What will we tell my grandchildren?

On September 18, in the center of modern culture, Garage-as a preface to the exhibition of John Baldessari-a public conversation between an American classic artist with Ilya Kabakov took place. At the end of the event, another artist, Yuri Zlotnikov, who had long been polemicizing with Kabakov, tried to express his point of view on Kabakov from the hall in this discussion, but he was soon interrupted. The director of the Garage Anton Belov tried to take the microphone from him, which he had already received the famous “Listen to me, asshole!” Then the microphone was turned off. They write that after that, on the sidelines, the director of the multimedia art museum Olga Sviblova and Daria Zhukov, the head of the Iris Foundation and the TSK Garage, approached Zlotnikov and apologized, “smoothed the situation”. Be that as it may, Irina Saminskaya has something to say in connection with this case.

The feeling that you live not at the best time, of course, poisons day after day. Here were the great twenties, terrible thirties, war and heroism, fifties, magic sixties, well, at worst the seventies - also nothing. In this regard, I had some hopes for the public discussion of Ilya Kabakov and John Baldessari, who seemed equivalent to seeing, for example, John Lennon and Bob Marley. Everything went according to plan: the old people said, the halo shone, people crowded, and from the upper rows, from the gallery itself, began to slowly wade to the microphone Yuri Zlotnikov. For a second it seemed that here it is, the tail of the story that we managed to catch.

Like the moment when the great Tatlin knocks a chair from under the great Malevich and shouts: now try to sit on geometry and color-this is not forgotten. Then I would tell my grandchildren, embellishing how Tatlin shouted with and how a healthy Malevich clenched his fists.

Or suddenly I will see how the idol of the youth of Arthur Krawan , the poet, Dadaist, who wrote, in his expression, only then, to enrage, he undresses in public in 1917 in New York, where he was invited to read a report on humor, instead of which he simply comes out drunk and shows, in principle, humor in action. The overflowing Grand Palace Central in anticipation of the opening of the exhibition of the Society of Independent Artists and the appearance of Kravan, shouting cursing and breaking off clothes - what else do you need to justify gray everyday life from art? Some eyewitnesses (alas, not me) after that ascertained the end of art. This plot from Krawan’s life is not as noticeable as his public boxing duel with Jack Johnson, but is most directly related to the “heroes of our discussions”. I was vividly presented to the indignant New York establishment, which, in principle, does not want to see a bare and drunken Kravan, but is forced to be content with what is. I don’t remember, by the way, if he had a microphone.

Now the artists have a tight schedule, there are not a minute for questions, dinner is cooling.

Of course, I always wanted to attend the debates of the evening of the Oberiuts on January 24, 1928 at the Press House in Leningrad, about which Harms announces from the cornice of that very house and during which he showed the first drafts of Elizabeth BAM. The evening took place almost like in the central house of the artist, surrounded by the then “art test”, with a full hall-with only one difference: the debate began at about one in the morning, ended closer to dawn, and no one (more precisely, not a single person in the hall) left them. Now the artists have a tight schedule, there are not a minute for questions, dinner is cooling.

I would like to complete this strange top again by a historical joke, which is not directly related to art, but to the culture of public performances, discussions and freedom of speech. 1860, the most prominent scientists and philosophers gather at the Museum of Natural History at Oxford University . The reason is the evolutionary theory of Darwin, which, as you remember, explains for a long time that the most real ancestors of a person were monkeys. The theory has supporters and opponents, and during the performances, Bishop Oxford Samuel Wilberfors, unable to withstand the conclusions of the English biologist Thomas Huxley, addresses him with the question of who was the monkey in his family, from which he came from-his grandfather or grandmother? Is it necessary to write here that, of course, Huxley did not faint from this question, but answered with dignity. If desired, his witty answer can be found on Wikipedia.

In conclusion, it is necessary to state that in any of these stories the microphone was not taken away, they allowed us to finish to the end, all questions sounded, all received answers - and the story after that changed its move. Also, this boring public discussion of Baldessari and Kabakov had such a chance, and Kabakov himself gave him, who confused the artist Zlotnikov with the artist of Borovsky (suppose the Sofitov light did not allow the face of the workshop to make out the face of the workshop). Already this moment gave the hope that Zlotnikov-Borovsky would now notice, and Baldessari would not agree, and Kabakov will be indignant, the dead audience will finally come to life, and then we will tell his grandchildren ... In short, we will only tell the grandchildren that during the period of the story in which we had to live, with the exception of shameful trials, the artist should not have said, but it would be better to be silent at all, because it was true to anyone. It is not interesting what he thinks. Thanks for all this at that moment at that moment for the dinner, a concert, home, to visit, for the vernisages and birthdays.