| The Moscow Metro missed the opportunity to boast of its history To get to the “Our Metro” exhibition, which opened on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Moscow subway at the Polytechnic Museum, you need to go through a real turnstile. Next you can expect to find yourself in a space reminiscent of a subway, especially since the blue stands with silver numbers indicating the year symbolize the carriages. And even in the circular movement around the small hall, if you wish, you can see allusions to the most iconic metro line - the Circle. However, there is no desire - because the exhibition “Our Metro” most closely resembles an exhibition in a provincial local history museum during the stagnation period. The hall of the Polytechnic Museum is mostly filled with tablets with terrible copies of photographs or diagrams.
One of the most unknown subjects to the general public - pre-revolutionary plans for the construction of the metro - was of no interest to the organizers. Several diagrams, small explanatory text. But the plans were impressive - for example, according to the 1902 project, it was planned to lay several lines and build a grandiose station on Vasilyevsky Spusk. There is even a watercolor drawing of an unbuilt station, which for some reason is not presented in the exhibition.
Photographs and diagrams are interspersed with various technical devices under glass covers, for example, an auto-informer or a dispatch control system. According to the organizers, the metro is “a complex system, saturated with the most powerful engineering communications, equipment, and units.” It’s as if the history of the metro was limited to the “development of track facilities,” as if there weren’t 70 years of fascinating history, full of the most incredible facts that were forgotten at the “Our Metro” exhibition.
Who remembers that at the Kropotkinskaya station (then the Palace of the Soviets) there were real palm trees, and the floors of some stations were laid with parquet, which was supposed to finally give the stations a resemblance to palaces? And the Dzerzhinskaya station (now Lubyanka) looked like the dungeon of a medieval castle. The difficult geological situation did not allow the construction of a full-fledged station; it was possible to make only two platforms connected by a common vestibule. Architect Ladovsky made a paradoxical decision - since it is impossible to give the station a “non-underground”, festive look, it must be emphasized that it is located deep underground. In the 70s, the station was completed and its original interior was lost.
Interesting metamorphoses occurred with the mosaic panel “Victory Parade” made by Pavel Korin for the Komsomolskaya-Koltsevaya station. Beria “stood” on the mosaic podium of the Mausoleum for just over a year - the station was opened in 1952, and already in 1953 Beria’s glasses were “removed” so that he would not be recognizable. Then the figure was completely removed. A few more years later, Malenkov, Molotov and Kaganovich (whose name, by the way, was borne by the Moscow Metro) disappeared from the podium. And in 1963, the mosaic was replaced with a new one, now on it Lenin spoke to the Red Army, and thus one of the last images of Stalin was removed.
Stalin from the Novoslobodskaya station was replaced with a snow-white dove. This station was recently restored, so much so that it is now unrecognizable. Pavel Korin's mosaics, made from the stained glass windows of Latvia's closed Lutheran cathedrals, now look tacky and garish. What makes them similar to the graffiti that is painted on subway cars and walls? The metro management considers these drawings to be vandalism, although, for example, in the Tretyakov Gallery such works are classified as art. At the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, a plywood model of a carriage, completely painted with grafitti, was presented. By the way, the biennale opened in the metro - at the Vorobyovy Gory station, everyone could get acquainted with video art. It is unlikely that the members of the art group “Mukhomor”, who in Soviet times staged an underground action in the metro, could have dreamed of such a degree of recognition - during the day, the group members met at different stations and passed something to each other. But now fashion shows of designer clothes at the Sokol depot and Art Manege parties at the Alexandrovsky Sad station are held quite officially.
70 years of the rich history of the Moscow Metro could have become a subject of artistic reflection, a topic for risky and vibrant experiments, but wealthy customers followed the traditional path of creating a routine exhibition for the anniversary, without even trying to find suitable performers for their own presentation. Alexander ZMEUL |
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