Mikhail Bode. March 8 in January

March 8 in January
Diary-38

Mihail Bode

Publication date: January 29, 2002

Why not celebrate March 8th before the deadline? Thaw, drops, rains and puddles, river floods - everything indicates that spring has dealt a preemptive blow to Mother Winter. Nature is in a hurry, and society - at least cultural society - seems to be in hibernation. For example, the Tretyakov Gallery missed a preemptive strike with its women's exhibition, which was supposed to prevent last year's international tour of the Amazons of the Avant-Garde . The Tretyakov Gallery (the curators of the exhibition are entirely ladies) swear that their project was conceptualized long before the “avant-garde”. May be. We spent a long time gathering supplies and then woke up as if out of season. However, in the bins of the exhibition “Feminine Art” there are more than 200 creations created by craftswomen over half a millennium, from the 15th to the 20th centuries. So, in terms of gigantomania, the “feminine gender” has outpaced the “Amazons”.

What Tretyakov wanted to say with this exhibition is not too clear. In appearance, it resembles a kind of mixture of exhibitions: 1) ancient Russian art and painting (shrouds, “airs”, shrouds, covers embroidered in the “tsar’s workshops”), 2) little-known antiques of the 19th century (paintings of the first emancipated artists, as well as wives and sisters famous artists), 3) “Amazons of the avant-garde” (it’s impossible without them), 4) “Soviet Woman for the Soviet Country” published in the 1930s-60s and Moscow’s annual “By March 8th” throughout the 1960s-80s (without they could have been dispensed with), and, finally, 5) feminist artists, often shown in Moscow contemporary art galleries. It turned out to be a kind of female tracing paper from the main collection of the Tretyakov Gallery, which is still stuffed mixed with everything and everyone.

The exhibition is so amorphous that any interpretations and concepts can be attached to it. Let's say, the history of women's needlework: from the goldsmiths of Godunov's era , to the ornamentalists - "world artists" of the beginning of the last century and today's young conceptualists working with soft materials. Or you can trace the history of women's artistic emancipation. And here we must again start with the royal goldsmiths, among whom were queens and princesses exiled to monasteries, who broke their eyes and pricked their fingers. It is clear that they were not allowed to paint icons. Here it is, the ancient Russian “right of the males”. Let's go further. During the Age of Enlightenment in Russia, the fine arts were practiced by august and high-society persons, for example, Empress Maria Feodorovna (wife of Paul I) or Grand Duchess Elena Pavlovna. But on an amateurish level: you can’t earn your living from an artistic craft. The visiting professional, portrait painter Vigée Le Brun was looked at with a blind eye - a foreigner.

The first sign of recognition of women's art fluttered in the middle of the 19th century. Sofya Sukhovo-Kobylina was so happy to receive an academic gold medal that she wrote a completely helpless picture with the scene of presenting this award. Although before that I wrote more or less decent Italian views. Following the swallow, others, inspired by art, flew. For the most part, they are relatives of famous artists (“darlings”), which could not but affect their work. Olga Lagoda-Shishkina, among other things, has in common with her illustrious husband her inability to paint the human figure. The Shishkinsky landscape turned out to be unattainable for her. Elena Polenova took a noticeable step towards independence. Further along the path of the “Silver Age” the heels of Yakunchikova, Delavos-Kardovskaya, Bashkirtseva, Zinochka Serebryakova , etc., began to click briskly. And then the “Amazons” arrived in time. Well, everything is clear with them, since a lot has been written. In Soviet times, women's art seemed to exist and did not exist. In the general socialist realist grout it is not very distinguishable. Only knowing the gender of the author can one say: there is something delicately neat and decorative here. And then they will be lies. And so, when it was possible, Soviet women artists, like male artists, were impressionistic, brutal in the times of the “severe style”, decorative and metaphorical in the era of deep stagnation and then moderately abstract (meaning those who were in the underground ). They almost didn’t talk about their own things, about women’s things and in a woman’s way. With “perestroika” and the subsequent liberal indulgences, the female artists (namely girls, the ladies did not change) started talking. Which is understandable: feminist art is a passport to the Western art world, a sign of a civilized society. Let's cherish women's art - let's be considered civilized!

PS The week is not too stormy and not too quiet. An ordinary week. January 29 is a tiring day for vernissage regulars and party-goers. However, exhibitions are scheduled literally by the hour. At 17.00 at the Museum of Decorative, Applied and Folk Art on Delegatskaya, the collective exhibition “Counter-Evolution” opens - each of the 30-odd artists shows one early and one late work. The principle is quite mechanical, but some things may be interesting. At 18.00 at the Aidan Gallery there will be a vernissage of Maria Pogorzhelskaya’s exhibition “Beach”. Painting, so to speak, is of a transitional type from the Surikov Institute to the Moscow Union of Artists, requiring, in order to be considered relevant, a quirky “conceptual” commentary. At 19.00 on the shopping and pedestrian bridge "Bagration" the exhibition "Front Page Shots" will open - the best photographs for editorials taken by photographers of the Kommersant Publishing House .

On January 30, in the exhibition hall “On Kashirka” there will be a vernissage of Dmitry Panchenko. For big fans of today's symbolist painting.

On January 31, at the Gelman Gallery Leonid Lamm’s exhibition “Insinuations” will open . This is a gallery event. For the first time in Russia, a veteran of Sots Art is exhibiting, who emigrated to the United States after his imprisonment in 1982. True, several of his works could be seen at the collective exhibition of nonconformist emigrants “Transit” in 1990 at the Central House of Artists . Gelman will have a personal one.

On the 31st you can go to the NCCA at the Zoological Center, on the 13th to Yuri Avvakumov’s master class “How to make an exhibition.” Who will go for it when Gelman has Lamm?

On February 1, the fun at the Moscow Comics Festival will begin at the Zverev Center for Contemporary Art. It will end on the 10th. They are just a day short of Maslenitsa.