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A SCHOOL FOR FOOLS
Oil on canvas, 30 x 30 inches, 1986
(Private collection, Chad's Ford, Pennsylvania)
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The painting devoted to A School for Fools by the Russian contemporary writer Sasha Sokolov was created as a part of the artist's project of researching and translating the works of the novelist. One of the most important characters in the novel is the geography teacher, Pavel Norvegov, who is shown here holding a butterfly net and a book about lepidoptera (butterflies) written by some Babochkin (the name can be translated as Butterfly). Beautiful morpho butterflies alight on Norvegov's body, indicating his connection to nature. A barrel and a water lily in the river are symbolic references to the main hero of the novel, student So-and-so, who imagines that he once turned into a water lily and in protest shouts into a barrel. Of course, the most important symbol is the red-brick school, a school for fools, which the hero is forced to attend. Obscene and irreverent inscriptions on the walls surrounding the school come directly from the novel, as do the statues of two men in the school yard and the water-tower in the distance. The rolling hills of the painting, the covered bridge across the river, and the tranquility of the countryside were influenced by the artist's visit to Vermont, where he met the author and discussed the novel. It may be interesting to point out again that the painting combines elements of Byzantine style (the face of Norvegov) with the style of naive painters (the sky is a rough copy of the sky in one of Henri Rousseau's works).
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