Saint Andrew’s Descent, a quirky winding hill where artisans sell paintings and embroidery in Kyiv, is often compared to Parisian Montmartre. Sharing crooked cobbled streets, history-strewn architecture and amazing vistas, they are charming time capsules.
Of course, it’s unfair to compare French artistic reputation to that of Ukraine. While Paris is glutted with grand galleries and cozy art nooks beyond the Montmartre, Kyiv would struggle to kindle an artist in you. After St. Andrew’s and a couple of churches, we send foreigners away to visit Odesa and Lviv. And it’s not because we don’t have much to celebrate, it’s because we don’t know how. In this sense, France offers a great lesson on protecting art and history.
Growing up, French boys and girls attend schools with names like Claude Debussy or Honore Balzac. I went to school #1 in Cherkasy named after Vladimir Lenin but it quickly shed the communist association when the Soviet Union fell through. Most high schools have kept numerical names to this day though, and only the selected few call themselves lyceums and gymnasiums, also remembering poets or country leaders in their names. Kyiv Mohyla Academy is arguably the only higher institution in the country requiring an applicant to pass entrance tests on the history of the establishment.
Academically, our schools do just fine on Ukrainian literature and world history. But when it comes to field trips, teachers would limit students’ exposure to poet Taras Shevchenko’s grave in Kaniv and Kyiv Pechersk Lavra monastery at best. And that already would be a voluntary act on their behalf because the education policy does not encourage any cultural outings.
So, if we are not even interested in our students learning about culture and traditions, I doubt we can do a good job promoting this in the tourist sector either.
Take the case of the French. They consider an artistic profession a respectable calling and pump money into the industry, which attracts millions of tourists each year. Along the Seine, multiple green stalls are affixed to the embankments where street vendors sell art reprints, posters and small souvenirs. These metal boxes look as unfitting as mayor Leonid Chernovetsky’s green toilets along Khreshatyk Street. But just as Kyiv needs toilets because of unlimited beer drinking on the street despite official bans, Paris relies on its stalls to sell art work to swarms of tourists.
Each country has its own priorities, and sadly Ukraine is bigger on alcohol than art. Consider the saga of St Andrew’s descent, coiled up by merchants and artists since 18th century.
Around 2006, authorities announced its souvenir trade too chaotic and called for rearrangement. In other words, they want art trade replaced with restaurants, hotels and banks for a quick fill-in of state coffers and private pockets. To enact it, city lawmakers made a small amendment to the lease rules by equating artists and businesses. It meant that a painter who previously paid $5 per square meter in his gallery could no longer compete with a hotel that was ready to pay $100.
Artists often deal with arson attempts, electricity cutoffs, and locks changed overnight. There have been forceful takeovers and legal battles. Smaller vendors were required to change makeshift tents with metal kiosks. At one point, one wing of the market place that sold paintings completely disappeared. Given that St Andrew’s is one of the most popular art venues in Ukraine, one can only imagine what happens to smaller bohemian nooks.
Ukraine’s artistic community keeps petitioning as high up as the president’s offices but there are obviously not many art connoisseurs there either.
When I was telling this story to Muriel, a French vendor who sells prints of 1900’s art-deco posters, she was shocked. Working across the Notre Dame de Paris cathedral, she told me she was in the business for 30 years. No one has ever threatened her job. Once though, the French government tried to cut special unemployment benefits to art workers, like her. In 2003, artists rebelled against the plan by cancelling art festivals, striking on the streets and threatening to disrupt International Film Festival in Cannes.
Ukraine is big on protests too but rarely do they have impact. The St Andrew’s community, although supported by famous actors and artists, represents the nostalgic glance backwards with no purchase on the immediate presence. The commercial use of heritage places makes more sense as far as jobs and paying taxes go. But on the other hand, you can’t take history and culture away from its people. Places like Montmartre, St Andrew’s and their likes shape national identity.
And if the state keeps devouring its own history, I would not be surprised if many more Ukrainians choose schools de Victor Hugo for their offspring.
Kyiv Post staff writer Yuliya Popova can be reached at [email protected]
