A Breakthrough to the Hidden God

Form and Inner State

How does the artist manage to impress upon others the mood he has captured on canvas?


It is not enough to say that Yuri Mironov is simply endowed by nature with this rare shamanic gift. Of course, the ability to perceive the essence (the "thing in itself") is a necessary condition of creation. But the sufficient condition, and herein lies the whole matter, is such mastery of form that the mood depicted outwardly plunges one into an inexpressible inner state. To master form is to break through to content, to attain, through the stages of the manifest, the abyss of the hidden. What matters here is both a sense of composition and the rhyming of lines, and the arrangement of colour. Only through this self-focusing of form does this or that universal state of being, and the state of personal existence (what philosophers call "existence"), depicted in the painting, become the essence of the world and of man, a manifestation of the Divine itself.

Contemplation and Freedom

Yuri Mironov does not even attempt to substitute this universal "Divinity for all" with a satanic deification of the idol of his own wilfulness. He cannot be called an avant-gardist. Strange as it may seem, he is rather traditional. He proceeds from the contemplation and experience of "God's world", of nature, of landscape. The Romantic and phantasmagorical William Turner is clearly his precursor. Not a violent mesmerism, but Lermontov's "the night is still, the desert harkens to God, and star speaks to star" — this is the essential and moral orientation of his art. This is why his painting enters the soul tenderly, attunes it, and leads it lovingly towards its own deeper states. In contemplating and immersing oneself in Yuri Mironov's works, what occurs is not submission to another's creative will, but an ascent to oneself, an elevation of one's own personality.

A Dialogue of Colour and Form

Indeed, on looking at the painter's new canvases, the heart stands still, a chill runs down to one's feet. One senses that one is touching upon the sacred, the divine, the demiurgic. Every composition stands, naturally, at the border, and even beyond the border, of the real and the unreal, of dream and waking. In each, at first glance, there is an infinite contrasting, whether in colour or in form. A conversation unfolds between one colour "star" and another, between one image and another. But this is not a polite, empty exchange, but a most intense dispute, an impulse towards Truth. Thus in the painting "State — I?" an expressive red line in the foreground seems to open a "dialogue" of images, and from this "dialogue" a polyphony grows, not a harmonious, classical one, but syncopated and rhythmic, jazz-like. The principal contrast is varied and developed in the others, returning to its deepened source. Hence contrast is not an end in itself, but a means, working not towards rupture and estrangement, but towards synthesis, towards union. The unity and struggle of opposites convey the essence of literally every state captured on the creator's canvases.

Without Lermontov's motif of solitude, the motif of silence, it is impossible to imagine the outstanding works of Yuri Mironov. Above the abyss of silence, above the mute, languishing Being, there unfolds the drama of becoming, the comedy of vanity and the tragedy of death. All together, the whirlwind of expression, the rhythmic arrangement of existence, a jazz-like syncopated time, form a harmony by some artistic miracle. But even when the creator brings forth upon his canvases the slumbering storms of lines, of coloured "stars", of images — oh, better not to wake them, for, as in Tyutchev, "beneath it Chaos ever stirs"!

Intuition and State

In the artist's most recent works there is almost no concreteness. And thus a striking effect of "co-divinity" and "co-creation" is achieved, incomparable with the impact of Yuri Mironov's earlier, more "semi-realistic" landscapes. The painter himself is astonished by this. He explains it thus: "For me the primary thing is to arrive at a state, to strain towards it and to perceive it. The composition is not planned in advance. I wander and wander, I languish — and suddenly lightning flashes, I see! I see into the darkness of the unknown! I begin to work. I trust feeling, not reason. Intuition, not calculation. The colour settles of its own accord. As though it is not you, but someone else working through you. A wonderfully happy sensation! It comes of itself. No questions, no problems. Lightness. Freedom!"

Of course, even now some works he simply paints, "makes". In each of his works there are elements of inanimate (mineral), living and artificial nature (the noosphere). The unfolding scientific and technological revolution he, unlike the avant-gardists, perceives not as a triumph of soullessness and alienation, but as a continuation of man's existential mission. Thus even the monstrous manifestations of progress and the most whimsical images, inspired by contemporary science fiction and social dystopia, are tinged in his work with humanity. And in every painting there is an obligatory organic unity of painting, music and poetry. Such is the "trademark" of Yuri Mironov's work. But humanity is not the limit…