The Dialogue of Absence and the Phenomenon of the Medium

This article analyzes the phenomenon of identity in the work of the Leningrad artist Igor Mayorov (1946–1991). Moving beyond the traditional art historical comparison “Petersburg Zverev”, the author proposes to overcome biographism and the search for direct influences by synthesizing Jacques Derrida's concept of différance, Pierre Bourdieu's field theory, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann's social construction of reality. The paper argues that Mayorov 's identity is formed not as a sum of internal qualities, but relationally – in the space of differences (a “dialogue of absence”) with Anatoly Zverev and other significant figures. The article then extends beyond this opposition by introducing the concept of “delegated expressionism”. Drawing on biographical context (the act of self-sacrifice, taking the blame for his brother) and Bruno Latour's actor-network theory, Mayorov 's work is interpreted as a result of “delegation”: the era delegates to the outcast artist the right to speak in its name. An analysis of the materiality of his method (using zuhanden / ready-to-hand objects) through the lens of ruin theory (W. Benjamin) and ontology (M. Heidegger, G. Harman) reveals his works as a “ruin of the tool”, where the creative process becomes inseparable from the result. Special attention is paid to the phenomenon of “phoenixation” – Mayorov's ability to stylize, understood not as forgery but as the rebirth of the lost (the “Nolde cycle”) and the highest form of service to art. Ultimately, Mayorov emerges not merely as an artist, but as a “medium” and a living archive of his time

Blame · Phenomenon · Social phenomenon · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Public Spaces through Art · Vladimir Nabokov Literary Studies