Art Friend heads to the Museum of Russian Art for a journey into the world of mushrooms
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Everyone needs an art friend. Art spaces can feel exclusive and art can be confusing, obtuse, even boring. But, especially with the right context, everyone can be a critic.
So let the MPR News arts team be your guide, your Art Friend.
This winter, senior arts reporter and critic Alex V. Cipolle and St. Paul chef Alan Bergo walked into a museum, and then later a kitchen. For months, they discussed mushrooms and art inspired by the exhibition “Russia’s Native Mushrooms: Botanical Watercolors by Alexander Viazmensky,” on view until Feb. 9.
Bergo is known as The Forager Chef and specializes in mushrooms and, well, foraging. Art Friend also speaks with museum curator Maria Zavialova, the artist’s longtime friend and agent Michael Peltsman and, with Peltman’s help, the artist. On this mushroom trip, the Art Friends encounter the ideas of mycophilia and mycophobia, the fanaticism of “mushroom people,” the craft and perfectionism behind botanical art and how much you need to know about art to have a rewarding experience.
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Alex V. Cipolle (voice-over): My new Art Friend is Chef Alan Bergo. He’s a mushroom expert. On a winter afternoon we sit at his dining room table in St. Paul, smelling mushrooms.
Alan Bergo: You will smell some of that fruitiness in these.
Alex: Oh wow. That’s definitely apricot.
Alex V. Cipolle (voice-over): We’ve been talking about mushrooms and art for the past few months. And more specifically, looking at botanical mushroom art at a local museum.
Alex: Thinking about this from an art perspective and your relationship to it like any final thoughts on …?
Alan: Yeah, I think it actually made going to look at art more intimidating for me.
Alex: Dang it. That is not the hope.
Alan: Because now I know, in order for me to truly appreciate this, I needed to understand, I needed to do my homework. I needed to have, you know, the first-hand knowledge of the intricacies that are in this. Then when I did, I had so much more appreciation for it. Now I think about all the other art that I might go and see. I’m like, this is like a side job.
Alex: Tell me about it.
Alan: I’m just being honest…
Alex (voice-over): Oof. That’s rough to hear. As an arts reporter and critic, making art more intimidating? It’s pretty much the opposite of what I'm trying to do. My goal with ‘Art Friend’ is to make art more accessible. In my loftiest dreams, I want to help make engaging with art a regular part of people’s lives — as typical as turning on a game or a podcast.
So how did we get here? And more importantly, where could we go?
Well, I love mushrooms. I love to cook and eat them. I love to look at their weird fairytale shapes and photograph them in the woods. I love that we know a lot about them, and yet we still know so little. They are mysterious and healing, funny and magical.
So I was very excited to see this collection of botanical watercolors of mushrooms at the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis. Chef Alan agreed to go on the trip with me.
Alex: I’m here with chef Alan Burgo at the Museum of Russian Art in south Minneapolis, and one of the first things I noticed about Alan today is he's wearing a mushroom t-shirt.
Alan: It’s like I’m going to a concert.
Alex: Tell me about that. What’s your T-shirt?
Alan: This is a king bolete and it’s one of the mushrooms that I expect to see here, if we’re talking about, you know, traditional, well-known Russian and Eastern European mushrooms.
Alex (voice-over): It’s a tiny gem of an exhibition. 25 paintings in the fireside gallery, a single room tucked into the back corner of the museum. The show is called “Russia’s Native Mushrooms.” The watercolors are by artist Alexander Viazmensky. He lives in St. Petersburg, Russia. He's been foraging and painting what he finds for decades. Some call him the "Mushroom Man." Many consider him the best botanical painter of mushrooms in the world. His work is in the collections of the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens in London and the Minneapolis Institute of Art.
If you’ve seen a botanical painting of fungi, chances are Alexander did it. In fact, before I started on this story, I randomly came across his Mushroom Art Calendar at Whole Foods.
Artist Alexander and chef Alan are both mushroom fanatics. It’s a whole world.
Alan: Forager Chef is my brand, my website. I’m the author of “The Forager Chef Book of Flora.” I had a show that was on Apple TV for a little while that won the James Beard. Most people know me from my website, which focuses on mushrooms and plants and roots and tubers and seeds and fruits and herbs and lots of things.
Alex (voice-over): Along with chef Alan and artist Alexander, a few people will help tell this story. There’s Maria Zavialova, the museum’s curator.
Maria: Maybe there is magic about them. Mysterious that you cannot quite always uncover, like you pick up a mushroom, you eat it, and that's it. No.
Alex (voice-over): And Michael Peltsman, the artist’s agent and friend of 60 years.
Michael: Since then we became close friends and corresponded. Then, in 1976, I emigrated to the United States and he stayed in Russia.
Alex (voice-over): Maria and Michael are from St. Petersburg, like the artist. But they’ve been living in Minnesota for decades now.
I wasn’t able to speak to the artist Alexander directly. So I had Michael ask him what music makes him think of mushrooms. Alexander responded the compositions of Johann Sebastian Bach evoke the joy of foraging deep in the forest.
Before we go into the gallery with Alan, let’s travel back to a night when the museum hosted a mushroom feast. The event celebrated the exhibition and put mushrooms in their culinary and cultural context.
Maria gave a speech. She explained that Russians have a distinct relationship with fungi.
Maria: When you talk to them about mushrooms, you will see that something is happening that’s not quite normal. You know, it’s not just talking about mushrooms, like something you eat, there is a passion there, and there is an obsession, for sure.
Alex (voice-over): Maria recalled her early memories of foraging mushrooms in Russia. Like many Russians, her parents taught her as a kid.
Maria: ... and researchers actually try to find out why some cultures have a fear of mushrooms. For them, mushrooms are connected with the underworld, with death, with something that’s dangerous, risky and poisonous. And in some cultures, it’s just pure delight, pure delight and passion, and indeed the obsession.
Alex (voice-over): And it is indeed a lifelong passion and obsession for the artist. His friend Michael says the artist was already in love with mushrooms when they met in college in St. Petersburg. They’re both in their late 70s now. Michael says the artist didn’t get a driver’s license until he was 72.
The reason? To drive to a mushroom foraging spot he could only get to by car. Michael passed along a question to the artist from me. How did he choose to dedicate his life to this? Michael read Alexander’s response.
Michael: (reading artist Alexander’s response) I fell in love with mushrooms since my childhood. Once, when I brought beautiful mushrooms from the forest, I decided to save a memory about them before eating and processing them. Fortunately, I was not a photographer. That’s why I painted them.
Alex (voice-over): Michael, the artist Alexander and the curator Maria were all touching on what is known as mycophila — a love of mushrooms. The counter to that is mycophobia— a fear of them.
Maria explained that Societies in places like Russia, China and Japan — as well as Indigenous cultures — embrace mushrooms. Whereas places like the U.S. tend to be highly cautious if not suspicious of them, at least historically.
Our pop culture does bear this out. One of the biggest television hits in the U.S. is “The Last of Us.” It’s a post-apocalyptic story. A mass fungal infection has blazed through the planet turning people into, essentially, mushroom-headed zombies. A doctor on the show explains.
If it’s not straight-out fear, we view mushrooms through a thinly veiled psychedelia. Like Alice in Wonderland, who eats a mushroom to go on, well, a trip of sorts. Or the special mushroom powers in Super Mario Brothers.
Americans simply do not have the same lifelong love affair with fungi as Russians. Chef Alan agrees.
Alan: You know, appreciation of mushrooms, eating mushrooms and mushroom foraging in Russian and Eastern European culture — we don’t have that here in the United States. We’re kind of having a mushroom awakening, but it is really nothing compared to how much it's appreciated over there, like it’s a familial activity.
Alex (voice-over): That is starting to change.
Alex: But as you said, there is kind of an awakening. I lived in Oregon for over a decade.
Alan: Oh, so you know.
Alex: And there’s a huge mushroom culture there, mushroom festival, really embraced there. And I feel like you’re starting to see that in Minnesota more.
Alan: Yeah, you are. And we have a really vibrant, forging community here in Minnesota — and fantastic mushrooms. I mean, we got, let’s see, last fall, we had a ton of rain in the fall, and I had two friends that picked over 100 pounds of porcini.
Alex: Wow.
Alan: Like in the span of a week. It was insane.
Alex: What do you think about that culture of fear versus joy? Like, what are your thoughts on that, especially here in the states, our attitude toward this?
Alan: I think it’s unfortunate. I mean, I think if people could, you know, an experience like the joy that I get from it. I mean, imagine a scavenger hunt that makes your heart pound, and you’re looking for things that are valuable and elusive. And they might not be there, but they might be, and, oh, maybe you find something you weren’t expecting that’s even better. It’s a thrill.
I think more people should enjoy it, and it’s a great way to — it's a great, easy hobby to get into that doesn’t cost you anything except maybe a little gas money, and can teach you and make you feel a lot more connected with the place that you live.
Alex: They also just have, like, such a lovely fairy tale quality for them.
Alan: Nature just makes the darndest things, and mushrooms are a great example of that. The shapes and colors and variations. It’s just incredible.
Alex (voice-over): Chef Alan and I are back at the museum.
Alex: So here we are, “Russia’s Native Mushrooms: Botanical Watercolors by Alexander Viaizmensky.”
Alex (voice-over): There are a few photographs of the artist Alexander, who has a naturalist Santa vibe.
Alan: That’s the artist in that big picture with the table full of porcini?
Alex: Yes.
Alan: Excellent.
Alex (voice-over): There are 28 mushroom watercolors in total. They feel alive. Alexander has rendered them as if they’ve just sprung from the earth. Bulbous and brightly colored, dancing against white backgrounds. Each is painted as life-size. Some are bigger than you’d think possible.
Alex: What’s really special about this is they're all originals.
Alan: Oh wow.
Alex: So these are the original watercolors that you will see prints of and calendars and books that are sold around the world.
Alex (voice-over): There are paintings of golden chanterelles and toasted-brown porcinis. And the bright red white polka dot Amanita muscaria, or the fly agaric so often seen in fairytales and Super Mario Brothers.
These paintings are portraits, not cartoons or platonic ideals. Each is delicately rendered. Right down to their flaws.
Alex: Something else that’s interesting is we see there’s a lot of imperfections in these mushrooms.
Alan: These are slug bites.
Alex: Slug bites?
Alan: Yeah, slugs love boletes specifically, and they’ll kind of take little bites out of the cap. So you can see, these are actual mushrooms that someone picked in the woods and drew exactly how they were.
Alex (voice-over): For each composition, Alexander includes mushrooms at many stages of their life cycle.
Alan: And they also have the mushrooms uprooted from the ground. They’re not cut because seeing where the mushroom attaches to the ground — you know, is it bulbous? Does it come out of an egg? Is there a sack? All these things are really important for identification. And then we have, like, leaves of the trees that they’re probably growing in symbiosis with. I just love all the info that’s kind of packed into something that, you know, is artistic and pleasing, but it's also highly informative.
Alex: Historically, botanical paintings were used as a tool for education, and people have been making them for thousands of years. They were used as a reference for doctors and pharmacists and gardeners and whatnot. So Alexander really carries on that tradition, and it is really important to him to show the whole mushroom, and he wants to show them at different stages in their life cycle.
These compositions may have taken several years to find the mushroom, the right mushroom to fit the cycle of each piece. They’re not necessarily all painted at once, like he’ll find one summer and then be waiting for the perfect one the next summer.
Alan: I know exactly what that’s like, because I do the same thing with a camera.
Alex: What do you mean?
Alan: Images for my website. I’ve probably written about 60 different species that grow here in Minnesota that you can eat, and I need to show images of them young, images of them old, at the perfect stage for eating. What it looks like and how they get cleaned, what it looks like if the rain makes the warts slough off on the cap, what’s the base look like? What are the trees that they grow with? Like, every single possible thing to help people.
Looking at something online and making a jump to saying, I trust this person. I’m going to pick this mushroom and put it inside of my body — that takes a lot of trust. So I want to have the most comprehensive information that I possibly can. But to get all the pictures of mushrooms at different stages — if we don’t get rain, they’re not going to come at the same time in the year. So you might have to wait three years, four years. It can take a lot of time and dedication and a little bit of luck.
Alex: Do you feel a kinship with an artist like this?
Alan: All mushroom people feel a kinship for other mushroom people. This is my guy. Yeah, these are my people.
Alex (voice-over): Chef Alan and I discuss thoughts or questions for the artist. The artist’s friend Michael is helping correspond with the artist in Russia.
Later that week, Michael met me in the gallery surrounded by his friend’s paintings. Alan and I had wondered how long these extremely detailed paintings would take. Michael read the artist’s responses in Russian and then translated.
Michael: (reading artist Alexander’s response) To paint one big mushroom, it takes six to eight hours. Sometimes it takes more, and I’m finished the next day, but I am trying to fit in one day, because the mushroom changes very rapidly. Sometimes it extends to weeks, months and sometimes even years, because I am searching for the appropriate mushroom.
Alex (voice-over): Alan and I also wanted to know if the artist had any favorite memories or adventures in foraging. Michael read his response
Alex: He says he’s had a lot of experiences with meddlesome rabbits and foxes.
Alex (voice-over): Two weeks go by. Chef Alan and I, and a small MPR News crew, are in his kitchen. He sautés mushrooms as I share Alexander’s responses.
Alex: And this I thought was really interesting. He said some of his favorite memories of collecting mushrooms are when he’s in the forest and it starts to snow, and he has to actually pick the mushrooms out of the snow. One time, he was picking mushrooms alongside a creek that was flooding, so all the mushrooms were underwater, so he had to, like, go into the water and pull mushrooms out from underwater, essentially. What a vision, right? Like mushrooms underwater. I thought that was really interesting.
Alan: That’s so cool. I’ve only picked mushrooms in the snow once.
Alex: Do you have you ever had any experiences with foxes or rabbits?
Alan: I got stalked by a wolf once. I was getting close to a den, and I heard yipping, distant yipping, and I went quickly away.
Alex (voice-over): Alan is cooking some of the mushrooms we saw in the paintings.
Alan: We’ll start with the shaggy parasol. Put a little salt on it. Those are so good. I can’t believe those are dried.
Alex: Should I just dive in?
Alan: Yeah, just dive in. It’s finger food. Just make sure they get a little salt on. They need that to open up.
Alex: Mmmm.
Alan: Umami bomb!
Alex: Oh, my God. I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those before.
Alan: Most people will never have one in their entire life
Alex (voice-over): I tell Alan what Michael and the artist shared with me. That some of his paintings may take years to complete in search of the right mushroom.
Alan: I have so much respect for that. A lot of people would just look at another picture and just add the mushroom, but that's fanatical dedication, and that is a mushroom person.
Alex: Well, because he could just look it up online, right
Alan: Exactly.
Alex (voice-over): We eat more mushrooms, black trumpets and morels. And a porcini ravioli Alan made. I ask Alan what he’s been thinking about since he saw the exhibition.
Alan: Well, I think the first thing that I noticed was that it takes some time for things to kind of sink in. And I really thought about how appreciating art is a learned skill. But even more so, because this was a topic that I have basically devoted my life to, I have a pretty high level of learning.
I have a pretty deep knowledge of it already, so I could see things that I feel like other people wouldn’t — like the slug bites on the mushrooms, and how much of an indicator of the realness that that was. And if I did not have that, it would not have really hit me as hard, and I don’t think I would have had as much of a deep appreciation for it.
Alex (voice-over): We take a seat at the dining room table.
Alex: This whole experiment that we’re doing that is called Art Friend is trying to demystify art and have it start conversations, and have people that maybe don’t typically live in the art world go look at it with me and just talk about it. So in that sense, thinking about this from an art perspective and your relationship to it, any final thoughts.
Alan: Yeah, I think it actually made going to look at art more intimidating for me.
Alex: Dang it. That is not the hope.
Alan: Because now I know, in order for me to truly appreciate this, I needed to understand; I needed to do my homework. I needed to have the first-hand knowledge of the intricacies that are in this. I had so much more appreciation for it. So, now I think about all the other art that I might go and see and I’m like, this is like a side job.
Alex: Tell me about it.
Alan: I’m just being honest …
Alex: No, I think that’s great.
Alan: Because, because I want, we want to, we want to appreciate the art and I want to understand it. I want to know those deeper meanings. There’s still only so many hours in the day.
Alex: I want to push back on that a little bit. Let’s take what you do, for example. I don’t need to know everything you need to know about mushrooms, to know that that was a delicious meal that we just ate.
I think that the same could be said for art. Like you don’t need to know all the fine details to understand that something is beautiful or moving. And I think artists would hope that their work could communicate that, regardless of education or background..
Alan: That’s fair.
Alex: Cool.
Alex (voice-over): Alan has a point. The more you learn about a work of art or an artist, the more rewarding it is. Alan reminded me that viewing art can feel intimidating, but it needn’t be. As long as we earnestly engage with art, there are no wrong answers. Already being an expert is not the cost of entry.
Most of the art I look at, I know nothing about, at least not at first. Yet it can still transport me. The unknown can be daunting. It can also be an adventure, like jumping toadstool to toadstool.
Alex: Thank you for doing this and feeding us and taking all the time. That was way above and beyond.
Alan: That’s the only thing I do.
Editors note: The mushroom exhibition is on view through Feb. 9. Thank you, Alan, Alexander, Michael and Maria for being my art friends. Thank you to Jacob Aloi for production support.
