Patchwork blanket

- How the New Light is dressed

- What is the American style

- Universal metaphor of patchwork blankets

- What is the specifics of America's culture

Today, in the new episode of the podcast "Genis: a look from New York" -we are with a culture historian and musicologist Solomon Volkov talk about a grandiose exhibition at the Institute of Costume of the Museum of Metro dedicated to the American style.

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Alexander Genis: It has been a long time ago that the most popular, and often the most inventive exhibitions in New York are organized by the Institute of Costume at the Museum of Metro. Sometimes they cause a real splash - and not in vain. Such were, say, who occupied half of the museum of the “Chinese costume” exhibition or the exhibition “Catholic Fashion”, in which even the Vatican, or the high -Mine Camp exhibition with quotes from Susan Umbable participated. We talked about each of these blockbusters in detail in these programs. After all, fashion, as perhaps, is nothing else, capture and convey our Zeitgeist. The spirit of time is reflected in the fantasies of elite fashion designers, who have long been doing not for the requirements of stores of finished dresses, but for extravagant stars and the museum public. This is free art. This is the current exhibition, named with intent and subtext: "Lexicon of Fashion: in America."

You need to start with the second part. The curator of the exhibition Bolton set a goal to refute the walking opinion about typical American styles. "If in Europe, he says, clothing expresses complex emotions and meets deep intellectual requests, then Americans allegedly prefer sports styles and comfort." In our opinion, if only in the groin not a sting.

In a refutation of this common misconception, a new exhibition has collected work about a hundred young, daring, and sometimes, in my opinion, crazy fashion designers. One, for example, presented a jacket with two hood and two sleeves. Only Siamese twins can wear this. This outfit is called "together", which, of course, is true. Among other oddities-a prison robe, a skirt with a bell that occupies a whole room, sweaters with an American flag, differing in flowers from the original, and an almost invisible black-black tight mannequin costume, which I scored the Ninja.

Here I must say that the names play an important role at the exhibition, which declares itself as a "vocabulary of American fashion." Each costume is awarded a thoughtful one in order not to say a pretentious name, like “unity”, “enthusiasm”, “vitality”. Under me, I called his abstract sculptures Ernst the unknown for the exhibition: “loneliness”, “thought”, “doubt”. In both cases, the names were taken from the ceiling. However, not always.

The central metaphor of the exhibition covers it like a blanket, which she, in fact, talks about. This is a famous patchwork blanket, an American quilt that is sewn with a lady who gathered for leisure from elegant cloaks of fabric. This is an ancient, complex and laborious art that has survived to this day (I once specially came to the province to look at the exciting process of the birth of Quint). One of these masterpieces is presented at the exhibition. This is the blanket of 1856, which was sewn by the needlewoman Adelaina Sirs. Each of the 360 shreds is signed by the celebrities of that time, including Abraham Lincoln. Today's fashion designers sew outfits presented in the exposition, which, frankly, resemble colorful quilted jackets. But another thing is important.

A patchwork blanket is a symbol of eclecticism, which perfectly conveys the underlying plan of the exhibition. She, as it were, turns to the viewer with a request to determine that such a single American style is in such a diverse country that she and herself almost disagree with herself?

Where are those universal conceptual categories hide, which make the style to American, different from everyone else?

What features is he, this very American style, manifests itself not only in fashion, but in the entire culture of the country?

This is the task that the exhibition in the meter offers us, and I am grateful to her for the opportunity to talk with you, Solomon, about these difficult matters.

But before we start a dialogue, I will ask you, as our control specialist, to tell you about one of them related to the opening of this exhibition.

Solomon Volkov: For this I will have to present the heroine of this control. Her name is Alexandria Okasio-Cortes. For the Americans, who at least a little monitor politics, today this is already a home name, but some of our listeners may hear about it for the first time now. She is one of the most interesting and contradictory figures of modern American politics. She is 31 years old, she is a puerto roth by her mother, the daughter of a wealthy architect, early orphaned. She graduated from Boston University as a bachelor of arts, but she had to work as a waitress, not having received work in her specialty. She even founded the publishing house of children's literature, but it went bankrupt. As a result, I went into politics. Her patron became Bernie Sanders, the leader of the Left Wing of the Democratic Party of the United States. With his support, Alexandria in 2018 sensationally won the election in the House of Representatives of the United States from New York and became the youngest congressman in the history of the United States, she was then 29 years old. In her political views, she is the extremely left, like her political father-patron Bernie Sanders. She all the time comes out with some vivid statements that immediately cause the most fierce controversy, and from the Republicans, but also inside the Democratic Party.

See also Hemingway's audit

Well, we will leave alone the political component of this exhibition, although in the current American atmosphere not a single exhibition, not a single event, not a single cultural undertaking passes without such a control, without the struggle of the right and left, and these two parties were clouched so that their struggle is also the cultural life of America.

Let's go down from high fashion for a minute to ordinary. How is the New York crowd dressed, in your opinion, how does it differ from Russian and European?

Solomon Volkov: You asked me a question, it already has an element that is impossible to answer. You ask: how is the New York crowd dressed? My answer: there is no such thing as "New York Crowd." I go out into the street, heat, and the old man in a sheepskin coat, in a winter hat and at the same time in shorts, is coming towards me. Is it a typical American or not? I somehow took up the calculation of what the percentage of people walking towards me are dressed in such a way that, if he appeared somewhere in Moscow in this form, he would be sent to a psychiatric hospital. On Broadway, every tenth was dressed in such a way that, in principle, it would be scary to approach this person and talk scary. It is not because the torn, but because of the eccentric combination. The New York crowd is largely consists of such eccentrics. It seems to me that there is no such style of clothes of the New York crowd. What do you think?

Alexander Genis: I think this is the style. This mixture of everything is a typical American style. The epigraph to the exhibition, about which we are talking about, you can put the words of the African American politician Jesse Jackson, who said that America is a patchwork blanket, which we have already talked about, therefore it is impossible to talk about one separate style. But this is also a kind of manner of dressing. Dovlatov, when he arrived in America, in one letter wrote to Russia to his friends that he likes most in America what everyone dresses as he wants. A lady can go in the evening toilet and in sneakers - this, of course, is a special feature of Americans. For the first time I saw this in 1967 in Moscow at the Palace of Congresses, I was on the ballet "Swan Lake", my parents brought me, there the American couple was walking in the lobby. As you know, in the palace of the congresses everyone put on their best clothes. But the girl, by the way, was of extraordinary beauty, was in a very short dress, and the guy in jeans. They stood on the escalator to get to their balcony, and began to kiss a suck. I must say that this is a picture that is still in front of my eyes.

But I would say that women dress much better in Russia than in America, much more erotic, let's say. I was once in the Russian Museum and met a girl there, in my opinion, she was a high school student, however, now everyone seems young to me, and she walked along the museum alone on huge studs. She was all dressed with a needle, because going to the museum is an occasion not only to look, but also to show herself. In America, you rarely meet this, unless, of course, you are at the mod exhibition. Many come to the metro, dressed in an extremely extravagant way, sometimes you can’t distinguish them from mannequins. They look exactly as the extravagant costume of a fashion designer, exhibited in a window, should look. This is what people who come there look in order to share their joy from clothes. One way or another, what you are talking about is democracy in action, everyone dresses as he wants. But the exhibition that we describe, she speaks of, of course, about something else, she says that American democracy is able to give rise to the most unusual phenomena, including in the field of fashion.

(Music)

Alexander Genis: Well, Solomon, it's time to fulfill the promised. Let's try to sketch the American style with the widest strokes. It was this question that the curators of the fashion exhibition asked when they called their exhibition "American style". What is an American style in general? I understand that this question sounds as strange as what is common physics? But still, any generalizations help us understand better the culture that we are talking about.

Solomon Volkov: For me, there is still no such concept "American style". Each bright representative of American culture creates his own style, and together they, as you already said about this, are this wonderful patchwork blanket.

Alexander Genis: But there is a concept, say, "American novel." Fenimore Cooper, for example, was a terribly popular writer of his time. Belinsky said that if Pushkin and Gogol took an example from Fenimor Cooper, we would have great literature. Fortunately, they did not listen to him. But Fenimore Cooper, despite the abundant exotic material with all the Indians, still wrote as they wrote in Europe, as they wrote in England, he adhered to some romantic standards. Early American literature was the process of English, European literature, it continued these topics and techniques. When did the American novel become American? The answer to this must be sought with Hemingway. He said that the first American romance is Hechelberry Finn Mark Twain. This is a classic work that gave an impetus to a new direction in American literature and culture as a whole. Who is Hechelberry Finn is an ignorant tramp that has an original mind that is able to look at everything again. European culture is not a lesson for him, he protects his lifestyle and praises the America that was around Mark Twain. This is not America Solovyov, who never in America, which did not prevent American poets from chanting them, but this is America that Mark Twain saw on Mississippi, which really lived then. And Hechelberry Finn is the most vivid character in all American literature, I would still say.

Solomon Volkov: You talked about an American novel now, but the novel, as we know, invented not in America. But we can say that the movie, the cinema that we know and love, invented in America. What can we say about American cinema?

Alexander Genis: It cannot be said that the movie was invented in America. At the time, when the Hollywood star rose, there were already high achievements in cinema, such as German cinema or Russian cinema. But the successes of mass cinema are, of course, America: let's say Charlie Chaplin. It was the mass of this phenomenon that made him inaccessible to intellectuals. I will not forget the statements of Khodasevich, who wrote that there is culture, there is art, and in the end, there is a sport, but there is much lower than all this, namely cinema. This is at a time when Charlie Chaplin, whom Einstein, for example, considered an intellectual, was not suitable for experts and experts of high culture.

I really love old Hollywood. who created a special language that must be able to use and learn to understand it. Then the movie is as unnatural as opera or ballet. We must be able to understand the PA Early Hollywood, how we should learn the language of the opera and ballet.

But there is one genre that Hollywood glorified - this is Western. Western also needs to be understood, he has his secrets, his tongue, his allegories and metaphors. In essence, it is a biblical genre. This is the promised land, where the elected people come - the Americans, and they must create order from chaos. This is what a fair cowboy is doing, sheriffs come out of the best cowboys, and civilization is born. The mystery of the birth of civilization is a purely American topic, the plot of the Far West. That is why we love and appreciate the westerns so much, because they include the dynamics of biblical pathos. It is the old, 50s, the 40s of the westerns are particularly in such a quality. No wonder they influenced the whole world, say, Kurosava. When Kurosawa came to the cinema, he was asked: what should a Japanese cinema do to achieve the same level as American cinema? It was before the war. The young Kurosawa said: "How what? Remove westerns, only on a Japanese topic." It was to that he did, however, after the war, during the war, Kurosawa shot propaganda films by order of Japanese militarism. But after the war, he removed the alteration of American westerns, which in turn acted on Hollywood, we all know the "magnificent seven", which came from the "seven samurai". Таким образом круговорот кино начался в Голливуде и обошел весь мир, включая Россию. "Белое солнце пустыни" – один из лучших русских фильмов, которые я знаю, снят в поэтике вестерна или истерна, как теперь говорят.

Соломон, есть еще одна область искусства, где американская культура проявила себя крайне своеобразным образом, – это живопись. При том, что она очень отставала от европейской, первая американская живописная школа называлась Гудзоновой. Гудзон очень красивая река, его называли американским Рейном, и первые художники живописали пейзажи Гудзона, примерно там, где я живу, я каждый раз об этом думаю, когда катаюсь вокруг этих гор на велосипеде. Но честно говоря, ничего американского в этих картинах не было, как и во многих других. Я однажды, изучая американский отдел музея Метрополитен, вдруг понял, что все наши передвижники были и в Америке. Это общее типологическое искусство всего XIX века.

А когда началась настоящая американская живопись, отличная от любой другой?

Соломон Волков: Я думаю, мы можем говорить как о сугубо американском явлении – о поп-арте в искусстве, в частности, в живописи, это затронуло много очень и других областей культуры. Сейчас открылась грандиозная выставка одного из главных художников ХХ века, сейчас он является самым знаменитым живущим художником – это Джаспер Джонс, ему 91 год. Одновременно в двух музеях – в Уитни, музее американского искусства в Нью-Йорке и в Большом музее в Филадельфии, открылась состоящая из двух частей выставка. Ее планировали к 90-летию Джонса, пандемия это дело задержала.

Очень интересная концепция, два разных куратора по-разному подошли к творчеству одного художники. Причем сам Джонс в этом не принимает никакого участия, он живет затворником один. Его когда-то большой друг и любовник, как сейчас выясняется, Роберт Раушенберг, тоже столп американского изобразительного искусства, умер. Он входил в круг Энди Уорхола. То есть это представитель ответвления гейской культуры в Соединенных Штатах. Это очень само по себе интересно и делает его актуальной фигурой и сейчас. Причем стараются эти два куратора показать Джонса с разных сторон. В Уитни его хотят открыть для новой публики, которой еще надо доказать, что Джонс такая великая фигура, а в Филадельфии, наоборот, делают усложненную экспозицию. В Уитни экспозицию выстраивают хронологически, так, чтобы все было понятно, объясняют, а в Филадельфии разбрасывают, наоборот, эту экспозицию, делают ее случайной, как в сочинениях Джона Кейджа, еще одного знаменитого американского гея, композитора, который ввел понятие случайности в сочинения свои музыкальные. Это очень интересный концепт.

Джаспер Джонс. Банки с пивом

Таким образом, получились две зеркальные версии, как двойники у Джонса. Он ведь и прославился своими так называемыми флагами, мишенями, картами, где сопоставляются всегда два объекта. Скажем, знаменитые его две банки из-под пива 1960 года, отлитые в бронзе. Одна полная, другая пустая, хотя выглядят они одинаково. При взгляде на эти две банки из-под пива возникает законный вопрос: пить или не пить? Аналог "быть или не быть?".

Александр Генис: Поп-арт – действительно американский вклад в мировую культуру, хотя он тоже восходит в какой-то степени к европейским опытам, к дадаизму, например. Я бы сказал, что понадобились усилия многочисленных кураторов, историков искусства для того, чтобы объяснить, что такое поп-арт, и увидеть в нем искусство. Именно это и делали специалисты, которые объясняли, что это не просто глупости, которые показывают художники вроде Энди Уорхола, когда он изображал банку с супом, банки вообще имеют привилегированное значение в этом виде искусства. Что самое главное в этой банке? То, что это не суп, а банка с ним, важна упаковка, а не суть. И это – медитация на тему массовой культуры, предлагающей нам поверхностный взгляд на вещи. Вместо того чтобы проникать внутрь, мы пытаемся понять, что нам говорит массовая культура, которая множит свои образы, как это делал Энди Уорхол, печатая, скажем, портреты Мэрилин Монро. Что нам говорит не художник, а общество?

Но есть еще одна область искусства, которая уж чисто американская и которая повлияла огромным образом на весь мир. И это, конечно, джаз.

Соломон Волков: Вы считаете, что джаз, а я считаю, что есть вещь, которая повлияла и на джаз тоже, – это блюз. Это жанр традиционной афроамериканской музыки, который зародился в конце XIX века в среде выходцев из среды плантационных рабов. И это уникальная американская музыка. Потому что в конце концов джазовые музыканты под влиянием, конечно, американского джаза появились во множестве и в европейских странах, и везде, в том числе даже и в Советском Союзе, а вот блюз остался все-таки специфически американским стилем самовыражения в музыке. Это уникальная вещь, которую ни с чем абсолютно не сравнишь. Это музыка горя и страдания, которая обладает колоссальным эмоциональным зарядом.

Я хочу показать и рассказать об одной песне, которая для меня, когда я ее впервые услышал, стала незабываемым событием, эта песня является также знаковым событием и в истории американской музыки, причем не только блюзовой музыки – это символ американской музыки вообще. Речь идет о песне под названием, ее переводят нелепым образом на русский "Странный фрукт". "Странный фрукт" звучит на сегодняшнем жаргоне как-то очень двусмысленно, так говорят о человеке, который немного не в себе. Поэтому я перевожу название этой песни как "Странный плод". Ее сочинил в 1937 году еврейский писатель, что очень интересно, Абель Мирополь, он написал стихи в 1937-м, а потом положил на музыку. Его поразила (у него была жена афроамериканка) фотография 1930-х годов, на которой были изображены повешенные на дереве жертвы линчевания в Индиане. Под влиянием этой фотографии он написал песню, которую сначала он сам исполнял. Но потом ее подхватила певица, которая для меня является одной из самых ярких представительниц не только блюза, я вообще считаю ее великой певицей, как я, например, считаю великой певицей Эллу Фицджеральд, которую мне еще посчастливилось здесь услышать в Карнеги-Холл в Нью-Йорке, или Марион Андерсон, великую исполнительницу спиричуэлосов, а также и Шуберта. Эту певицу зовут Билли Холидей. Она умерла сравнительно молодой в 44 года, злоупотребляла наркотиками, алкоголем. Она вошла в историю во многом благодаря этой песне "Странный плод", которая стала, может быть, самой популярной песней своего времени. Билли выступала с этой песней в первом расово интегрированном ночном клубе в Нью-Йорке. Она кончала свои выступления этим номером, официанты тогда прекращали разносить напитки, в зале гасили свет, только один луч был направлен на ее лицо, и она с закрытыми глазами как молитву исполняла эту песню. Ее называли афроамериканской "Марсельезой". А в 1999 году журнал "Тайм" назвал ее "Лучшей песней столетия". Вот первые и последние строчки этого "Странного плода":

Деревья на юге дали странные плоды,
Кровь на листве и кровь на корнях.

Этот странный и горький урожай.

Это песня, которая навсегда останется с нами.

Billy Holide

Я могу сказать, что эта песня действительно навсегда впечаталась и в мое сознание. Вот она в исполнении несравненной Билли Холидей. И это – пример уникального американского стиля в культуре.

(Музыка)

Вы слушали подкаст Александра Гениса "Взгляд из Нью-Йорка". В этом эпизоде мы с Соломоном Волковым рассказывали о грандиозной выставке в Институте костюма музея Метрополитен, посвященной американским фасонам, – и обсуждали специфику американского стиля в широком культурном контексте.

We are easy to find on the air and on the Radio Liberty website. Subscribe to my podcast on iTunes , Google Podcasts , Yandex music. Write to me on social networks, leave your comments and greetings in the Freedom accounts and on all pod-platforms.

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