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Vania
Russian-born Vania Zouravliov s surreally haunting illustrations capture a mixture
of innocence, brutality, beauty and decay. Inspired by a diverse range of influences,
Vania draws inspiration from sources as seemingly opposite as Russian romantic
folklore, Japanese illustration and pop culture. His resulting drawings are elaborately
composed and demonstrate the technical brilliance of an old master.
In artworks that often depict beautiful women involved in macabre or erotic
scenes, Vania s intense emotional style evokes a nostalgia rooted in the artist s
Russian background and attributed to the imagery of Russian silent and art house
movies. His dark motifs are intricately layered and full of powerful symbolism, often
with sadomasochistic references, that are both provocative and sensitive and
which represent the vulnerable relationship between innocence and affliction.
As the first monograph on the artist s work, this publication presents the expansive
scope of an exceptional talent. As a prodigy in his homeland, Vania has
exhibited internationally since the age of thirteen, and has continued to produce
a vast range of work for both commercial clients and as an independent artist.
of innocence, brutality, beauty and decay. Inspired by a diverse range of influences,
Vania draws inspiration from sources as seemingly opposite as Russian romantic
folklore, Japanese illustration and pop culture. His resulting drawings are elaborately
composed and demonstrate the technical brilliance of an old master.
In artworks that often depict beautiful women involved in macabre or erotic
scenes, Vania s intense emotional style evokes a nostalgia rooted in the artist s
Russian background and attributed to the imagery of Russian silent and art house
movies. His dark motifs are intricately layered and full of powerful symbolism, often
with sadomasochistic references, that are both provocative and sensitive and
which represent the vulnerable relationship between innocence and affliction.
As the first monograph on the artist s work, this publication presents the expansive
scope of an exceptional talent. As a prodigy in his homeland, Vania has
exhibited internationally since the age of thirteen, and has continued to produce
a vast range of work for both commercial clients and as an independent artist.
- GenresArt
144 pages, Paperback
First published September 30, 2008
114 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
October 21, 2017
Eisnein's No.19 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.20 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
Vania Zouravliov & Japanese Ero-Guro: Fetishizing Disease, Death & Decomposition
The imagery contained in 'Vania', the first monograph of Russian-born, Edinburgh College of Art-educated, London-based artist-illustrator Vania Zouravliov, is designed to flip switches and trigger neurochemical reactions, often contradictory and mostly disturbing. He borrows heavily from fin-de-siècle Art Nouveau and Symbolism, both stylistically and thematically, particularly the delicate line-work of Aubrey Beardsley. But this blend of erotic and grotesque, the 'corrupted' Vanitas compositions with their sexualized Memento Mori, Symbolist-Satanist subjects like Salome with the head of John the Baptist -- ties him closely to the Ero-Guro artists. Inspired partly by Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo, it has evolved visually through the work of artists Suehiro Maruo, Toshio Saeki, Kazuichi Hanawa and Shintaro Kago. The Ero-Guro manga of Maruo combined gratuitous violence, bizarre sex and fetishized everything from physical deformity to coprophagia to Imperial Japanese nationalism. All of Maruo's sickly little chestnuts, including the Japanese nationalism, oddly enough, are slowly digesting in Zouravliov's artistic gullet. The broader themes that define Ero-Guro -- the contrast between the beauty of youth and decomposing flesh, between opulent, aristocratic luxury and decadent, sado-masochistic, scatological obsessions, perceived purity and the foulest corruptions -- also define Zouravliov's oeuvre.
Ero-Guru Pioneers; and masters of family-friendly manga and illustration, now with 20% more scatological bondage & cannibalism! Suehiro Maruo (01. & 02.), Kazuichi Hanawa (03. & 04.), and Shintaro Kago (o5. & 06.):
01.
02.
03.
04.
05.
06.
But it's the artwork of Takato Yamamoto that best links Vania Zouravliov to the Ero-Guro aesthetic. Both artists employ a fine, clean, solid line, complemented by densely rendered pointillism and hatching, meticulously detailed black & white Beardsley-style texturing, and carefully executed Acrylic colors. The overall composition is pleasing to the eye, sometimes giving the initial impression of abstraction; but the eye quickly distinguishes an intricacy that borders on overwhelming, demanding closer inspection. This method of compelling the viewer into a literal and metaphorical 'closer proximity' to examine the details of the composition, creates an uncomfortable intimacy; and discomfort shifts to the darker ranges of the artistic spectrum, as mummified infants, fetal skeletons, and hermaphroditic twins being violently turned inside out in a grotesque symmetry, quickly resolve as a species of waking nightmare. Thematically, they're exploring the same fucked-up terrain, including a very specific fascination with androgyny, hermaphrodism, and chimerism, occasionally linked with their corresponding mythological corollaries. The Art Nouveau influence is immediately recognizable through the mutations of style that time and visionary talent has produced.
Three works by Vania Zouravliov:
Works by Takato Yamamoto (01.-03.), Zouraliov's artistic equivalent in the East, followed by more examples from Zouravliov (04. & 05.):
01.
02.
03.
04.
05.
Zouravliov came from a talented Soviet family, with an artist mother and art teacher father; even in the egalitarian-totalitarian confusion of Stalinism, elitism still thrived, and his destiny was still sealed. Celebrated as an artistic prodigy in the waning light of Soviet Russia, as a child Vania made television appearances and met publicly with the 'stars' of the Communist art-world, proponents of the KGB-approved 'Social Realism'*(P.S.). The maturity of his work was remarkable, given his technical proficiency and profoundly disturbing explorations of sexuality and mortality. I know... what moody, artistically-stricken youth isn't all hung up on death and fucking? Plenty. All of them. Whatever. But how many of those kids harness that obsession into something that isn't painfully, hilariously awful? Seven. Eighty-three. It was rhetorical.
Published by Die Gestalten Verlag in Germany, the copy I have is apparently the revised and expanded second edition. DGV always do a nice job, and this oversized 10 x 13-inch hardcover is well-worth the cover-price. My one gripe is the paper-stock. Zouravliov’s oeuvre is composed almost entirely of B & W and monochromatic compositions, usually on tinted paper that adds to the illusion of age, sometimes with a slightly more varied palette of muted and subtle tones. The paper is a matte finish that was chosen partly for ecological reasons… very noble… but there’s no excuse for using cheaper paper on a 70$ art-book. It’s still acid-free, and decent, but doesn’t hold the colors or the blacks with the crisp, vibrant tones of a good, coated art-book stock. That said, Zouravliov’s work seems to be suited for the lower contrast tones. The ochre and sepia add to the sensation that you’re looking at a 19th-century Daguerrotype, or hand-colored Stereoscopic slide; fading evidence of some long forgotten orgy-atrocity, the stars still hate-fucking as bleached-white skeletons, pelvic bones clattering and scraping until they break each other to fragments, and dig into the back and knees and feet of the next couple fucking on the bed of death, that will also be their death-bed, still writhing unto death and beyond it, still copulating as the carrion worms strip away their soft parts, so they can eventually join the ossuary, and the next couple can continue the cycle. That image, of a young, beautiful woman atop corpses in varying states of decay, finds multiple expressions throughout ‘Vania’. The literal proximity of sex and death might speak to the painters fears about sex and women, the physical and psychological dangers involved**.
This book is difficult to find online for anything close to reasonable prices, but a new edition should be turning up soon, given how quickly previous editions sold out. He's also become one of the most popular Mondo artists for his intricate and ornate movie posters, with other minor art-heroes like Aaron Horkey. As well, he and Horkey co-founded 'VACVVM: The International Illustration Cult' with a handful of like-minded Mondo vets, apparently united only by their steadfast refusal to follow a single common sense rule of traditional illustration... I don't think I've been able to read any of Horkey's posters, with their insanely decorous fonts; and Zouravliov eschews clear, instantly recognizable design for compositions that look like a gorgeous tangle of looping scribbles and micro-hatching, unless you're two feet away. But fuck all that. These motherfuckers can draw.
* P.S.: Painter Werner Tubke managed to create a vital and fascinating oeuvre behind the Iron Curtain, walking a tightrope over the bureaucratic abyss of East Germany. In 1980's Scotland, a young Ken Currie adopted both the politics and ideas of Social Realism, turning his outrage over the sickening squalor and neglect and greed he saw everywhere around him into something powerful and passionate.
** P.S.: That would raise interesting questions, if true. Since religion was outlawed under the Soviet regime, by following the pipes of such a neurosis, we end up with 'personal trauma' and/or the mysterious world of Communist sexuality. Anti-sex propaganda, perhaps? Indoctrination films used from early childhood to scare children away from sex? Sure, sounds fine. When you don’t have enough jobs or food to go around, scaring kids straight – or gay – might be a simpler way of lowering birth-rates. I have absolutely no evidence for any of this, and I’m quite sure I made it all up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong. Probably, though, given the ridiculous leaps I was making from one bullshit assumption to the next.
Eisnein's No.19 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.20 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
Vania Zouravliov & Japanese Ero-Guro: Fetishizing Disease, Death & Decomposition
The imagery contained in 'Vania', the first monograph of Russian-born, Edinburgh College of Art-educated, London-based artist-illustrator Vania Zouravliov, is designed to flip switches and trigger neurochemical reactions, often contradictory and mostly disturbing. He borrows heavily from fin-de-siècle Art Nouveau and Symbolism, both stylistically and thematically, particularly the delicate line-work of Aubrey Beardsley. But this blend of erotic and grotesque, the 'corrupted' Vanitas compositions with their sexualized Memento Mori, Symbolist-Satanist subjects like Salome with the head of John the Baptist -- ties him closely to the Ero-Guro artists. Inspired partly by Japanese writer Edogawa Rampo, it has evolved visually through the work of artists Suehiro Maruo, Toshio Saeki, Kazuichi Hanawa and Shintaro Kago. The Ero-Guro manga of Maruo combined gratuitous violence, bizarre sex and fetishized everything from physical deformity to coprophagia to Imperial Japanese nationalism. All of Maruo's sickly little chestnuts, including the Japanese nationalism, oddly enough, are slowly digesting in Zouravliov's artistic gullet. The broader themes that define Ero-Guro -- the contrast between the beauty of youth and decomposing flesh, between opulent, aristocratic luxury and decadent, sado-masochistic, scatological obsessions, perceived purity and the foulest corruptions -- also define Zouravliov's oeuvre.
Ero-Guru Pioneers; and masters of family-friendly manga and illustration, now with 20% more scatological bondage & cannibalism! Suehiro Maruo (01. & 02.), Kazuichi Hanawa (03. & 04.), and Shintaro Kago (o5. & 06.):
01.
02.
03.
04.
05.
06.
But it's the artwork of Takato Yamamoto that best links Vania Zouravliov to the Ero-Guro aesthetic. Both artists employ a fine, clean, solid line, complemented by densely rendered pointillism and hatching, meticulously detailed black & white Beardsley-style texturing, and carefully executed Acrylic colors. The overall composition is pleasing to the eye, sometimes giving the initial impression of abstraction; but the eye quickly distinguishes an intricacy that borders on overwhelming, demanding closer inspection. This method of compelling the viewer into a literal and metaphorical 'closer proximity' to examine the details of the composition, creates an uncomfortable intimacy; and discomfort shifts to the darker ranges of the artistic spectrum, as mummified infants, fetal skeletons, and hermaphroditic twins being violently turned inside out in a grotesque symmetry, quickly resolve as a species of waking nightmare. Thematically, they're exploring the same fucked-up terrain, including a very specific fascination with androgyny, hermaphrodism, and chimerism, occasionally linked with their corresponding mythological corollaries. The Art Nouveau influence is immediately recognizable through the mutations of style that time and visionary talent has produced.
Three works by Vania Zouravliov:
Works by Takato Yamamoto (01.-03.), Zouraliov's artistic equivalent in the East, followed by more examples from Zouravliov (04. & 05.):
01.
02.
03.
04.
05.
Zouravliov came from a talented Soviet family, with an artist mother and art teacher father; even in the egalitarian-totalitarian confusion of Stalinism, elitism still thrived, and his destiny was still sealed. Celebrated as an artistic prodigy in the waning light of Soviet Russia, as a child Vania made television appearances and met publicly with the 'stars' of the Communist art-world, proponents of the KGB-approved 'Social Realism'*(P.S.). The maturity of his work was remarkable, given his technical proficiency and profoundly disturbing explorations of sexuality and mortality. I know... what moody, artistically-stricken youth isn't all hung up on death and fucking? Plenty. All of them. Whatever. But how many of those kids harness that obsession into something that isn't painfully, hilariously awful? Seven. Eighty-three. It was rhetorical.
Published by Die Gestalten Verlag in Germany, the copy I have is apparently the revised and expanded second edition. DGV always do a nice job, and this oversized 10 x 13-inch hardcover is well-worth the cover-price. My one gripe is the paper-stock. Zouravliov’s oeuvre is composed almost entirely of B & W and monochromatic compositions, usually on tinted paper that adds to the illusion of age, sometimes with a slightly more varied palette of muted and subtle tones. The paper is a matte finish that was chosen partly for ecological reasons… very noble… but there’s no excuse for using cheaper paper on a 70$ art-book. It’s still acid-free, and decent, but doesn’t hold the colors or the blacks with the crisp, vibrant tones of a good, coated art-book stock. That said, Zouravliov’s work seems to be suited for the lower contrast tones. The ochre and sepia add to the sensation that you’re looking at a 19th-century Daguerrotype, or hand-colored Stereoscopic slide; fading evidence of some long forgotten orgy-atrocity, the stars still hate-fucking as bleached-white skeletons, pelvic bones clattering and scraping until they break each other to fragments, and dig into the back and knees and feet of the next couple fucking on the bed of death, that will also be their death-bed, still writhing unto death and beyond it, still copulating as the carrion worms strip away their soft parts, so they can eventually join the ossuary, and the next couple can continue the cycle. That image, of a young, beautiful woman atop corpses in varying states of decay, finds multiple expressions throughout ‘Vania’. The literal proximity of sex and death might speak to the painters fears about sex and women, the physical and psychological dangers involved**.
This book is difficult to find online for anything close to reasonable prices, but a new edition should be turning up soon, given how quickly previous editions sold out. He's also become one of the most popular Mondo artists for his intricate and ornate movie posters, with other minor art-heroes like Aaron Horkey. As well, he and Horkey co-founded 'VACVVM: The International Illustration Cult' with a handful of like-minded Mondo vets, apparently united only by their steadfast refusal to follow a single common sense rule of traditional illustration... I don't think I've been able to read any of Horkey's posters, with their insanely decorous fonts; and Zouravliov eschews clear, instantly recognizable design for compositions that look like a gorgeous tangle of looping scribbles and micro-hatching, unless you're two feet away. But fuck all that. These motherfuckers can draw.
* P.S.: Painter Werner Tubke managed to create a vital and fascinating oeuvre behind the Iron Curtain, walking a tightrope over the bureaucratic abyss of East Germany. In 1980's Scotland, a young Ken Currie adopted both the politics and ideas of Social Realism, turning his outrage over the sickening squalor and neglect and greed he saw everywhere around him into something powerful and passionate.
** P.S.: That would raise interesting questions, if true. Since religion was outlawed under the Soviet regime, by following the pipes of such a neurosis, we end up with 'personal trauma' and/or the mysterious world of Communist sexuality. Anti-sex propaganda, perhaps? Indoctrination films used from early childhood to scare children away from sex? Sure, sounds fine. When you don’t have enough jobs or food to go around, scaring kids straight – or gay – might be a simpler way of lowering birth-rates. I have absolutely no evidence for any of this, and I’m quite sure I made it all up, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I’m wrong. Probably, though, given the ridiculous leaps I was making from one bullshit assumption to the next.
Eisnein's No.19 Favorite Artist/Artbook. Check Out No.20 Right HERE. Go Back to No.1 HERE.
More Art-book Reviews
More Comic-book Reviews
More Novel Reviews
January 1, 2013
Macabre, bizarre, and mostly stippled. It is very delicate at times, and his use of line is deliberate and very calculated. The style reminds me of John Dyer Baizley, who is in and did the cover art for Baroness--but much darker. This is the sort of art that you'd imagine illustrating a collection of Akutagawa's weirdest stories. It is strange and wonderful to look at, but it may disgust some and make them feel uncomfortable. If it had a smell it would be of rotting flesh and ylang ylang, heavy and cloying and hard to breathe.
May 24, 2013
A beautiful book for anyone who loves ink and tonal drawings. Zouravliov's art is reminscent of Aubrey Beardsley at his most twisted and naughty. This is not a book for children; the illustrations are heady with the clash between innocence and carnal lust, death and hedonism. Yet the drawings are so elegantly rendered, it makes the material easy to enjoy. This is my favorite art book for its profound, dark beauty and the virtuosity of the artists' work.
October 6, 2012
Dearest Russia, I would like to to thank you for a visual and literary gene superiority. Don't stop breeding...
March 10, 2011
Bizarre dark art. Don't look at it if you don't want to feel weird.
October 8, 2012
Brilliant, dark and twisted. Definitely not for everyone
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews