Illustration for The Golden Cockerel 1999

Editor: This is Vyacheslav Nazaruk's "Illustration for The Golden Cockerel" from 1999, made using tempera. It strikes me as a sort of fairy-tale landscape, a bit like naive art, but also with a medieval feel. How do you interpret this work, with all its visual symbolism? Curator: Indeed, it’s fascinating how the piece utilizes a stylized landscape and frame, calling to mind illuminated manuscripts and Russian folklore traditions. Do you see how the mountains are not simply mountains? Editor: You mean the way they’re almost personified, looming over the scene? Curator: Precisely! They stand as silent witnesses or even participants in the unfolding narrative. Consider the figures on horseback; they are almost icons themselves, repeated and simplified. What emotions or associations do their repeated presence evoke? Editor: There’s a sense of ritual, or maybe inevitability. Like they are characters caught in a recurring story. I also see some geometric elements used in the buildings and the rocks, are they just for aesthetics or there’s more into it? Curator: Nazaruk blends geometric elements into the organic forms, suggesting a world where nature and artifice are intertwined and where nothing is truly accidental. Every angle, every placement has significance. The rigid geometry amidst the chaotic natural forms reinforces the tensions between the man-made order and the wild landscape, speaking perhaps to themes of control and freedom. Editor: That makes me think about how stories and symbols get reinterpreted over time. Thanks, I'll definitely look at Nazaruk’s work differently now. Curator: The true power of an image resides in its enduring ability to reflect and reshape cultural memory. This image speaks volumes.