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«The art for four hands». By Nadezhda Nachalova. "The Culture" newspaper, No. 43 dated November 2005.

A large scale canvas occupied the whole front wall of a reception hall and the public was scrutinizing it like an interesting crossword, recognizing the painted characters and finding out "who is who".
A large scale canvas occupied the whole front wall of a reception hall and the public was scrutinizing it like an interesting crossword, recognizing the painted characters and finding out "who is who". The creators of this "state" canvas are Sergey Kalinin and Farid Bogdalov, painters, which are famous in art-circles of the capital. We are not going to recite history of this 9-meter project. We will just remind, that this canvas is some kind of a remake to famous picture by I.E.Repin "Ceremonial Sitting of the State Council". It was created by Repin to the government order in commemoration of 100-th anniversary of the State Council establishment. During the third-year period of the work – since 1901 to 1903 – the artist had created 3 portraits of high officials. And later on, already using them, he created a grand group portrait. A talented psychologist Repin did not just imprint the image of state elite of those times, but created a range of most interesting portrait characteristics. The compositional solution and compelling characters made Repin's work a real masterpiece. Modern arts critics define the genre of Kalinin and Bogdalov’s work in a rather involuted manner: it is "not simply and not rather a painting, but an object of art, created as a result of permanent interactive action, which has involved the broadest number of participants". But the reality, as usual, is simpler and clearer. All depictions of assessors possess a remarkable portrait similarity. Its clear language of arts used for this artwork, understandable by the people, is somewhat to be called bureaucratic realism, as the former state style – social realism – has been exhausted long time before. As it is widely known, "the object of art” was a private initiative of its creators. And now it is quite natural, that they want to realize their "product". In the nearest future, the canvas itself, the preparatory artistic and graphical portraits, documents and photos will be exposed to open bids. SOVCOM gallery is in charge for its organization. This new "Session of the Federal Assembly" was preliminary estimated at 1 000 000 US$, the portrait of V.V.Putin – at 40 – 50 000 $US, and the graphical portrait of Chernomyrdin just at 1800-2000 $US.