He grew up in a poor family and since college years he was looking for “side-jobs” to earn extra money. In the childhood, he tried to smoke leaves rolled in newspaper and was going to school in straw shoes made by his father. He names Ukraine a graveyard for talents, however, he has returned here after living abroad. About the childhood and life of modern art genius, about women, art, emigration and his return to Ukraine – the way Ivan Marchuk himself sees it in the section “Who is…” from DUMKA.
About childhood, learning, and life
My father was a jack-of-all-trades and the best weaver in our area. He could literally weave Greek amphoras from a vine, the ones in which we could hide. What a pair of shoes he was made for me: a layer of straw, sole – made of a wooden plank, and on that plank – there were three cords; and when I went to school, I wasn’t walking I was gliding.
I really loved geography in the sixth grade, back then it was physical – that is, rivers, seas, states, islands, peninsulas, capitals. All of these I knew and loved above everything else. Just for a short period of time at school, I loved history – and then completely stopped loving it when I grew up, cause around there are only lies.
I was smoking when I grazed cows. We were screwing around. In newspaper we were rolling not a tobacco, but dry leaves and then happily smoked it and burnt our tongues. Fortunately, this stupid habit wasn’t formed…
Ever since I can remember, I was painting. Sometimes there was nothing to paint with – neither pencil nor pen. So I scribbled on a paper with everything I could get – I squeezed a stem and drew with its juice, it was one color, the flower juice gave another shade. I was secretly stealing paper from my dad’s box until they gifted me a sketchbook.
It all started with the fact that I, a boy from the village, entered the Trush college in Lviv. This was the best and the most memorable day of my life! In the seventh grade, I’ve already dreamt of being an artist. By that time they had already called me an artist in the village, I drew a portrait of Shevchenko for a regional exhibition…
So I got to college. It was such a revolution for me! For the first holidays instead of rebellious kid to the village comes holy boy. People noticed it right away. Women said, “Look, what happened to him?” I used to mess around, I was always throwing something or calling people’s names. The art has changed me completely.
Since my college years, I used to work, I was looking for some part-time jobs to help my parents. Ever since I can remember, I was earning and sharing. After all, my family is huge. And everybody is poor. No matter how much you give – it won’t be enough.
I’m a bit stingy with my time. I’m afraid to waste it on empty things – watching TV shows, mindless chatter. With all this, you can lose all those moments one calls happiness. So I’m rushing… Maybe for happiness.
The main thing for me is to do what I want.
About women
I am a hermit because I can’t belong to a woman. I belong to art. This is my love. I should be free. I have inner freedom, which has never left me – neither in my childhood nor in my youth, not now.
That’s why I’m a hermit – I love woman too much. (laughs) Well, one lady will get me in her household… And all the others will be offended. And what could be more dangerous than an offended woman? No, let’s leave it as it is.
I still dream of finding a woman. But you’re not looking for a woman, she just appears. If God doesn’t give me one, then he must have decided that I should be “handcuffed to the easel”.
I am so overwhelmed with freedom… A beautiful or interesting woman and… a cat can help you to get an emotional release. I can’t have a cat, because I’m a “tramp” … I won’t take it with me wherever I go. I hate dogs – they are annoying. I love proud ones. So I need a woman.
About art and own creativity
An art is a sweet labor camp. It is suffering and joy at the same time. It captures you and doesn’t let you go. And you become a slave to what you’re doing. You work hard, to the point of exhaustion.
Contemporary art is if you take a broom soaked in a paint, and then you dance with it and do something. They will applaud you and it’s really interesting.
You know, when you stand in front of an easel, it’s one person. When I’m with someone – I am a completely different person, then I’m happy, I’m joking, I’m doing foolish things, I communicate with people. These are two different worlds.
Sometimes I think that I haven’t lived yet, I had no rest. There is only work and work. But I can’t do it the other way, because for me art is life and revelation, it is joy, and my sorrow. There are no alternatives to this.
I do everything hard and for a long time. Day by day I draw landscapes bent over the table – it’s difficult. I will pass my technique to nobody because I have to be in one copy. I have to do the things that you haven’t seen before.
Such tricks as “to strip a girl”, to paint her, to laugh together and to wash her together – it’s not for me. I can’t waste my time on these foolish things and I don’t try to amaze the public with cheap stuff.
I’m not a pessimist – I’m a realist. Many people say that my paintings are very pessimistic. And I say: “They are not pessimistic, they are wise”.
I am an individualist, therefore I don’t apply to any competitions and salons. I don’t want to mix with anyone.
I am an improviser. I act as I want at this very moment. The only thing that I am obligated to – is not to play dirty.
I’ve always understood that it was a big responsibility to put a signature under a work. Therefore, I worked and I am working to the point of exhaustion. Yes, I could have lived better than I live. But my life is encoded. I don’t control it, I live as I live. I work, I’m torturing myself, and I continue to work. Me myself, I don’t know what it really is. It exists, and that’s it.
Photo: The Ukrainians
I am always jealous of poets. He takes a piece of paper, seats in the tram – and he is already working. As for painters, it is an entire industry.
I’ve already said once: give me a thousand years – and I will paint Heavens! Just give me this opportunity. What a picture it would be!
About the life of his works
In Soviet times, I gave away a lot of paintings for free, because then there were no business cards. They told me: this man will help you with something. And nobody helped, because I was forbidden. However, I take a picture and carry it to that person. I placated those people to the extent that all those pictures were sold at the auctions.
When my paintings are circulating among the people, it’s already outside the jurisdiction of an artist. The devil may get them. This is the way an art is going around the world. I have three thousand pictures all over five continents. Do I know where and who got them? This is already a product. It’s as if you bought some kind of a plaything in the store.
I’m copied, my works are forged. Sometimes they call me to see if this is my picture. Because Marchuk is already circulating among the people.
About emigration, living abroad and coming back
I was living in Sydney, then in Toronto and New York. But my soul was drawn to Ukraine. When they asked me why I had returned here, I said: “I returned to my country, to my fellow countrymen. Because the land and the state are two different things. I will never love the state.”
My nature is my nature, there is nothing like it in the world, I can paint only my native nature.
I was living for 12 years in New York. I’ve seen all sorts of artistic garbage – a whole bunch of it! They always told me: “Why do you go to Ukraine every year again and again?” To see some normal art!
America had influenced me very positively it taught me to appreciate the time. Although I appreciated it here, there, it was in a very special way.
Subconsciously I knew that I don’t want to live my life in America. Especially I didn’t want to die in a foreign country.
I returned not to Ukraine, I returned to my native land. And I’m proud of it. And people suffer because they are silly. The God gave men paradise, as well as he took away the awareness that they can stand up for themselves from their heads.
About Ukraine
Ukraine is a graveyard for talents. Talents are dying here.
We have no respect, nor love, nothing at all. Now it’s sad, shameful and scary to live here. At the same time, we have good people whoever you talk to – “a good person”, then why in our country everything is so bad? There is nothing like this in the world.
I know what kindness, love, generosity are. And people often do evil, because it is easier to do it and it doesn’t cost too much. Doing good things costs a lot. Ukraine will never be a country. Because there is a jealousy in the soul.
In our country, according to my calculations, there are 50% of those who hate Ukraine as a state. Another 30% are “khokhols”, that’s how they’re called, that is, those who don’t care on what land they live, they need only something to eat and a place where to sleep. And only 20% are the people who are really ready to stand up for Ukraine and love it.
Ukraine is still semi-Soviet. Back in the 90s, as soon as Ukraine gained its independence, it was said that it would be a sanctuary of communism – so it happened that way.
When they started to talk about Europe, I said somewhere that I would be the first one to oppose Ukraine entering Europe. They shouldn’t accept such rottenness, promiscuity, rudeness, and scrapyard, because the whole of Europe will stink.
This war will last as long as we live. Or until Ukraine disappears as a state. I don’t see the light. I always said that I’m not a pessimist, I’m a realist. God grant that I’m wrong.
I knew and I know where Ukraine is going, what will happen to it. I know it, but I won’t tell it. I’ve made the diagnosis. I see, monitor, and feel it intuitively.
About Russia
It’s our own fault in a lot of things, but it was Russia that had started all this. Russia has begun the war. Putin has a plan “Barbarossa”: to eliminate Ukraine as a state. I don’t see the force in the world that can set the barrier between us, and stop him.
Russia remained the same neglected household. Russia is only Moscow, maybe also St. Petersburg.
How can you talk about fraternal people when you have been conquered, you are under control, people are assimilated, they say that “we are relatives” to keep their empire from crumbling.
By Dmytro Zhuravel
The publication was collected from numerous interviews, speeches, and appeals of the material’s protagonist.
