TY - JOUR AU - Soboleva, Larisa AU - Alekseev, Yevgeny PY - 2020/06/23 Y2 - 2024/03/29 TI - World-Famous Artist on Creative Freedom, Time, and Himself: The Last Conversation with Vitaly Volovich JF - Quaestio Rossica JA - QR VL - 8 IS - 2 SE - Origines DO - 10.15826/qr.2020.2.480 UR - https://qr.urfu.ru/ojs/index.php/qr/article/view/qr.480 SP - 553–572 AB - <p>This conversation with Vitaly Volovich (3 August 1928 – 20 August 2018),&nbsp;a famous Ural artist, took place on 18 May 2018, and turned out to be the last&nbsp;extended interview given by the artist. The interview was aimed at discussing the&nbsp;newly published Women and Monsters album of Volovich’s works, as the editorial&nbsp;board of Quaestio Rossica was planning to collect and publish more materials on&nbsp;this topic in Russian culture (Quaestio Rossica, Vol. 7, 2019, Issue 2). The interview,&nbsp;however, became much more expansive and interesting as Vitaly Volovich, with his&nbsp;phenomenal memory and unprecedented skill as a narrator, recalled many pages of&nbsp;his difficult life navigating Soviet bureaucratic censorship, which was only braved&nbsp;by those who truly understood and loved art. An epic picture of the dramatic ups and downs in the artist’s life unfolds in this interview; the reader finds the artist’s&nbsp;personal search for meaning and his opinions on art, the freedom of creativity,&nbsp;life in Sverdlovsk, his friends and adversaries, and his achievements and failures.&nbsp;Volovich was attracted by the theatrical: he loved the circus, the spirit of acting&nbsp;and the carnival. Knights and monsters, selfless heroes and criminals, beautiful&nbsp;women, clowns and beasts reign in his books and graphic works. These images,&nbsp;initially associated with literary fantasies, manifested the artist’s thoughts on&nbsp;modernity, on the difficult path of the country and national culture. The interview&nbsp;was conducted by Professor Larisa Soboleva, editor-in-chief of Quaestio Rossica,&nbsp;and art critic Yevgeny Alekseev.</p> ER -