Porcelain | Author’s Projects

From the Series On the Edge

Grisha Bruskin (b. 1945); Lev Rubinstein, text (b. 1947); D. Verchinskii, painter (dates?).

3,75 х 35,6 сm
Kuznetsov Porcelain Factory (Kuznetsovskii farfor)

Inscriptions: Front, edge of band in continuous text in black: ‘Мне приснилось, что в ночи сердце вынуто из ножен. Что мы знаем? Что мы можем? Тот кто знает, пусть молчит... Мне приснилась неба пустота. В ней с тобой мы потерялись оба. Ты сказала: „Ласточка вон та будет помнить нас теперь до гроба”... Мне снилось, будто бы они – мои оставшиеся дни – бегут, маячат впереди, меня оставив позади. Шести прозрачных трепет крыл мне многое во мне открыл, и я проснулся...’ [I dreamed that in the middle of the night my heart is drawn from its scabbard. What do we know? What can we do? He who knows, let him be silent. I dreamed of the sky’s emptiness in which and I both got lost. You said, “that swallow over there will remember us now unto death.” I dreamed that they – my remaining days – run looming up ahead leaving me behind. The flutter of six transparent wings revealed to me much that was in me. And I woke up…].

Marks: Reverse: Mark ‘60’; ‘Исп. мастер / Верчинский Д. / по рисунку / Г.Б.’ [Painted by the artist D. Verchinskii after a design by G.B.] in black overglaze; ‘образец’ [model] in black overglaze; ‘Гриша Брускин’ [Grisha Bruskin] (artist’s signature) in Cyrillic cursive with date ‘1998’
cat. no. 362

Grisha Bruskin was born in Moscow in 1945. He attended art school in Moscow and graduated from the Department of Decorative and Applied Arts at the Moscow Textile Institute in 1968. He was quickly accepted into the Soviet Union of Artists but was soon criticized for creating art that was unacceptable by official Soviet standards.

In the early 1980s Bruskin developed an individual style of painting in which characters were depicted in rows and were organized in a manner consistent with the hierarchies of society (Lexicon) or of a text (Alephbet). He drew on the notion of the unlimited multiplication of an image for his work in other artistic genres such as performance art, installations, and object art. His art intersects Conceptualism, Sots Art, and post-Pop Art, incorporating within its scope various social and textual mythologies.

Bruskin entered the international cultural scene in the late 1980s, and at the Sotheby’s art auction in 1988 he commanded prices unprecedented for post-Stalinist art. His work can be seen in many prominent Russian, American, and European art museums: in the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Ludwig Museum in Cologne, the Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and many others. He resides in New York City.