Andriyivsky Uzviz, which winds from near St. Michael's Square to Podil, is home to art that awaits discovery by buyers able to separate the stimulating wheat from the forgettable chaff. "There is no such thing as good art or bad art," a pragmatic artist once said, implying that anything that might entice someone to part with a few dollars was good art, at least in the consensual view of an object's creator and its buyer.
Accepting the artist's premise that the value of art, like beauty, resides solely in the eye of the beholder makes it a lot easier to stroll down Kyiv's art avenue, Andriyivsky Uzviz, without flinching. The city's picturesque open-air art market offers a little - a lot, actually - of something for every taste.
Many of the paintings and prints are seascapes and still life studies that would be at home in any inexpensive hotel room from San Francisco to Sydney. Little about them says anything about Ukraine or about creativity, for that matter. There are whimsical canvases devoted to knock-offs of B. Kliban cat cartoons and improbably long, narrow paintings of dachshunds. No imitations of Margaret Keane's soulful, saucer-eyed children or C.M. Coolidge's Dogs Playing Poker yet, though as Ukraine adopts more of the West's dubious taste, it shouldn't be long before these genres take root.
The question easily morphs from "Is it good?" to "Who buys this stuff?"
A lot of people do, obviously. Ii is axiomatic that if something tasteless appears once or twice, it can be chalked up as an anomaly, but if it appears repeatedly, there must be a market for it.
In the free market, it's understandable that an artist won't repeatedly create what an artist can't repeatedly sell.
Much of the Ukraine-themed art lacks originality: Many of the artists have swapped fruit for sunflowers as the focus of still life paintings. There are countless copies of national icon Taras Shevchenko's 1860 self-portrait and of Ilya Repin's Zaporizhyan Cossacks Write a Letter to the Turkish Sultan.
But that's not to say that the street, which winds its way from near St. Michael's Square to Podil, is a creativity free zone.
There are original works on display, nuggets awaiting discovery by discerning buyers able to separate the stimulating wheat from the forgettable chaff.
Acquiring the ability to tell the difference takes time. Discerning the original from the pedestrian and the worthwhile from the passe` requires several trips up and down the steep cobblestone-paved slope. In this case, familiarity breeds at least the degree of expertise necessary to determine what is of interest, as well as an idea of what, financially, will be required to convince the seller to part with a desirable piece.
Some believe that having a native on hand to negotiate with the seller will result in a lower price. Unquestionably, having a Ukrainian or Russian speaker intercede may speed the negotiating process. Will a seller charitably relinquish a chunk of his profit just because the buyer isn't a tourist? Is the fabled "local discount" merely anecdotal, a fantasy fueled by Kyivans' collective egotism?
On the uzviz, as in art markets everywhere, there is no good or bad, and a fair price is what a buyer and seller agree it to be. Whether a canvas is created by the next Marc Chagall or by a middling art student doomed to lifelong obscurity is of little consequence if it strikes an emotional chord. And with hundreds of pieces on display and stock that rotates daily, the street is likely to offer a gem for every taste.
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