, behind each seemingly trivial matter, there is a history. In the paintings of Petr Yemets, there is no place for the accident. Documentary reflection of reality is combined with the ability of the artist not only to convey the state of nature but to find and introduce into the composition an eloquent detail that conceals the main message of the intention. On the canvas “God Save Us” it is a pine; in the “Red Guelder Rose” it’s a snow-covered chimney; in “Loneliness” it’s a forgotten child’s ball; in the “Land of Storks”, it’s a road sign.

Having spent the first two years in the Zone, Petr Yemets was moving more and more confidently from the realistic manner of reproducing reality to the symbolic one. His paintings burst as a kind of artistic tribunal over the entire system that generates Chernobyls (“Tocsin of Mother’s hopes”, “As a Nightmare”, “Star of Wormwood”).

The generalized symbolic vision of the tragedy, the avant-garde-unusual construction of compositions and the fantasy interpretation of images with the interspersing of realistic elements in the image, this manner became predominant for him.

The “Song of Protest” by Petr Yemets deserves special attention. To some it reminds Edvard Munch’s “Scream”; there is the same motif of death and an incredible desire to live at one and the same time. The scream brings the world around under itself, gaining a universal scale. However, Petr Zaharovich explained the meaning of the images in his painting in some other way.

Petr Yemets. “Song of Protest”. 1988.

In the first years after the accident, young people hesitated whether they should have children, and the doctors told them openly ‘Currently, it’s better to abstain.’ I regarded this as a violation of God’s law, not of the earthly one. In my picture, there is a chorus of pregnant women associated with the zone who are recommended not to give birth, and who try to declare their holy motherhood right in the cesium-plutonium thicket of radiation. However, they are not even women anymore but half-skeletons with blanched eyes. Because the person who is forbidden to give birth and bring up children looks like this: though he can walk, he’s already dead. And lighted candles are a symbol of mourning for unborn children.

Another of the artist’s ambiguous paintings is “The Sacrifice for the 21st Century”. In the late 1980’s Ukrainian art critics explained this painting as ‘Radiation in the image of death. But people in gas masks tell her ‘no’, as evidenced by a decisive hand gesture of one of the liquidators’. But this interpretation was more in line with the directives of the Soviet leadership than the positions of the artist himself. Petr Yemets explained the picture depicted on the canvas differently.

The Angel is standing and counting. Who passes away gets a candle in the chest; and he left, dissolved both materially and in memory. The first, second, third. No one knows how much more vacant place in the heaven, so the Chernobyl victim can be painted for ages...

Petr Yemets. “The Sacrifice for the 21st Century”.  1988.

In the same 1988, the canvas “Quiet Field” was painted. Here’s what the artist told about the history of its creation.

The tragedy occurred on October 2, 1986. On that day, according to the worked-out scheme, sand, dolomite and other cargoes provided for by technology were dropped from the helicopters into the reactor.

The crew of the military helicopter Mi-8, commanded by the captain K. Vorobiev, was to drop a basket with instruments for studying the radiation situation into the reactor. But whether the sun dazzled Vorobiev for a moment or the incredible pressure of the last few days influenced him but something caused the pilot’s only one wrong move...

In the first seconds, no one even realized what had happened. The blades of the helicopter caught on the steel cables stretched from the arrow of the tower crane. The blades were cut off like matches; the vehicle fell into the mouth of the reactor like a stone and turned into a flaming torch. If someone of the crew members survived the strike (and there were four people in the cabin), he was burned alive in the fire.

In 1987, a modest obelisk in the form of a helicopter blade was installed at the Chernobyl airfield; it was the first monument in the USSR to those killed in Chernobyl.

It is this memorable sign that is depicted in my picture.

Petr Yemets. “Quiet Field”. 1988.

1989 — 1991

He had already returned from Chernobyl. In the capital’s exhibition halls, the first displays of his paintings were successfully held. The republican press was vying in telling the story of the artist. Petr Yemets was admitted to the Artists’ Union Ukraine. But...

‘You can’t let go,’ his friends tell him.

‘Yes, I suppose I won’t let go,’ he replies.

Chernobyl does not let go. Petr Yemets painted pictures “What Are You Punished For, My Land?”, “The Road from the Promised Paradise”, “The Tears of the Forerunner”. Although the artist was very reluctant to give his works to strangers, the latter one was put for sale two years after the creation. The money should have gone to the treatment of a boy with leukemia.

In October 1992 the newspaper “Obrazovanie” wrote:

‘The exposition of the paintings by Petr Yemets traveled across Europe and America; this month it travels around its native capital. The exhibition opens with the picture “Tears of the Forerunner”, auctioned by the artist.The proceeds were to be used to treat a sick boy who suffered from the Chernobyl accident. The treatment abroad is expensive, and the artist decided that if one of the solid “charitable” funds gets his picture, which in the end is designed to take care of the injured, then little Petr Lychuk may be able to regain his health. But the picture is not bought, and even the newspaper clippings attached to the frame, telling whom the help is addressed to, disappeared. These charitable funds seem to exist for themselves, or else why the desperate request of the sick child’s parents is not addressed to them, but to the whole world ‘Help us, somebody!’

Petr Yemets. “The Tears of the Forerunner”. 1990.

“All of Us Were Crucified on the Cross”

In the early 1990’s the theme of Chernobyl in the works of Petr Yemets, although is the main, but not the only one.

Like any person, I set myself some framework and outline a range of topics that I find interesting to work with. The times change, so the topics change too. But I never paid attention to any restrictions or fear.

And it is true. He always allowed himself to freely express his thoughts on any issue. And he always fought for this right. Freedom to think what you want, laugh at what you want, and draw what you want these are the basic things, without which he could not imagine himself.

Petr Yemets takes to heart the impoverishment of his own people and disdains the power that led to this. The iconic canvas of this period is the picture “Ukraine”.

Petr Yemets. Ukraine”. 1990.

‘This is an allegorical image of an invincible, strong and free Ukraine. The picture reflects the hopes of the entire people for the long-awaited freedom and independence,’ journalists commented on this work, but they were cunning. Petr Yemets painted something else on the gloomy gray background; these were useless, incinerated hopes in the red glow of so-called reforms.

During the recording of one TV interview, Petr Zaharovich said:

This is how I saw it, our Ukraine. That’s how I see our people; the old mother in the background, closer –  two daughters, one of whom holds her child in her arms. Women are real beauties, but what a terrible fate they have...

I believe that this is the extermination of our own people. And I want to show this genocide to the whole world.

These words, of course, were cut from the program, but they were preserved on a working copy, which the interviewer, TV journalist Alexander Anisimov, gave to Petro Zaharovich.

Another accusation that the artist throws power is the paintings “Son of God” and “The Alps, the Vienna and the Danube Remember” (the line from the famous Russian song dedicated to the World War II – transl.) Both pictures depict beggars from the underpass, only on the first, there is a little boy of seven years, and on the second is a gray-haired legless veteran.

Once I was asked ‘If you wrote the Constitution of Ukraine, what would be your very first article?’ The very first article is to feed people and feed the children. The main problem of our politicians is greed, which took away a piece of vital bread from the people.

Not everyone likes this position of the artist. Because if Chernobyl is the sins of the old government, to which one can write off anything, then the “Son of God” is the sentence for the new government.

Petr Yemets. “Son of God”. 1990.

“And I will Worship All the Temples of the World”

Before his stay in the Chernobyl zone, the artist scarcely ever turned to God. In the future, he will do this more often, and not only in difficult times.

In the post-Chernobyl period, traveling around the world, the artist from nature painted the temple buildings, churches, and cathedrals of Rome, Paris, Strasbourg, Vienna, and Berlin. These picturesque sketches, mostly watercolors, composed the series, which the artist called “... And I will Worship All the Temples of the World”. But he interpreted this phrase much wider than a simple image of church buildings.

From the preface by Petr Yemets to the album of reproductions, which should have been published in 1996 (unfortunately, the book was never published due to lack of funds):

‘I had an idea to walk you by those roads, which certainly turn into temples. All my life I used to stop time on the canvases, in sketches, and in the simplest graphic drafts. Analyzing what I’d experienced, I came to the conclusion that all my paths led to the temple. Bowing to the ground, I reflected them on paper as my own reminiscence for a good memory to other people.

The ways were different, and they were perceived differently too. When I painted the ruins of ancient Rome, it seemed to me I could hear the voices of Roman soldiers and the sound of their weapons and at the same time the heavy breathing of slaves under the scorching Italian sun. They are adzing these stones for the construction of history. An invisible voice whispered to me ‘Slavery, bondage. Lord, how hard it is...’

Being abroad, the artist tried to fix on paper and show others things struck him the most. After all, people often live and do not notice life. The master’s brush revived “Evening Strasbourg”, “Rome on a Sunny Day”, “Jesuit Temple”, “St. Mary in Cosmedin Church”, “Tiber River Embankment”, “The Bridge of the Holy Angel”. There are also fascinating “Old Fortress”, sketched by the artist in Krakow, “The Church of the Kaiser Wilhelm” in Berlin, and numerous Austrian and Belgian landscapes.

"The Art of War. Sarajevo 1995”

Yes, he wanted to let go of the pain. He painted beautiful landscapes, bridges, and castles. But misfortune found him again. And although it was another’s misfortune, the artist passed it through his own heart.

Taking pictures to Rome, where it was planned to open the next exhibition of the artist, Petr Yemets was in the area of military operations. This was in the summer of 1995. The media announced that the civil war in Yugoslavia had ended. Therefore, the familiar filmmaker Petr Olar proposed to go to Italy by his own minibus.

‘We would ride the Balkans, take pictures on the road and at the same time rest, he told me, I agreed, so we loaded the pictures, the cinema equipment and with the crew and two children (they wanted them to see the world) and set off.

In Budapest, we got without any special adventures, and even when we went to the Ukrainian embassy in Hungary, didn’t fell even the slightest alarm. Therefore, the ban on going further sounded like a bolt from the blue.

In the embassy, we were told ‘In Yugoslavia, there are some events again. If you had no children, we would have passed you over. But with children, there’s no way. Turn back home.’

Turn back home? Never! We settled on the banks of the Danube and camped for over a week. I fished and fed the whole group. I’d never seen so many fish: a pike was running on the water by its feet. At that time, Petr Olar spent all his days in the embassy: he asked, bored, persuaded and, eventually, he got his way. On the ninth day, we got permission to travel through Yugoslavia.’

Everybody, of course, was delighted, but they could not even imagine what awaits them ahead.

The birds’ singing was stopped by the shots. The smell of thyme mixed with unpleasant powder smoke, half-decaying corpses, blood, and absurd death. The art of war.

Things that Petr Yemets had to see in Sarajevo and its environs are shown in the pictures he had been painting from nature for two weeks while the group was in a besieged city without the possibility of leaving it. These pictures are “The Last Melody”, “Red and Black”, “Mercenary”, “On the Pass”, “For Someone Else’s Porridge”, “Travelers”. It is worth looking at these works to understand: there is nothing more terrible and stupider than war.

Petr Yemets. “For Someone Else’s Porridge”. 1995.

I remember, during my stay in West Berlin, I wanted to feel the times of the World War II. I tried to unravel the place where my uncle Misha (my father’s brother) waved his hand for the last time before forever remaining in this land. I even touched the grass, hoping to feel his warmth, but the grass was cold, and not surprising because much time has passed.

But no matter how many roads there are in the world, no matter how they twirl around, wherever they lead us, they must certainly turn to native home, to the parents’ doorstep.

So, going back, I necessarily go to the temples, light the candles, whisper quietly a prayer known only by me: about slave artists, about their immortal art; about those who last waved their hands at the walls of an alien temple. I always remember that Hero in the underpass, I light, put a candle for his feet, lost somewhere in Europe, for the song he used to beg alms from passers-by. For his sharp, full of blame eyes. For scared nightingales, for crumpled thyme.

Having prayed, I begin to talk one-on-one with the beautiful again. After all, I still hope that beauty will save the world. And the world and people are worth it...