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A Bulgarian Journal
Mark Zimmermann
Growing up an army brat, travels with my family took on a headiness of life, I
would guess, unknown to most children. My family didn't just move, we took
on new endeavors: the first flight to Hawaii; the station wagon purchased in
Maryland and stuffed with belongings for the drive to Savannah; the parched,
endless earth of west Texas... I think often of my solitary journeys:
hitchhiking across Germany sans DM; pitching round blue stones into the darkness
of the fall Mediterranean in Nice (once again, poverty-stricken); the
dilapidated train that slowly climbed the hills along the coast from Sydney to
Melbourne for 13 hours while large, red-faced men juggled cans of Castlemaine
XXX to their seats; the bus ride from Chicago to NYC, sharing the snuff of a
snowboarding punk rocker. Ofttimes, it's not the opiate of arrival that I
cherish as much as the travel itself--the flux, the grooveless electricity of
departure and motion...
Last year--July 2000, to be precise--I was honored with a solo exhibition of my
paintings at Galerie Melon in Sofia, Bulgaria. The occasion of the show
came about through the joint efforts of my friend and collector, Professor
Gabriela Ilieva of NYU, and Lyubov Kostova, a linguist and curator living in
Sofia. This past August, while lounging poolside at my parents' suburban
Los Angeles home, working drawings in crayon, ink, and pencil, I was invited to
exhibit as the inaugural show for a new gallery, Galerie Viking, once again in
Sofia. This, then, is a retelling of the events surrounding the show and,
more importantly, the travel. I've come to love Bulgaria as a home I've
yet to spend enough time in--a small country of boundless diversity in nature,
from alpine cliffs to arid stretches of parched hills, the beaches of the Black
Sea, the unburdened rivers and streams lined with massive dewed ferns, the
elegance of lazy evenings at cafes, noting that, indeed, that is the
most beautiful woman I've ever seen in my life, no, that one is....
The noble Dostoyevsky mentioned that the most honorable thing for a writer to do
is talk about oneself. Very well...
Tuesday, August 21, 2001
JFK International Airport, NYC
Sitting with Crissy and tall ales at the bar in the international terminal...
An hour earlier, as we strolled in, a loud, elderly drunk cast a hazy glance our
way, or, I should say, Crissy's way. Being a man of little tolerance for
such buffoonery, I, with no uncertain malice of intent, kept a strong eye on the
fool as we shared a ridiculously priced turkey sandwich. The old drunk
then asked if I'm an actor. "You've a devastating look, sir," he
slurred, "are you an actor?" His voice had that surging baritone
so common among radio disc jockeys, newscasters, and aging thespians. Having
lived in NYC for over twelve years, I was quite familiar with its artificial
timbre. I kept my stare fixed and sipped from the ale, "nope..."
The old man spilled some of his drink--vodka, I'd surmise. "I saw you
looking at me," he said, "you've a devastating look..." My
silence prompted him to filial reverie. "Ever seen Cagney and
Lacey?" he asked. "No," I said, "I don't watch
TV." H
e seemed wounded by that fact. "I won two Emmys for that
one..." I nodded. For a moment I had visions of such youthful
infractions as bashing a man's head into a parking meter with the assistance of
a handful of his hair. Through it all Crissy seemed amused by the whole
thing. We continued with the turkey sandwich...
"My friends," the grey actor stammered, "I must take
leave..."
With that, he fell from his stool and, picking himself up, lurched to the
import/export man from Atlanta sitting to his right, hugging him.
We make our way to our gate and, through some divine intervention of moment,
become upgraded to first class. This is one of the graces of travel with a
lover: our seats weren't together, they found the only ones that were....
Nestled into my leather throne, drink in hand, shoes off and feet propped up, my
mind reeled at the vast differences between coach and this cabin of sustained
privilege. Indeed, who wouldn't want to fly, if one could go like this?
I ordered another scotch and settled into my reading--variously, Jeffers, some
Russians, and the ancient verses of China and Japan.
Wednesday, August 22
Ruzyne Airport, Prague
9:20am... We sit in another bar. This one, however, with the feel of
the continent--the small round tables with marble tops, the waitresses in
starched white blouses with black skirts and aprons. It all seems
European, that "feel" of things, the janitors in orange jumpsuits and
cropcuts, wearing white sandals and green socks, the patterns of the men's
jackets, the shrinking skirts of the women and unmatched Adidas warm-ups of the
children. The cigarette smoke smells different, the beer is warmer...
I work on my third beer, Crissy leafs through the mass of ads in Vanity Fair...
Prague. I'm bummed now, that through all my broke wandering and hitching
about Europe, I never made it here before. I think back to the tales of
American jeans traded for Volkswagens; my father as a boy in a covered wagon
fleeing the vengeful Red Army and the burning farm, left behind; his months in
the war-torn wilderness, time in a monastery, beaten by the nuns with damp,
cruel switches.... Of course, Kundera comes to mind now, I would imagine,
languid and wealthy in Paris, or perhaps a charming cabin in the lush poetry of
Normandy. I think of Kafka's devastated hours, the oh-so-modern horror of
the artist bound to the waste of a hated job. But then, it was Kundera who
wrote, "Without even realizing it, the individual composes his life
according to the laws of beauty, even in times of greatest distress."
There's a vagueness to surroundings after an overnight flight. Lined up on
the wall in front of me are five clocks: London, Prague, Moscow, Tokyo,
and New York. Quarter to four, NYC time. But here it's morning. A
morning with tall pilsners and no English around us. I find this lack of
communication comforting. Crissy and I practice our rudimentary Bulgarian
and discuss future journeys. I realize in a stilted, juvenile way that I'm
still drunk from the numerous scotches consumed on the flight (along with two
small bottles of airplane red with my smoked breast of duck).
Thursday, August 23
Sofia, Bulgaria
Up at ten... Sipping strong coffee on the balcony of my friends from last
year, Kiko and his wife Diana. Kiko, an engineer by trade and education,
now teaches high school history; Diana, a chemist. A gorgeous day,
standing five floors over the tops of fruit trees and crumbled stucco; to my
left, six kittens clamor over the red tiles of a roof that seems to have
outlasted history. In the distance to my right, the copper tops of
government buildings, oxidized a shadowy green; a wind blown flag stands
alone...
Last night, I met my new gallerist, Daniela Shishmanova, after a dinner of fried
chicken, boiled potatoes, and the ubiquitous shopska salata (the standard
Bulgarian starter: glorious tomatoes, cucumbers, peppers, onions, and white
cheese).
A seasoned secondary dealer, Daniela shows us the poster and invitations to the
show. I'm struck by the delicacy of the printing, the thought and care.
Her English is only slightly better than my Bulgarian; luckily, Prof. Ilieva is
on hand, back in Sofia to pick up her daughters after a summer with family.
After the introductory niceties, we head to the gallery to begin hanging the
show; our first media date is set for eleven the next morning (now, as I write
this in the evening, it would be this morning... this is the gamble of journal
writing, the non-linear course of history, the backpedaling, the peeling away of
such baggage as past, present, and future...).
The gallery sits off the street of Tsar Simeon, a crowded, narrow street just
off the main drag of Bulevard Maria Louisa, nestled in a dark courtyard.
The space is obviously brand new, it has that smell to it.... a small
space, what could be termed intimate, the lighting rather disappointing, much
too low for my tastes, but adequate. I think to myself, "I'm here,
now get on with it..."
The night finishes (as most subsequent nights did) on the balcony with glasses
of rakia after dinner. Rakia is essentially a fruity brandy, usually
distilled from grapes or apricots, best when served chilled. At first sip,
it resembles in taste and bouquet a mellower grappa (except the homemade
variety, which has that brutality the heady grappa fan comes to lust for...),
but after several glasses it more closely resembles the back end of the freight
truck that just ran you down. A strong wind comes to us from the direction
of the Bosporus, some six hours east. I'm struck by the fact that this is
the last of Europe... "We are the Orient," Kiko says, and we
discuss the possibility of a roadtrip to Thessalonika in northern Greece.
Indeed... the last of Europe. Seven hundred years, more of less, of
Turkish occupation... Bulgaria stands in a veiled isolation, an isolation
both of peninsular geography and the old Soviet strictures the dictator, Zhikov,
so handily inspired.
Cut off from the west by the warring states of the former
Yugoslavia, far from the Euro-cache of Prague and Budapest, Bulgaria rests in a
salient antiquity, nestled solemnly in shadow: a poet awaiting inspiration.
A study in dualities, Bulgaria is a nation of fusion: Christian and Muslim (for
better or worse), European and Asian, capitalist and communist, urban and
rural... In a five-minute walk, you can spy elegant women in Versace and Chanel,
long sleek hair lifted gently by the breeze, the sun glinting off understated
jewelry, then a pair of dirty youngsters and a hunchbacked grandmother leading a
cart of scrap metal or corn, drawn by a sway-backed mule, lurching along in a
cloud of flies.
So this morning, Kiko gets me to the gallery. At a main intersection, in
heavy, smoking traffic, a throng of gypsy kids poured between the cars from the
traffic island of dirt and brown weeds, to attempt the washing of windows as the
cars paused at the red light. As a New Yorker, I felt right at home,
except their ages ranged from about 8 or 9 to 15, most or all dirty and
barefoot. As the light changed, the guy in front of us leaned over to his
passenger door and opened it , hard, into the body of a girl trying to get at
his windshield. She looked to be about 12...
Now, writing this in the early morning, I reflect that in the States, we hear
the term gypsy tossed about rather insouciantly. Images from old Hollywood
portray a dusky, silken romanticism; the wagons bedecked in color and ribbon,
music, dancing. I don't see it... Last year, I was stunned by the utter
squalor and deprivation of the gypsy, or Roma, the actual ethnic term. The
given census figure for the Roma is approximately 300,000--though, of course,
this belies true accuracy, given the unquestionable numbers of Romani who pass
as Turks or ethnic Bulgarians. The story of the Roma is one of
migration--a low tribal-based caste moving from India to Europe sometime in the
Middle Ages, never assimilating into the native cultures they entered, clinging
still to their tribal identities (Kalaidzii, Kalbardzii, Kardarashii, and the
"bear tamers", the Ursari). Last year, while visiting the Black
Sea coastal town of Varna, strolling up from the beach, an old man in
traditional ga
rb led along a thin scraggly brown bear by a rusty chain attatched to five
rings piercing the poor beast's nose and lips. The bear had no teeth, a
string of phlegm dangling...
The collective farms of the Soviet regime offered the Roma (or Tsigani in
Bulgarian) some relief from their historical destitution. Since the fall
of Communism and the subsequent rise of a somewhat functioning free market
economy, however, the Roma, as with many rural Bulgarians, have found themselves
trapped in a vicious tide of neglect and unemployment. From this
contemporary scenario arises the return of the trade of the pickpocket--to some
tribes a practice held in some esteem. Indeed, I've often heard tales of
the thumbless children prowling the bazaars of Sofia and the cobbled alleys of
shadow in Plovdiv, the "second city". Word is, the father hacks
the thumb away from the base of the wrist, the thinner hand gaining access into
even the tightest pockets with, it is said, a most skillful ease. As with
any of the former Communist countries, Bulgaria has experienced a marked
increase in crime. It's easy to guess where the accusing eyes turn... It
remains to be seen
what will come of this.
At the gallery offices, after tedious interviews on BTV and EvroCom, Daniela and
I spoke with a journalist from one of the major Bulgarian newspapers, Novinar.
Daniela and I stumbled through the interviews, no real interpreter being
available. I must say she did a heroic job... Later in the offices,
as her intern hustled in apricots, various sweets, and my beers, we went over an
article in the newspaper Dnevnik by Inna Nikolova, a journalist I had been
corresponding with for the past four months. The article was pieced
together from the three weeks of e-mails back and forth as I completed the show
in several 15-hour painting and drinking sessions in the blinding heat and
stagnant humidity that oppressed NYC in those early weeks of August.
Later in the day, Kiko, Crissy, and I visited the National Art Gallery, under a
much-needed restitution. The former residence of the King, the National
stretches alongside the gold painted bricks of Boulevard Tsar Osvoboditel,
across from the former site of Georgi Dimitrov's mausoleum. Dimitrov--the
initial leader of the People's Republic, brutal dictator, and Stalinesque
genocidal demagogue--died in 1949, mysteriously, after a visit to Moscow and
"The Boss", Uncle Joe... In 1990, his body (said, actually, to
be wax) was taken and supposedly cremated. The mausoleum itself has since
been razed. Now the site is but a weed-strewn rectangle, leading to the
National Theater's open promenade and cafes along the perimeter of the city
gardens, a haven for highly competitive chess players and the home of the
Municipal Art Gallery. At the National, only four small galleries were
open for a group retrospective of the Mitov family: Boris, Stefan, Georgi, and,
to my eyes, the most
talented, Anton. The work, for the most part, was robust in its
ardor and sense of color, actually, a bit startling in sheer draftsmanship.
Anton's work, as mentioned, rose far and above that of his family members--in
particular, works from 1913, The Perished for the Fatherland and A Letter from
Home. The Perished... features the aforementioned dead in an impastoed
foreground of umbers, blacks, and siennas, a tragic tumble of martyred soldiers,
the wounds skillfully executed (pardon the pun...) with dashes of red, both with
brush and knife, a solitary cleric giving last rites before a stained sunset.
To stretch a point, some of Goya's more illustrative tragedies come to mind....
Through it all, I was struck by the dates of the paintings: 1918, 1914, work of
the 20's, etc. As powerful as most of the paintings were, I kept in mind
the fact that by this time, Monet had become a hermit based on his
experimentation; Braque and Picasso had torn heretofore commonplace percept
ions of content and form asunder with their Cubist discoveries; the
Italian Futurists had gone to steel and gasoline for their flirtations with the
muse, while Wyndham Lewis' harsh Vorticist stylings had scandalized London.
This chronological misplacement was the condition I witnessed in the
contemporary arena of painting last year, during my first visit. In
Bulgaria--Sofia, to be precise--painting still holds a certain ineffable value,
a value falling from us within the vagaries of American culture.
Problematically, the value held is one of a seeming nostalgia, the sad exile of
the nation fostering a stagnation of influence, to say the very least.
This, of course, leads to an artistic enviroment where mannerist philosophy
takes hold--though, to be fair, when considering the vacuum in which Bulgarian
painters existed and worked through the reign of the Soviet puppet Zhikov, it's
surprising there was painting at all, outside of Communist realism. As
with most things, rea
lity needs to be groped and rolled about in, before it sinks in. The
paintings I saw at group exhibitions at the Shipka 6 Galleries in the
Bulgarian Artists' Union building, today and last year, reflected this
condition. On the upside, the work oozed a rapid sincerity, not the
boorish irony Westerners are used to. On the downside, most of it seemed
done without the benefit of having seen much of the important painting in the
last sixty years (i.e., much of the American painting...). Most of the
work seemed inspired by mid-century, mid-level painters: Meutheil, Riopelle,
Corneille, and, most unfortunately, a bit of Fauvist Matisse thrown in.
Here and there, however, regardless of pure aesthetic value, there would erupt,
from the most trite of canvasses, a pure trope of inspiration--the line, the
splash of liquid resins. Sadly, most of these singular events then went
nowhere. Much of the work seemed finalized around a particular mark or
form, the artist filling space a
round the immediacy of what worked in the crucial initial stages.
Diebenkorn warned of "initial prettiness", that standard to react to
in the further quest of creation. Some artists use this as a source of
improvisation, of spontaneity. That's fine, but not all use it with the
certain sophistications that breed success. There was a poetic sense of
tragedy, the artist simply running out of possibility, gasping at the roadside
that is the continuum.
Thankfully, this time out, I found some stunning work that would stand tall in
any forum of advanced painting. On the Shipka 6 Galleries' second floor,
the artists Svilen Blajev and Plamen Bonev exhibited grand abstractions of very
different application and structural content. Blajev's work, a course,
Tapiesesque offering of mixed media (comprised, it would seem, predominantly of
soil and straw, with a body of pigment sparingly applied), brought a minimalist
aesthetic to strong plastic resolutions, his basic format being a small, central
geometric totem, perhaps commenting on the heraldic implications of the Balkan
iconographic tradition. Bonev's work, four parts of the series roughly
translated as Path, appeared to me initially as near-misses--intense, splashing
gestural paintings of subtle hue, at first glance derivative of de Kooning's
school of imitators. Upon closer examination, however, I saw a delicacy
that could be likened to, perhaps, the best of Joan Mitchell (
a classic hitter of near-misses if ever there was one), notably her
Sunflower and Canada masterpieces, or perhaps the aforementioned Diebenkorn's
early Berkeley series. Bonev's painting is painting of a severe nature,
violent and, yes, at times nearing an incoherence--but an incoherence of delight
in material and an incoherence not of depletion of value, but one of heightened
mystery. One must remember that, in general, the initial aesthetic
difficulties of a work may later define its true importance. Nothing taken
for granted, no quarter given, and none asked. Sadly, we were brusquely
denied the pleasure of documenting the work by the stout matrons sitting at the
reception desk. I dropped off a few invitations to my own show and we went
off for lunch at the obliquely bourgeois pizzeria Troll, where I promptly
knocked over my liter of beer.
Later on, after a nap, we walked to another pizza joint (fairly upscale, by
pizza joint standards) and met with the journalist Inna Nikolova.
Interesting that she wasn't, in fact, who I thought she was...
First words out of her mouth were "You don't know me..."
"I guess you're right," I said. So this made for some fun....
Though we came to know each other a bit through e-mail, she really seemed
unprepared for just about everything I had to say. But in a good way, this
delicious mystery about her...
Friday, August 24
Sofia
Up with a nerve-rending hangover.... The branches from the peach trees outside
our balcony window dance lightly before the light foam of clouds. We have
coffee on the living room balcony with Kiko and Diana, a comfortable silence
between us due to the early morning hour and the difficulties of language...
While drunk, Kiko and I indulge in conversations of metaphysics and discourses
on the contemporary relevance of prototypical nihilism in the novels of
19th century Russia. Sober, our moments, unless specific, rely on smiles
and nods and at its best, a simple wink.
By 8am, we sit outside the Palace of Culture, or NDK, a massive arena-like
structure. A cross between Lincoln Center and Madison Square Garden, the
NDK houses facilities for media and the performing arts, as well as a disco and
vendors of various hues. A short walk from the NDK, through Yuzhen Park,
rises the colossal modernist spires of the Thirteen Hundred Years Monument, a
work that induces very little in the way of indifference of opinion; loved or
hated, it serves as a nice metaphor for things Bulgarian... at 8:30, we make our
way into the BTV television studios, up the stairs. I sit through the
vagaries of makeup, a fey young man reaching under my shirt to attach a
microphone at the collar.
A few hours later, Kiko, Crissy, Gabriela and myself sit outside at a cafe,
under a large umbrella jutting up from the center of the table, a steady rain
pebbling off its surface. They drink coffee, Kiko and Gabbie furiously
dialing and answering cell phones--hustling for me, basically, juggling the next
odious responsibility. I hurl down a succession of Bloody Marys and there
is the strange languid motion of morning about us: a distance between the
drivers of the cars speeding by and the steam of the present that we sit in, as
if a sauna, beneath the leaves of dripping sidewalk elms.
I awake from a vigorous nap and stretch to the sun of a balcony... Later
we walk the streets of Sofia and lunch at long tables in a courtyard beyond the
construction going on street level. I dine on calves' tongues and tripe, a
selection of fiery peppers at hand, discussing such diverse topics as tennis,
Marxism, and the precarious strictures of paint handling in this turn of the
century.
By 7pm, Kiko and I are scouring a local green market for the ingredients to an
extravagant sauce of basil and sausages to accompany pasta, my overblown gift to
a party of ten, later tonight. We stroll about the cobbled stones of a
courtyard that once may have held civic meetings or perhaps the marching of
children, our hands loaded with plastic bags of basil, tomatoes, garlic, onions,
and bottles of wine. Nearby, kids shoot NYC-style hoops at a netless rim
while other, older kids, in Motorhead t-shirts and Ajax jerseys, kick a soccer
ball in joyful abandon towards nothing... Sadly, though festively, the
bash ain't quite prepared for a four-hour sauce. The joy and victory came
late, as it usually does--the fat gleaned from the top of the bubbling sauce,
plates filled greedily, glasses raised past midnight; the swirl of fork in spoon
...
Saturday, August 25
We stop at a McDonald's, of all places, God knows where, somewhere outside of
Sofia, some 3 hours drive... a piss stop. Two cars--myself, Kiko, Didi,
Crissy; and in the other (some Soviet machine), Georgi and his wife, Krassi.
Except for the Cyrillic lettering, it could be any McDonald's anywhere.
The twist is the gypsy wedding party being filmed without a hint of irony.
A dark-haired girl (woman?) of 16 or 17, in white finery... She poses amid
the sliding board and short bushes of the playground, lifting an ankle, turning
a seductive shoulder... The presumed family films her gyrations on camera,
as small children run and scramble through it all. My thoughts escape me,
staggering from the the latrine to the doors of Kiko's Golf. My most
immediate concerns would be simply vacuous emanations from an American
overseas.... For an American in some ports of call, there is the rise of
patronization at the sight of things defying our chauvinistic definitions.
Certain excess
es are ugly no matter where you find them; part of the gift of travel is
the ascension to levels of, perhaps, allowance, if you will. Crossing the
Rio Grande as a child with my family, the children my age clutching fistfulls of
ice cream cones hawked uselessly at the gringo cars, streams of melting flavor
running down their thin arms under the white burn of sun.
As we continue east, the landscape morphs into rugged alpine crests and
coniferous forests of staggering grace and depth. This is the land of myth
that lured Phillip of Macedon towards the Plain of Thrace, the Turks westward,
all tumbling into the blood of history. The tragic myth of the mountains
is that the lovers Rhodopis and Hem lost favor with the gods by taking the names
of Zeus and Hera. Their heresy was rewarded by them being turned into the
mountains separated forever by the River Maritsa, the Balkans and the Rhodopes.
After four hours (the last hour, it seems, spent in a steep vertical climb), we
pull into the square of the town of Trigrad. People mill about a few
market stalls, children running about, old men with canes in black wool stare
and point. Kiko goes through a beaded curtain into a store for booze and
cigarettes... About us, rising up, the gorges stretch, dotted with pines
and boulders, sheep grazing. Motorcycles zip about in the dust, seemingly
held together by electrical tape and good luck. Back into the cars, we
turn a corner and park at the bank of a small creek, traversed by a wood and
metal monkey bridge. Shouldering our gear, we make it across in twos, to
be greeted by our host, Ivan. We're staying one night here, at Ivan's
house, at the base of a hill that, with some liberty, could be termed a
mountain. A cow and two horses out back, chickens and dogs everywhere....
After we got sorted out, the six of us went for a walk along the trail in front
of the farmhouse, followed by a shaggy pony. The trail looped around a few
other houses and a stable and then began an incline around the base of the
mountainous hill, littered as it was with scrub weed and loose stones the size
of melons. At some point, I left the trail to scuttle along the side,
moving laterally to shift motion vertically, kicking my way up gradually,
fingers and the toes of my Aussie boots digging in for footing. Before too
long the others followed--Kiko and Georgi dropping out early, Crissy bravely
going on before it got too much in her NYC summer shoes. In the end,
Krassi and Diana made it up with me, Diana surging forward ahead of us at times;
at other times, I'd grind myself into the incline as they clamored up and over
my shoulders when no other hold was available. Halfway up, the sun
dropping in flowered hues behind the peaks, the Muslim call to worship went out
fro
m the bullhorn mounted at the tip spire of the mosque, the eerie echo
bouncing off the flint walls, washing over us, sweat stinging my eyes. It
was otherworldly.... Once again, I had a sense of transition from Occident to
Orient, west to east. From the peak, the world reached out; oddly, I
thought of dinner...
After showers, we settled at the wooden table in the dining room and toasted our
day with rakia (several bottles of rakia), moving on later in the night to
vodka. Dinner was pan-fried trout, which Kiko joyously devoured with his
fingers...
Sunday, August 26
After a hearty breakfast of fried bread, fig marmalade, feta cheese omelettes,
and ceramic crocks of warm (freshly milked) cow's milk, we say our goodbyes to
our hosts and set off for the Trigrad gorge, set amid the towering cliffs and
pine forests, the cave known as Dyavolsko Garlo ("Devil's Throat").
The entrance to the caverns was a crude, damp tunnel, dipping down into the
earth for about 160 meters. Along the wall, cases of beer cooled in
rusty chain-link cages. The descent continued until we reached the center
gallery; around 25 stories tall, a huge waterfall plummeting from the light
above, feeding the underground river that claimed the lives of four divers back
in the Communist era. Diana mentioned that for years, divers looked for
the end of the underground river. None was ever found and when the last
four divers didn't make it back, the curiosity of the stodgy functionaries
wearing medals on their chests was somewhat dampened. Indeed, there is a
decidedly ma
cabre feel to the whole place, the underground... Legend has it that this
was Orpheus' passage to the underworld, on his mission to reclaim his Eurydice.
The climb out of the caverns was a tenuous test of will: the metal steps both
narrow and slippery, the weight of the years adding a disconcerting slant to the
step underfoot, the thin railing bristling with slick calcium deposits.
After the less dramatic exploration of the caves of Yagodina, we began our drive
back to Sofia, stopping in the lovely town of Plovdiv for coffee...
Plovdiv holds a warm spot in my memory, not the least reason being the
outrageously beautiful women flaunting the various micro-fashions so prevalent
in the post-Soviet east. The timber manors of the Bulgarian Renaissance,
the dusty Ottoman mosques and the Roman theatre, the soft rigors of cafe
society... Originally a Thracian colony, the city was renamed Philippolis
by Philip the Second of Macedonia. The Romans brought their sense of urban
security to the frontier town and the town thrived until being sacked by the
Huns in the 440s. Later, as the empire shifted from Roman to Byzantine to
Ottoman, Plovdiv developed a mercantile class that lifted native Bulgarian
culture out of the shadows of Islamic political rule.
While nestled at a cafe in Ploshtad Tsentralen, a massive though charming
marble-paved promenade, I asked Diana what the situation was regarding cafes and
bars, nightlife in general, during the Communist era. To digress, it's a
classic irony that so many American (indeed, Western) intellectuals still cling
to a vicarious appreciation of the doctrines... It would be easy to say
that, yes, Marx and Engels were right in the theory laid out. Sadly, it's
the people involved who fuck it up. And isn't that just what we do best?
Georgi told us that on his wedding day, his father brought two bags of Coca-Cola
to the event, an event stalled somewhat by the failure of the "people's
electricity." "My guests sat in the dark and talked,"
he said. "And waited..." Diana said she didn't want to think of
"those times"... Here we sat, in a thriving, cosmopolitan
square, surrounded by fashionable lovers of all ages, cruising arm in arm,
holding hands, lounging as we were with coffee an
d beers. A mere twelve years ago this scene would have been an utter
impossiblity--the social beauty snuffed out by grim dogma.
Right now, back in Sofia, it's around three in the morning. Sipping rakia
and writing in this journal, I'm getting pissed thinking about it all. I
question any notion of a "right" or a "left". Besides,
it's useful to remember that in the States those terms mean little, if anything,
in an international context. Now drunk and sentimental, I think of these
people, my friends and their sufferings. What is there to say? The
failure of Marxism is that it's success was based on an industrial society
backed by a solid intelligentsia, fluent in its verse. Things never got
set up that way.... The funny part is that it's so easy to align yourself
with "left" or "right" if you've never sat over drinks or
dinner with the protagonists, never heard the people who survived it tell of the
hell that is possible, or, indeed, historical... Right now, I'm thinking
of various tragedies: the congress of Berlin in 1878; Rothko slitting the
arteries; Bulgakov censored and abused, unread; my
father killing to live, to get out of a jungle and see his wife and kids.
A great line of Bukowski comes to mind: "Humanity, you never had it to
begin with."
Monday, August 27
....We'll see. So the drama, the political rumblings in the wee hours of
the morning, gave way to drunken slurring on the balcony. Kiko came out
shortly after last night's last sentence and we proceeded to hit a few more
bottles of rakia, one of which was homemade. We crawled to our beds around
6:30, reminding each other, of course, that I had an 8am television interview on
The Morning Show. So at a quarter to nine in the morning, I awake to
Crissy's elbow in my back and Kiko's frantic knocking on the bedroom door...
Eschewing a shower, I brushed my teeth and pulled on clothes, stunned and
irresolute, grinning stupidly at Kiko's apologies as we negotiated the worn
stairway down to the car....
The interview went as well as it could. I guess it was good for my
credibility as an artist, especially a decadent Westerner. It's a unique
vibe to have so much attention through translation alone, all feeling definition
regarded from behind a veil of sorts. Granted, this feeling was usually
compounded by the noose of alcohol.
From the station we walked a few blocks to a cafe where I was to meet with the
critic and curator Adelina Fileva, of the Sofia Municipal Art Gallery, along
with my friend, Professor Ilieva, for translation. The meeting went along
in its way... The idea was to hash out her ideas for an essay she was doing on
my work. I go for a series of harsh Bloody Marys as Kiko smokes and downs
coffee. I realized only later that I still had a face full of TV makeup
on... Towards the end of our meeting with Adelina, Daniela showed up, in
tight low-rise slacks and 6-inch heels.
Prof. Ilieva, Daniela, and myself later walked to the gallery. One of the
impressive things about Sofia is that it's so accessible by foot. Further
grace is found in the number of small anonymous Roman ruins that dot the city.
They're part of the urban space, as indistinct and ignored as a statuary of
generals in saddle around NYC... Around one or two, Crissy met us and we
walked back towards the City Garden and the Municipal Art Gallery, where I
was to meet its director, Filip Zidarov, a devotee of good ol' Modernism and an
alumni of NYU... The exhibition at the time was a retrospective of Christo
Stefanov, whose oeuvre ranged from dark, murky portraiture to dark, murky
symbolism. At its strongest, the work had a heroic, earthy tone.
Problematically, however, much of Stefanov's use of shadow turned to mud and the
figure representation was, sadly, kind of clumsy; think '80's Sandro Chia, or
farther back, the Italian Rosai. One work stood out, though--MYWKATO
("Geran
ium" or "Pelagonium"), 1970--a smallish vertical panel of a
crusty, knifed application; a simple study of an archetypical flower, done in
lush flourishes of teal and quivering reds, the background a lucid ivory.
This stunning piece was, perhaps, what Maitre Picasso should have been doing in
his last years, as opposed to his bulbous whores and musketeers. This was
a painting that truly captured and transposed the promise of traditional
modernism, the fluid gratuity of paint operating as its own quiet language, a
language of understanding the subject's singularity. The structural
solidity of black, stressed just enough--just enough to give a musculature to
delicate petal and the fecund stem reaching from its pot. I returned many
times during the following week to sit and contemplate this gorgeous work and it
stood alone... A sense of that unique, Bulgar isolation permeated the very
color. In the guise of poet, I mused that I'd probably never see it again.
We had coffee with Zidarov at tables in front of the National Theater in the
City Garden. Ever the European intellectual in the best old world sense,
he stressed his confidence that the vagaries of photography and video would
eventually burn themselves out. I ordered a rakia and, upon its arrival,
toasted his obvious good taste.
Around 4pm, Daniela was expecting a client.... By this time I was fading fast.
Luckily, the guy showed near five. A short, round man in Italian silks and
black shades. He shook my hand with an unmanly grip and made his way
silently about the gallery checking out the work. I was impressed that he
really put the effort in to look at each piece--not the cursory view, the look
needed for the aesthetics of painting... He moved about the gallery for
about an hour, not speaking, as I threw back bottled water and wiped sweat from
my forehead, Crissy patting my knee. When he'd seen his fill, he offered
to drop us off. Locking up the gallery, Daniela told me he liked my work;
he nodded, for the first time smiling... We turned the corner and climbed
into his BMW limousine. He tapped the window.
"Bulletproof..." he said, smiling yet again.
Tuesday, August 28
The day of the opening. Anxiety creeping over my shoulders.
Interviews.... More talking about myself and what people should look for in
abstraction. It's becoming tedious.... The same questions with mostly the
same answers. I recall using the great Pollock's metaphor of a garden as
an example and often stared down at my sandled toes. And too much booze
and too much smoking. Then a nap... The nerves hit shortly after waking.
The nervous anxiety of exhibition. Pacing... The sweat. Once again, my
beloved Criselda was on hand to offer her tender support. My weakness
appalls me...
We arrived at the gallery a few minutes before the opening's scheduled time.
Caterers busied themselves with the buffet and the icing of bottles, while I
paced about the courtyard of the gallery, going through several bottles of
water, a vague effort made to identify the particulars of my current
neuroses.... Kiko, as ever, sturdied himself by smoking a pack of cigarettes in
about 15 minutes...
The show went on, as always... An Orthodox priest performed a ritual ceremony
for the opening of the show as well as the gallery. Daniela, Crissy, and
myself stood at the gallery's door and held votive candles as he recited
prayers, dousing us and the gallery's front with holy water. We then tore
apart a great, round bread in symbol of...something. Shortly after the
ceremony, the show dissolved into a crowded party. A few more interviews
for radio and an invitation to dine with someone at the Ameican Embassy, which I
had to decline. Several re-fills for my glass, a few canapes and the continued
shaking of hands. Of particular note: the autographs on invitations to the show
for some nubile art school girls.... Luckily, my friend and translator Lyubov
Kostova and her man, Dutch artist Rene Beekman, showed up with Sofia artist
Krassimir Terziev; this gave me a chance just to take it all in and share it
with someone in English. And to re-fill my glass...
Obviously, as I write this, the handwriting drifts to a horizontal slice in the
earth... It's near six in the morning. After the show, the dinner party of
fifteen, with the requisite bottles of fine Melnik wine and various rakias, fell
to but four--Kiko, myself, Daniela, and a friend of hers--sipping American
whiskey in the garden of a bar whose name already escapes me. There were,
of course, macho platitudes which ended, most banal, in high fives from
strangers speaking a language I can't understand... I need to sleep; the
pink tinge in the dark sky frightens me.
Wednesday, August 29
A bit of a struggle getting up this morning.... Crissy and I meet Krassimir
Terziev at a cafe in front of the National Theatre. It's bloody hot.... We
walk to Galerie Irida, where he'll have a show in two weeks. The
exhibition on hand is a large group show. Pleased to see the violence of a Bonev
piece prominently displayed... We left Kras there to go over business with
his dealer and walked back towards the City Garden and the Municpal Art Gallery,
a last few chances to check out my Stefanov piece, the lovely geranium.
With each viewing, there is a surge in its appeal, a flood of ardor as if an
unrequited love from some years back. An hour or so later, we meet painter
Nikolay Yanakiev at Galerie Viking and, with Daniela, take off in this
Volkswagen to his studio, a classic atelier set atop six flights of dusty stone
stairs... A skylight takes up the ceiling above us, numerous old frames
line the walls, bundles of stretchers in corners, the stench of oils and
generation
s of palette knives, long since useless, clutter a small table with
brushes, crayons, and tubes of pigment. Nikolay passionately serves iced
vodka and drags out a dozen or so pieces, a mix of slightly representative forms
and dramatic abstractions; the aesthetic could be termed "French" in
the finest sense of the word--the sensual, though overly primary, color and a
haphazard, giddy romance with the brush... Formally, the work of
Soulages and de Stael came to mind. We took pictures and toasted each other's
violent successes, Nikolay having just returned from a group exhibition in
Washington, DC. There is talk of a roadtrip to Plovdiv for a show of four
Sofia painters, but we nix it. The energy level is in decline... I need
time simply to enjoy Sofia with Crissy: walking slowly beneath the shadows
of weeping willows, being in love, that sort of thing.
Thursday, August 30
Interviews... The excitement of talking about myself is dying.
Friday, August 31
Took the day off from anything that isn't casual and easy. No more
press...
A little time in the gallery and then off to meet Krassimir for drinks and
dinner at his studio. We take a cab out of the city into the anonymous
highrise suburbs. Up to the 20th floor in a frighteningly tiny and rickety
elevator, scrawled with graffiti. Krassimir's place is a two-room
apartment, his paintings next to the bed... We crack open the rakia and
some wine and settle down to check out the work. In general, he's a
conceptualist, working in video with certain sculptural elements. For this
show, however, he says he wanted to get back to doing something with his
hands.... As a postmodernist exercise, the work is good--basically
cinematic stills done with expressive strokes of the brush with easy tones.
Kras says he's looking for motion in the work.... Later, when Beekman (an
artist working with real-time computer images and sound...) arrives and too much
booze has gone down, the conversation gets a bit heated regarding things
aesthetic.... We figure that's OK.
POSTSCRIPT:
Our last weekend was spent touring the Rila and Pirin Mountain ranges, visiting
the grand Rila Monastery, with its truly breathtaking views of alpine expanses,
and in the more aridly rugged Pirins, the Rozhen Monastery, a much smaller
though equally impressive sight. Both monasteries offered excellent
examples of Bulgaria's rich art of the fresco, full of writhing demons and
gloried saints.
We spent the night at the White River retreat, an isolated resort of small
bungaloes, reached after a two-hour vertical drive off the highway, down a
gravel road to the desolate village of Pirin, then another hour or so, back up
through dense forests on a one-lane dirt path. The next day we followed
the circuitous backcountry route out to the highway and made our way to the
ancient vineyard-surrounded village of Melnik. After parking the intrepid
Volkswagen, we walked the main dirt road (from which I pulled a mule's tooth, to
save as a lucky piece...) up to the cave cellar of winemaker Mitko Manolev.
There our host served us a variety of robust reds, accompanied by lukanka
sausages and good Bulgarian feta cheese. The temperature hovered at a year
round 10-12 degrees Celsius, the skulls of steers and lesser beasts hanging from
the damp wall of smooth rock.
Later, back in motion, heading for Sofia and a going-away party at Lyubov's
flat, I had a vivid reverie of our Saturday night at White River--after dinner,
sometime past midnight, standing with Kiko, looking from the vast outdoor deck
of the dining room, three mountain peaks meeting in the foggy distance.
Somewhere out there rested Greece in its splendid antiquity and, in a few days'
time, I would be flying back to the States and New York, an apartment on Seventh
Avenue and a studio in Long island City. The frenzied creation of a body
of work would be but a figment of time, something that happened weeks ago; the
travel and the rush of new experience would be replaced by the vacuous normality
of going day to day, a feeling that comes far too soon once you enter the taxi
at JFK's terminal, sit in the traffic at the mouth of the Midtown Tunnel, and
spill out with the other cars beneath the looming verticalities of Manhattan.
The mists tumbled out from under the imposing pine
s, hanging aslant from the timeless stone around us. Georgi, the
grizzled caretaker of White River, told us of boar hunts in these hills, showed
us the trophy heads in his small room. This, I thought, far from art and
the minutiae of philosophies, was a more direct vision of
actuality. The story goes that he was severely beaten for several days, by
the police, for anti-party sentiments....
The night a dewy blue, we continued our passive vigil, digging the world from a
balcony; the weight of the forest opaque and unending.
Mark Zimmermann, an artist and widely published poet, is a frequent contributor
to PAJ. His recent exhibitions include L.I.C.K. Ltd. Fine Art in Long Island
City, New York, the Ruth Bachofner Gallery in Santa Monica, California, and Post
in Los Angeles, California.
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