Artwork Description
Igor Melnikov – The Window
Dimensions: 17 x 16″ framed / 11.5 x 11″ unframed
Year: 2011
Medium: oil on panel
In this piece, Melnikov silhouettes a young boy against an open window, his profile receding gradually into the shadows. The little boy squints ahead at someone or something that the viewer cannot see, emphasizing the privacy and autonomy of the subject. This self-sufficiency — this protection of the inner lives of his subjects — is a consistent theme throughout Melnikov’s paintings of children. Here, he takes special care to emphasize the mental landscapes of the featured child over the visible landscape of the work itself. In this way, Melnikov draws viewers into this little boy’s mind, raising questions about subjectivity, childhood and psychology.
Russian born artist, Igor Melnikov, upends traditional associations with portraiture through his haunting and intrinsically psychological paintings of emotionally ambiguous children and within his subtle natural explorations. Rather than focusing on the individual identity of those within his works, Melnikov instead looks to viewers as dynamic participants in the interpretation of his paintings, allowing them to determine whether the children might burst into tears or laughter, based on personal experience, thought, and upbringing. Melnikov is fascinated with the simultaneity of happiness and suffering, which he believes function as an expression of the ‘complexity of the human personality’ and exist as a component of the ‘meaning of being’. Melnikov’s paintings are collage-like, yet not in the traditional, material sense of the process—instead layering his own psychological explorations onto his attempted understandings of the human condition and expression. While his muted color palettes might at first appear to be reductive, they instead focus viewers’ attention on the figures within the work and encourage slow and thorough readings of the detailing that remains visually available. While people and the human condition remain the primary subjects within his paintings, Melnikov also expresses an artistic concern for the natural world, whether expressed in landscape surroundings or in its more material and familiar manifestations, seen in the figure’s clothing and simple possessions.
by Keira Seidenberg, Art History/Gender Studies student, McGill University