| With a new exhibition, the Russian Museum passed the exam on Yin and Yang Has the holiday hangover passed yet? Wonderful! Then let's remember what we know about binaries, oppositions, binaries and ambivalence in culture. Male - female. Bitter is sweet. Hot - cold. Raw - cooked. Fathers are children. Love is hate. Good and evil. Yin, sorry, and Yang. Are you tired yet? Then try to structure all this knowledge in the form of an exhibition project under the title “Two”. Is it difficult? That's it. The author's speech does not consist of commonplaces and worn-out clichés. What is required is what is called a problem statement, a question addressed to a specific address. However, judging by the ongoing series of exhibitions, the staff of the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg prefers the path of intellectual escapism. No questions are asked. No answers are given. They take it broadly and think in general terms, in the categories “Red color in Russian art” (the name of a long-standing insert of the State Russian Museum), “Abstraction in Russian art” (the name of last year’s exhibition of the State Russian Museum), “Two in Russian art” (the name of the new exhibition of the State Russian Museum).
The exhibition “Two” is made like this. In the first hall, the main ones are ancient Russian icons and avant-garde, works by Malevich, Filonov, Chagall... In the second hall - allegorical compositions of the 18th century, paired portraits of students of the Smolny Institute, painted by Dmitry Levitsky. In the following halls there are the Itinerants of the 19th century, diluted with the Soviet “severe style” (including the famous painting by Nikolai Ge “Peter I interrogating Tsarevich Alexei”). A tiny corridor sheltered fragments of the global exhibition “Abstraction” with white and black circles by Rodchenko, white and black compositions by a wonderful nugget from Krasnoyarsk Andrei Pozdeev, black and white objects made of epoxy resin by V. Tsesler and S. Voichenko. The prospect of the enfilade is closed by a guest from the Tretyakov Gallery, who was awarded a separate hall, Nikolai Ge’s painting “What is Truth?” with Christ and Pilate.
If only the exhibition could retain the extreme tension of the dialogue between “two”, which is set by Ge’s painting! Where there... The presented repertoire of subjects convinces that Russian art can “double itself” in any way it likes, and the organizers completely abdicate responsibility for the process, as well as control over it. Other chosen couples can be simply amazing. Among these “amazing” ones: a) George and the Serpent from the Novgorod icon, b) Fortune and the Beggar from the academic painting (1836) by Alexei Markov, c) Lenin and the blind peasant from the painting of the sixties artist Geliy Korzhev “Conversation” (a mighty man in a sheepskin coat with eyesores before our eyes - a kind of Tiresias, an old soothsayer, to whom ancient heroes went for a prediction, and now Ilyich stomped in a cap and a polka-dot tie), d) eunuch and concubine of an eastern harem with sepia by Karl Bryullov “By the command of Allah, once a year the shirt changes,” e) two versions of one head of a “slave with a rope around his neck” from Alexander Ivanov’s sketch for “The Appearance of Christ to the People.” All genre and even semantic principles are rejected decisively and without doubt. The actions of curators cannot be appealed. What, exactly, can one complain about when the main curator of the exhibition, head of the department of painting of the second half of the 19th and 20th centuries. Vladimir Lenyashin in his introductory explication leaves no chance for substantive criticism: “In the active opposition of good and evil, light and darkness, heat and cold, wealth and poverty, masculine and feminine principles, which do not exist one without the other, the basis of life was rightly seen. A miracle that exists only in struggle, in action and ceases with the onset of peace.” Yes, you can’t argue against the relevance of the opposition of heat and cold in the current January dubak! We can only dream of peace!
For the general public, the exhibition “Two” opened on New Year’s Eve, December 30, as part of the IV International Festival “Arts Square”, organized by maestro Yuri Temirkanov (by the way, the concerts I listened to during the festival with the famous Temirkanov orchestra ZKR, unlike the exhibition, turned out to be impeccable articulated in form and meaning). A day earlier, in the halls of the Benois building, where the exhibition “Two” was displayed, a luxurious “festival” reception was given. The atmosphere of a brilliant social event successfully corrects the style of perception of the exhibition. On a festive evening, “Two” is, first of all, the entertainer of the New Year’s “Ogonyok”, the same ones, sprinkled with confetti and entangled in streamers, Angelina Vovk and Igor Kirillov, Alla Pugacheva and Philip Kirkorov, Father Frost and the Snow Maiden in the end. With such people you can definitely talk about heat and cold, male and female, Yin and Yang. Speak up and not be embarrassed by your own ignorance. Sergey KHACHATUROV, St. Petersburg |
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