“Not mockery, but screaming”

The installation (which uses stuffed birds, dogs and cats - works brought from Belgium by the famous artist, director, choreographer Jan Fabre) was placed a month ago in one of the halls of the Hermitage, in the General Staff Building. The museum has been preparing for an unusual exhibition for a year. The townspeople were warned that it would be provocative, that it would excite the minds and evoke uneasy sharp feelings. A 16+ restriction was imposed on visiting part of the exposition.

“Belgium has a very reverent attitude towards animals,” Jan Fabre, the author of the exhibition, explained at the opening ceremony. - However, just like in Russia, it happens that some people throw their pets out into the street, and then they die - from hunger, cold, from evil hands or under the wheels of cars. The stuffed animals that I used are of this origin. And I didn’t kill them, but the cruelty of the former owners, and that’s what I’m talking about,” the artist emphasized.

But nothing saved from the wrath of those who proclaimed themselves the main righteous people of the country. In mid-November, both in writing and orally, a certain “Orthodox community” began to be indignant - people introduced themselves as visitors to the Hermitage. Then the singer Elena Vaenga spoke badly about the exposition on the Web. Vitaly Milonov, a deputy, strongly supported the artist, who called the exhibition "a spit in the soul of the Russian people", and the exhibits - "vulgarity", "abomination" and "nonsense". Jan Fabre - according to the parliamentarian - "a bum from art" and "a loser-experimenter." The Hermitage also got it from Milonov:

“The decision to hold such an exhibition is tyranny and complete idiocy,” the deputy diagnosed the management of the museum.

And on November 18, the Russian Orthodox Church came out against the Hermitage and Fabre:

- The exhibition "Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty" was not worth holding in the Hermitage, - Archpriest Alexander Pelin, head of the St. Petersburg diocesan department for relations between the church and society, told the media. “It all looks rather shameful. In addition, there are many protests of ordinary people on the Internet. We have nothing to do with Jan Fabre, but why do we need such art in Russia? Fabre is one of the apologists for a new pseudo-religious metamorphosis, in which there is no longer any place for either God or man with higher ideals and meanings.

Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky intelligently commented on these attacks against him:

- This is not a mockery, but a cry in defense of animals, and it is really correct. We woke people up, made them talk about it. Jan Fabre tells precisely about the fact that people who say “love animals” sometimes throw them into the streets and then they die under the wheels of cars on the roads. Fabre, with his sharp, heavy story, excites public opinion and once again shows that art is in fact very complex, and not as primitive as it is understood.

The exhibition of Jan Fabre in the Hermitage will last until 9 April.