Fox, you're all - a kiss in the cold!

The museum of the East is an exhibition of Viktor Pivovarov

"Victor Pivovarov. Foxes and holidays ” - the first experience of the State Museum of the East in the field of contemporary art. For initiation, the hero was chosen flawlessly. The founding father of Moscow conceptualism and the classic of children's illustrations in his own way retelling Eastern mythology, mixing the novel by Victor Polevin and the magazine “Funny Pictures”. Suddenly, a tragicomic story about today's Russia was obtained.

The exhibition “Fox and Holidays” is a line in the column “Achievements” not with the artist who performed with solo expositions in the Tretyakov Gallery, and in the Russian and Tseretelievsky Mom, and the Museum of the East, which finally opened its doors for Contemporary Art. And then thanks to the efforts of his young employee Diana Farmakovskaya, who invented a special project “About the East” from the old works of the veteran of the Moscow Conceptual School. The hits of the exposition - the “title” album “Fox and Holidays” (2005) and the ten -meter “Sutra of fears and doubts” (2006) - have already been honored with our museum walls. And the scrolls from the series “Lesson of Chinese” in Moscow showed the Velta gallery in the crossroads of May-June of the 98th. There are strange rapprocheces, sorry for the banality!

Then the giant paper sheets with the phrases from the primer, stylized in the form of hieroglyphs-recruits, were shown in the ballroom hall of the XIX century in Arbat Lane. Now they moved to the ceremonial interiors of the “Lunin’s House”, a masterpiece of the Russian Empire on Nikitsky Boulevard (the Museum of the East is hanging there). Then the longest works had to be put on the floor and declare it with a bold curatorial solution. Now everything is decorously hung on (false) walls painted in a noble burgundy color. The author specifically noted this detail in welcoming speech on the vernisage.

The difference is signed. In 1998, “Chinese” meant a cheap fake “Made in China”-and the foul calligraphy “From Pivovarov” could be casually thrown at a manor parquet. In 2015, the authentic of the noble house is no longer visible behind it, the guests crowd the owners. We again have a Russian with a Chinese - brothers forever. The artist, having caught not a rumble, but the coming Eurasian Symphony of Languages, remembers his “Chinese lesson” in a timely manner. So that the “Mom washed the Rama” we brought not a goose pen, but a brush of badger wool. Rather, foxes. Her tail appears among the texts of the Pivovar -tank Primer, redrawn in the eastern way. She is the main character of the entire project. And all the artist’s work, judging by the text of his conversation and the curator in the catalog.

The fox appeared Pivovarov in military childhood, pursuing the sled in which he was traveling with his mother. Gradually the sore-fed, the insidious beast became the “way of Russia in general”, merging with the idea of the bride-demon of eastern mythology. There is a fox-Sukkub, turning into a girl, whose kiss promises only troubles, very in Russian the “hooly-jing” is very Russian. The artist’s insight was confirmed by the “The Holy Book of the werewolf” by Viktor Pelevin, who appeared almost simultaneously with the graphic album of Pivovarov “Fox and Holidays”. It is dedicated to the non -existent nationality of the Jewish Autonomous Region. The “foxes”, which appeared in frosty fields as a result of Stalin's ethnic experiments, send the cult “holy foxes”, mark their own memorable dates, have their sacred texts like “Sutra of fears and doubts”, similar to Megil, expanded on the catwalk in the center of the main hall.

The history of these "children of the clouds" is a typical conceptualist "rut". No wonder the famous essay-manifesto of Pivovarov and his book, published ten years ago, “UFO”, are called “On the Love of the Word and Images”.

But in the game Zaumi there are historiosophical insights. Like St. Fox Ivan Ivanovich, the “night watchman of the dwellings”, invented long before the current triumph Vladimir Vladimirovich. Or “a holiday of getting rid of fears and doubts”, during which “children are given yellow mice”-it would be necessary with yellow-black ribbons. You can not even remember a bright eastern future under the sign of a holitzzin: federal channels with their “Chinese lessons” constantly tell us about it.

The exhibition at the Museum of the East was possible only thanks to the support of the embassy of the Czech Republic-honestly, Viktor Pivovarova was worth it in 1982 to marry and move to Prague, closer to beer. Speaking on the vernisage on behalf of the Czech center in Moscow, the long -standing acquaintance of the artist Jan Makhonin said that for the Czech Republic the organization of such an exhibition was a gesture of justice. And he added: in a country where this justice is not enough now. The audience froze and ... went to a buffet with Crimean champagne.

Fedor Romer -
Especially for "new"