'Years later, some will say none of this happened; the shops were pen, we went to see puppets in the park.
And yet on some nights townspeople dim the lights and teach their children to sign. Our country is the stage: when patrols march, we sit on our hands. Don't be afraid, a child signs to a tree, a door.
When patrols march, the avenues empty. Air empties but for the screech of strings and the tap tap of wooden fists against the walls." - "And Yet, on Some Nights" by Ilya Kaminsky, from Deaf Republic, Minneapolis, Graywolf Press: 2019
Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964) was born in Kyiv when it was part of the Russian Empire. After stuying at art schools there he moved to Moscow where he was able to exhibit some works in group shows. In 1908 he moved to Paris where he lived in La Ruche, a Russian art colony. While in Paris his sculptures earned him th nickname "the father of Cubist sculpture.
Archipenko emigrated to the United States in 1923, becoming a citizen six years later. He broke with the neoclassicism of Rodin and Maillol; he reimagined the human figure in three dimensional space through contorted planes set in negative space.
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa in 1977 when Ukraine was one of the union of Soviet Socialist Republics. Kaminsky is hard of hearing as a result of a case of mumps he suffered as a small child. The Kaminsky family was granted political asylum in the United States in 1993 because of Ukrainian anti-semitism. Ilya Kaminsky settled in Rochester, New Yotk. He has published two collections of poetry Dancing in Odessa (2004) and Deaf Republic.(2019). Three Per Cent, published monthly by the University of Rochester Press has been inspired by Kaminsky's championing of literary translation.
Image: Alexander Archipenko - Carousel Pierrot 1913, paint on plaster, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, NYC.
4 comments:
Ilya Kaminsky was born in Odessa in 1977 where half my family came from, a very beautiful and cultivated part of the world. Ilya was born too late to remember the pogroms and WW2 executions in Ukraine, but he was still very lucky that his family was granted political asylum abroad in 1993 because of Ukrainian anti-Semitism.
Now would be the time for me to read his poetry collection, Dancing in Odessa (2004). Thank you.
Hels, "Dancing in Odessa" can be difficult to come by - in the States, anyway. I look forward to reading it, too.
I love the figures of Archipenko, I didn't know his Ukrainian origin. Thank you, Jane.
Tania, Russia/Soviet Union used to take credit for Archipenko. None of us will allow them to do that ever again.
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