Viktor Misiano . Lighthouse.
 
  The gold-leaf filigree on Vienna's Secession building pulses with light in synchrony with the artist's heartbeat. The universal meaning of this metaphor is obvious enough - but what does this work mean in the context of the reality in which it arose? The context of this work is the chaos that is Russia. This chaos takes on an economic dimension - the industrial crisis, the disintegration of the cultural infrastructure and the absence of an art market; a social dimension - entropy in the community, convulsive individualism, the rudimentary nature of civil society; as well as an intellectual dimension in the marginalistion of cultural practices, the crisis of rational values and the genera lack of stable points of reference.

The artistic community gives some meaningful responses to this situation: entropy, in the absence of positive forces, can be perceived as a new positive force in itself. The vital, roguish animalistic nature of Russian reality can be perceived as a sort of liberation. The artist opens up a pre-rational, that is, a pre-human beginning for himself, and in it he investigates the means of inarticulated - thus truly universal - communication. A strictly diametric answer is also possible: the language of articulated communication, which isn't in demand and thus inadequate in a societal context, begins to take on the qualities of a value in itself. The reclusive artist sublimates this language in his alchemist's retort, making it completely incomprehensible and esoteric. In addition to this, the more insane the surrounding reality becomes, the more it seems to justify intellectuals in maintaining their classic, detached position, an ironic distance and tendency to scoff. Finally, the last and most typical response to the insanity of existence is its reproduction: a large part of today's artistic work is marked by its intellectual lethargy and creative somnambulism.

Obviously, Vadim Fishkin's work does not fit into any of these more developed artistic mainstreams. In his eyes, positivity can't be pre-rational: after all, it dissolves and resounds in context. Irony can only be positive if it transcends the here and now and lends it a certain perspective, thus it can't remain outside the bounds of intelligible communication. Positivity is only truly positive when it is addressed to the community, to which irony no longer seems adequate; irony is only effective when it opposes the Other; but if the Other is dissolved in chaos - just as its alternative did - then irony appears to represent something extremely comfortable and conformist. The glowing dome of the Secession represents a message of urbi et orbi; it radiates a light of positive will, the rays of "Enlightenment". Such is the artist's answer to creative decline.

But what meaning does this message have which is sent into a reality where both "city" and "world' have disappeared? What does the message mean if nobody demands it, if it has no recipient? And why does this light not dawn on the world with an even light of reason ? And why is its source not universal reason, but the palpitating, mortal heart of the artist? Finally, why is the image of the Secession's shimmering dome reminiscent of the words of Nikolai Berdyaev, the I9th-century Russian philosopher: "The intelligentsia in Russia is a feat of morality."