Журнал Viche 2009 №15

№15, 2009

Independence and Its Imperturbable Ghosts

During 18 years independent Ukraine observed how monuments were multiplied in arithmetic progression on its territory. Other thing is that there have appeared only some monuments actually dedicated to Its Majesty of Independence. And it can be explained.

Architecture and artistic boards at their time suffered a lot with the competitive projects of the main Kyiv monument – the symbol of the renewed state. Sculptors with their crazy creativity quite often forced arbiters to drink valerian. Then quite a lot of developments seemed to experts and ordinary citizens of Kyiv to be vapid, funny and deprived of fantasy. And sometimes they appeared to be even ugly. The spectrum of projects impresses with its range. With time they were divided in several groups: a) Madonna with a child (one, two, three); b) tridents or incomprehensible phallic columns of different sizes and in fanciful combinations; c) winged handsome men (beautiful women); d) beautiful women with snowball tree, willow, fern, hemp and something like that; e) beautiful women without any medical or other plants, but with charms of the body exaggerated by an author depending on his own taste. According to what criteria the jury judged this parade of the post-soviet kitsch is still a mystery. But they became sure that conducting of such executions (let it be in other parts of the country, let it be with less fuss) is a masochism.

Olga KRASOVSKA