Kostyantyn Militynskyy “Red woman”

2020; aluminium (dibond), digital printing; 122 x 66 cm

Description:
An American artist, one of the representatives of pop art, Tom Wesselmann, drawing his beauties, deduced the standard of “American beauty”: a tanned body with stripes off bikini (after all, an American house must have a pool), blonde, bright lipstick and a cigarette … and no personality: no facial features, no details except attributes in the foreground, in the form of fruits, ice cream and cocktails. In some works, he deliberately shifts focus and scale, depicting closeup of either female toes only, with brightly painted nails, or only chest, or lips. His paintings show irony in relation to American consumer paradise, for which he created the corresponding “female breed”.
For 70 years of its existence, the Soviet system has created total control and specific art. In the USSR, the image of woman, which was cultivated in the mass consciousness was a Mother-Woman, a Woman Stakhanovist, a Collective Farm Worker, a Komsomol activist and so on and so forth. There was no talk of any style, romance, or physical beauty. The only function of art, declared, was a service to the Soviet people and the Communist Party, which was implanted in the image of a happy socialist reality. An ideologically conditioned image was presented as real. The Art had a right to exist only as a propaganda of socialist ideology.
The clash of these images in the space of the picture allows you to get an unexpected impression from thinking about the development of the plot.

About artist: Kostyantyn Militynskyy
1966; Kyiv
Was born in Novy Rozdol. I live and work in Kyiv. He graduated from NAOMA, Faculty of Monumental Painting. During and after graduating from the academy he took an active part in group and solo exhibitions. Then he worked as a designer, art director in advertising agencies. Participant of numerous exhibitions, residences, festivals: group, zonal, international, personal. I work in different genres. In addition to painting and graphics, I experiment in the field of computers, visual media (3D rendering and digital images: animation, digital sculpture, digital video, new media. Works are stored: Museum of the History of Kiev, private collections.