Seeing the chief by Alexei Lukich Yushanov

Seeing the chief by Alexei Lukich Yushanov

“Seeing the boss” – the most mysterious picture, if only because it is the only thing left in the history of the artist Alexei Lukich Yushanov). He did not deserve even a chapter in the Great Soviet Encyclopedia; It is unclear when he actually died. The name remained among the second-kind artists, like the trail of a comet lining up behind Perov. The concentration of social anger on which the first and most famous Perovski paintings were mixed, his followers are dissolved in more ideological water – and lesser themes, and the types are not so ugly. And Yushanov, judging by one masterpiece accessible to us, was simply superior to all colleagues in the shop.

The composition “Leader’s wires” causes a variety of associations. There is a roll call and with “The arrival of the governess” Perov, and with “Matchmaking Major” Fedotov. The hallway, where the head is brought a glass on a silver tray, resembles a stage, all the actors – as it should be in the play – are divided into several groups.

But here the social flair is clearly the artist let down. He would depict the chief as fat and drunk, as Perov did with his priest in the “Crusade on Easter” – and the servile nature of his associates would become more than obvious. But the main culprit is a kind of dandelion. And all his vices are nothing more than the old man’s quirks. They can be attributed to the old age, not mores and social order.

Yushanov actively borrowed Fedotov’s artistic discoveries – character of characters is expressed through gestures and poses. Friso unfolded the scene, as in the theater of shadows, built on eloquent silhouettes. Each hero, as in the classical play, is the bearer of a single vice. But Fedotov, moreover, extremely funny played on the world of things – he has any detail of the interior parodying people. Yushanov to such subtleties did not reach – his apartment is written with a boring conscientiousness of a neat fixer.

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