FILM REVIEW: THE DESERT OF FORBIDDEN ART

Directors Amanda Pope and Tchavdar Georgiev, and cinematographer Gennadi Balitski during the shooting of The Desert of Forbidden Art. Photograph by Ernest Kurtveliev.

Art thou Igor Savitsky 

By Allan Heifetz

In Western Uzbekistan, also known as Karakalpakstan, in the town of Nukus, there is a remarkable museum that holds the second largest collection of 20th century Russian Avant Garde art in the world. How did this remote desert village acquire such a great and vital museum? It’s all due to one man, Igor Savitsky, who started up the Nukus Museum in the late 1950’s as a safe house for beautiful and endangered Karakalpakstanian cultural artifacts such as carpets, jewelry and costumes.

Born into an aristocratic Russian family in 1915, Savitsky’s family barely survived the 1917 Bolshevik uprising. Growing up under communist rule, Savitsky trained as an artist. In 1950, while working as an illustrator for an archaeological expedition in Central Asia, he fell in love with the Karakalpakstan region and its people. He made a vow to save important remnants of the culture from potential destruction by the Soviets. Savitsky was officially named curator of the Nukus in 1966 and went on to discover the amazing work of an unknown school of artists who settled in Uzbekistan after the revolution. For the rest of his life Savitsky was driven to unearth stunning art from cutting edge Russian artists who were banned during the Joseph Stalin era for refusing to paint Soviet-positive propaganda.

Savitsky spent his life tracking down these treasures, traveling all over Russia and pleading with the often bewildered families of the artists to hand over their bounty. Imagine giving up your mother or father’s genius artwork with only a stranger’s promise of financial reimbursement down the line. Savitsky always made good on his promise, miraculously getting ignorant Soviet higher-ups to foot the bill for the museum’s expenses. Because the Nukus was so far from Moscow, Savitsky was able to bamboozle a clueless regime into funding a museum consisting solely of forbidden works. Due to his tireless efforts, the Nukus museum now holds over 40,000 pieces worth totaling millions of dollars.

Opening this Friday, The Desert of Forbidden Art tells Savitsky’s amazing story, and tells it well enough. However, like most documentaries nowadays, the film does not warrant a trip to the theater. Art lovers will hopefully be able to catch it on DVD, or better yet, watch it on April 5th on PBS, where it will be featured on Independent Lens.