"Rose and Quail". Metamorphoses in the Graphics of A.V. Nikolaev (Usto Mumin) of the 1930s

Abbasova Galina Leading Specialist in Public Outreach Programmes, Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts 119019, Russia, Moscow, Volkhonka str., 12 abbasova_galina@mail.ru Other publications by this author

The personality and creative activity of Alexander Vasilyevich Nikolaev (1897-1957), who moved to Central Asia in the early 1920s and took the pseudonym Usto Mumin (in various interpretations - "modest master"; "believing master"), has been of genuine interest to a wide range of specialists for many years. The works of Usto Mumin, who was at the origins of the formation of the art school of Soviet Uzbekistan, still continue to have a noticeable influence on modern Uzbek art. His recognizable style was based on a synthesis of Italian painting, Persian miniatures and ancient Russian icons, seasoned with a bit of modernist experiments^[1]. The artist's fascination with Persian miniatures, Botticelli and Mantegna paintings was first noted by critics in the late 1920s ^[21].

A decade later, Usto Mumin's figurative language underwent significant changes, but the most significant characteristics of his drawing remained unchanged. In Soviet historiography, it was customary to mark this difficult period not only from a creative point of view as the time of becoming on the path of "genuine socialist art", and in the post–Soviet one - to endow it with negative connotations. Following the canon of socialist realism was dictated, on the one hand, by the need to integrate into the rigid framework set by the state, on the other – by the internal logic of the development of the master himself. The 1930s were marked for him by numerous trips and fruitful cooperation with the editorial offices of newspapers and magazines^[2]. He especially emphasized the importance of his work in Leningrad in 1929-1930: "Frequent visits to the Hermitage and the Russian Museum, meetings with Lebedev, Pakhomov, Filonov and other artists, visits to theaters and at the same time in–depth work on a drawing for a children's book - moved me a lot as a professional. I lived in Leningrad for about a year and was charged with it for a good dozen years ahead" ^{[2, l. 11]}. The extensive graphic material that has come down to our days, created by the artist in the following decade, in a sense, is a source of understanding of the evolution of his worldview and creative attitudes.

Arriving in Central Asia and joining the Samarkand Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Antiquity and Art (Samkomstaris), Usto Mumin joined a chamber circle that connected artists close in outlook and aesthetic preferences ^[3]. Having settled in the house of D.K. Stepanov, the artists "lived by the labors of their hands, grew vegetables and fruits in the common garden, painted Uzbek baby cradles for sale and cheerfully and slyly dubbed their artistic commune – the "Paul Gauguin Collective Farm". The rest of the time, young artists were engaged in painting and everyone was looking for their own embodiment, their own seen East" ^{[1, p. 12]}. A researcher who has devoted more than a decade to studying the work of Usto Mumin, B. Chukhovich gave the circle a remarkable name "Pre-Raphaelites of Samarkand", having analyzed in the most detailed way the aesthetic platform of this unofficial association, based primarily on the passion of its participants for Italian art ^[17].

Usto Mumin recalled his acquaintance with the city as follows: "Samarkand captivated me not only by architecture. The very air of this city, its location, its measured life, beautiful people (especially children and the elderly) – the whole life complex of the city fascinated me so much that I decided to live the way the neighbors around me lived in the mahallas. Where have all my youthful hobbies of Malevich, Shchukin, museums, Chamber Theater gone? They melted like smoke under the pink sun of Samarkand" ^{[2, l. 7]}. Being under the charm of the old town and the people who inhabited it, the artist began to create a series of paintings dedicated to young bacha dancers^[4]. Contemporaries especially noted the "fabulous motifs and erotic experiences" that filled his works ^[6]. Their semantic layering was emphasized by the Persian aphorism: "Each verse of Saadi contains seven meanings" ^[21].

In the works of the master of this time, both Italian and Persian reminiscences are easily guessed. For example, the figure of a reclining youth in the tempera "Spring" (1923, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan; fig. 1) has almost a direct resemblance to the "Venus" of Giorgione and Titian, but at the same time finds analogies in the Safavid miniature of the XVII century, where images of reclining women and boys ("Reclining figure", 1630-1640, Metropolitan Museum of Art) could be almost identical, differing only in some details of clothing hinting at gender. Borrowing and modifying compositional "formulas" repeatedly replicated in miniatures ("A young man kneeling next to a sleeping Prince against a landscape", 1655, Los Angeles County Museum of Art; ill. 2), Usto Mumin was not limited to a set of typical plots and compositional solutions. His works trace such characteristic features of the miniature as flatness, rejection of direct perspective, "overturned" space, showing objects from different points of view, etc. ("Vladyka", the beginning of the 1920s, I.V. Savitsky State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan; ill. 3).

The second half of the 1920s was associated with the artist's participation in the association of "Masters of the New East"^[5]. If Stepanov's circle was a chamber group of artists whose aesthetic program was available to a very narrow circle of connoisseurs, then the "Masters of the New East" planned an active exhibition activity designed for a wide audience. A kind of retrospective direction within the framework of the association was represented by Usto Mumin, who continued to develop the aesthetic principles of the "Pre-Raphaelites of Samarkand". The works created by him at this time are distinguished by conciseness and exquisite subtlety. The tempera "Friendship, Love, Eternity" (1928, Marjani Foundation; ill. 4) is executed in a brilliant graphic manner – a kind of philosophical reflection on the path of life. The key to understanding this landmark work is a fragment of an archival document – G.A. Kozlovskaya's memoirs, which touches on the history of the creation of the work presented by the artist as a gift to her family. For the first time, the full text of the memoirs about this painting, discovered in the archive of the Russian National Museum of Music, was published in the first issue of the publication "EastEast Paper" for 2020 ^[3]. A year later, this fragment was included in the article by B. Chukhovich ^[18]. In this work, this text is also given in full, due to its fundamental importance for the figurative and symbolic structure of the master's works:

"Near the entrance to Shahi-Zinda in Samarkand, there was a small teahouse, where Usto Mumin often visited. When he came there, he invariably saw a gray-haired old man sitting in a corner on a mat. The old man was completely blind, quiet and unresponsive. Another old teahouse owner carefully and tenderly took care of him – watered, fed, washed his hands and face. Together they performed namaz and always, when the teahouse owner approached his friend, they talked quietly about something of their own. Then Alexander Vasilyevich learned the story of their lives. Both of them were born in Bukhara, played together as boys, entered the time of their beautiful youth together. But friendship suddenly suffered a disaster. One of the young men was sold into slavery.

At the time of the emirate, even special tricks of lawlessness were not required – selling into slavery was not uncommon. Like many others, the young man was taken to Iran. The friend, unable to bear the separation, followed the caravan. In Persia, he hired himself as a farmhand to the owner who bought his friend, and worked hard for several years until he bought him out. They finally set off together on the way back home. It was a long journey home, difficult and full of hardships. And so, crossing the mountain passes, among the blinding sun and high-altitude snows, one of them suddenly went blind. The second brought him home blind and helpless. So, until a very old age, they were always together, and the picture of this kindness and devotion acquired a high meaning and meaning for Ust Mumin" ^{[1, l. 13]}.

The narrated story, similar to the ancient story of the friendship of Orestes and Pylades, allows you to see the artist's personality and his work in a new light. Undoubtedly deeply touched by the story of the tea-house owner and his friend, Usto Mumin repeatedly embodied their images in his paintings, telling about the intertwining of human destinies, devotion and love. It seems that the tempera "Teahouse" (1928, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan; fig. 5) is directly connected with the history of the old teahouse and his blinded friend. In addition to the stylistic similarity, they are also brought together by the fact that both paintings include a symbol significant for Persian poetry – a rose flower – in the hand of a young man ("Friendship, love, eternity") and adorning the head of a gray-haired old man ("Teahouse")^[6].

The 1930s in the artist's work were marked by a departure from the aesthetics of the "Pre-Raphaelites of Samarkand". The poetic contemplation inherent in his early painting gradually disappeared and gave way to the construction of a new social myth. The most popular subjects came to the fore: the struggle for cotton harvests, the liberation of the women of the East, the new Soviet way of life. Nevertheless, this transition was not irrevocable. The artist constantly returned to the mythologized environment created by him. One of the confirmations of this is the sketch of the painting of the lunette "Harvest" created in the Art Nouveau style (1930s, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan), possibly intended for the pavilion of Uzbekistan at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition in Moscow. The images of a man with a sheaf of ears and a boy with a lamb surrounded by vines are filled with biblical allusions and numerous references to the early works of the artist himself ("A young man with grapes" (1924, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan); "Uzbek with a Dutar" (1923, the I.V. Savitsky State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan), etc.).

A significant role in the transformation of Usto Mumin's artistic manner was played by his departure in 1929 to Leningrad, where he devoted himself to work on book and magazine illustrations: "My acquaintance with V.V. Lebedev – one of the most interesting artists of the USSR – on the basis of the creation of children's fiction, with a very strict selection of artists, gave me opportunities for six months to release three children's books, and work in the publishing house of "Krasnaya Gazeta" and the magazine "Around the World" to give a large number of his sketches on Uzbekistan, and take a strong position in this magazine as an artist in Central Asia" ^{[2, l. 11]}. Avoiding sharp political satire, which the illustrators of the "Red Newspaper" specialized in (A.M. Lyubimov, An. Vasiliev), he preferred to display everyday realities.

In October 1929, the "Red Panorama" published drawings by Usto Mumin for N. Shkapskaya's essay "Hadji" (ill. 6). A little later, a series of illustrations for the magazine "Around the World" was published – for the story of S. Roslov "Russian Hagenbek", essays by M. Roslavlev "Bukhara" and O. Trizny "Country, where fruits grow", "Along paths and roads" (fig. 7-9). The tonal pattern prevails in their solution, the connection with the ideas of the spherical perspective of K.S. Petrov-Vodkin is preserved (fig. 10). For some of them, Usto Mumin used his previous achievements (in particular, the separate sheets for the essay "Bukhara" and the story "Stone Rain" for the magazine "7 Days" (1927, No. 44) are almost identical. Stylistically and thematically close to the early Central Asian works of the artist, his Leningrad graphics stood out significantly against the background of the bulk of illustrations for the publications of the "Red Newspaper", built almost exclusively on the silhouette and a variety of hatching options.

The drawings of Usto Mumin for the magazine "Cutter" stand apart – to the stories of G. Lorber "The Uprising of Women" (1929, ¹ 41 (277)); Ya. Kalnyn "Meetings" (1929, ¹ 44 (280)); A. The King "Mouthpiece" (1929, ¹ 48 (284)); A. Popovsky's "Reconstruction" (excerpt from the novel "Anna Kalymova", 1929, ¹ 51 (287)); " By traps (From the life of the colonists of Novaya Zemlya)" (1930, ¹ 10 (298)). Departing from the oriental theme, he expands his creative arsenal, in which one can find echoes of primitivism and constructivism, the influence of Persian miniatures and poster graphics. The intense search for the Leningrad period fully affected the artist's further work after his return to Tashkent.

Such great masters as V.L. Rozhdestvensky, S.A. Malt, M.I. Kurzin, P. Shakhnazarov, V.P. Markova and others worked in periodicals of Uzbekistan. After returning from Leningrad in 1930, Usto Mumin joined them. Collaborating with various publications, he easily varied the style of his drawings, using mainly the chromolithography technique, which he mastered perfectly during his work at the Leningrad DETGIZ. The authorship of his illustrations, as a rule, is confirmed by the signature of the artist himself^[7]. In cases where the signature was not put, the editors indicated the name of the master in the accompanying caption to the drawing. At the same time, there are also such drawings, the authorship of which can be determined using exclusively formal stylistic analysis, since both the artist's signature and the explanatory text are missing.

For the satirical magazine "Mu?tum" ("Mushtum") – translated from Uzbek as "Fist" – Usto Mumin designed covers, illustrated stories, made screensavers. From a number of genre scenes on topical topics, "Bedanaboz" or "Lover of quail fights" stands out ("Mu?tum", 1935, No. 13-14; ill. 11). The artist's favorite theme, the image of a bedana (quail), reappeared in it, which in the 1920s was reflected in a series of paintings distinguished by a chamber poetic character ("A Boy with a Quail", 1928, the State Museum of History and Culture of Uzbekistan; ill. 12). However, this time the artist placed the quail in a context where it turned from an intimate, erotic symbol into its complete opposite. On a vertically oriented sheet, Usto Mumin placed three figures arranged in a sharp movement from the upper right corner down diagonally. Against the background of the yellow light pouring from the doorway, a woman in a red dress is depicted threatening with her right hand. A boy looks out from behind her. At the bottom, black is given the figure of a man kneeling facing the viewer. The long sleeves of his shirt suggest that he is a loafer who does not bother to look for work. His face is distorted with anger, he presses a quail to his lips – a gesture that further accentuates the painful obsession of a quail-fighting lover. In front of the audience is a passionate player. A red rose flower, tucked behind a skullcap, on the one hand creates a color accent that visually connects the foreground and background. On the other hand, it emphasizes the broken connection of the protagonist with the passing era, not matching the grimace of anger to the delicate rose flower. Thus, what in the early works, according to Eleonora Shafranskaya's fair remark, was a euphemism of a love confession ^{[19, p. 68]}, loses its poetic halo, turns into a caricature and becomes the object of denunciation.

How much Usto Mumin did not like the role of a critic of the patriarchal system, the oriental traditions going back to the past, quail fights and bachey dances, is an open question. There is a widespread point of view about the forced change of reference points in the work of the master. However, the ease with which he turned to his favorite images, turning them into his semantic opposite, betrays not only the pressure exerted from the outside, but also, probably, a personal choice that corresponded to the inner attitudes of the artist himself. In the end, the fulfillment of orders "by force", "against the will" should inevitably affect the quality of the works, but this is far from the case. An illustrative example is the "Old–fashioned School in Central Asia", or "School in Shakhristan" (1934, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan; ill. 13). The artist depicted the punishment of a student who disobeyed the teacher.The composition of the sheet is close to Muhammad Qasim's miniature "The Punishment of the Disciple" (1605-1606, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; ill. 14) so much so that one can assume a direct quote: the guilty student with his legs tied up to the crossbar is lying on the ground, surrounded by other children, and the teacher is preparing to hit the boy's naked feet with a stick. The composition of the "School in Shahristan" is given in a mirror image and with some significant changes in relation to the "Punishment of the student": its thin dynamic line sharply contrasts with the smooth lines of the miniature, creating additional tension in this scene filled with expression, each of the participants of which the artist has endowed with pronounced emotional characteristics. At the same time, the painting "New School (in the Museum)" (1934, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan), paired with the "School in Shakhristan", is significantly inferior to it in terms of performance quality, differing in both weak composition and unconvincing drama. It seems that in this particular case the artist did not feel the desire to develop the topic and make unnecessarily straightforward comparisons (fig. 15).

Nevertheless, it is on the contrast of the old and the new that most of Usto Mumin's graphic sheets of the 1930s are built. This technique, which has been widespread since the late 1910s, becomes a cross-cutting motif of magazine graphics. It can be found on the pages of the magazines "Godless at the machine", "Give", "Crocodile" and many others. For the magazine "Mu?tum", Usto Mumin created a whole series of genre drawings in which traditional Oriental life is filled with signs of the new Soviet era. Their leitmotif was criticism of the remnants of the feudal past, and women often acted as agents of change (the struggle for women's rights in Central Asia did not lose its acuteness in the 1930s). Turning to widely replicated themes with their inherent narrative, the artist retained the expressiveness of the line characteristic of his early works, the well-known decorativeness and restrained color, built on a combination of two or three tones. In the "Red Teahouse"^[8] (1933, "Mu?tum", No. 8; ill. 16), the dehkans sitting on the dostarkhan are shown, dissatisfied with the locked red corner with a radio receiver and newspapers. Dehkans who have put aside ketmen (Central Asian hoe) turn to the teahouse owner for an explanation and he, distracted from brewing tea, turns in their direction. The genre scene, typical for its time, was solved by the artist using "formalist" techniques: conditional outlines of figures, a combination of stroke-filled and empty silhouettes, alternating monochrome and colored planes. Usto Mumin complements the drawing with a reference to his earlier work: as in the tempera "Teahouse" (1928, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan; fig. 5), he places an incomplete silhouette of a samovar in the foreground, highlighting its outlines with a colored contour.

The same techniques are used in the sheet "Teahouse" (1933, "Mu?tum", No. 7; ill. 17), in which the detailed figure of the teahouse in the foreground and the conditional outlines of the dehkans working in the fields are contrasted. The main color of the drawing is yellow, but thanks to various combinations of strokes, the master managed to achieve the illusion of polychromy. Next to the teahouse attendant squatting by the tandoor, his inventory is laid out – a bucket, ladle, sieve, rolling pin, kumgan (jug). A quail trap hangs under the branches of a flowering tree, which in this case can be interpreted both as a characteristic household detail and as an echo of a passing era. The quail trap is a symbolic image for the master, while remaining in his artistic arsenal, it nevertheless loses the original meanings that it was endowed with in the works of the 1920s.

Usto Mumin rarely turned to religious topics. An exceptional example is "Komsomolets at the Mullah" (1933, "Mu?tum"; ill. 18). A young man in European clothes – a green suit with a tie and, apparently, a Komsomol badge on his chest, accepts a sheet of Arabic script from a mullah. His hands are folded in a gesture of gratitude. Book spines and scrolls with sacred texts are visible on the shelves. They are covered with cobwebs along with walls and a leaky roof – details that testify not only to the influence of religious figures going into the past, but also to the reform of writing, the rejection of Arabic, for reading and writing in which ordinary people had to seek help from a narrow circle of initiates. The drawing stands out for its exceptional richness of texture – the grainy surface of the wall and books contrasts with transparent scrolls; the solid filling of individual elements of clothing is combined with an elongated sparse stroke that conveys its lightest areas; decorative intricacies of Arabic script are contrasted with the dry geometry of bookshelves. Imitation of texture with a stroke and rhythmic alternation of color planes are characteristic features of Usto Mumin's magazine illustration.

In "Family Dinner" (1933, "Mu?tum", No. 23; ill. 19), a woman and her son are shown sitting at one end of a table, turned at an angle and "tipped over" at the viewer in the best traditions of oriental miniature. In front of them are bowls of soup and tortillas. The main character defiantly meets the gaze of an angry husband who has prepared a large spoon, but received the smallest portion of food. So, with his usual gentle humor, the artist illustrates the textbook saying "He who does not work does not eat." Skillfully using various variations of the stroke, Usto Mumin achieves the illusion of polychromy, despite the fact that the drawing is based on only two colors – orange and green. This graphic technique allows you to convey the ornamental variety of fabrics laid on one of the shelves, to emphasize the density and heaviness of clothing, to shade the light streams.

Genre drawings by Usto Mumin, created in the 1930s for the magazine "Mu?tum", despite their applied function, retained the best features of his graphic works. The fact that almost each of them was signed by the author indirectly may indicate a fairly high assessment of these works by the master himself^[9]. Despite the fact that the dramaturgy of these sheets is built on the principle of contrasting the old and the new, most of them are devoid of the straightforward propaganda aggressiveness of the poster. One of the exceptions, close in style to the poster graphics – "Opportunists" (1931, "Mu?tum", No. 18-19; ill. 20). Drenched in dark red, the monumental incriminating figure of a dehkan worker in a rapid movement is contrasted with the simplified caricature appearance of an official, who is led away by the arm of a frequenter of seedy places. In the yellow blob, towards which both "opportunists" are heading, their desire for an idle, debauched lifestyle seems to materialize: bachi dancing, drunkenness, gambling, idleness and gluttony. The grotesque appearance of these characters will be emphasized by a whole set of everyday details and talking details. The incriminating pathos of this sheet, as a whole, is not characteristic of the artist and sharply contrasts with the illustrations to the "Anecdotes of Afandi" (1936, "Mu?tum", No. 3, No. 5; ill. 21) with their inherent ease of drawing and good-natured humor.

Usto Mumin's graphic sheets for stories and novels in the magazine "Ma?ala" ("Mashala", from Uzbek – "Torch") differ from the satirical and genre sketches "Mu?tum". We are talking, as a rule, about collisions infinitely far from everyday life. Illustrating a fragment of Sadriddin Aini's novel "Slaves" and the vicissitudes of the fate of the protagonist Nekadam ("Ma?ala", 1934, No. 1; ill. 22), the artist undoubtedly had to recall the tragic story told to him in Samarkand by an old teahouse. This connection can be traced not only in the similarity of some episodes of the plot outline of the novel, but also in the stylistic solution of the drawings themselves, echoing the series of the 1920s, telling the story of two young men. The style of "Slaves" is also close to his drawings of the novel by H. Chance "Pravo" ("Ma?ala", 1934, No. 2), filled with heroic pathos, expression and psychologism.

Along with epic images, Usto Mumin developed a genre of lyrical landscape, which includes "Boat Trip" ("Ma?ala", 1934, No. 1; il. 23), vaguely reminiscent of the tradition of Chinese painting of mountains and waters. The artist used such formal techniques as a high horizon line, several vanishing points located along the central axis, shading, etc. The perspective opens from the bottom up from the water surface to the top of the hill with the Chinese pavilion. At the foot there is a small boat with two young men, lost among tall trees. Floating on the river, it reflects the metaphor of the path, which corresponds to the general contemplative mood of the landscape. Interest in Chinese art is marked by several early drawings of the master, including "Stork and Pagoda" (1920s, I.V. Savitsky State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Kazakhstan) and a post-war series of sketches of scenery for performances of the Uighur Republican Theater.

In 1936, Usto Mumin created a thematic series of illustrations for the newspaper Pravda Vostoka, dedicated to Soviet holidays. It opens with the drawing "A Wonderful Year" (1936, "The Truth of the East"; ill. 24), built on the obvious contrast of realistic interpretation of three-dimensional figures and decorative flatness of the background. At the bottom edge there are close–up data of Uzbek family members - parents and a little boy with a toy car and a bear in his hands. In front of them are two bouquets of roses, lilies and cornflowers. On the chest of the father of the family is the Order of Lenin, which gives justification to the whole scene. In the background, figures of dancers and musicians are presented in a decorative frame with a pointed finish. Their flatness can be interpreted as an imitation of a wall painting or as a transmission of a distant plan marked by artistic convention. Individual elements of the composition refer the viewer to the master's earlier works – figures of dancers and musicians with national instruments (dutarist, doirist and karnaichi)^[10]. It is in them that the carnival whirlwind is enclosed, which gives the drawing a festive character.

In the drawing "The Christmas Tree" (1936, "The Truth of the East"; ill. 25), the narrow vertical format of the sheet is emphasized by a special construction of perspective, in which the space seems to rise as it moves away from the viewer. The static foreground with large figures of children reading and a boy with a toy train is replaced by dynamic couples circling in a whirlwind of dance. Their spiral movement continues in the brilliance of the New Year's illumination. Here the artist allows himself some conventionality, replacing the whole with a fragment, giving only an outline of the upper part of the dancers.

The drawing "May Day Demonstration" (1936, "The Truth of the East"; ill. 26) is most conservatively solved, the composition of which is based on strict symmetry and direct perspective. The central part is occupied by a festively decorated car moving towards the viewer with a young couple in the cab. Dancers and musicians in national clothes are placed in the body, standing against the background of a developing flag. Cliche images like figures of a dancing woman and a dutarist, garlands and bouquets are repeated in a number of graphic compositions by Usto Mumin of the 1930s. Despite the saturation of the multi-figure image, it does not disintegrate, it does not seem chaotic, largely due to the dense rows of athletes and poles with flags, as if limiting and directing the revelry of the national element. The composition is flanked and balanced by three-quarter portraits of the leaders facing the center.

In accordance with the particularly ideologized nature of Pravda Vostoka, Usto Mumin works in a strictly defined system of forms dictated by the canons of socialist realism. Rejecting such techniques characteristic of his magazine graphics as poster flatness, line conditionality, stroke rhythm, etc., the artist, in accordance with the requirements of the order, prefers "realistic modeling of forms". The festive cycle contains a set of textbook images, which include athletes at demonstrations, pioneers, liberated women of the East; cars with Komsomol members at the wheel; a train (albeit a toy in the hands of a little boy), and so on. The national flavor is accentuated by the traditional costume worn by some participants of this orderly and state-controlled carnival element.

A significant amount of Usto Mumin's magazine and newspaper graphics was associated with the demonstration of the achievements of the cultural revolution in Central Asia. In this direction, the artist worked for the magazine "Mu?tum", mainly in two genres – acute satirical, stylistically close to the poster and caricature, and everyday, in which the juxtaposition of the old and the new, inscribed in the everyday context, instead of biting satire was flavored with the gentle humor of the master. For the magazine "Ma?ala" he created a series of illustrations in the lyrical and epic genres. The latter is characterized by drama, expression and a retrospective appeal to the heroes and ideals of bygone eras. In terms of internal drama, these are monumental works, despite their chamber format. The magazine also publishes the artist's pastoral drawings with their inherent philosophical and contemplative attitude to the world. Basically, we are talking about landscape as the most neutral genre. The artist publishes the most strict drawings from the point of view of the socialist realist canon in the newspaper Pravda Vostoka. In them, he abandons the conventions of artistic language in favor of such external markers of realism as the desire to convey three-dimensional space, the reproduction of volume and chiaroscuro. This is a kind of festive series covering the most significant events of the annual calendar cycle for the Soviet state, constructing reality as it should be in the ideal world of socialist realism.

In the newspaper and magazine graphics of the 1930s, Usto Mumin used an extensive range of artistic techniques, varying them according to the genres to which he refers. The main tool for him was still the line, while color continued to play an auxiliary role: "When the theme I have outlined is clear, when it is sufficiently tested by materials, I struggle for a long time over the composition, looking for the best, most expressive solution. The first thing I struggle with is drawing. Drawing is not only as contour boundaries of forms, but as an expression of thought. Almost simultaneously with the drawing, the basic color scheme is born, albeit with a slight delay, which sometimes changes several times, varies, is rewritten until it comes into a certain harmony with the drawing" ^{[2, l. 17]}. Due to the combination of strokes, their thickness, density and angle of inclination, he achieves a convincing embodiment of such categories as flatness and volume, lightness and heaviness, conveys the diversity of the image. The combination of a stroke and a color spot allows him to successfully create the illusion of polychromy, despite the fact that no more than two colors are used. As a rule, the master works with warm shades – red, orange, yellow, less often with cold ones – blue and light blue.

Fulfilling the state order, Usto Mumin approached the solution of the tasks with his inherent skill. His graphic sheets are compositionally and stylistically verified. The artist managed to find that balance, that delicate balance, which allowed, with an obvious ideological component, to preserve the high artistic quality of the drawing. He filled the subject world of his works with images borrowed from earlier works. However, extracted from the mythologized context, they lost their semantic ambiguity and acquired an absolutely mundane character. At the same time, the master's ruthless appeal to such iconic symbols for his painting of the 1920s as the rose and the quail suggest that the changes that took place in the 1930s in his work were not only external in nature, but were due to deeper reasons.

^[1] A.V. Nikolaev (Usto Mumin) was born in Voronezh, studied in the Sumy Cadet Corps, where fine art was taught by E.K. Evlampiev (a classmate of P.P. Benkov at the Kazan school), who instilled in students an interest in classical Russian painting. Later, Nikolaev continued his education in the Voronezh studio of A.A. Buchkuri. In 1918, the Moscow Art Theater artist V.V. Ivanov, who arrived in Voronezh, "cheerfully rejected" Nikolaev's drawings, but offered to work for him as an assistant director. In 1919, Nikolaev, "with the blessing of Vyacheslav Vasilyevich" ^{[2, l. 4]}, together with G.T. Krutikov went to Moscow to study in the workshop of P.V. Kuznetsov. However, already on the road, the young people changed their decision and upon arrival were enrolled in the Free State Art Workshops to K.S. Malevich. From Moscow, together with his friend A.G. Mordvinov, Nikolaev volunteered for the Red Army. At the beginning of 1920, they were both recalled from the army and sent to Turkestan with a mandate from the commission of the CEC and the Council of People's Commissars for the Affairs of the Republic of Turkestan. Having stayed "for purely personal reasons" in Orenburg, Nikolaev arrived in Tashkent in the autumn of 1921 and was appointed head of an art and decorative workshop at an Art School. Six months later he moved to Samarkand, where he worked in the Samarkand Commission for the Protection of Monuments of Antiquity and Art (Samkomstaris). After 1925, the artist returned to Tashkent, worked in the theater and editorial offices of Pravda Vostoka, Kizil Uzbekistan (Red Uzbekistan), Mushtum (Kulak). In 1929 he left for Leningrad, worked in DETGIZ, illustrated magazines "Around the World", "Red Panorama", "Cutter". In 1930 he returned to Uzbekistan, where he continued to cooperate with periodicals. In 1937, he went to Moscow to participate in the decade of Uzbek art and design of the pavilion of the Uzbek SSR at the All-Union Agricultural Exhibition. In 1938, Nikolaev was arrested on false denunciation. After returning from the camps in 1942, he served in the Uzbek Musical and Drama Theater and the Uighur Republican Theater in Andijan.

^[2] In 1928-1929, Usto Mumin worked in the magazine "Yangi Yul" ("New Way"). In 1930, he was in charge of the art sector of the editorial office of the newspaper "Kizil Uzbekistan" ("Red Uzbekistan"). In 1933 he worked in the magazines "Mashala" ("Torch"), "Attack". In 1935-1936 he was the chief artist of the magazine "Mushtum" ("Fist"). His illustrations were published in the newspaper Pravda Vostoka, the magazine Seven Days and other publications.

^[3] In addition to Usto Mumin, the circle included D.K. Stepanov, V.I. Ufimtsev, N.A. Mamontov, A.V. Isupov, K.S. Petrov-Vodkin and A.N. Samokhvalov.

^[4] Bachi, presented with ethnographic impartiality, appear on pre-revolutionary postcards and photographs. V.V. Vereshchagin was one of the first in Turkestan to turn to the image of bachi. Subsequently, the artist destroyed the painting "Bacha and his fans" (1868), because the public considered it obscene. The "Pre-Raphaelites of Samarkand" breathed a new meaning and a new aesthetic sound into the long-known plot. The fact that the works of Usto Mumin, dedicated to the history of the two bachs, fit into a cycle, behind which there is a deeply personal impression received by the artist in Samarkand, was convincingly proved by B. Chukhovich at the time.

^[5] The first exhibitions of the participants of the association "Masters of the New East" were held in 1929 in Tashkent and Novosibirsk. As a rule, this year is considered the time of the official registration of the "Masters of the New East", initiated by M.I. Kurzin and V.N. Gulyaev, who also participated in the creation of the art group "New Siberia" (1926). Perhaps the organization of such an association of Siberian artists in Uzbekistan was prompted by the exhibition of V.I. Ufimtsev in the West Siberian Regional Museum (1926-1927) and the exhibition "New Siberia" in Omsk (1926-1927), where the artist's Turkestan canvases were exhibited. In addition to Kurzin and Gulyaev, the "Masters of the New East" included A.N. Volkov, V.P. Markova, A.V. Nikolaev (Usto Mumin), M.Z. Gaidukevich, S.A. Malt, N.S. Turkestan, I.I. Ikramov, etc. Ufimtsev, who was not officially part of the association, joined them.

^[6] Both paintings were presented at a small exhibition for the anniversary of the artist in 1948. Among the most significant of his surviving works (unfortunately, much was lost during the war), Usto Mumin calls the tempera with the conditional name "Head with a Flower", selected along with the tempera "Friendship, love, eternity" for display at the anniversary exhibition. With a high degree of probability, we are talking about the above-mentioned "Teahouse" ^{[2, l. 10]}.

^[7] The signature of Usto Mumin could vary from the most common monogram in the form of the combined letters "U" and "M" to various spelling variants of his creative pseudonym – Usto Mumin, Usto Mumin, Usta Mumin, etc.

^[8] Here and further, the names of the drawings are conditional and given by the author of the article due to the lack of names given by the artist himself or the editorial board.

^[9] At the same time, there is no doubt that at a later time Usto Mumin preferred his works of the 1920s. This is evidenced by the selection of works for the exhibition and discussion at the creative evening for the 50th anniversary of the master. V.L. Rozhdestvensky, who was present at the evening, noted that the newspaper and magazine graphics of Usto Mumin, to which he devoted twenty-five years of his life, are greatly underestimated: "Artists have some strange attitude, underestimation the work that goes to the masses, artists are trying to recruit such works that are made for the elite, and A.V. today greatly belittled himself, he said casually that he worked in newspapers, magazines, book graphics, posters" ^{[2, p. 28]}.

^[10] The artist uses similar silhouettes in "Dance" (1933, the State Museum of Arts of Uzbekistan), "White Gold" (1934, the State Museum of the East).

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