Frequently an artist turns to the naive art through copying of the reproductions of the well-known works of the masters of the past. For instance, the canvas by A.Kuplin "The Nineth Wave" (after the painting by I.K.Aivazovsky). In his original painting Aivazovsky used the effects of the late-romantic landscape. The famous marine-painter was excited not by the real ship-wreck, nor by the unity of people facing the blind but severe natural forces, nor even by sublime beauty of the storming sea, lit by the raising sun. He was more interested in the possibility of combining them, creating a spectacular show, , attracting and shocking spectaculars' imagination. Kuplin is setting up the same goal. No doubt, he somehow succeeds. His non-professional copies are of different quality. Some of them are real masterpieces of naive art, others are just the samples of amateur art, and the third are pieces of kitch worthy for bad-taste public. What is common in all these works - the same attitude to the object of painting. The old masters' paintings are seen by the copyists not in the original but through the reproductions in the magazine "Ogonyok", where they all look the same. On the pages of the magazine these pictures exist out of time, out of place and out of real scale. Does it really matter by whom and when was a picture made: was its author Russian or Italian, Pushkin's contemporary or Dmitry Donskoy's? You've got a nice picture - look at it and work! These reproductions are used as the samples for painting, wood-cutting, drawing, embroidering by the artists who have no idea of each other and live in thousands miles. Great paintings of the past no more belong to the art history; they belong to geography.
   However, the amateur copies are not worth speaking about with irony, neither should we get affected by their moving nonsense. These pictures are seriously done, with true dedication of the artist; they have their fans and customers and do not long for either sneer or indulgence.