COLOUR COUTURE

In its eight years of work, the Museum Centre of Azerbaijan has proved to be not just an exhibition hall, but also an experimental-creative laboratory. It has carried out dozens of its own special projects in the visual arts. The final, special project of 2007 was an exhibition of arts, graphics, sculptures and arts and crafts called "Love Rainbow", organized by the gallery with the help of the fine arts department of the Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

The curator of the project and director of the Museum Centre, Liana Vazirova, described the exhibition as "an encyclopaedia of love and colour". About 130 works by 44 authors were displayed in the gallery, and each work was dedicated to one of the colours of the spectrum (including its quintessence - white). Thus, even the scenography of the opening day - with a highlighted ceiling and detailed disposition of works which paved the way not just for a dialogue between visitors and the works of art, but also between the works themselves - promoted the idea of universal love - not only the classical love between a man and a woman, but also a love for all living creatures on the earth. The idea of the spectrum hidden at the heart of this exhibition is not abstract. This is not just a spectrum of love - it is a spectrum in the figurative meaning, of which we spoke earlier. It is also a symbol of colour as such. Azerbaijani art is rightly proud of its colourist painters (it cannot be otherwise in our land, so generously gifted by nature itself). In any case, viewers of the Love Rainbow had the opportunity to see high colour (the so-called colour couture) on a mass scale, i.e. admiring the works of art as an ensemble, and also individually - taking the famous Luchaire colour test if they wished. Moreover, large screens in the gallery displayed video materials related to the science of colour, so the opening day really combined "pleasure with business".

A large exhibition entails large expense: for this project, the partners and sponsors of the gallery of the Museum Centre were the Nurgun Group and Altes Group of companies, the D?dor Textile Shop, NIKoil Bank, the Anadolu chain of restaurants and the Gallery chain of gift shops. As always, works by painters of different ages co-existed peacefully in this gallery. They do not care about people's rank or position here - you just need to be talented. Different techniques did not "argue" with each other, but were in excellent harmony - all these canvases, pastels, batiks and bronze compositions.

It was especially pleasing to see the broad range of sculptures on show at this exhibition. It is no secret that this form of art is not very common here, although there are good sculptors, including some real masters. Nevertheless, at opening days in our country, the sculptures are often a modest supplement to the triumph of paintings and graphics. There were many different types of sculptures here. There was diversity in the materials used, as well, which was a little unusual.

Right at the entrance - in the lobby of the Museum Centre - guests were welcomed by a gigantic composition by Mahmud Rustamov "The Family" - as a symbol of the deification of love. Apart from its unusual style, it was also noted for its material - wood, especially as very few people create such large pieces here. In the gallery, you could see Zakir Ahmadov's bronze lovers - "In Love" and "The First Date", and bronze compositions by Hikmat Ismayilov, one of which had the same name as the whole exhibition. The complete technique of Mammad Rasidov was also demonstrated in his "Tale Town", which seemed to have been woven from brass cables (no-one has yet depicted our "city of winds" in a form that resembles a wind vane!).

It seemed that the same Mahmud Rustamov had deliberately arranged a parade of materials. From wood painted with oil at the entrance, he moved smoothly, before our eyes, to painted… marble dressed with copper (the ethnic-mystical "Portrait of the Butterfly"), then to ordinary painted stone (Women's Torso) and finally, to the traditional bronze (the slightly infernal, "Looking Through Time"). And the visitor is "finished off" by Rasid Ismayilov. He astonishes the unsophisticated viewer with the simple "working" material of his wonderful "Queen" - banal plaster. The sophisticated viewer will easily survive the ordinary nature of the material and admire the loftiness of lines which resemble those of the ancient Egyptian arts.

The viewer's mood changes from one hall to the next. The Love Rainbow also had room for the surprisingly optimistic, "greenhouse" of Vuqar Muradov ("Naked Flowers" and "Yellow Flowers"), the lightly bellicose, "Don Quijote" by Nazim Rahmanov and decadent "Veiled Woman" by Farid Mirzayev… Love is not always "The Family" as in the ornate and fiery painting by Anar Huseynzada, or "Abundance" in the bright, burnt painting by Namiq Mammadov. Sometimes it is anguish, as in the shrill, sad painting, "Nameless" by Niyaz Nacafov, in which a man speaking with an owl visually embodies the Azerbaijani idiom characterizing loneliness. This work is dark and gloomy - only a bitten apple, a symbol of the original sin, burns in the dark of the night, like a constant fire…

Walking around the gallery on that frosty evening, viewers received a powerful charge of energy from Ismayil Mammadov's golden, "Nostalgia", Inna Kostina's, "Simurq", Hamza Abdullayev's lilac, "Paganini's Glory" and Ali Hasanov's pink, green and beige, "Promised Land"… Someone liked the "vegetable people" in Naira Rustamova's paintings, Emin Asgarov's tender and almost plush, "Bats" or Malik Ismayilzada's luxurious, "Nu" - a painting in emerald and green-blue, in which the vitreous traces of oil paint resemble fragments of shippo. The list of works which "struck like lightning" can go on. But everyone definitely experienced the triumph of love, beauty and life.