Despite the online abundance of all manner of cat cartoons, the work of Russian artist Vasya Lozhkin (the nom de plume of Alexei Kudelin, born in 1976, lawyer by profession) stands out. Passed around on social media with equal enthusiasm by housewives looking for a giggle, journalists foraging for a satirical cartoon to supplement an article, and art lovers with a penchant for the feline, his paintings run the gamut from wistfully sentimental to quite scary, often in some combination thereof.

One can argue whether Lozhkin is actually an Artist or not (capital A intended) — he himself says that he loves painting, but is no painter. As far as I’m concerned, his eye for colour and striking compositions compensate for whatever deficiency may exist in terms of actual drawing talent. He’s unabashedly prolific, returning again and again to the same themes, populating his world with an addictive medley of orange tomcats, grannies of a threatening disposition, sad Slavic bears and grey bureaucrats of ill intent… as well as good sprinkle of ‘ordinary’ people gone mad, with or without the presence of alcohol. There’s a lot of alcohol.

It is Lozhkin’s cats that mostly grab the public’s fickle heart, thus providing their creator with what must be a fairly steady income from knick-knacks of all kinds, à la Kliban*. I’m glad. If it didn’t involve ordering stuff from Russia, I’d be first in line for, say, a mug or two. He has produced something like five thousand paintings so far, exhibiting no shyness whatsoever about recreating particularly successful canvases. He notes that ‘I like cats, but so does my audience. Since my job is to feed my family, I feed it with cats.’ His pragmatism strikes one as being almost defensive.

« Talking about the ideas behind Lozhkin’s paintings is like explaining a joke — the explanation will not make it funnier or clearer. His metaphysical world is a sort of peculiar successor to the classic Lubok, where a highly amusing image with a straightforward caption is filled with philosophical meaning. Grotesque buffoonery is aimed to the public exposure of a man’s self, his hidden aspirations and his dreams. The Skomorokh makes an absurd mockery of events, turns the innermost self inside out, so that Man can see his soul — see it and laugh at the absurdity of its ideals. » [source in Russian]

« Each sees what he wants to see. And hears what he wants to hear. But with the sense of smell, this trick does not work: if one early morning you go stand in the middle of a field, knee-deep in manure, squint your eyes and take a sniff, you’re certainly not going to smell violets. » On the topic of sweet violets…

‘Cockroaches in the head‘ is a popular idiom, meaning somebody’s mind is messy or full of idiomatic eccentricities. Do professional art critics ignore Lozhkin’s cats et al because this isn’t high art, or because they’re perplexed? Occasional exhibitions, if not very well attended, are distinctly enthusiastically attended by ‘people with cockroaches in their heads’.

Komsomolskaya Pravda (the ‘Komsomol truth’) included Lozhkin in its series of ‘Best Contemporary Artists’, dedicating its 15th volume to his art. On one hand, he is now amusingly rubbing elbows with Edvard Munch (volume 6) or Salvador Dali (volume 30)…. currently the series is up to 34 (Pablo Picasso, and no, I don’t understand which logic these choices are governed by, either). Lozhkin was amused by this, apparently. From this end of the world, having anything to do with a pro-Putin newspaper** with Soviet roots is disturbing, but then again… I don’t have to survive in that climate.

In an interview, Lozhkin said that the fairy tales he creates always have a happy ending, despite heavy elements of psychosis. He also mentioned that lately he’s been trying to accentuate on the positive, to evoke pleasant emotions from his audience. I admire the motive, but I’m not sure he believes in it himself — there is little doubt that the darkness deepens.

« Each one of us, if you look carefully, has this bottomless depth; everything is in there, the icy horror, this hopeless darkness, gray hopelessness and green melancholy, as well as terrible laughter, pandemonium, devils, animals, cockroaches… »

Visit his site for a look at paintings classified by year here.

~ ds

* B. Kliban’s cats were also very much like people, prone to the same excesses and weaknesses of spirit.

** When editor Vladimir Romanenko posted some articles critical of the Ukraine war, they were removed in under 10 minutes.