From the editor

The invitation to lead the section "Art" on colta.ru was a surprise to me. Still, since OpenSpace.ru, my articles have been published here as a marginalia, examples of a private opinion that is contrary to the general stream. In a word, I got used to my status “young” art critic and curator with rare media outputs.

Of course, I was not “young”, now I am almost 35. The alleged youth was explained by the fact that I considered myself a firm opponent of the “Actual Art” system. I was outraged by the faded and overloaded with pseudo-scientific exposition language of the 2000-2010s, their huge input threshold in art in the form of snowdrifts of postmodern philosophy-a new version of Marxism-Leninism. I was weighed down by the complete isolation of the “Council” from the real social background, his monologue cynicism and the emptiness of his statements. It seemed that from the beginning of the zero art covered a glass dome and life under it slowed down. I worked on my exhibitions and books on the sidelines of postmodernism and in the eternal expectation of its decay.

And this dome broken. We are at the turn of the new era. Soviet approached its last phase. A neo -mododernism has come - a contradictory time, which (like any neostle) finally allows Russian art to re -describe the experience of the 20th century, moving away from strong emotions. Flat and glossy, this big style raises us over a map of artistic life, like a carpet. And I appreciate the opportunity to see this map as a whole. Postmodernism was an era of torn ties, an era of closed communities with unchanging leaders, whose authority stopped attempts to system analysis, turning them into “private opinions” and “disagreements” . Now these communities are visible on their real scale and context, and leaders have lost their weight .

Art is not only personal space, but also the space of public action.

As the author, I always wanted to write about how and why art produces new meanings. As an editor, it would be interesting for me to show a complex and voluminous dialogue between a variety of areas of artistic activity in modern Russia, which is now becoming more and more active. I want access to understanding how different strategies for work within art and work in the study of art, whether it is the management of the gallery or public “VKontakte”, the everyday life of the museum keeper, modern dance, home -made books or the organization of home exhibitions, appear in the section. There will be a special section “Visual Dictionary”, revealing different types of creative laboratories. Art is not only personal space, but also the space of public action, a step that needs to be decided on. The idea of ​​the unity of these spaces in many respects turned out to be erased in the postmodern era.

Finally, I would like to give a word more to the artists themselves, in order to gradually approach the question of whether in modern Russia there is a social position of the artist as such and how it is now possible to act, to make it significant and noticeable.

I will add more. Colta.ru is an intellectual portal that focuses on public problems rather than on news reasons, and it has no task to comment on all current exhibitions. The “Art” section itself is quite small and publishes about a dozen materials per month, not counting the announcements. Therefore, of course, we are not talking about competing with Arthid, Art Newspaper Russia , “XG” and other special arts about art. But if you are engaged in art or write about it, I will be glad to your support in my experiment. If you yourself are doing something new, not yet described and really not understood, if you do not want to cooperate with the “artists” known to you and create your own if you want to tell you about interesting and deep initiatives in your city-write to the editor ( nadia.plu1@yandex.ru ), send photos. I hope that together we will be able to pave part of the path to new art spaces.