Valentin Dyakonov. Carp is an aphrodisiac and a firecracker

In the exhibition " Visible Image and Hidden Meaning " at the Pushkin Museum. Pushkin is dedicated to the emblems of Flemish and Dutch painting of the 16th-17th centuries. Based on well-known material from the collections of the Pushkin Museum and less well-known Serpukhov Historical and Art Museum, the Dutch exhibition was compiled, commented by curator V.A. Sadkov. The point is that behind any everyday scene, behind any still life, there is a symbolic plan. To understand it, the curator abundantly quotes sources on emblematics - the works of the then scientists who compiled the emblematic “periodic tables”.

This kind of exhibition is not uncommon in the world museum business. Not uncommon, but a conscious necessity. Art critics look away from the artistic Olympus and build panoramas of the artistic life of a certain era based not on geniuses, but on much more uncertain grounds. Iconography and emblems can say more about an era than the most remarkable works of Zeus-Bruegel and Dionysus-Rubens. The science of semantics comes to the aid of museum workers, and the paintings of small Dutchmen begin not only to please the eye and immerse the viewer in a treasury of details, but also to teach, instruct, and hint.

There is no stylistic framework for the “Visible Image...”. The works presented are diverse, each with its own lineage of influences. Northern followers of Caravaggio coexist with virtuosos of everyday scenes in the spirit of Bruegel the Elder. There is also Rubens, whose “Bacchanalia” is subject to non-canonical interpretation. And his followers, of course. According to the organizers, the “hidden meaning” exists outside of a certain style and set of techniques. True, the symbolism of mythological plots still has little in common with the emblematic tricks of the theorists of meaning of the 17th century.

The meaning, however, is hidden only from us, modern viewers. The audience of those years read it, as they say, on the fly. Although even here one cannot be completely sure. The first painting, van Es’s wonderful still life “Oysters and Mirror Carps,” turns out to contain two types of references to symbolic content. Seafood is ambivalent - quite in the spirit of Bakhtin. Carp is both an aphrodisiac that increases potency, and, like any fish in general, a medieval symbol of Christ. Oysters appear in ancient mythology (see "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli, in which the goddess emerges from a shell), where it has sexual overtones, and in medieval mythology - an open oyster is a soul open to God. I wonder if an uncomfortable situation was possible in the 17th century when a pious family, having decorated the house symbolically with a completely decent still life, suddenly learned from sophisticated guests that it “reads” a little differently? Apparently, then, as now, everyone judged to the extent of their depravity.

Thanks to the exhibition, we learn that there is a sexual connotation in the fish trade. In the famous still life of Snyders there is both aphorodisiac carp and fresh oysters. It is not surprising that this subtext also exists in the poultry trade. The word volegen, it turns out, has two meanings - “bird hunting” and “seduction”. That is, a symbol can be born both as a squeeze from a mythological plot, and as a consequence of “folk etymology,” when the polysemy of a word serves as the basis for the polysemy of the image.

For someone uninitiated in all the subtleties of emblems, some misunderstanding may arise. Surely there is a gap between the character and what is identified with him. A girl playing a lute is a symbol of voluptuousness. I wonder when the reality of life at that time - in fact, a girl - becomes a symbol? Did the artist need to delve into the relevant literature to convey the “message” to his work, or was it enough to visit a tavern, brothel, etc. to get inspired by the setting? In Pieter van der Wieling’s still life “Allegory of the Frailty of Glory,” composed of many components, each object “works” to affirm a given theme. A couple of soap bubbles float above a skull entwined with straw, the head of an antique statue, and so on. In fatalistic ikebana they play the role of a reminder of the transience of life. Well, Teniers Jr. in his “Smokers” refuses unnecessary dramatization - a bad habit is a bad habit, dope is dope (comments say that hemp was mixed into the smoke of that time). Likewise, in van Ostade’s painting, the peasants’ fight remains a peasants’ fight, depicted accurately, balancedly, like a poem by Igor Kholin. The exhibition lacks differentiation of subjects into allegorical, didactic and neutral.

It must be said that viewers do not devote too much time to reading comments. Perhaps the painting of the “Little Dutchmen” has a certain aura of intelligibility. Their paintings will be exhibited without the need for additional comment. Or perhaps the exhibition design simply did not clearly identify the objectives of the exhibition. One way or another, setting such tasks is necessary for a modern museum. Arranging more or less famous things according to a certain theme is an almost untrodden field in Russia.