"Savitsky:" "I found these paintings rolled up under the beds of old widows, buried in family trash," "in dark corners of artist's studios, sometimes even patching a hole in the roof." "I ended up with a collection that no one in the." "Soviet Union would dare to exhibit." "These were forbidden works by artists who stayed true to their vision, at a terrible cost." "Marinika:" "Russian museums can't live with the idea that such a wonderful collection was taken out from Russia to this provincial place somewhere in Uzbekistan, God knows where." "Stephen:" "It really wasn't that long ago when what we now call Uzbekistan was one of the most spectacular centers of world culture." "The silk road ran right through that region, but for a period of almost a century Uzbekistan had been just distant province of the Soviet Union." "When the Soviet Union collapsed I was asked to cover this region that nobody in the world really ever thought about." "So, I decided I'm going to get in a car and find out what's out there." "For those people who consider Uzbekistan to be hopelessly exotic and remote how about Karakalpakstan?" "It's an independent republic within Uzbekistan." "In order to go there you have to cross this enormous desert where there's nothing but camels to see and fly infested truck stops once in a while along the road." "The principle city in Karakalpakstan is Nukus." "I had, I guess, assumed that the Nukus museum would be to museums in the world what Nukus is to the world." "Kind of a dusty, provincial town." "It didn't take me more than a few minutes of walking around this museum for my jaw to drop." "The fact that there's such a collection in this place and such a concentration of art makes it far more interesting than if you would see the same paintings in a series of galleries in Germany or in New York." "So, how did this happen?" "Savitsky:" "I was born into a life of privilege." "I even had a proper governess imported from France." "The little girl with the bow is me, groomed in the high fashion of the times." "My father was a wealthy lawyer, while my mother spent her days presiding over tea." "My brother went to military school and I was supposed to follow in his footsteps and serve the czar." "But then the revolution broke out." "Our life turned upside down." "We were no longer the ruling class." "One by one our friends and relatives began to disappear." "We had to hide our aristocratic roots and blend in with the proletariat that were now in power." "I had to prove that I was ideologically pure." "So, I took a working class job as an electrician." "But I dreamed of becoming an artist." "I got my opportunity when I joined the famous." "Khorezm Archeological Expedition." "It was the greatest dig in Soviet central Asia, as important as the discovery of." "Tutankhamun's Tomb or the Treasure of Troy." "My job was to draw what could not be photographed." "Here in the desert for the first time I felt a wonderful sense of freedom." "There was no one in sight except for tarantulas, scorpions and archeologists." "An ancient civilization lay buried in the sands of the desert near Nukus." "We were literally walking on top of antiquities." "Savitsky:" "While everybody slept during the midday heat I painted." "The desert trains the eye to be especially sensitive to subtle and intense variations in color." "It is the best school for the painter who strives to grasp the full power of how color sounds." "Savitsky:" "If an artist's of Falk's stature tells you you're no good you know you'll never be great." "Savitsky:" "I destroyed all my works and cut my ties to the art world." "I decided to return to the desert and start a new life." "Marinika:" "I knew Savitsky from my childhood." "My grandmother was always full of irony when she saw Savitsky saying, "Oh, again he came to ask for this old stuff."" "Savitsky:" "I discovered that the folk artists of this small nation lost in the sands had an amazing sensitivity to patterns and colors." "Marinika:" "This is the classical costume of Karakalpak fiance', which is exactly the same denim cloth that is popular all over the world now and Karakalpaks were using this cloth for more than three centuries." "Stephen:" "When the Soviets were in power they felt that the ethnic traditions of all these nationalities in what was then the Soviet south should be repressed." "You shouldn't be Karakalpaks or Uzbeks." "Then if you had traditional clothing you should hide those." "You should get rid of those." "Savitsky saved a lot of that stuff that might otherwise have disappeared." "Marinika:" "I remember in those days Savitsky was called a rubbish man because he was collecting all these garbages people thought, washing it in garage and he was telling fairy tale stories about the beauty of those old rags or costumes" "that were everywhere." "Savitsky:" "These treasures would remain forever in my garage unless I found a way to get the local communist party boss to go against party policy." "Savitsky:" "I finally had my museum, but as an artist I still longed to see paintings." "Around that time I came across an art catolog from the early days of Soviet Uzbekistan." "Savitsky:" "I was surprised that I had never heard of Volkov." "If a work so haunting had fallen victim to censorship what else was out there?" "Savitsky:" "I traveled all over Uzbekistan searching for masterpieces that the history of our times had condemned to obscurity." "I found a whole multinational collective of artists." "Some were Uzbeks, others came from distant parts of the Soviet Union." "They came here after the revolution." "For a brief period of time in the 20s and 30s they painted freely, far away from the Kremlin's censorship." "Uzbekistan became their second motherland." "Voiceover:" "I know about the classical case with the great French artist Paul Gauguin living like the natives on the island of Tahiti." "I got the idea of repeating his experience with myself." "I started learning the Uzbek language." "Then I got from the library the Koran." "Three months later, I told my landlord that I would like to convert to Islam." "My landlord was rather puzzled." "He couldn't understand why would a Russian artist convert to Islam." "I told him that I liked the faith and wanted to live according to Muslim customs." "Marinika:" "Upon his conversion he changed his name to Usto Mumin which in Uzbek means faithful master." "He penetrated into this culture very deeply." "He started oriental philosophy." "He was very keen on Sufism." "His art is synthesis of Italian Renaissance," "Russian icon painting and oriental miniature." "Savitsky:" "The artists strove to find the most contemporary methods and forms to depict the Uzbek people and their culture." "Stephen:" "So you began to have a kind of a cross fertilization of one of the great world class schools of art, the Russian Avant Garde with this other more interesting locally based school and the influences that created the Russian" "avant garde merged and melded with the influences that came out of central Asia." "Marinika:" "Mikhail Kurzin came also to Uzbekistan in the beginning of 1920s." "If we look at his first impressions of Uzbekistan they are full of sarcasm, irony, grotesque." "He was the master of these things." "So this was the new, this is the old." "The old symbolized the tradition of Islamic country when man was allowed to have up to four wives." "We can see two wives following their master, and they're wearing veils paranjas." "Sarcasm of Kurzin is in the fact that the two traditional wives are combined with the new Soviet kind of wife in the new clothes, in the new way of behaving." "Stephen:" "Part of the revolution that Soviet rule brought to central Asia was the liberation of women." "Stephen:" "Central Asia had been stuck in a far distant past and when the Soviets arrived it was like a dawning of a huge new era." "Life changed in every way for the people that lived there." "Stephen:" "The Soviets decided that they were going to turn central Asia into the region where all the cotton for the entire Soviet Union was going to be produced." "Cotton is a very water intensive project, and so the Soviets built a huge network of extremely inefficient irrigation channels so that huge amounts of water was just lost, and they sucked this water principally out of the rivers that fed into the Aral Sea." "This was one of the world's largest inland seas and had been since time in memorial." "It just dried up." "This Aral Sea disaster is truly one of the great environmental catastrophes of the 20th century." "Savitsky:" "As I was walking across the wasteland of our Soviet dream," "I pitied Volkov for his idealism." "Male voiceover:" "The artist Volkov, more than anybody else, has gone astray." "Volkov doesn't see anything but colors." "The audience saw staring at them from the walls, roughly sketched monsters, a deliberate distortion of reality." "Stephen:" "You had these paintings of hardworking peasants and factory workers all of whom would be very healthy and vibrant." "They were supposed to convey the satisfaction and the thrill that people felt being Soviet citizens." "John:" "If an artist wished to work outside the system of Soviet socialist realism then that artist would inevitably be removed from that system like a microbe from the healthy body." "Yevgeny:" "In my dream I saw a creature, his eyes like the barrels of a gun." "I called the painting "Fascism is Advancing."" "Marinika:" "It was a kind of a future vision of the threat that was coming." "The fact that Lysenko finished his life in mental hospital means a lot." "Many artists were forced to be sent to mental hospitals." "Marinika:" "Savitsky was criticized for this very painting when it was hung on the walls of the museum." "The inspection came and said you must take away this anti Soviet work." "It's degenerate painting so there is no place for it in the museum." "Savitsky:" "Anti Soviet?" "Of course." "Of course." "Degenerate?" "No way." "The next day after the commission left I put it on the wall again." "It was too great a work of art to hide." "Marinika:" "Here is another painting from our collection done by Komarovsky." "He was studying icon painting." "Unfortunately his life was ended during Stalin's repressions." "For the only reason that he believed in God." "Alexander Nikolaev was also repressed." "The reason was his nontraditional sexual orientation." "John:" "He was arrested and imprisoned for homosexuality, which was considered to be a crime in Stalin's Russia." "Marinika:" "Two years ago, a new information about this painting came to us." "We realized that this was only part of the painting, made by Mikhail Kurzin." "And the whole painting looks like this." "So it was a big discovery for us." "Very unexpected." "We don't know who cut the painting." "The photograph came from the KGB archives, and now we look at this painting with new eyes." "In Kurzin's caricature of western capitalism the millionaires cradle their symbols of power against a background of exploited workers." "At first glance it's hard to understand why the." "Soviet Secret Police objected to this criticism of capitalism, but as you take a closer look." "Kurzin's workers bear a striking resemblence to the ones in Stalin's labor camps." "They are the same slaves." "In Kurzin's vision of socialism the workers crowd a tunnel going nowhere." "You see the self portrait of Kurzin holding a coffin." "So, this is annihilation of hopes, of the dreams of an artist in that society." "Male voiceover:" "November 16th, 1936, interrogation of the defendant Mikhail Ivanovich Kurzin." "Question:" "Tell the investigator about your anti." "Soviet speech at the exhibition of the artist Malt." "Answer:" "I don't remember the matter of my anti Soviet speech because I was drunk." "Marinika:" "Mikhail Kurzin tried to follow the Soviet path, painting fake, joyous peasants, but he couldn't stand it." "He used to say that even in the capitalist world the artists are living better than here." "Voiceover:" "From the interrogation of the witness," "Alexander Nikolaevich Volkov, encouraged to testify against his fellow artist and friend Kurzin." ""In conversations with me Kurzin said that the." "USSR doesn't allow freedom of expression pointing out that there are greater opportunities for artists' creativity in capitalist countries."" "Male voiceover:" "Witness Alexander Nicolaevich." "Volkov, "I am convinced that Kurzin is an anti-Soviet artist and human being, hostile to the Soviet rule and the politics of the party."" "Voiceover:" "From the testimony of Mikhail." "Ivanovich Kurzin, "I plead guilty that I being drunk expressed my anti-Soviet opinion and said artists throw away your brushes and palettes," "arm yourselves, attack the Kremlin and kill Stalin."" "Marinika:" "We are speaking so much about the artists who were repressed in Stalin's time, all those terrible stories, how they were sent to gulags or somewhere driven mad, but when we come to our own personal life I realize that we also" "have very many tragic stories around us." "My father had a very difficult life." "His father was shot in 1938 as the enemy of people being the president of Karakalpakstan and he just wanted his people to blossom, to flourish." "Marinika:" "Nadezhda Borovaya was sent to concentration camp as the wife of an admiral who was repressed." "Even children were sent to concentration camps." "To women's colonies." "Once in 1983 Savitsky prepared a big portion of the works for the attention of the commission from the Ministry of Culture." "He was to persuade them to give money to the museum so that he could pay the owners." "One of the artists that was put on the agenda was." "Nadezhda Borovaya." "Savitsky was very tricky." "He said that these were Nazi concentration camps." "Showing all those people who had the drawings with the numbers on their foreheads" "and terrible scenes of lives of those prisoners." "So the commission was persuaded." "They decided to pay money to Nadezhda Borovaya and after the commission went away Savitsky came to me and whispered into my ear with a... with a smile on his face that these were Stalin's concentration camps and I was so shocked." "I couldn't understand at first what he was saying." "Then later I realized the extent of danger he exposed himself." "Savitsky:" "Borovaya's works were unique visual evidence of the repressions." "I had to make sure that one day people could see them." "Marinika:" "My father was invited to work for the." "Regional Communist Party Department and he advised Savitsky to be careful." "My father was saying, "Oh, one day you will get into the jail."" "But Savitsky's obsession was so strong he couldn't stop." "Savitsky:" "The Bolsheviks were destroying our culture." "Nothing was sacred." "Centuries old treasures were vanishing in front of our eyes." "Savitsky:" "When I discovered Alexei Rybnikov he was completely unknown as a painter." "John:" "Rybnikov was a very interesting man." "He was very close to the very major Avant-Gardists." "In fact, in doing exactly what Kandinsky and Chagall were doing at the same time." "Therefore, any museum that has any piece by." "Rybnikov is blessed." "Savitksy:" "Rybnikov led a secret life as an artist." "He was a follower of Natalia Goncharova." "She was the most famous female artist of the Russian Avant-Garde." "Luckily for her she left Russia." "Marinika:" "Savitsky heard about this artist." "Ural Tanskybaev who was recognized by the regime as the master of socialist realism." "He was awarded many state prizes." "Savitsky:" "At first I didn't want to go to Tanskybaev." "He was a fat cat, enjoying all the perks of a people's artist of the USSR." "In return he painted what he was told." "But then I discovered that Tanskybaev had been one of Volkov's favorite students." "Savitsky:" "So, I went to Tanskybaev's studio." "The works were boring, but I saw immediately the hand of someone who knew how to paint." "He was a bit suspicious of my motives until we found that we both admired Uzbek folk culture." "He showed me watercolors of village life that he'd done as a young man." "I asked him if these were all he had." "Marinika:" "Ural Tanskybaev took Savitsky into the attic, opened a big chest and Savitsky couldn't believe his eyes." "Savitsky:" "I had stumbled upon a world created by the mind of a genius." "These works that hadn't been exhibited for many years shocked me with their originality." "Marinika:" "We can see his real soul in his early paintings." "Savitsky:" "He told me how much he admired." "Van Gogh, Gauguin, and Seurat." "But his subjects came from the oriental culture around him." "Marinika:" "Tanskybaev said you can take everything what you like and you can pay when you can." "Savitsky:" "I quickly took every single work before." "Tanskybaev changed his mind." "Marinika:" "Nukus was so far away, far from political cultural centers maybe Tanskybaev thought that who will see these paintings there." "Marinika:" "Elena Korovay was very much interested by the life of Jews of Bukhara." "Not the fact that they were isolated and living in ghettos, but she saw the beauty of their occupation." "We can see wonderful indigo colors of her dyers or tailors of Bukhara," "carpenters." "We have the whole series of these works that were created by her during her stay in Uzbekistan." "Marinika:" "Korovay lived in poverty." "She had a lot of troubles and problems." "Savitsky took these paintings from Elena." "Korovay herself already in Moscow." "Elena:" "For me Karakalpaks are invented creatures with their city Nukus in a land far away." "And there's Savitsky with the eyes of a hooligan, persuading me that I am obliged to donate to his museum." "He looks at the paintings, attentively, meticulously." "Examines them again and again, at a distance and up close, but doesn't get tired." "As any fanatic he is boring, a little, pretending to be interested in what I have to say." "But I know the only thing on his mind is getting all my works for his museum." "Savitsky:" "I would leave Moscow with piles of aging canvases and boxes of drawings." "I was such a sight that no taxi would stop for me." "And the porters grumbled when I appeared at the train station." "Savitsky:" "I traveled across mother Russia for three days," "until the train tracks ran out." "Then I'd camp out and wait for a truck to transport me and my treasures across the desert to Nukus." "John:" "It seems very strange that he would have such enough money to have bought all the paintings that he bought, these are thousands of paintings." "Yes, he had state subsidies for his museum, but those state subsidies were meant to be used for financing expeditions into the desert, not to be buying silly Russian art." "Savitsky:" "One can find art anywhere." "All you have to do is look." "Marinika:" "So, Savitsky was grabbed by Dr. Efuni's staff and brought against his will to Moscow to." "Efuni's hospital, and when they checked his lungs they understood that this is the end." "Marinika:" "The whole ward was given to this unusual patient." "They even allowed him to leave the ward if he needed." "So we know that Savitsky managed to collect two containers of paintings and graphics while he was staying in Efuni's hospital." "Marinika:" "We use these trays because the climate is very dry in summer." "It can be plus 50 in the shadow." "And we need some kind of humidifiers for the paintings." "This does not help much we know, but there is no way out at present." "That's why we are using this primitive method of putting vessels with water everywhere." "When Savitsky came to me and said," ""I want you to be director," I couldn't say no to him." "The Nukus museum has been my life's work for 25 years." "I am the granddaughter of the first president of Karakalpakstan." "Karakalpakstan is a very poor country and the only treasure that it has now is this museum." "When Savitsky was gathering this art that we have it was not accepted by the communist regime." "Nowadays also we live in a very complicated community, which requires from us not only energy, not only strength but also some kind of flexibility, with radical Islam around us, nationalism." "Some people are more progressive minded." "Some people look back to the past and it's very difficult to survive, to preserve this collection for the future." "Stephen:" "Central Asia is really not a stable region, and Uzbekistan is in a very turbulent area." "Of course it borders on Afghanistan." "Some of the same trends that you see in." "Afghanistan have also emerged in Uzbekistan." "Marinika:" "Remembering the events in Afghanistan when those radicals destroyed Buddha statues in Bamiyan." "This means danger for our collection." "Stephen:" "The influence of Islamic fundamentalism could grow substantially." "How that would affect a collection of art that is abstract, modernistic and that is run by a woman could be a little bit disturbing." "Marinika:" "You can see piles of canvases that are hanging like this." "They are real masterpieces but they were never shown to anyone because they need to be restored." "They need to be framed." "When we look at these wonderful paintings we understand that people are missing so much." "They can't see all these treasures, and we have thousands of works like this in our storages." "Stephen:" "When I found this museum story I realized this could be a great piece for our Sunday Arts page." "The Arts and Leisure section of the New York Times has a unique place in American intellectual life." "When any story is given huge prominence on the front page of that section it's naturally noticed in the cultural world." "I realized that this was going to be an exciting story." "There were going to be a lot of people choking on their English muffins over breakfast on." "Sunday when they read this one." "Marinika:" "The collectors from the west started to come in their private planes, bringing bags of money, showing this to us." "Of course they had very good taste." "We understood this immediately." "They wanted the best pieces and all the foreigners used to say, "Why don't you sell one or two paintings?"" "It was a tradition for western museums to sell something from their collection in order to settle their problems." "Remembering the biographies of the artists, they were so unhappy during their life they found shelter in Nukus and even to think of selling them somewhere was very difficult for us." "Stephen:" "I visited another museum in another city full of artifacts from Uzbek history, fantastic fabrics and weavings, suddenly a guy came over to me and this was the museum director." "I pointed to a weaving and I said this is a spectacular piece of art." "And he looked at me and he said, "You want to buy it?"" "I said, "What?"" "He said, "You want to take it?" "How much would you pay for it?"" "So essentially what he was saying is," ""Come loot my museum."" "The idea that you'd be an impoverished director of an impoverished museum that had piles of stuff that it couldn't even exhibit, but you wouldn't sell a single piece must have been unique to Marinika." "Marinika:" "If we start selling something some people would be interested in selling the rest with official excuse of buying something for the country in such a difficult economic situation." "For example, buying tractors or some equipment for the industry of our country." "Marinika:" "After Mikhail Kurzin was released he was already a very ill person." "He had no right for a job." "He had no means for life." "When we look at these wonderful dumplings" "it's interesting that the paintings were done by the person who was suffering from malnutriiton." "He had suffered so much and food was the only zone for him where he could be free." "Savitsky:" "I like to think of our museum as a keeper of the artist's souls." "Their works are the physical expression of a collective vision that could not be destroyed."