Kote Bolkvadze: David Natidze, Resistance

David Natidze’s Sculpture Resistance

Tbilisi Public Art Fund implements several projects to promote contemporary art through a multi-layered and heterogeneous process, mainly focusing on a dialogue between society, the wider public, and modern art. The dialogue includes interaction, communication, and intervention into a daily routine while transforming an urban image. The development of the Fund intends to shape cultural spaces thanks to complete coverage of the locations of the capital city by different artists and mediums. Until now, Georgia has not operated a modern art museum on its territory. Therefore, we can consider this project to serve as a "temporary exhibition," an "urban and cultural institution" that contributes to the transparent promotion of awareness on contemporary art and secures access to it. The artist and his work are perceived as a game, a dialogue, a way of generating opposite ideas. The project's innovative character lies in developing large-scale art, which extends beyond the museum format and traditional art practices.

David Natidze, Resistance, 2023, Avlabari Square

David Natidze's sculpture Resistance belongs to one of the most important projects realized by the Fund so far. Depending on the action plan of the Fund, be it its visual or ideological priorities, the sculpture, located at the Avlabari Square, definitely raises questions in professional and non-professional circles, which are concerned with the general issues related to the "landscape" of the city. To understand the essence and value of this work, one should consider undoubtedly key factors like analysis of Davit Natidze's visual language and signature features, the struggle of Western modernist sculpture with the classical school, Georgian Soviet sculpture, and its propaganda among the masses. Before discussing the listed issues, I will offer you my vision regarding Resistance. 

The following aspects of Natidze's sculpture led to the emergence of different opinions in the public: its incompatibility and merging with the location and environment, kitschy and classical aesthetics, specific and, at the same time, abstract messages related to urgent social and political issues, etc. The above-mentioned irrevocable assessments refer to the goal of the Fund to use the sculpture as a tool to get involved in the project professional as well as amateur social circles and raise awareness about contemporary art through interaction among those who were not primarily familiar with the realm. They started communicating with the image and translating its messages into everyday life.

Davit Natidze's sculpture Resistance from the Avlabari Square is a "self-sufficient" entity that implies the unity of plasticity, title, concept, spoken language of material, and relationship with the space. The frontal section of the portrait, which is made of Portuguese beige limestone, shows the fluttering textile of drapery, the isolated facial features, and the expressions alienated from the environment. The title Resistance and the flapping of draped fabric evoke the pathos of heroism. Sculpture that possesses this dramaturgy cannot possibly depict an isolated person or a lyrical character. On the contrary, we look at a particular type of protagonist devoid of any poetics. His resilience and confrontation resemble specific social and political responsibility or commitment. This hints at the birth of a savior and a tireless hero as if he is preparing himself to appear on the stage where waving of the cloth is associated with the social call for "encore!" The interpretation and its rational arguments may be diverse. Even the "poster-like nature" of the sculpture is highlighted by a simple slogan and an image. The dynamics of the material invite the viewers to engage rather than reflect. The sculpture is not contemplative, poetic, mythological, or erotic. The wind is social and political and does not relate to the ideological understanding of the sculptural image or poetic relationship with the location. The background of the sculpture shows the renovated Avlabari Square and the dark-colored pedestal. The work's entire fabric demonstrates the fight's significance, consistency of ideals, and confrontation towards the gray world and reality. The flattering of the cloth, which is Natidze's well-thought theatrical and dramaturgical exaggeration combined with the illogical location of the sculpture, illustrates the act of Resistance (the renovated location, the dark pedestal, and the romantic sculpture turn into a visible visual resistance or weightlessness).

Interestingly, the Fund mainly promotes contemporary art, replacing almost traditional understanding of beauty, delicacy, and mediums with provocative messages and conceptualism. The artist and his work do not play with the space during the representation. Instead, the works consistently speak to us and reveal their aesthetic and ideological appearances.

Based on its content and plastic forms, Resistance finds itself on the delicate verge of realism and abstraction, kitsch and intentionally exaggerated classicism, Modernism, and traditional schools. Natidze's sculptural signature resembles a photograph and a poster at the same time, being terse and expressive, able to capture diverse types of stone and minerals without losing the quality of the material and showing the spontaneity generated in the process of creation on the "film," i.e., the stone. His modernist, minimalist sculptural forms grow from the knowledge of classical and traditional schools and their skillful deconstruction. In this sculpture, Natidze purposefully wanders among the classical nuances and applies them as quotations to focus on Resistance while repelling the pathos by abstracting the shapes and freezing them in the plastic flow. Subsequently, even if we are unfamiliar with the artist’s work, it is impossible to attribute this sculpture to kitsch.

The sculpture Resistance reminds us of many renowned artists who explored the phenomenon of petrification, anticipation, and silence in a creative way. Among them are Giorgio de Chirico (metaphysical painting) and Sergo Kobuladze silence, whose sculptural, laconic, petrified human figures represent alienation and opposition to fascism and Soviet ideology.

Davit Natidze graduated from the Tbilisi State Academy of Arts, Faculty of Sculpture in 1994 and continued his studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Antwerp. The artist cooperates with numerous galleries and works as a restoration/renovation expert and an instructor. 

Vera Pagava, Still Life

Davit Natidze's sculptures can be united under several categories, including figurative, realistic, abstract, classical, organic, and conditional. Most of his sculptures are produced on the edge of authentic and abstract images, emphasizing naivety, intentional kitsch, polychrome and monochrome texture, and transparency of the material. The works that are made by applying more or less classical or traditional sculptural methods are wrapped in drapery, demonstrating covered anatomy, dynamics, and drama. In several works, figurative sculptures are semi-draped or not covered by cloth at all. Light and dark textures, features, and the flow of minerals and stones govern geometric, organic, and conditional forms. These shapes are associated with more abstract and modernist schools: their plastic nuances and integrity are flat and dematerialized, distanced like frescoes, plastic forms, objects, and still lifes of Pirosmani and Pagava. The series of birds is saturated with purposeful naive searches, which transform from realistic images into black arches (crescent, Pirosmani’s piece of Georgian bread). The immediate and easily readable images of birds take fetishistic shape or transform themselves into the signs of the formalist Freudian school.

David Natidze, Untitled (Birds),2021

Davit Natidze describes his sculptures and manifested individual features as minimalistic. More specifically, if we think about them in the context of the European school of sculpture, the visual language of the artist varies between the styles of Western Modernism and a formalist school (from the 1930s to the 1950s), a period before the introduction of minimalist and kinetic sculptural traditions.

Barbara Hepworth, Zennor, 1967

Stylistically, Davit Natidze's name or artistic identity can be included in the constellation of the following sculptors: Alexander Archipenko, Constantin Brâncuși, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Jacques Lipchitz. Dream, eroticism, archetypal codes, formalism, and Modernism are the concepts that unite the creative expression of Natidze and the great sculptors. 

Even though the artist was shaped as a professional in the West and stylistically and ideologically is part of the European context, Natidze's signature features and a specific sculpture Resistance reveal the signs of Soviet and post-Soviet art. Monumentalism, withdrawal, pathos, heroism, traditions of realist painting, and creativity remind us of the features of the Soviet sculpture, which are preserved on a subconscious level or demonstrate a critical attitude towards existing periods and heritage. In general, the narrative, mastery, realism, and classicist story in Natidze's sculpture still indicate the artist's transition from the post-Soviet cultural field into the Western realm, where Georgian, Soviet, and post-Soviet cultural codes take the shapes of authenticity and difference.

The Fund and Natidze's project generally imply the relationship between the public space and large-scale art. The process started with sculptures made in Soviet Georgia, where from the beginning of the 1920s, the Tbilisi masterplan, urban development, and the Leninist plan of monumental propaganda contributed to shaping the Georgian school of sculpting. The city and its propagandistic monuments dedicated to different themes turned into representations of the existing regime, ideology, and prosperity. Until the 1920s, Georgian sculpture replicated the style of easel paintings on a small scale, being influenced by multiple schools and produced by different artists. The Soviet monumental school was primarily represented by Nikoloz Kandelaki, who was later joined by Iacob Nikoladze (Modernism) and several generations of sculptors. The works became propagandistic, large-scale, public, and based on classical and realistic images. This historical background distinctly differs from the Tbilisi Public Art Fund and Natidze's work. However, in a different historical context, both are united by the sculpture as a transforming factor of society and public space. Public sculpture is related to Soviet art and its ideological context.

Merab Berdzenishvili, Medea, 1967-1970, Bichvinta

To establish the references with the Soviet sculpture, its plastic features, and mythology, and to draw parallels with Natidze’s monument, it suffices to name the following examples: Juna Mikatadze's Galktion Tabidze (1979, Tbilisi), Giorgi Shkhvatsabaia's Let the Banners Wave on High! (1988, Tbilisi), Merab Berdzenishvili's Medea (1967, Bichvinta) etc. The plastic forms of all three Soviet authors (clothes, wind chimes, drapery), their content, and pathos differ from each other and Davit Natidze’s work in essence, but when we take into account chronological development of Georgian sculpture, it becomes obvious which are the traditions Davit Natidze's descriptive language derives from, what was the memory it has merged with the Western school, which critical positions does the sculpture Resistance contradict the Soviet cultural and political memory with. 





Giorgi Shkhvatsabaia, Let the Banners Wave on High!, 1988, Tbilisi




Konstantine Bolkvadze 

Konstantine Bolkvadze (1989) is a Tbilisi-based art critic and curator. He received a bachelor's degree from the Faculty of the Art History, Ilia State University (2015), and Master's degree at Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (2017). His research interests include: Soviet and Post-Soviet periods in Georgian art, specifically the influence of Socialist Realism and the ideological program of de-Stalinization by different artists in visual language. Bolkvadze has collaborated with a number of museums and galleries in Georgia, including Artbeat Gallery (2019), Davit Kakabadze Foundation (2019), Georgian Museum of Fine Arts (2018-2023). He lectured at the School of Visual Arts and Architecture, Free University, VA[A]DS (2021-2023). Bolkvadze has worked on a number of publications, including about Sergo Kobuladze (2023) and Temo Javakhi (2022), consulting art company ReachArt, about Irakli Parjiani, the Irakli Parjiani Foundation (2020), about Esma Oniani, publication Danarti (2020), Indigo magazine (no. 25, no. 34).