Forgotten ideals of a happy childhood

The main “new Russian classicist” and repentant modernist Timur Petrovich Novikov continues to search for classically-inspired fetishes that can sow horror in the hearts and cause a grimace of disgust on the faces of “supporters of art hostile to the muses.” To be honest, the heroes of his new series can cause horror and disgust not only among the intelligentsia of the “left-democratic orientation,” as T. P. Novikov likes to put it, but among every average person who remembers his Soviet childhood. The famous Novikov "rags" - panels with a picture glued or sewn in the middle - this time are dedicated to sculptures from pioneer camps. To all the “buglers”, “standard bearers”, “pioneers with airplanes” and “pioneers with rockets”. Their retouched photos are displayed on velvet in scarlet, burgundy, blue and green: each color implies a certain - to varying degrees of ideologicalization - canon of the image of the “pioneer”. It seems that Novikov is playing at being an encyclopedist-systematizer, studying a lost culture.

At the same time, the plaster idols generally refuse (Timur Petrovich is a conscious confusion!) to be involved in ideology - they are far “from the social struggle and problems that worried adults in those years,” as the author writes in the catalogue. These pure examples of pure beauty, it turns out, go back to ancient sculpture: “at the end of the 20th century, we can safely say that they were the last monuments of this now almost lost tradition.” Therefore, neo-academicism is simply obliged to rehabilitate the forgotten and destroyed “pioneers”.

It is clear that all this is provocative mockery, presented with the most serious face. Although, however, no. In the same catalog article, Novikov - in support of his “pioneerophilic” theses - refers to the opinion of “a famous sculptor who worked a lot on the creation of such monuments” (in the press release version of the article it is even written “a famous Soviet sculptor”). And who is this one who claims that his pioneer “was like the Greek tyrant fighters”? Yes, this is no less than Novikov, prone to mystification and pseudo-teaching Dm. A. Prigov. No comments.

Nevertheless, let’s be fair: these monuments to Soviet “happy childhood” have their own charm, but not classical, but barbaric. Well, the “pioneer with a twig” who appeared on the cover of the catalog - and without panties (how could they put this in the camp? Didn’t Timurov’s henchmen blind him?) - is even good in an ancient way. St. Petersburg bohemia, known for its non-traditional sexual orientation, should appreciate it. Even though he is a monument.