Translated material
Dimension of universal emptiness
"Three Centuries of American Art" in Moscow
The exhibition turned out to be a response to the project “RUSSIA!” -- the largest show of Russian art in the United States. The initiator of that program, director of the Solomon Guggenheim Foundation Thomas Krentz, is the protagonist of the current show, the first large-scale tour of American art in Moscow. Collected from various municipal and private collections in the United States, the exhibition “New World. Three Centuries of American Art” has been traveling to Beijing and Shanghai since the beginning of the year. Now, thanks to sponsors - the National Reserve Corporation, the ALCOA Foundation, Interros, The Henry Luce Foundation - I have reached the Russian capital. It is part of the spatial expansion of the Guggenheim empire into countries, to put it mildly, not of the cultural mainstream, but of the cultural extreme: to the Far East, to Asia (Krenz started the construction of a new grandiose center in Abu Dhabi), to Russia...In general, spatial expansion and the temptation of extreme conquest of universal geography are, in my opinion, the main theme of the image policy of the Guggenheim empire, as well as the leitmotif of the brought exhibition and American art in general. It is logical, therefore, that three heroes of American culture - Thomas Krentz, Dennis Hopper (director, artist, actor of the 1969 cult film "Easy Rider"), and finally, the favorite of all intellectual ladies, Jeremy Irons - rolled up to the main entrance of the Museum of Fine Arts named after A .WITH. Pushkin on shiny black BMW R 1200GS motorcycles. All three friends are fans of this type of transport and in two days they traveled together on motorcycles from St. Petersburg to Moscow. By the way, Thomas Krentz even held an exhibition (travelling, of course) at the Guggenheim Museum, “The Art of the Motorcycle.”
At a press conference, the emotional director of the Pushkin Museum, Irina Antonova, admitted her passionate desire to ride on the same motorcycle with Jeremy Irons. And she even confirmed that he agrees and there is hope. And then she gave him the floor. The actor very figuratively described the drive of riding a motorcycle: dust, salt on the face, wind, the power of the elements, instincts, the savory taste of any food at stops... If you imagine this story visually, you will get a collective image of realistic American painting.
Intoxication with space, elements, the ability to express emotional states at the most basic physiological level. Distrust in refined culture - but trust in air, light, freedom and naive particles of being. Cultural historian Mikhail Yampolsky gave a stunningly accurate definition, far from saccharine good-naturedness, and ambivalent in his diagnosis of such trust of Americans in the world space in the latest issue of the Pinakothek magazine: “In general, it seems to me that the most significant feature of American art is... the extraordinary ability to imagine the gaping nothingness in the forms of the intense presence of the facticity of the world.”
At the exhibition, you somehow understand especially clearly that American artists made almost no distinction between spatial exclamations and empty gapings. From the 19th century, when America was a terrible province, until 2006 (the last painting in Adam Cvijanovic’s exhibition, with pop-art clarity, shows how Hurricane Katrina swirls the scattered multi-colored entrails of a sex shop in the air), artists diligently recorded the nomenclature of universal particles, and at the same time they themselves seemed to dissolve in the “nothingness” of spatial holes. Their attitude, position, personality were eliminated radically. They wanted to look at the Universe outside the hierarchy of values, as an emptiness separated by intervals of objects (this is probably how motorcycle riding enthusiasts perceive the world).
They didn’t want to show anything, but to present it: visually, literally, without judgment. This is the paradigm of radical provincials (namely, “radical provincialism” is what Yampolsky called the art of one of the most famous painters of America in the 19th century, Winslow Homer; his painting is on display). This is the paradigm of pop artists fetishizing consumer goods. This is the same paradigm, paradoxically as it may seem, of the abstract expressionists who flooded the objectivity of the world with thick colorful streaks. This is what Mark Rothko said about his paintings: they have “a serenity ready to explode.” That is, again, freedom, dangerously bordering on “nothing.”
During the 18th-19th centuries, forced spatial adventures of European style canons turned out to be the main plot of American art. It’s delightful to watch how Gainsborough’s style, which finally reached the States, was tried on the personages of generals or colorful leaders of Indian tribes, how the mountains of the Sierra Nevada were recognized through the eyes of Caspar David Friedrich. And you don’t have any ambitions to outdo teachers or hide borrowings. The painting is approximate, but it’s not scary. It is not customary to boast about Maestria in the USA.
An interesting introductory article to the exhibition catalogue, written by Pennsylvania art critic Michael Leija, confirms that “prejudicial attitudes towards art have persisted in America to this day...many Americans are uncomfortable with their president being too knowledgeable about the arts (poetry, serious music). To understand this sort of thing is a kind of class privilege, a sign of belonging to the elite, evidence that you have had a refined upbringing and an excellent education.” Here is another proof of the closeness of Russian and American mentalities.
Many of us are united by the hypocrisy of the plebeians.
In the 20th and early 21st centuries, the energy of emptiness is being explored in the full range of new natural science, philosophical, psychological, and aesthetic teachings. And the version of the “factology of nothingness” demonstrated at the exhibition by Rauschenberg, Jeff Koons, Andy Warhol, Dan Flavin proves that for Americans, even emptiness. But it’s not a trifle at all!