Watch the interview (in Russian)
The interview appeared in issue 21 of the Catoblepas journal.
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Artist Evgeny Medvedev discusses his studies at the Imperial Academy of Arts, working from life, self-portraits, improvisation, and his own book on artistic perception.
Interview by Aleksandr Spiridonov Jr..
The text was prepared from the video recording. The conversation has been edited and abridged for clarity.
Aleksandr: Evgeny, tell us a little about yourself and your creative path.
Evgeny Medvedev: I drew from childhood, but not from life. It was only when I went to art school at the age of ten or eleven that I discovered it was possible to draw from life at all. That profoundly changed my visual thinking, my understanding of drawing, and my approach to work.
I then enrolled in the sculpture department at the Oryol Art College, but did not graduate because I was admitted to the Academy of Arts in Saint Petersburg.
The Academy as a space for self-education
Aleksandr: What did the Academy give you? It seems to me that over six years artists are more likely to develop what they already had. I do not see a single school there that applies to everyone.
Evgeny Medvedev: The Academy is a wonderful space. At least, I saw it as a place where you could develop independently and make things. You learn a great deal in the first few years. I certainly did: I came from sculpture and did not understand pictorial composition very well.
In the later years, it becomes clear that education does not work the way people generally imagine. You are not taught a set of rules to learn and follow. It is more of a working process: every day you do a great deal of work from life and exist within those conditions. Self-education therefore plays an enormous role.
Our studio was free and undogmatic. Some students, however, need a strict mentor—it depends on the person. The Academy has different studios, approaches, and teachers. After the second year, students can choose what suits them best.
The self-portrait as an opportunity to experiment
Aleksandr: Why do you have so many self-portraits?
Evgeny Medvedev: It is a model that is always available, an object for study. I made especially many self-portraits during the coronavirus pandemic, when I was stuck at home. What else was there to do?
Aleksandr: They are all different and unusual. Are they a kind of study, experiment, or test of visual theories?
Evgeny Medvedev: Yes. For me, a self-portrait is more an opportunity to make a drawing than an end in itself. It is an object with which I can experiment.
Oryol, Saint Petersburg, Italy
Aleksandr: Your journey has a distinct geography: Oryol, Saint Petersburg, Moldova, Italy. How does changing place affect your work? The scenery changes; quite literally, the world changes.
Evgeny Medvedev: I do not really perceive changes in my own work, although a change of place certainly has an effect. Saint Petersburg, for example, is a very dim city—specifically in terms of illumination. When you arrive somewhere sunnier, you begin to understand why nineteenth-century Russian artists such as Perov and Kramskoi are so restrained in their palettes, while Italian artists of the same period are far more colourful. The surrounding world genuinely looks different in different places.
When I painted landscapes in Italy, I realised that I did not need a tube of black paint there.
Aleksandr: On your first trip to Italy, when we met in Rome, you and Lena were constantly going out to paint studies. That is unlike the Academy, where you sit indoors.
Evgeny Medvedev: The Academy also includes plein-air practice, although the routine is different, of course. In general, I am not very attached to the studio. I now work in small formats—about 30 × 30 or 30 × 40 centimetres. You can carry them with you, which makes it possible to draw anywhere and at any time. A large format already requires a studio, if only for convenience.
The graduation work and large formats
Aleksandr: Do you plan to return to large formats—for example, the scale of your graduation work, City?
Evgeny Medvedev: I am not specifically planning to, but I do not rule it out. At the Academy, the entire final year is allocated to the graduation composition. The pre-graduation placement takes place in the summer: you gather material and make sketches. During the first semester of the sixth year, you prepare the full-scale drawing and a monochrome version; in the second, you paint the final work.
When you study at an institute, you operate within prescribed conditions and constraints. In independent practice, you choose a working routine that suits you. A large composition requires an idea, a subject, a thought you want to express, followed by a long period of gathering material.
Aleksandr: Do you invest your work with an idea beyond the artistic one? We often discuss questions of perception in particular.
Evgeny Medvedev: When I paint from life, there is usually no separate idea. I have not devised compositions at all lately: I am interested in a different direction now. Narrative and compositional art does, of course, make it possible to express ideas through visual language.
Life and improvisation
Aleksandr: You had a project involving graphic improvisations. Are you still developing it? What are you focusing on now?
Evgeny Medvedev: I can draw both from life and from imagination—in sculpture and in graphic art. I made some works at home on paper, and once painted a decorative mural in a restaurant without preliminary sketches. Improvisation is very different from working from life, but the two practices are connected.
When working from life, an artist still brings their own conception of the subject into the image. The ability to draw from life helps you draw from imagination, while improvisation, in turn, changes your work from life. The model continually enriches you with new material and a new understanding of form.
At present I am concentrating specifically on working from life, so my improvisational activity has subsided somewhat. The interest remains, however, and I return to it from time to time.
Aleksandr: Your ceramics could also be considered improvisation: portraits, noses, frames. The frames especially—with them, the result is a complete work.
Evgeny Medvedev: Yes, that too is a kind of improvisation. I like decorative elements to include modelling.
Handwritten typefaces and the book
About the book
The book discussed in this interview is being prepared for publication by Catoblepas Press under the title New Ideas in Visual Art.
Aleksandr: You created two handwritten typefaces for Mistakes of Youth. They give the text a distinctive emotional tone. More recently, you produced a book of your own, written entirely by hand—New Ideas in Visual Art. Tell us about it. When did these ideas first occur to you?
Evgeny Medvedev: Before the Academy. I wanted to understand what happens when you draw and why a work does not succeed. First you notice patterns in your own thought processes, then you try to adjust them. Gradually, you understand that the result depends not only on the materials, but primarily on the way you think.
No one at the Academy presented this aspect systematically. Every artist has their own worldview and way of working. Each invents or develops a concept that suits them. I wanted to set out clearly how I approach drawing, painting, and sculpting from life.
In essence, these fields are connected. They handle colour and space differently: in sculpture you work with real space, while in drawing and painting you work with imagined space. Many other aspects are largely shared, which is why so many artists have always practised all three art forms.
Aleksandr: Who is the book intended for? Will a beginner be able to understand it?
Evgeny Medvedev: I originally wrote it for myself, to systematise everything and then develop these ideas. The potential reader is more likely to be an Academy student or someone who already draws a great deal and is deeply immersed in the subject. The book may be especially relevant to an artist with a similar way of thinking.
Aleksandr: It is very different from ordinary guides to learning how to draw. It deals with deeper matters—with artistic perception. The artist’s tools here are not only the hand, but above all the mind and the eye. You consider how to shift between different focuses of perception.
Evgeny Medvedev: The book’s central idea is to offer a view of classical art, define its field of activity, and provide tools for working within it. These tools are ways of thinking during the act of drawing.
By classical art, I mean art made from life: sculpture, drawing, and painting. It encompasses academic and interpretive approaches and creates models of visual perception. A work of art is an example of how the world can be seen.
Taken in isolation, the academic approach seeks to bring the work as close as possible to the model and assumes that there is one correct way to draw. The interpretive approach, by contrast, permits many ways of understanding and depicting the model. What appears to be a mistake can be transformed by an artist into a deliberate distortion, deformation, or extension of form.
Classical art exists in the balance between these approaches. On the one hand, the work must be perceived as a piece of life, an illusion of reality. On the other, the artist needs freedom of execution in order to control how the world appears.
The search for new possibilities
Aleksandr: We will meet again for a separate public discussion of the book. For now, tell us about your immediate plans.
Evgeny Medvedev: The first task is to finish the book. It has been written, but it is not yet complete. My plan for drawing is the same: to keep working.
It seems to me that development in art is driven by interest. When you use the same set of techniques for a long time and remain at the same level, you become bored. That forces you to seek new tools, broaden your visual range, and change your understanding of art, its role, and its functions.
This is a search not for a single rule, but for different possibilities. It is difficult to determine which one is correct. There is no universal criterion. An artist therefore needs a broad perspective: they must know and understand the full scope of their activity.
Aleksandr: Thank you, Evgeny. Until next time.