Prof. G. Astrov
The life of Sima Ostrovsky has come to an end, yet his spiritual and artistic presence is keenly felt. As years go by, it becomes increasingly clear that a genuine, authentic talent cannot be supplanted by another; accordingly, the loss of an artist of the scope of Sima Ostrovsky renders the colorful, many-faceted cognlomerate of modern art perceptibly depleted and hence, in some way, deficient. Even in our rapidly changing times, the art of Sima Ostrovsky does not become obsolete but, conversely, is vibrantly alive with its wealth of imagery and refinement of pictorial plasticity.
Sima Ostrovsky received his education in the Leningrad School of Industrial Arts named after V. Mukhina where the foundation of his future as an artist was firmly laid. In the course of his education, he absorbed the values of a high professional standard, the culture of painting, drawing, and design, along with the taste, tact, and sense of measure so typical of the St. Petersburg school. His personality and artistic self were formed in the atmosphere of social and artistic non-conformism which prevailed in the St. Petersburg of the 1960's and 70's. For Sima, art was not merely an occupation, but a vocation, a calling. This, copied with his natural aversion to sanctimony, made him reject outright officiousness in all its manifestations, including the exactitude of the Academia-promulgated formalism and the socalled socialist-realistic style, which advocated a wearisome, monotonous imitation of reality. Sima's rebellion against accepted norms and his creative and ideological independence led him to seek the society of similar "free-thinkers", a number of whom he encountered at the notoriously popular exhibitions of non-conformist contemporary artists. These were held in the Nevsky Hall and the Cultural Center named after P.Gaza, which also served as the meeting grounds for the members of an artists' association formed by E.Abesghaus, A.Okun, A.Bassin, A.Gurevich, Y.Kalendarev, T.Kornfeld and others. This organization of Jewish artists, a unique and unprecedented endeavor in Soviet Russia, championed the renaissance of Jewish national art on a new, modern foundation. By joining it as a member, Sima Ostrovsky validated his physical, spiritual and artistic belonging to the Jewish nation, a stand that determined his destiny as a person and as an artist. But even among the brilliance and originullity of his comrades, Sima's talent was not lost.
In 1977, Sima Ostrovsky emigrated to Israel. As could have been expected, the drastic change affected both his lifestyle and creative work. For some time, he was employed as a graphic artist and published several books. Essentially, however, his approach to art remained the same: graphics were, for him, by the same token as painting, a genre untainted by the temptations of commercialism and full of worth in its own right, a sphere where he could fully realize his personal and artistic potential.
Sima Ostrovsky, the painter, a faithful son of the 20th century, was open to every influence. In succession, he was carried away by pop-art and the classical style of the Renaissance; he was temporarily swayed by the fantastic world of Marc Schagall, the element of folklore and primitivism, by expressionism, surrealism, and many other trends, none of which passed without leaving a trace. True, it is not unusual for an artist to be susceptible to influence, nor experiment; the crucial point here is where this brings him. In the case of Sima Ostrovsky, the result is far from ordinary: the painter succeeded in incorporating the external influences and transforming them into a strikingly original, novel art form.
An imaginative and creative person, Sima Ostrovsky has constructed his own, unique visionary world where real-life proportions and spatial relations are turned upside down, and where the law of gravity seems to have lost its all-pervading power. His pictorial language is based on complex allegorical and symbolic connections, on metaphor, simile and association, rather than on the illusory effects of natural perception; his favorite artistic means is cuspidate grotesque, paradox and hyperbola. These devices could have resulted in artificiality and affectation, were it not for the irony so characteristic of Ostrovsky's personality - irony which is reflected in both his mentality and his talent, and which renders the imagery of his work artlessly natural. Irony, for him, is not merely an artistic device but an inherent part of being and creativity, a form of his existence in this world. It is, moreover, a manifestation of his Jewishness, inasmuch as Jewish mentality is in general characterized by an ironic bent.
Rather than merely to represent the realia, Sima Ostrovsky aspired, in his art, to address the eternal questions of existence and intransient spiritual values. And because of this, his works are multi-faceted and profoundly complex. The all-permeating motif of the chess game, for example, assumes the ambivalent signification of a plastic metaphor bearing on the confrontation on the one hand and convergence on the other of man's fate and will. An orchard full of ripe fruit is an image of Heaven, which a pair of stylized swans, as if copied from cheaply crafted mats, imbue with ironic overtones. Many personages in his paintings play musical instruments: the violin, the cello, the balalaika, the trumpet, and even the gramophone. This, too, has a metaphorical meaning, the instruments constituting a visual representation of the duality of spiritual being and material existence, metaphysical and physical respectively. (Let us remind the reader that Sima Ostrovsky was, himself, a musician of uncommon talent and virtuosity, in whose life music played a highly important role.) Perpetuating the Russian tradition during the beginning of the century, the painter absorbed the invigorating impact of the urban folklore in its variety of forms: painting, music, poetry and, in particular, primitive art, graphic and pictorial alike. Along with their ironic mockery and teasing equivocality, "peasant aesthetics" attracted Ostrovsky by a fantastic model of "a world upside-down" which they comprised, as well as by a fresh and uncorrupted perception of life, and an independence of the regulations imposed by Academia. A more careful look, however, will reveal, behind the mischievous burlesque, an unqualified rejection of triviality and banality of every kind. Furthermore, the graphic art of the Russian people is often transfigured into the mysterious code of Jewish symbolism, in so far as both genres blend pictorial form with text by incorporating letters -Hebrew, Latin, or Cyrillic - or even entire messages, into the picture. The imagery of Ostrovsky's paintings is interspersed with mythological elements from the New Testament, reinterpreted as grotesque, and with exceedingly free "quotations" from the Renaissance art, next to which one is surprised to see conceptual collages, full of cheques and banknotes. It is quite impossible, and neither is there a need, to bring all this to a common denominator, for it is in the diversity of voices that Ostrovsky's artistic self assumes integrity, his talent multifariousness, and his art the traces of empathy with the tribulations besetting our time. The dramatic effect, however, is perceived only if one looks beyond the surface. It is only at these deeper strata that one can perceive that Ostrovsky's world-view is far from idyllic, his wisdom by no means acquiescent or mild, but sober and profoundly discerning.
It is not easy to determine whether painting or graphics predominated in Sima Ostrovskv's art, for both genres seem to be equally important, like two branches of a tree. The foundation, the unifying component of the integral nervous system of his works is the artist's high professionalism, which is evident throughout - in drawing, composition, and painting in equal measure. Much - indeed, almost all - of what has been said regarding Sima Ostrovsky's painting can be extended to his graphic work: for Sima did not regard drasving as auxiliary to painting, nor as its side product, but an art form in its own right. It is not incidental, then, that his first steps in the world of art were as a graphic artist. In a review of the first exhibition of "Alef", an association of Russian-speaking Israeli artists, it was pointed out that "Sima Ostrovsky, who contributed several interesting works on wood, figured prominently as a graphic artist of uncommon power. "Sima Ostrovsky" - continued the journalist - "has a remarkable ability to create most complex structures in one breath, as it were, preserving at the same time the unity and integrity of every element of the overloaded composition. An exorbitant agglomeration of stylistic devices may, at times, obscure the content of a text. Sima Ostrovsky has succeeded in avoiding this danger with a surprising facility (or at least so it seems to us), attaining the impression of balance and good measure in his drawings. In all his works, the artist grotesquely represents the rapidly disintegrating, uncanny, frightening, yet poignantly familiar world. His vision, his approach to reality, which is usually scornful, and often bitterly resentful, as well as his ironic view of himself are projected with an indisputable mastery. The agitated voice of the artist reflecting his passionate, impelling temperament imbue his graphic pieces with a profoundly tragic meaning." Ostrovsky's graphics of the Israeli period advanced what had already been attained in Leningrad, enhancing it with fresh themes and new artistic means.
The life and art of Sima Ostrovsky have become the heritage of the past. The destiny of a true master, however, can be seen as woven out of two threads. On the one hand, there is physical existence, which is the artist's life on earth, with its beginning and end. And along with it, there is yet another form of being: one that does not gain in years, one that is preserved in his works and perpetuated in the memory of his contemporaries and generations to come.