Aistė Marija Grajauskaitė 

Vilnius, 2010

 

Today’s lively, young painting is, for me personally, more than a canvas or an idea. I believe it is an entire story—one that encompasses more than the viewer sees or could possibly see. It is intimacy. Something that always brings forth a feeling—like a familiar smell that transports you to a moment in the past in which the person associated with that smell once existed, yet in our memory there remains only an emotion, not an image. I was overcome by a similar sensation last autumn, while walking through that mecca of modern art in Vilnius, the Contemporary Art Centre (CMC): I could see, but not everything. And I must admit, I don’t know if painting would move me so if not for that unsaid moment, that untold story.

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I—mindfulness—the canvas. A game for three players.

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Where I lead next is my game. On my canvas. The three of us. I—Vilnius—You.

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I am a young painter. I usually blend the kaleidoscopic memory of facial features with the curves and sculptures atop the churches of Vilnius, with the light of the Cathedral Tower, with shadows, adding to them the imagined sound of the bell of St. Augustine’s Church echoing down the walls of the Old Town’s narrow streets and— voilà—your portrait emerges.

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For some inexplicable reason, I have never seen a more painterly city than the prosaic Vilnius I measure with each footstep. I’m not saying I’ve traveled the entire world or have seen every single city, but Vilnius has something especially magical within it (admit it, you’re nodding in agreement). I won’t even begin to talk about how moving are its small streets and each of their curves, or the concert of sounds that emerges at night in the Old Town: old doors, pointy high-heeled shoes, old musicians playing in Kalvarijų Market… What I want to tell you about this time is something that, in all likelihood, is seen by me alone—because I can’t know how much You can see without the use of my eyes.

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I have several of the portraits like the one I mentioned at the start. Surely one for each of my beloved. And no one can punish me or write some awful text, teeming with criticism (to which I, a painter, won’t know how to respond, since my instrument is a thought brush, and not a thought quill) because I create these portrait images as I see them today. Or because, even if the sun is shining, I will still choose to see my subject against the grayish-white sheets of a Vilnius sky.

 

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„Žinot, o Jus reikia tapyti, kaip peizažą.“ 

“You know… You need to be painted like a landscape.”

 k.s.

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For as long as I’ve lived in this city—a city beloved by more than one nation, ravaged by more than one blaze—I’ve associated most of its churches with an event or a person. Some of them remind me of how I fell in love with art history, others how I fell in love with people, still others with betrothal, and the rest—with separation (from memories, people, things). There are even some that only the guiding hand of Dionysus can bring me to. It is then that you understand that a feeling, like a brushstroke, lies somewhere between magic and masterpiece.

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Ultimately, if we start down the twisting road of thoughts, one could make the supposition that, if anything has ever happened in the Vilnius Old Town, than that event can be associated, post factum, with one or another architectural creation, because the city abounds with them. If they are not directly in front of you, then they are behind you, or just off to the right. And if you dislike churches, then be a good urbanite and remember the Orthodox shrines or, if you are drawn to what is long gone—the synagogues.

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There are also those picturesque places in Vilnius that reveal fantastic views. There is just one problem though: self-respecting Vilnius dwellers forget that they are, in fact, self-respecting Vilnius dwellers, and thus rarely pay a visit to these places. Very rarely. Hey, clever Vilnius resident, would you like me to name them for you? Not ashamed to encourage me? As if you don’t already know what you’ll hear…

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The Basilian Gates, painted in saffron yellow

(Povilas Ramanauskas, Dedikacija tapybai – A Dedication to Painting)

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Gediminas’ Grave Hill, engulfed in Celadon greenery

(Tadas Jočys, Tonas – Tone)

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The City Wall Bastion, resounding in black pearl playfulness

(Alvīne Bautra, Bar kodas – Bar Code)

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St. Casimir’s Chapel, captivating in elephant gray

(Sanda Skujiņa, Fuetė – Fuet)

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St. Anne’s Chapel and St. Francis of Assisi Church, shimmering in the glow, twice each day

(Dalia Juodakytė, Paslaptys – Secrets, a series in six parts)

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The Vilnius Old Town in Persian pink from St. Saviour’s Hill

(Kristina Česonytė, Be pavadinimo – Untitled)

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The silent paleness of St. Augustine’s Church, like a grass widow

(Krista Dzudzilo, NEUTER III neuter 1)

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Sts. Peter and Paul’s Church, almost white-hot

(Marta Ivanova, Be pavadinimo 4 – Untitled 4)

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St. Catherine’s Church, hidden within mother-of-pearl and the steps of passersby

(Veiko Klemmer, Rayman)

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The Bell Tower of St. John’s Church, powdered in incarnate color, looking out on Vilnius below

(Alise Medina, Ji – She)

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Was that enough to draw out of the grayness of a long-spun and forgotten memory the recollections of a first kiss? A first book? The first dawn?...

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I painted the last portrait of my Beloved in front of the blood-red velvet pediment of the Church of St. Philip and St. James. Apparently, I toyed with this portrait the most. To put it more precisely: I’m still toying with it. It was this painting, into this monologue between Vilnius and one thoroughly non-Vilnius face, that I was able to incorporate the greatest number of this city’s places, sounds, colors, and smells—the greatest amount of Vilnius’ texture and form.

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For six whole days, without nourishing my spirit beast with any French eclairs or similar such splendor, I was engaged in the painting process with my entire being, or perhaps, damnit, I myself became the painting process. Somehow finding myself immersed in the night’s cashmere gentleness, I laughed to myself as I came to understand that Vilnius is a wonderful city to fall in love. Not with someone else—but with oneself in the image of another. With oneself alongside another.

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I’ve often woven that image into the city’s panorama—a panorama that, unlike the one you just pictured in your mind, is not seen from some high point in the city. Usually, it’s a panorama from a lower point of view (from the “frog’s perspective”, as art terminology would say), more or less as far off the ground as I am tall, since that’s as far as my own panorama can reach. About one meter and sixty nine centimeters.

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Sunday is a sacred day in Vilnius. All of us, at least in part, immerse ourselves into Stendhal’s state of crystallization. Somewhere very close to insanity, we try to slow the flow of time instead of simply laughing in the face of it. We sink into an excessive care for others, forgetting that, in the end, everything will reverberate in heartbeats on the flowing surface of the Vilnelė River.

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We leave the museum satisfied until, suddenly, in the light of the sun, we remember the tickets (but not the film) from a movie we liked, the cover (but no quote) from our favorite book, our grandmother’s hands (but not her face), an old yellowed photograph from our childhood (but not the smell of the sweater we wear in the photo)—all of these are not works of art on display, but just their brushstrokes, hues, texture and materiality. From all of this we craft together our own personal museum to which we sell no tickets, and which we gift to but a few people in our lives. This is the true and cult-like exhibition of young, immortal painting, whose opening is grand in the moment, but forgotten in the flow of hours and springtimes. And remembered again as we seek to reconstruct the exhibition in the autumn.

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And sometimes, in moments like these, as I read through texts, I think to myself: I don’t care, let the great philosophers, art critics and art historians fight it out amongst themselves, defining definitions for their concepts, juggling them for hours on end in an attempt at conversation, trying to discover some innovative constant. If you would ask me today what painting is for me, I would tell you that, first and foremost, it is not form, color, or line. It is something intangible, between rock, blues, and classical music. Between a smile and smells. Between black, dark blue, and red. Something between chocolate, wine, whiskey, and Campari. It is bitterness, the sky, curly hair, a flannel shirt on skin chilled by the cold of night. This is what I see when I look at young painting (which is not only still alive, it is looking back at those of us who think this way with a mocking gaze from the cafe across the street, drinking a black espresso and paging through Vogue in search of a new dress for a grandiose homecoming). 

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I see a memory and future nostalgia, seemingly created and designed by that someone who painted just for You. I see it even with my eyes closed, just standing in front of a work.

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And the glory of it all — your image in me

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because we are mortal Vilnius brushstrokes on an enchantingly forgotten canvas