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PHENOMENOLOGY IN COLORS: AN INTERVIEW WITH A. S. ZASLAVSKY(October 2024, St. Petersburg)

Abstract
In the interview with artist A. S. Zaslavsky, conducted by N. A. Artemenko, a deeply personal story of the formation of his artistic path and worldview unfolds. The first impulse toward painting came from life itself — childhood in Kiev, the postwar atmosphere of antisemitism, and the persistence of his father, a painter. Yet the true sense of painting arose later, in art school and at the institute, where Zaslavsky first experienced the revelation of paint as a pictorial substance capable of transforming the world. A special place in the conversation is given to Byzantine frescoes of St Sophia Cathedral and to Vrubel’s Kiev works, against which the artist reflects on the difference between “genuine” and “illusory” depth in painting. The central concept of his aesthetics becomes the plane — two-dimensionality as the metaphysical ground of the pictorial event. Zaslavsky contrasts the spiritual depth of color, characteristic of icon painting and the Middle Ages, with the illusory depth of perspective and chiaroscuro, discovered in the Renaissance. The dialogue touches on figures such as Giotto, Raphael, Cézanne, Matisse, Caravaggio, as well as themes of the phenomenology of art (O. Becker, M. Merleau-Ponty). The artist speaks of the fragility of pictorial language, of memory and recognition as sources of truth, and of the prayerful dimension of creativity. His formula is simple: “Our world is colorful.” For Zaslavsky, painting becomes a way of dwelling “on the edge” — between life and death, between definitions, in the space of authentic experience.

Keywords
painting, icon art, plane, depth, phenomenology of art, A. S. Zaslavsky.

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