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The Phenomenon of Natalya Dolgova
By: Jury Rytkheu,
Kerro, Leningrad Region
When I first time saw the pictures of the young St. Petersburg
artist Natalya Dolgova, I did not know yet, that the she
had spent her childhood in the Far North, in a corner of
the notorious Kolyma which is called Tenkinsk valley.
Anyway her northern relationship was easily guessed, since
what I saw struck my in the heart and touched my emotional
depths, which unfortunately seldom are awakened to become
really fascinated. Everything was recognizable and almost
familiar.
Characters of ancient legends such as giants and dwarfs
brought to life in colours, relationships between people
and animals, created by the artistic imagination and possible
only in the whimsical imagination of the Storyteller, again
took me back to my remote childhood when the artist and
storyteller Onno turned up in our yaranga in Uelen and stayed
for some days to wait out the winter blizzard which carried
on for several weeks.
Every night after the evening meal the inner yaranga became
so hot, that people stripped themselves of all their garments:
women kept on only a narrow leather loincloth which today
is beautifully referred to as "bikini” and men
only carelessly covered themselves between the legs with
a rag of reindeer calf skin. That is when the genuine art
feast would begin, and the true enjoyment of the colourful
imagination of the storyteller which would bring to life
everything living and dead of the world around. The whale
would easily turn into a person, a young man would get wings
and fly to the stars and gloomy rocks would issue cries
and speak in human voices. The entire surrounding world
became amazingly colourful, overflowed with pleasure of
life.
This probably also was my first familiarizing with genuine
art. Maybe in that very moment the kernels of creativeness
were sown in my soul, later to determine my course of life.
Art cannot be primitive. If a work of art is forgotten,
becomes non-existent, the soul of mankind grows poorer.
But if it continues to serve mankind, stays in the memory
of mankind, continues to excite hearts and touch emotional
strings, it will remain modern, irrespective of its time
of creation.
But the most interesting and surprising is the fact that
it continues to be a source of creative energy for the modern
artist, inspires him or her to create astonishing works,
where time and history, past and present come together,
but where there is no gap between centuries and times, and
all is one and inseparable.
In recent literature this trend was most clearly demonstrated
by Gabriel García Márquez, especially in his
novel "One Hundred Years of Solitude ".
Natalya Dolgova's work is based on the ancient art of the
peoples of Northeast Asia, in particular the Chukchee and
Eskimos who have created a unique civilization of large
sea mammal hunting which survived almost intact to the beginning
of the past century. I am deeply convinced that she is a
genuine phenomenon of revival of the ancient creative spirit.
One cannot say that no attempts were made in this direction.
There were, and some were undoubtedly successful. But nevertheless,
only few managed to achieve such an organic image as is
the case with Natalya Dolgova. In the works of the young
artist there is not even a trace of deliberate stylization,
no forced attempts to enter a world which is not hers. It
is a free and natural feeling for her to stay in a mythological
environment offering inspiration to the will, letting off
into free flight the magic bird of creative imagination.
This Chukchee mythological cycle may be an episode in the
works of Natalya Dolgova, but it’s a successful and
promising episode. And I hope the phenomenon of Natalya
Dolgova will be adorned with many new artistic achievements.
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