In the direct and present emergence of “art”, the artist hears it speaking first-hand. He discovers that the language of art places him under obligation. If he stops making liberal use of this language, he loses the basis for the identity offered to him. At this point any imitation of art comes to an end, and the vast system of representing fictional events, popular history and false identities loses all meaning.

Софронова А.Ф. "В окрестностях Ярцева" Середина 1920-х

In the realm of politics, there is a perpetual creation of models of contemporary culture and stereotypes of modernity, and an endless emission of ever more precise cultural strategies and directions for how to implement them. The artist feels this constant pressure from politics. He understands that his own personality and creative work are merely the result of one of the already existing, even if not yet made public, programs for implementing communal culture. And so the artist tries to distance himself from all this. But how? After all, this political program is a unified realm of interpretation, where all possible meanings and connections appear, repeat themselves, and vanish with unforeseeable speed or consistency. This culture proclaims and demonstrates its infiniteness and limitlessness. This is a culture in search of immortality. It allows the artist to speak only the idiom that it has approved. And so, the artist’s most radical actions are merely considered to be reanimating meanings that are unpopular, improper, unimportant and potentially dangerous.

But in opposition to this culture, there arises an aspiration to recognize its boundaries, to locate those places where it is finite and leaves room for the artist to inquire about freedom.

As the artist attempts to reach these marginal zones of communal culture and finds himself unable to go beyond them he experiences something which allows him to at least speak about art in an attempt to give birth to a new language, an idiom which is lacking in the here and now. This is how the artist’s freedom converges with his doom.

The artist cannot go away. He cannot just die. He too takes part in the quest for immortality. Paradoxically, in a culture that determines the status of art and allows the artist to be an artist, he is able to be anything but a true artist. In a culture that encourages him to be himself, the artist can be anything but himself. Expressionism is an artist’s freedom to stop convincing himself to be himself. Expressionism is the pointed refusal to search for immortality, for the sake of a new birth that is neither self-evident, clear or guaranteed.