Scream, or modification of Eva by Chaim Soutine

About this artwork

"Scream XXI, or Modification of Eva Haim Soutine". Oil on canvas 40 × 50, 2020. This work was written to order ... Maybe it will seem to many to be ugly, unsuccessful, even ugly ... But, unfortunately, all searches for a "suitable" and fine-looking form of expression did not lead to anything ... "there is simply no place in this work ... Soutine himself was an artist far enough from politics and did not touch on social events and problems in his work. And it seems to me all the more surprising how the work of his brush called "Eve" (one of the most brilliant in his work), written in 1928, almost 100 years later, will not only become the focus of the protest movement in Belarus (the homeland of Soutine himself), but become one of his brightest symbols .... "How the deck is shuffled quaintly ...." Soutine, probably, would be very surprised at such a turn of fate of his own creation .. But art lives in the minds of people, and each new generation fills it with a new one, with its own meaning, thus ensuring life for itself and its creator for centuries ... Therefore, when ordering "to write Eve" it became immediately obvious that an attempt to copy an ingenious work of art was doomed to failure ... But the decision was quite real and, probably, appropriate to show how the image of Eve has changed and is understood in the context of frightening modernity ... Therefore, one of the components of the title of the published work - modification ... Scream XXI sends us straight to the painting of the same name by Edvard Munch, also written during the two world wars, when humanity plunged into the abyss of suffering, cruelty and chaos, when the laws of morality, humanity, law and justice collapsed ... and the law as a regulator of society was trampled into a disgusting mess of exorbitant political ambitions, fascism, poverty, moral deformity and other flaws in the human psyche ... Edvard Munch's "Scream" is the cry of humanity... In the work "Scream XXI ....." this is the figure to the left of Eve, who has the lower part of her face hidden ... Masks, which have already become a part of our daily life, seem to have made us dumb and impersonal ... But the eyes speak about a lot, eyes scream ... And in the center of the picture, of course, Eve as a symbol of enduring, unshakable values ​​that, no matter what, continue to live and inspire humanity to overcome the instinct for self-destruction - truth, freedom, creativity, humanism ...