Oleg Vassiliev often thought about how his artistic world related to that of the previous century. Below are two examples of those types of works.
Vassiliev was intrigued that Claude Monet began a monumental painting that he never finished and that ended up being cut into smaller fragments. Where did the lost portions of the larger canvas (and the intensions behind them) go? Are those lost portions similar to lost memories? Some of the paintings in this group of works had similar dimensions to the fragments that survived from Monet’s unfinished project.
Vassiliev also often thought about how his relationships with his fellow artists related to relationships between artists during the time of Monet and Courbet.