Zurab Tsereteli - Charlie Chaplin in Tbilisi

Zurab Tsereteli - Charlie Chaplin in Tbilisi – MOMA, Georgia

From 15 May 2019, the Zurab Tsereteli Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in Tbilisi, Georgia, is presenting the exhibition ‘Charlie Chaplin in Tbilisi.’

Last century, Charlie Chaplin films were especially popular. The exhibition information states that ‘the magical world of Charlie Spencer Chaplin (1889-1977) fascinated the impressionable boy Zurab Tsereteli (1934-). Zurab and his grandmother watched the films of the adventures of the hero with a cane.’

Later, the image of Charlie Chaplin’s “Little Tramp” persona inspired Tsereteli to create a series of works in which real scenes from the cinema and the artist’s fiction are mixed, putting his hero into situations invented by the Tsereteli.

‘The world of the circus and Chaplin on the canvases of Tsereteli is logical and unreal at the same time.’ Tsereteli puts Chaplin into old Tbilisi (Tiflis)—now known as the Old City—where this character became part of the town, as if he were born and raised there. In Tsereteli’s artworks, Charlie’s hero is seen together with a street shoeshine man or on another canvas with his best friend Kinto. ‘Charlie Chaplin’s persona and one of the most colorful characters of old Tiflis—Kinto—have a lot in common: cheerfulness, a penchant for petty deception, restlessness .... And Charlie himself on the canvases of Zurab Tsereteli’s works partly resembles local Georgians by his facial and body expressions.’

Zurab Tsereteli’s paintings are pervaded with Charlie Chaplin’s principal message: good always triumphs over evil, and love is the main value of life.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of: Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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