A random chapter from the book being written, OUCH: The First 40 Years.
Written October 23, 2006.
Hello, my friends, family, and collectors.
A lot of you know my artwork, but many of you don’t really know my story.
I am now writing my first book, called OUCH: The First 40 Years. Over the next few letters, I want to share some of it with you, beginning with my earliest memories and the stories my family told me about myself.
To tell the story properly, I have to begin before the first mural.
THE ROCK
My childhood was one of the most wonderful times of my life.
I grew up in the far north of Russia, in a tiny town called Kovdor, in the Murmansk region, above the Arctic Circle. About 30,000 people lived there.
Winters felt like endless darkness. Around noon, the sky would briefly lighten. Summers were the opposite. Daylight seemed to last forever, and even at midnight, the sky could still be bright.
Until I was twelve, I lived there with my great-grandfather.
He was already old, but robust. He never scolded me. I never had to do my homework. I could disappear into the streets with my friends, bring all my friends back home, stay outside day and night, and return whenever I wanted.
I was a street kid with an unbelievable amount of freedom.
I would invite all my friends to my apartment so we could smoke cigarettes. One day, when my great-grandfather found out that I was smoking, he told me:
“I started smoking when I was about the same age. In the 1920s, in the Soviet Union, I would walk around town picking up cigarette butts. The neighbors saw me and told my mother. It brought shame to my family. So let’s do this. I’ll go buy you cigarettes. You can invite all your friends over here, and you guys can smoke in the bathroom.”
The bathroom became a big party place for me and my friends.
We would smoke cigarettes. Sometimes, when we didn’t have tobacco, we would smoke newspapers, hoping we would get high from them. We would record funny stories and anecdotes on a cassette recorder.
Where are those cassettes now?
I wish I could find them, but I can’t. I would give everything to find them.
I got my first pack of cigarettes when I was eight years old.
The way I got it is a real story.
I had just started first grade at School No. 2. Behind the school was a garden where they grew vegetables.
One day, I discovered dill.
I had never tasted it before. I tried some and thought, Wow, this thing tastes and smells so good.
Then I looked around, saw how much of it was growing there, and said to myself, I bet I can sell this.
So I stole some dill from the school garden, divided it into little bunches, found a milk crate, and started walking toward the main store in town.
On the way, I saw a beautiful stone lying on the ground. I had no idea what kind of stone it was. It had many colors in it: red, green, gold, and silver. It was glossy and dull at the same time, and when the light hit it, it sparkled.
I picked it up and thought, I bet I can sell this too.
Outside the store, I put out all my bunches of dill and placed the stone beside them.
I stood there for maybe ten or fifteen minutes. Then a woman walked over.
“What a beautiful stone,” she said. “Are you selling this?”
“Yes, I am,” I told her.
“I’m going to buy it,” she said.
And she bought it.
I took the money. I was so happy and so excited.
Then I approached the store and saw a drunken man standing outside.
I said, “Zdraste, hello. I’ll give you some money. Go buy me a pack of cigarettes, and you can keep the change.”
I handed him the money. He went inside and brought the cigarettes back to me.
My first pack of cigarettes.
I was eight years old.
Looking at it now, it feels completely natural that I built my art career by selling on the streets.
I had already done it when I was eight.
I found something beautiful. I put it on a milk crate in a public space. Strangers stopped, saw what I saw, and paid me for it.
Years later, I would do the same thing with my art in New York.
I didn’t wait for galleries to discover me. I went outside, put my work in front of people, and learned how to sell it myself. That’s how many of you came to know me.
Maybe my art career did not begin with my first mural in St. Petersburg at the age of thirteen.
Maybe it began five years earlier, with some stolen dill, a beautiful-looking stone, and a milk crate outside the main store in Kovdor.
In 1997, in St. Petersburg, I would paint my first mural.
And I misspelled the only word on it.
That story is next.
Denis
OUCH