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Bridgewater Review Volume 30 | Issue 2 Article 6 Dec-2011 Mexico Through the Russian Gaze: Olga Costa in Guanajuato Yulia Stakhnevich Bridgewater State University, [email protected] Recommended Citation Stakhnevich, Yulia (2011). Mexico Through the Russian Gaze: Olga Costa in Guanajuato. Bridgewater Review, 30(2), 10-13. Available at: http://vc.bridgew.edu/br_rev/vol30/iss2/6 This item is available as part of Virtual Commons, the open-access institutional repository of Bridgewater State University, Bridgewater, Massachusetts. did she ever experience Russian toska ? Although somewhat ambiguous in meaning, тоска [toska] permeates Russian worldview on many levels and is often connected to the feelings of displacement and loss. Vladimir Nabokov best described in it in his Commentary to Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin : “No single word in English renders all the shades of toska. At its deep - est and most painful, it is a sensa - tion of great spiritual anguish, often without any specific cause. At less morbid levels, it is a dull ache of the soul, a longing with nothing to long for, a sick pining, a vague restlessness, mental throes, yearning. In particular cases, it maybe the desire for somebody or something Costa, Olga. Vendedora de frutas . 1951. Oil on canvas.The Museum of Modern Art, Mexico City. specific, nostalgia, lovesickness. At the lowest level, it grades into MexicoThrough the Russian Gaze: ennui, boredom.” Being Russian myself, I am not inocu - Olga Costa in Guanajuato lated against the occasional bouts of Yulia Stakhnevich toska, and towards the middle of my n 2003, I went to the Mexican town of Guanajuato stay in Guanajuato, I realized that I might have been suffering from it to work on my Spanish.What made this trip also.The desire to establish a personal memorable though was not the learning of Spanish, connection to a new country while I renewing my links to my first language but a serendipitous encounter with the legacy of and culture led me serendipitously to a Olga Costa, a Mexican artist of Russian descent. further exploration of Olga Costa’s life. I arrived in Guanajuato in early May at to do. I practiced my Spanish, learned Born in 1913 to Jacob Kostakowsky the end of the dry season. Everything how to dance salsa, took classes in and Ana Fabricant, émigrés from was covered with a thin layer of dust. cooking, and made new friends, both Odessa, then tsarist Russia, her journey Vegetation had turned grey, and temper - Mexican and expatriate. exemplifies the complexity of connec - atures never went below 90 degrees. tions between creativity and one’s first I have to admit that initially I didn’t pay When I was leaving in late July, the rainy language and culture, a topic that has a too much attention to accounts of the season was in full swing: torrential rains deeply personal meaning to me as an sightings of rare and exotic Russians in came in the afternoons washing down immigrant. Issues of identity and the middle of Mexico: after all, when the streets and making the trees and the creativity, of course, transcend the you travel, you want to learn something bushes green and lush again. Regardless personal; they have a broader political new, experience things that take you out of the season, for someone like myself appeal. For instance, recently Russia has of your routine. But as time went by, I who was born and raised in the urban been attempting to reclaim the cultural couldn’t stop thinking about the strange jungle of Moscow, Guanajuato felt legacy of Russian artists displaced by Russian woman my hosts mentioned in magical. It struck me as a place where twentieth century politics and war. conversations.What intrigued me about time stood still, where people moved Russians have long had a deeply rooted her was that she was not a transient visi - at a leisurely pace, and leaving your belief that although creativity is individ - tor; she came to Guanajuato and stayed. guidebook behind was the right thing ual, it must be fed by the artist’s native How and why did that happen? And 10 Bridgewater Review milieu and that maintaining a strong and wife in Russian.The choice of the the League of Nations afterWorldWar I connection to Russian culture and language is a powerful tribute to the to stateless persons. language is necessary for the expression significance that the Russian language The transition to their new country of Russian creativity. had for Olga’s parents: it was the lan - was not smooth.Their luggage, consist - guage of intimacy, of remembrance. This view, no matter how naïve, is so ing of books, musical notations, Jacob’s prevalent in the Russian psyche that After the amnesty, the family reunited finished and unfinished compositions, it has always played a role in how the in Berlin where Russianness was in the and his cherished violin, all mysteriously Russian public viewed artists in self- air: it was in the food stores, bookstalls, disappeared at customs, leaving the imposed or government-sponsored coffee shops, and in the music halls family stranded in the port city with exiles: with pity, sorrow, or disdain. where her father worked. But by 1925, limited financial resources and no Although some might question Olga’s the German economy was improving, Spanish language skills. Russianness by pointing out that she making life more expensive for Russian In their first days in Mexico, the was born in Germany, soon after her émigrés.The result was devastating to Kostakowsky family experienced differ - birth the family moved from Leipzig the Russian community with many ent aspects of their new surroundings. to Berlin, which at that time became choosing to leave Berlin for Paris, The parents had to garner assistance the cultural capital of the Russian NewYork, or elsewhere. For the from the German Consulate to ensure expatriate community. Kostakowsky family that elsewhere family subsistence and were engaged in was Mexico, the country that Lya Olga’s father, a professional musician, frustrating and ultimately unsuccessful Cardoza later described as “país revolu - actively participated in the Bavarian communications with customs officials cionario y lleno de nuevos horizontes” Socialist Revolution in 1919 and, after about their lost or stolen luggage.They (“a revolutionary country full of new its defeat, was incarcerated but escaped also fretted about train bandits and sent horizons”).The family began their the fate of hundreds who were exe - telegrams imploring relatives to wire transatlantic voyage in the French port cuted. According to Lya Cardoza (Olga’s money to help pay the family’s fare to of Saint-Nazaire where they boarded younger sister), as a reminder of his time Mexico City. Meanwhile, Olga and the vessel “Espagne,” arriving in the in prison, he always carried a pocket her sister marveled at the strange new Mexican port ofVeracruz on the seventh watch on which he had scratched the vibrant colors of Mexico. In contrast of September in 1925.They carried names of his (then only daughter), Olga, to monochromatic Berlin,Veracruz Nansen passports, which were issued by instantly overwhelmed them with its array of tropical flowers, dark-skinned people, soft, lush breezes of the ocean carrying new scents, brightly robed vendedores selling strange and exotic fruits, and the rolling sounds of Spanish that they heard from street vendors and the maids at the hotel. In his monograph on Olga Costa, Sergio Pitol quotes (in translation) Olga’s recollections of that first month inVeracruz. “We arrived inVeracruz during the strike of tenant farmers.The city was covered with red and black flags. For me everything stood out: houses with wooden windows painted in green, the appearance of the people, the movement of air at dusk, the sky that sometimes became all black with vultures, the insects, the bread.The first time Costa, Olga. Untitled . 1936. Oil on board. Author’s collection. December 2011 11 that I entered the bathroom I dis - “The country of red flowers, In her later paintings Olga drew both covered in the bathtub a huge black discovered in a mind intoxicated from her initial impressions of Mexico tarantula. Also I remember a maid by the Sun and enamored of the and made artistic references to the at the hotel; she was tall and skinny Moon, and the Evening Star, the imagery conjured up by Balmont: “the and always wore a dress of yellow Morning Star. A country of multi - country of red flowers” lived on in many stiff muslin; in the mouth sparkled a colored flowers and of birds with of her paintings, especially in landscapes gold tooth.With a cigarette in one bright feathers, azure, green, the and still lifes. In her interviews, she indi - hand and chamber pots from the shade of all precious stones. A cated that the impressions of seeing the rooms in the other, she walked in country of bloody spectacles and unspoiled beauty of Mexico stayed with the hallway like a queen.” of refined reverence, of legends her throughout her life and influenced truthful and of reality improbable, her work. For example, Olga’s most Although the Kostakowskys’ impres - of colorful hieroglyphs and pyra - famous painting, Vendedora de frutas sions of Mexico were personal, it stands mid-shaped cathedrals, of slow (Female Fruit Seller) from 1951 cele - to reason that they were also influenced words and the quick knife, of brates a traditional market scene, using by the popular writings of Konstantin eternal Spring-eternal Autumn. bright colors and featuring a cornucopia Balmont, a famous Russian symbolist A country whose history is a tale, of fruit.The depiction of the seller her - poet who visited Mexico in 1905.

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