If he were a character in a fairy tale, he would probably be called the “Cheery Eccentric”. Anton Solomoukha might indeed enjoy that. Fairy tales – Little Red Riding Hood amongst others – fascinate this voluble painter-turned-photographer whose work breathes irony and erotic fantasy.

Born in Kiev, in Soviet-controlled Ukraine, Solomoukha boasts of never having suffered under Communism. In 1978, at the age of 29, he nevertheless seized an opportunity to emigrate, arriving in Paris at a time when it was “absolutely impossible” he says, to leave the USSR. How did he do it? Easy. “I married a woman who was doing a doctorate in musicology in Kiev. Her mother was from Guadalupe. I told the Soviet authorities I wanted to go to France to study the plight of workers from Guadalupe. Thanks to my wife’s French nationality, the Soviets gave me permission to leave for a month, and I never went back”.

Barbara Oudiz (BO): Life for you as a student and an artist in Communist Ukraine was not particularly difficult, you say. Isn’t that surprising?

Anton Solomoukha (AS): My father was an official in the education department of the government. That’s why I always had very good relations with big wigs in the Soviet regime. As a result, I never had the slightest problem in the USSR. All I had to do was phone the police! This was in the days of Khrushchev, when there was a certain degree of openness, and so my father didn’t work in a repressive structure. On the contrary! On top of that, at the age of six, I was lucky enough to win second prize in a worldwide drawing competition.

That experience taught me that it wouldn’t be necessary for me to study math and geometry later on. I hated those subjects. So throughout my youth, I concentrated purely on art, history and literature. Under Khrushchev, we were able to talk about Picasso and other Western artists and so I was able to come in contact with Western art. This was after Stalin and before Brejnev, so the 1960s of my youth were a little like the 60s here. We listened to the Beatles, to the Rolling Stones, etc.

BO: And after your military service, you entered art school in Kiev.

AS: I studied at the best Fine Arts school in Ukraine with a fabulous professor who was very well known at the time, Tatiana Yablonskaia. I studied there from age 21 to 27, and did two doctorates. It was a very positive experience for me, even though the courses were very classic and demanding. The level was very high and the selection process was extreme. Each year they weeded out dozens of students. Seven or eight hours a day were devoted to drawing, five or six hours to painting, and in the evenings we studied Marx. Or rather Marxist-Leninism.

BO: The Socialist Realism ideal was still in full swing then. How did that affect you?

AS: Socialist Realism was actually very good for us artists! We could earn money by making official art! Each exhibition contributed to the Revolution, to industry, to the Kolkhoz, or to some other official cause and so our work was bought by the state (laughs). We were the elite!

BO: And you became a successful painter in Kiev?

AS: I have pursued an artistic career all my life. There were moments of great success. I won many second prizes in painting and drawing competitions. I always came in second, though. And I know why. It’s because a gallery didn’t represent me in those days. I was independent, so I always got the jury’s prize, but never first prize.

BO: How did you get involved in photography?

AS: I’ve only been doing photography seriously for about fours years. While my daughter was at art school, she used to criticize me and say that I spent all day with my paintbrushes and never looked around me, never noticed what was going on in the outside world. It was a joke between us, but one day I took it to heart and made a decision: everything I hated most, I would study! And since I hated photography, I decided to take it up. At first I did it especially to flirt with women. I’d make portraits of women to get to know them. I used to save the images to use later for my painting. Then the Director of the Russian Photography House – which is like the Maison Européenne de la Photo in Paris – came to my studio one evening. She looked at the dozens of slides I had taken and told me: you have to become a photographer! So I started forging my path. Over the past four years, I’ve been in at least 70 group or solo exhibitions. That’s almost an exhibition every month. For a gallery owner, representing a painter is like marriage. Whereas the relationship between a gallery owner and a photographer is like adultery. It’s just a fleeting affair, a much “lighter” relationship.

BO: Tell us about your Little Red Riding Hood?

AS: Little Red Riding Hood was a little girl with her first period. That’s what Freud says. It is her sexuality that is emerging. And all the dangers that come with sexuality. The wolf, according to some interpretations, is the lover, according to others, the father. Why does the grandmother die? Because a woman is born, i.e. Little Red Riding Hood, and an old woman dies. The wolf, the lover, replaces the grandmother.

BO: And the visit to the Louvre?

AS: For me, the spirit of Little Red Riding Hood is like that of a newborn, or like the mind of a child. It is a new and feminine spirit. It is “mature” innocence. Why did I want her to visit the Louvre? I want her to confront life through art. I believe that the concentration of life can be found in art. I’ve understood more about history by looking at paintings than by reading books! This Little Red Riding Hood goes to the Louvre and looks at the paintings, and because she’s still a child, she imagines herself as the Infante Margarita in Las Meninas by Valasquez or as Suzanne in portraits by Rubens.

BO: More often than not, you pose in these staged series.

AS: Yes, but this is not out of narcissism. Although I see narcissism as a very positive thing! It’s the beginning of Christianity. Jesus’ most important rule is “Love your neighbour as you love yourself”. I love myself a lot, luckily! Good thing, because if you don’t love yourself, you’ll never make it… It’s often more out of convenience that I pose. Sometimes I just don’t find the right model. Or I replace a model in a photo when a shoot didn’t work out as expected.

BO: You always stage your scenes against a black backdrop. Why is that?

AS: Because I’m very disorderly, I need something that is a permanent element in my photography. Black is my favourite colour. Night is my favourite time of day. In the dark, light bursts out more powerfully and forcefully. It’s like an image is bursting out against a dark sky.

BO: What new projects are in the works?

AS: There are lots and lots. I would like to do a story about the relationship between the body and food. I’d also like to re-do all the advertising photos that exist and make them resemble works by Rembrandt for example, to ridicule them. I don’t know which idea will emerge yet.

Text by Barbara Oudiz