Ukrainian Lessons by Charlotte Higgins review - when art and war collide

Charlotte Higgins' book Ukrainian Lessons is a subtly piercing exploration of the intersection of art and war in Ukraine. Higgins, a classicist and the Guardian's chief culture writer, recounts her visits to Ukraine, where she meets artists, writers, and musicians who are responding to the conflict in innovative and powerful ways.

## The Power of Art in Wartime Higgins' book is full of vivid and haunting images, from the cartoons that fall silent in a power cut, allowing the distant boom of explosions on the frontline to be heard, to the cataracts of larkspur that thrive on ground where there has been recent disturbance. She also meets artists who are using their work to respond to the war, such as Anna Zvyagintseva, who designs a bodysuit impregnated with seeds as a piece called Sustainable Costume for an Invader.

## Metamorphoses of Artists and Art Higgins is particularly interested in the ways in which artists and art itself are transformed under conditions of war. She meets Yaroslav Pilunskiy, a cinematographer from the Kyiv-based film collective Babylon 13, who is now working drones for the army, and Marharyta Polovinko, a artist who made macabre pencil drawings about the war using her own blood as a medium. Higgins also explores the ancient Greek strand of the book, where she aligns Greek myth and the characters drawn by Homer and Aeschylus with the present-day choices and agonies of mortal Ukrainians.

## The Importance of Art in Preserving Memory Throughout the book, Higgins argues that the literature and art made by Ukrainians during the war will shape the war's memory. She quotes Diana Berg, a cultural manager and activist, who says that "until the war is over, the best conceptual artists in Ukraine are the army." However, Higgins also finds that the artists, poets, diarists, novelists, and film-makers she meets still find ways and reasons to create, even in the midst of war. As Artur Dron', a poet and wounded soldier, tells Higgins, "for me, there is no sense in writing about war, but it's very important to write about people."

## The Solace of Art Higgins' book is a testament to the power of art to provide solace and comfort in times of war. She recounts a visit to an underground bar in Kharkiv, where she sees people listening with intensity to poetry, and a woman in the audience mouthing the words along with the poet Serhiy Zhadan, because she knows his poems by heart. As Higgins writes, "there is solace in art; here are ways to describe the incomprehensible; here is, if not your memory, at least my record.