CHAPTER 5
ROAD TO FAME
LYING IS DEATH
The years he spent on artistic experiments with images of flora and fauna in the Vepsa and Kizhi series and the images of man in the Kalevala series are extremely important for understanding of the later works of Vladimir Fomin. Working on Kalevala, he experienced a catharsis which led to a partial change of style. The painting space became more saturated. While earlier the compositions of the works were designed to have one central element dominate psychologically and technically, now they became more complex thanks to a more detailed development of canvas space. From 1998 to 2002, Fomin was working on several series simultaneously. His life entered the current of maximal artistic development.
In 1998, False Prophet, the first painting from the Peer Gynt series appeared; in 2000, Golden Dialogue completed the series. In 1999, Fomin created the image of Christ in Orange Crucifixion, which became the beginning of the Spiritual series. After he finished painting Christ, I led him to the window of our apartment studio, through which we could see a thick blanket of fog covering the houses and the lake.
Listen, I said, looking into the blind silence outside, we all wander in a fog. We are waiting for some change and cannot do anything about it. We feel that somewhere there is life-giving sun and brightly lit sky, something important for us. Our life is a fog…. Everybody, including myself, lives like that. Everybody but you. You can do whatever you want. Art brings us close to the impossible; that’s why the world needs artists. A painting blinds us like the rays of the sun, the music of the colors reveals to us what we are looking for… You need to create this series because you were given the gift…
When I start painting the Bible, Vladimir mused, the churchmen won’t thank me for my deviations from the canon. I am not creating my pictures to hang them in a church…
Fomin had correctly predicted the reaction of one of the church officials, who got angry after seeing the sketch to the painting Jesus Enters Kizhi on a Hare. After we met with the priest in a restaurant and he proudly took us home in his car to continue our discussion at the table, his attention was caught by my husband’s works. Naturally, he did not turn into an admirer of the avant-garde lubok and he subjected the canvasses from the Spiritual series to harsh criticism. I immediately responded, So drinking vodka and driving a private car is allowed, but painting crosses on anything but icons is not? The priest was taken aback, but the painting, unfortunately, remained unfinished for many years. Any unkind word about my husband’s paintings could stop the artistic process on that work forever. Even though he had a reputation of a cultured, calm individual, with a combination of charm and strength, his external calmness hid a sensitivity that led to the destruction of quite a few “unsuccessful” pictures, at least from his point of view, because for me they seemed close to perfection.
I have always thought that I have the right to work unceasingly on behalf of my husband just as much as he has the right to create, and I defended my right even when I was the only warrior on the battlefield. I believed in his genius even then, when there was emptiness around him. Religious faith is supported by art, church officials, and rituals… my faith in Fomin was not dependent upon anything like that. The condition of my belief in his genius wasn’t even love. No conditions – only faith, flowing like sand through fingers, like time, moving parallel to life.
My dedication to my husband’s occupation fascinated one of my acquaintances, a director of Karelian television, who decided to make a film about me as a modern muse. One day, during a program devoted to the political and socio-economic life of the Republic, he appeared on the screen and said: And now I want you to take a look at the paintings of Vladimir Fomin. After ten minutes of total silence on the air (the presentation of paintings was accompanied by neither music nor comments), the director was fired from his job. The third heart attack put an end to his career, fittingly closed by a shot of the Orange Crucifixion.
In 1999, Fomin began the Friedrich Nietzsche series, which he had conceived two years earlier; in 2000, the Maidens, Ladies, and Madonnas series, and almost immediately they were followed, in 2001, by the Mandalas series. In 2002, he started the Tales of the North and continued the Spiritual, Lubok, and Gifts series. My husband had become like a jet airplane breaking the sound barrier, ascending with an incredible, unhindered speed. He called this condition inspiration.
In 1998-1999, we became fascinated with old music and literature. The lute melodies of the 16th and 17th century made me dream that after many generations the name of Vladimir Fomin would be mentioned on earth the same way as the name of Peter Breugel today. This is the only thing I live for, I heard, immersed in dreams about the harmony which existed on earth in the very beginning and about the fruitless search for beauty outside of harmony. Lying is death. God is not a lie, Vladimir explained, making magic with his brush on his canvas. I believe in God, accepted by Einstein. I know that man is a biological robot, whose creator gave him the ability to develop. I feel instinctively within me the meaning of the expression ‘beauty will save the world.’ Beauty opens up the world. It brings to life only those who understand and carry beauty inside. It will not allow mediocrity and banality to reach the future. Beauty is the password to everything entering life and remaining in it. I know the password to peoples’ hearts.
Around 1999-2000, a break-through occurred in my Internet correspondence as my husband’s promoter. We began to receive proposals, related not only to the use of images of Fomin’s paintings as inspirations for personal artistic production, for designing compact discs, web sites, various publications, and theatrical performances, but also for instruction, lectures, defenses of dissertations and diplomas on art subjects. Beginning in 1999, Fomin’s art became a topic of study in universities in Hungary and the USA, from 2000, in Finland and Russia, from 2002, in Norway. The greatest interest was generated by the Kalevala and Peer Gynt series, which became frequent subjects of students’ compositions.
In the USA, for example, the students of Rollins College, in Florida, heard about the contemporary lubok for the first time from Professor Alexander Boguslawski, who opened for Americans the Russian master on the Internet by translating our website. In 2004, correspondence with the professor developed into friendship when he visited us in Karelia. Interestingly, the Spiritual series title was born thanks to him. The original provisional title, The Bible, did not adequately reflect the meaning the artist wanted it to have.
Also, Finnish scholar Irma Heiskanen delivered a series of lectures on psychology in various countries using a slideshow of her favorite Fomin paintings. As a sign of gratitude, she would send us unusual objects. The most memorable of those objects was an amulet that had belonged to an Indian chief; in this unusual way, Fomin acquired a kind of protective spirit from beyond the ocean.
DESTINY
Fomin loved Norway because it gave the world E. Munch, H. Ibsen, K. Hamsun, and E. Grieg. He painted the Peer Gynt: Henrik Ibsen series without having had a chance to visit the native country of these great men. Ultimately, he did go there, sat in the cafes they had frequented, saw their houses and museums, and stood next to their graves. Peer Gynt was painted while listening to the music of E. Grieg (Fomin dedicated several abstract compositions to the composer) and the jazz of Duke Ellington.
The Friedrich Nietzsche series grew out of the Gifts series. I always remembered Pushkin’s remark that in one’s life it is enough to read only a hundred books, but great ones. The works of the Norwegian playwright and Nietzsche’s parable Thus Spoke Zarathustra are in that hundred. But in the libraries of Karelia there was no Peer Gynt. We looked for it three years. In 1998, at a book sale in the center of Moscow, we got lucky. One of gray-haired booksellers sold us the collected works of Ibsen, published in 1956. When we came home, we immersed ourselves in the world of trolls, which merged organically with our surrounding artistic reality.
Later, when Fomin’s series became a sensation in Norway and its echoes reached our country, a director from a Karelian theatre tried to borrow my husband’s volume containing Peer Gynt, but he refused. He grew into Ibsen to such an extent that he cherished the rare book like a personal pet no one is allowed to touch. Fomin valued the Peer Gynt series more than Kalevala because he improvised more while working on it.
All great books derive from one. Both Ibsen and Nietzsche followed the Biblical path. After the forest folklore of Kalevala, Fomin tasted the fare of the gods and became fascinated with man’s nature to such an extent that we could not deny ourselves the opportunity to recreate the journey of Ibsen’s half-mythological hero to Egypt.
A year before finishing the series, in an interview, Fomin mentioned an exhibition in Norway as something self-evident, even though at the time it was equally insane to expect such an exhibition. But in 2000, when V. Goetz took to Germany the painting Transformation into Nothing from the finished series, Volodia became afraid that the series would be scattered all over the world, and he listened to my plea to meet a Norwegian, Jørgen Jørgensen Holten, the representative of the Council of Ministers of the Northern Countries. One needs to know my husband’s character to understand how difficult it was for him to take the first step in meeting someone. He almost never agreed to do it. But this time, he stepped in the open door and Jørgensen dispatched a petition to his directors asking for support for the 38-years-old artist. To his and our complete surprise, in 2001, Fomin was awarded a Grant of the Council of Ministers of the Northern Countries despite the rule prohibiting the issuance of grants for special achievement in science and culture to individuals older than thirty-five. Thanks to this exception to the rule, the expensive tour of Peer Gynt across Norway became a reality. But first, the creator of the series found sponsors – the corporation GlaxoWellcome and the firm Harstad CIC.
Thanks to a happy coincidence, in 2000, Vladimir happened to be in Jørgensen’s office on the same day as the delegation from the city of Harstad, headed by the descendant of the governor-general of the King of Northern Norway, Jens Harald Holmboe V, who was representing one of the projects of the European Union in the Baltic countries. Having heard about the series, he proposed that his colleagues see the paintings in person. Due to their insistence, the first and last Russian exhibition of Peer Gynt was organized. It lasted nine hours and cost us each ten years of our life.
THE EXHIBITION DONE THE RUSSIAN WAY
Several hours before the opening of the show, Vladimir complained to me, I really don’t want at all to have my shows marred by scandals. Why does it always happen to me?
The proposal to organize an exhibition of the series Peer Gynt: Henrik Ibsen in the Karelian Palace of Arts was made in June, 2000. In our apartment were visiting medical professionals from Harstad, Bergen, and Narvik. We were drinking beer and discussing our trip to Norway. Suddenly, the guests started talking about the international medical convention in Petrozavodsk, during which, in September, they were planning to organize my husband’s exhibition.
Vladimir gave me a despondent look. For a moment, I was desperate. We had agreed a long time before not to attract attention in Petrozavodsk either by exhibitions or publications. Our bitter experiences had taught us that nothing but painful consequences resulted from such attempts. But how could we explain this to the Norwegians who, like kids, enjoyed my husband’s paintings?
Seeing our confusion, the guests tried to convince us. We want, very much, for our compatriots to see your Peer Gynt. Moreover, the convention will be attended by 250 physicians from Moscow and St. Petersburg. This is an opportunity to show your paintings in Russia first and in Norway later.
I answered for Volodia that the Norwegians should discuss the organization of the exhibition with the Russians responsible for the preparations for the convention. We were given a promise that the officials from the Karelian Ministry of Health would cooperate with us. The evening ended with a lavish supper in a restaurant, after which we stopped thinking seriously about the exhibition in Petrozavodsk. In August, one after another, letters arrived from our Norwegian friends, asking us to confirm the show for September 15-17 and to get in touch with the Russian organizing committee. The rent for the convention rooms and the exhibition space had already been paid by the Norwegians. We felt pushed against the Great Wall of China, which we were now supposed to scale. The events developed according to the worst-case and most feared scenario.
While the Norwegian sponsors were dumbfounded by the difficulties with the show’s organization, we were listening to the trash of their Russian colleagues. For a month, our lives became dependent on the administration of the Karelian Palace of Arts in Petrozavodsk, which was the intermediary firm leasing the Palace to the Norwegian side and making the venue possible, and upon the bureaucrats from the Karelian Ministry of Health, who could not reach an agreement.
The director of the Palace sent Fomin to her assistants and they, according to established Russian tradition, to the administrator. The administrator threatened that she would not allocate even an inch of the wall space, would not allow even one nail to be put in it, and would not even provide a stool to help hang the pictures. You think you’ll sell the pictures to the Norwegians? You won’t! she thundered at my husband, and asked for a bribe. Fomin told me that sitting there, behind the closed door, he wanted to smash to pieces not only the administrator, but the entire building.
The situation required an intervention by the General Consul of Norway in St. Petersburg. After the Consulate made a call to the office of the Head of the Karelian government and to the Executive Representative of the President of Russia for the North-Western Federal District, the Karelian Minister of Education who was in charge of the Palace of the Arts called its director and all the disagreeing sides expressed full mutual understanding.
A few days later, we received a letter from a director servicing the convention, which read: You are supposed to exhibit only 3-4 pictures from 7:30 to 8:30 pm. Your wife and the press are not invited. Fomin had to call an ambulance because of my heart trouble.
Asked about the reasons for such an unexpected decision, the director answered, Nobody cares what arrangements were made before. The Ministry of Health is against your exhibition. Two days remained until the event. The heads of the means of mass information who wanted to see the local famous artist exhibiting in his own country were already invited to the banquet accompanying the opening. However, the press-secretary of the Karelian Ministry of Health and at the same time the director of personnel, who was not the member of the convention’s organizing committee, changed all the invitations.
Having recovered from my illness, I met with a lady from the organizing committee from the Karelian Ministry of Health. She washed her hands off the exhibition, telling me she was ordered to work just on the convention itself. Following the habits of the provincial bureaucracy, in which the smallest man is responsible for every blunder and after that – even the flood - I had a conversation with the press-secretary. He warned me immediately that he hated journalists, and started acting like a minister. Even if the Norwegians are paying for the convention, it does not mean that we have to dance to their tune! I’ll show them their place, when they come! He enjoyed shocking me and continued, If the Norwegians want Fomin’s exhibit, let them do it in Norway; this is our city!
I tried to elicit a more precise answer. Are you personally or is the Ministry against the exhibition?
We are not against the exhibition. We are against the combination of the exhibition and the convention, said the official, not daring to take upon himself the responsibility for the cancellation of the show. Fomin will eclipse our convention.
And Grieg’s music, performed by the guest pianist, will not eclipse it? After his statement it was difficult not to be ironic.
Remembering the flood, for two hours I tried to get from the comrades from the Ministry one answer out of the two – yes or no.
Yes, he absolutely should show his works, but under the condition that he should not give any interviews to any journalists. This statement put an end to our nerve-wracking conversation. I advised Fomin to avoid any provocations, knowing that if the journalists decided to come to the exhibition, nobody would be able to stop them.
The next morning, before the opening of the convention, its Norwegian organizers congratulated Fomin on the opening, expressing disappointment about the past events. When they entered the meeting hall, they saw the administrator and the assistant director of the Palace of Arts approach the artist, who was hanging his pictures. The Norwegians watched as the Russians tried to chase Fomin away. The director of the Palace, running in because of the commotion, admonished her subordinates who, according to her, did not know what was going on.
This is some kind of misunderstanding, she cried as she ran to meet the television crew that was trying to conduct an interview with the creator of the “Norwegian” series. We’ve been waiting for this exhibition for a long time. We are so glad that our famous master is showing his works in our venue. We have allocated the best room to accommodate forty paintings.
Indignant, Fomin, who had not risked bringing more than five works to the show and who was protecting them with his body, faced the camera and addressed the parents of the children enrolled in various art circles in the Palace of Arts.
Here they are taught how to draw correctly, he said to the camera, but they’ll grow up, and if they become talented artists, they will be treated like manure, like I am. So, mothers and fathers, think about it!
Of course, only the positive things (not Fomin’s remark) found their way on the air.
In the evening of the same day a banquet to celebrate the showing of Peer Gynt was given. Nobody who “helped” us organize the exhibition was there, except the lady from the organizing committee who kept repeating ad nauseam her excuses. When she approached me from behind and loudly said several times to the surrounding audience: You must see the pictures! They’re very interesting! – I almost choked on my champagne.
Have you forgiven her? Fomin asked me later, laughing.
I don’t understand what you’re talking about, I dodged. You said yourself that everything was done the Russian way.
This one-day exhibition became the shortest in the artist’s career. Afraid to leave his paintings in the Palace overnight, he took them home after the banquet without waiting for the official closing of the convention. Nevertheless, on that very September 15th, the Norwegians expressed for the first time a notion later quite often repeated in Ibsen’s motherland: The series of paintings about the meaning of life (according to its creator) was called a part of Norwegian culture.
“MAGNIFICENT” FOMIN
Shortly before 2002, a unique project, entitled Magnificent Lubok of Vladimir Fomin, was brought to life. For the first time in Russia an artist made a personal multimedia CD in three languages (Russian, English, and Finnish). It was a complete collection of works (paintings and graphic works), which included more than two hundred pieces from the period between 1990 and 2001, press releases, films, monographs about the series, a photo archive, and accompanying music. The work on the CD in New Zealand, USA, and Russia took a year and a half. The computer programming was done by the Petrozavodsk State University. Among the main sponsors were the Council of Ministers of the Northern Countries and the firm Stemmakaluste Vehviläinen.
The covers of the three language versions were distinguished not only by different reproductions of paintings (in the Russian variant, Ferris Wheel; in the English, The Scream. A Gift to E. Munch; and in the Finnish, Red Boat from the Kalevala series), but also by the title of the CD. The English and Finnish title, Sensational Lubok, proved justified by the purchases of the disc by some Russian libraries. It happened a short while before the Decree of the Russian Federation’s Government, On the ‘Electronic Russia’ Initiative for 2002-2010, was issued. It postulated implementation in public venues of electronic information resources, which, for all practical purposes, had not existed yet in our country.
THE ROAD NORTH
Fomin was the first Russian artist to be exhibited in The State Gallery of Northern Norway (Nord-Norge) in the city of Harstad, as he had been earlier in other galleries and museums in Scandinavia. Our trip was planned by the considerate Norwegians in such a way that, after traveling for 24 hours by train from St. Petersburg to Murmansk and then disembarking from a plane in the city of Tromsø, we were immediately given an opportunity to admire the monuments of the Northern Paris, as the city is often called. We traveled to Harstad on a steam boat over the Norwegian Sea.
On the 20th of April, 2002, in the evening lights of Harstad, we were met by the important officials of the community and Tromse province. They were surprised by the absence of luggage in our hands.
Does an artist need anything but his pictures? And they are here, shrugged Vladimir.
Later, the Norwegians joked, Typical Russians – they came with two tiny backpacks filled with vodka!
We did not anticipate that the program of our visit would require daily and frequent consumption of quality alcoholic beverages during meetings in various enterprises and in the houses of the “fathers of the city.” But, even if we had known about it, we wouldn’t have dared to break the Russian tradition – when you visit someone, bring your own vodka.
By the way, during our trip we experienced curious things in connection with alcohol. We stayed in a private hotel which belonged to two former artists – a dancer named Bjørk and a musician, Jan, who had performed with many of the world’s famous jazzmen, as evidenced clearly by photographs displayed all around the house. In their pleasant company we learned the meaning of the magical word skol. Every time Jan lifted his glass and pronounced skol, Volodia and I tried to keep the conversation going in Russian, assuming that skol means “school” in English and that Jan was playing the role of a music teacher. This led to a discussion nobody understood. Jan kept patiently lowering his glass without even tasting the cognac. This craziness continued until we realized that skol meant an invitation to have a drink, something akin to the Russian “to your health” (za zdorovie).
When we were told that the oldest living woman of Northern Norway, who was almost a hundred years old, would visit the hotel to meet us, we decided to celebrate the lady’s visit with French cognac. Unlike the Norwegians, who were used to traveling distances from one to three meters by car (in Harstad there were no sidewalks and no bicycle lines), we – who like to take slow walks several kilometers at a time – decided to go to the local liquor store. The director of the gallery Nord-Norge described to us some completely unbelievable route, from which we assumed that the store was located outside of the city limits. Somewhere half way between Harstad and Narvik (located in another province, in Nurland) we had to turn back. Thanks to inquiries of passersby that we met on our way, we found the ‘distillery’ right at the corner of the gallery, which we had left more than three hours earlier. This story became a part of their urban folklore and the inhabitants of Harstad enjoyed for a long time the anecdote about two Russians walking to another town to buy French cognac!
After having learned only one Norwegian word, skol, we felt relatively comfortable in the country, which astonished us by its tolerance towards everything, especially towards culture and children. We discovered the major difference between the Russians and the Norwegians. We, the Russians, are more aggressive.
THE EXHIBIT IN HARSTAD
We found out that the gallery Nord-Norge occupied an enormous two-story building that formerly housed a swimming pool. In several rooms, 39 paintings from Fomin’s Peer Gynt series were displayed. They were accompanied by 22 works from the Kizhi, Gifts, and Lubok series. Jens Harald Holmboe V personally helped in hanging them up.
On March 23, 2002, at the opening of the exhibition, more than a hundred invited guests gathered together. Two students of the Music School, M. Torvanger and J. Perander, in costumes of an Angel and a Viking (specially designed and made for the opening), performed on violin and cello preludes of J. S. Bach. The eyes of the visitors, watching them, shone the same way as when they were looking at the paintings in the series, which conquered the hearts of the Norwegians. All the remaining days of the exhibition, the visitors, while getting acquainted with the artist’s works, enjoyed the baroque music.
From the presentations by the director of the Norwegian Association of the Arts, Gunnar Knutsson, and the gallery’s director, Jan Pedersen, we learned what kind of adventures our paintings had undergone on their way from Russia to Norway. Such merchandise was a special case in the experiences of the Finnish and Norwegian customs officials. In Russia, all the necessary documents had been obtained and there were no problems with the paintings’ arrival in Finland. But then the Finnish customs officials refused to release the paintings to the Norwegians. Jens Harald Holmboe V had to pull all his diplomatic strings to save Fomin’s Peer Gynt. Accordingly, during the opening, everybody praised him for expenditures and the risks he took upon himself in connection with the show’s organization.
We were told that the exhibit was visited by an extraordinary number of people arriving by car and boat from other cities. Tens of buses brought students and school children to see, as the press called it, the Russian Peer Gynt.
The newspaper Harstad Tidende noted that fortunately, the first showing of the series took place not in Oslo, but in Harstad, because the artist wanted to become suffused with the beauty of the mountains, fjords, and the sea, described by H. Ibsen in his drama, and that despite the calm character of the author, his pictures are explosions of emotions, colors, and motifs. It was justly noted that when Fomin was 19 years of age, he had decided to become an artist and live like E. Munch.
Even one of the major Norwegian journals, KK, devoted exclusively to fashion, published one of the paintings and wrote an inspired commentary about the artist’s work. The journal’s editor purchased one of Vladimir’s paintings.
We were given a chance to make a short trip along the route which before us had been suggested to the former President of the USSR, Mikhail Gorbachev and his stellar spouse Raisa Maximovna. That’s how we found ourselves in a little town, Trastad, in a special Institute researching people with arrested psychological development. The town’s museum, the Trastad Samlinger, had the world’s largest collection of the works of the artists from Northern Norway. Fomin was asked to donate a picture to the collection of the museum of the mentally handicapped, but for some reason, he panicked, imagining his painting displayed among the works of the mental patients, even though, artistically speaking, there were some quite interesting works. Moreover, in a country that cultivates its national art, the Russian artist was treated exceptionally well and greatly honored everywhere. Perhaps Fomin’s refusal was caused primarily by his personal experiences in a psychiatric clinic when he was still a boy.
When we were shown the children’s library in Harstad, adorned by a painting of “a mad artist,” as our guide put it, I noted for myself that in no Russian institution for normal children would anyone consider hanging a picture of an insane artist. The library purchased a painting from Fomin, too. The city library, hospital, galleries, private collectors and lovers of art also expressed their desire to acquire his canvasses.
The program of our visit was quite saturated: we were shown all of the museums around Harstad, and in the Church of Trondeness – the oldest church in Northern Norway – a concert of organ music was given in our honor.
EVERYTHING FOR NORWAY!
Considering the success of the show, it is understandable that in April 2002, only 37 out of 61 pictures were taken to Oslo, to the Finnish-Norwegian Institute of Culture. And, true to experience, during the transport from the north to the capital, one of the containers with the paintings was forgotten and not unloaded from the ship. When the pictures were counted and the error discovered, the ship had to be turned back (it was already half way to Copenhagen) to deliver the missing works in time for the exhibition.
The show was opened by the director of the Institute, A. Björklund, and the Russian consul in Norway, Iurii Kvitsinskii, who admitted to Fomin: Thanks to you, the Russian Consulate received publicity in the major Norwegian papers, which happens very rarely… Apparently, as a sign of appreciation, the Consulate donated to the opening of the show a case of Dom Perignon champagne.
The Consul’s speech was filled with examples of cultural collaboration between the two countries in connection with the visit of Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin, to Norway. Among these exemplary events the Consul placed the symbolic exhibition of Fomin which contributed to the increased mutual understanding between the nations, enrichment of cultures, and strengthening of diplomatic ties.
The Norwegian press did not pay any attention to cultural ties between the two countries, instead, publishing articles praising the Russian artist, whose art enriched the spiritual treasures of the Norwegians and whose Peer Gynt series became the possession of the nation.
The papers Dagsavisen and Aftenposten wrote that the 39-year-old surrealist Fomin, one of the ten best known contemporary artists of Russia, had become the most popular artist in Norway.
The articles made Fomin recall the dissatisfaction of E. Munch with one of the two newspapers. The great expressionist, who was acknowledged in his country only after becoming famous in Germany, thought that Aftenposten tried to starve him to death, and for that reason was the worst… And yet, they sent a correspondent to me on my seventieth birthday, complained Munch to his biographer. I became so famous that they could no longer kill me. Are you from Aftenposten? I asked. “Be so kind and leave.
In Oslo, Fomin met Jørgen Jørgensen Holten. Together, they visited all the sights of the city, from the Wiegeland Park and museums to restaurants featuring Gypsy musicians, with whom Vladimir eagerly exchanged CDs. On his own, he saw about forty galleries, to become acquainted with the work of Norwegian artists. The exhibition coincided with the ceremonial funeral of the national hero of Norway, the explorer Thor Heyerdahl, in which Fomin also participated on 26 of April.
In the National Art Museum in Oslo, Fomin had his picture taken in front of The Scream by E. Munch. Shortly after his return to Russia, the painting was stolen. In a café in which Henrik Ibsen liked to eat, Fomin had a cup of coffee. In the National Museum named after the great dramatist, he was given a tour of the exposition. He could not have suspected then that in 2003 the museum would acquire for its permanent collection one of his works from the Peer Gynt series, or that it would hang directly across from the entrance. Fomin became the only Russian artist whose painting hangs in the National Museum of Norway.
In 2004, the painting participated in the large international project, Russia and Norway: Across Centuries and Borders, dedicated to the 100th Anniversary of Norway’s independence and the 100th Anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the two countries. On the 24th of June the exhibit, featuring Fomin’s work, was opened by the King of Norway, Harald V, and the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, S. Lavrov. The anticipated participation of the President of Russia, announced in the press, did not materialize. Only the former President of Russia, B. Yeltsin, was present at the opening.
In 2006, designated as H. Ibsen’s Year, Fomin was already showing his Peer Gynt in a museum in the USA.
