"The Snow Queen" was released before the new year 2021, and who would have thought then.
Lomaev really wanted to draw this fairy tale, but for a long time he could not figure out how to make his own voice sound, because “The Snow Queen” had already been visualized a million times: illustrations, films, cartoons - everything had already been done. How to move away from well-known images and create your own, original ones?
A year ago, this book greatly surprised readers who were eagerly awaiting it, and not everyone liked the idea. But now it is obvious how it arose: the very air that the artist and 140 million of his (and our) compatriots breathed was electrified by the impending tragedy.
“Do you remember, in childhood there were such riddle pictures... They seemed to be ordinary drawings, but with errors - a clock without hands; the shadow falls in the wrong direction; the sun and stars are in the sky at the same time. And the caption: “What’s wrong with the picture?” Your deskmate disappears at night and no one knows anything. But in the parks they serve ice cream for every taste. What's wrong with the picture? The Cretan brothers were taken away for insulting the royal portrait; Antonovich and his friends - for organizing a secret society, that is, for the fact that they gathered in someone’s room and read aloud a pamphlet that can be bought in any Parisian shop. Young ladies and gentlemen glide in swan pairs around the skating rink. A column of Poles, rattling shackles on their feet, trudges along the Vladimir road. What's wrong with the picture? You are listening? You are also part of this picture.” (T. Stoppard "The Shore of Utopia")
What's wrong with the painting "The Snow Queen" by Anton Lomaev? The setting of this classic tale is set in Europe in the 1930s. There is already a premonition of trouble in the air, but people don’t seem to notice anything. They rush about their business, sit in a cafe, chat, buy, dance - just like Remarque. Well, yes, beautiful baroque palaces are surrounded by anti-tank hedgehogs. Well, yes, soldiers are sitting at the next table in the restaurant, and the children, imitating them, are already zigging and marching in columns with might and main. Well, planes in the sky, military equipment in the fields, barbed wire blocking the streets. But everyone’s focus is on their own daily concerns, and not on all of this. The banality of evil as it is.
Lomaev considers the first chapter of this book to be the most important. The one in which the devil's mirror broke, and the fragments fell to Earth. Some in the windows, some in the glasses, some in the eyes and heart. This is from Andersen. And with Lomaev they also end up in the gramophone and loudspeakers. It is not entirely clear, however, whether these fragments fly into them, or splash out from them, but, probably, both ways.
The image of the Snow Queen refers to the film stars of the thirties - cold, beautiful, refined. Evil can be damn attractive. The image of Kai is a true Aryan, infected with evil. But Gerda is timeless. Such a face, which was portrayed by Anton Lomaev, seems to be considered beautiful at any time, because Gerda is love itself, and love “is long-suffering, merciful, love does not envy, love does not exalt itself, is not proud, does not act outrageously, does not seek its own, is not irritated , does not think evil, does not rejoice in unrighteousness, but rejoices in the truth; bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.” This is the kind of Gerda both Andersen and Lomaev have.
Kai and Gerda grow up from page to page. At the beginning they are small, naive children, and at the end they are a boy and a girl, and this combination suggests a happy ending. But that’s in ordinary fairy tales, but what about Lomaev? Alas, a happy ending is hardly possible for him. Kai has returned, but he is mortally wounded, as can be seen from his face. The war has not yet begun, but Kai has already seen everything. The last spread of the book is a large illustration in the spirit of family albums. Apparently, a photo from the wedding of Kai and Gerda. Gerda smiles timidly and looks to the future, but Kai has no hope in his eyes. He is forever “firmly sealed into this ice, he is in it like a fly in amber.” What a bright future there is.
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