In Moscow, April 22, sculptor Zurab Tsereteli died. He was 91 years old. A native of Tbilisi, Tsereteli began his career as a monumental artist and sculptor in the 1960s. Among his most important works of the Soviet era is the mosaic basin “Sea bottom” for the Lenin Memorial in Ulyanovsk (1970) and the design of the Olympic Games in Moscow (1980). In the 1990s, ceremony received a reputation as his favorite sculptor Yuri Luzhkov, who was then the mayor of Moscow. Large-scale projects embodied by the artist in the first post-Soviet decade-a monument to Peter I on the Moscow River, a monument of victory on Poklonnaya Gora, a sculptural ensemble on Manezhnaya Square, and the high reliefs of the restored Cathedral of Christ the Savior-even in controversial, but symbols of the era. In addition, ceremonies are known as the founder and leader of the MMOMA (MMOMA) – the first in Russia of the State Museum of Contemporary Art. In the material for the cooperative of independent journalists “Coast”, architect Daniil Veretennikov, co-author of the telegram channel of the Toilogram channel “The Heritage of Romanticism” about postmodern architecture, tells why the sculptures of Tsereteli, contrary to common opinion, are real art, worthy of research. “Medusa” publishes this text entirely. The endotes like where Tsereteli asks Luzhkov to sacrifice the King Callok for the composition “Troika with the Bells”, have long entered the Moscow city folklore. About some local sculptor, who placed something at least a little unlike the Soviet monument on the main square of the Russian city, they say: “This is our ceremonies.” This surname is still used as a common name, implying immortality in artistic means and a monopoly on the largest orders. Today, however, less and less, because the latest romantic look at the nineties changes our attitude to their material heritage. The squeamishness and sarcasm, with which it was yet adopted to talk about post -Soviet architecture and monumental art, have changed to interest and understanding in recent years. The Zerab ceres criticized more than any other sculptor, artist or architect who worked in modern Russia. But the reason here is not so much in the stylistic features of his works as in the character of the era itself. At no other time, criticism simply could not sound as loudly as in the liberal nineties. Especially if you take into account that it is directed against the most titled artist, firmly soldered with the authorities, led by propaganda and awarded all kinds of. Objecting against this art, critics objected to the official artistic program of the state, in any case, Moscow. Neither in the stagnant 1970s, nor in the stable 2010s, it was unthinkable. The Exercise of the Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov and sculptor Zurab Tsereteli explains two interdependent processes. On the one hand, the highest patronage provided ceremonies with a stream of orders, which greatly influenced the appearance of Moscow, increased the fraction of the author, personal, namely Luzhkovsky in it. On the other hand, the non-shaped glory of the bad taste and kumovism, which accompanied the main works of Cerenethels in the 1990s, was transferred to the mayor himself-and in the end, probably played a role in his. The Moscow Administration has learned this lesson well: it has been 15 years old, and we still do not know the mayor’s favorite architectural style. Now in the capital’s architecture a professional bureaucracy prevails, which controls the quality of projects and declares the competitive market. As a result, the “Luzhkovsky style” became a kind of historical joke: we are ironic, we do not approve, but we also do not hasten to correct the mistakes of the past, especially when they are so profitably shaken the achievements of the present. The “court” sculptor, ceremonies, of course, was engaged in monumental propaganda, promoting the ideas key to the Russian authorities. This is both patriotism (memorial on Poklonnaya Gora), and the traditional family (Peter and Fevronia of the Murom), and a strong state (the rulers of Russia, Stalin in the “Big Three”). However, the author of these sculptures of his loyalist position, although he refrained from commenting on acute political topics. How legitimate is the general criticism of the work of the late Cerenetel? If you cleanse it from reproaches to the personality of the artist and from the historical resentment associated with the death of the empire and the decomposition of its large styles, it turns out that the main claim refers to the size of the sculptures. Basically – one specific sculpture: a monument to Peter I at the Strelchi Strelchug. Discussing this monument, they will certainly say about it that, under the guise of the Russian emperor Tsereteli, Muscovites of a slightly Russified Columbus, whom he unsuccessfully tried to add either in the USA or somewhere in Latin America. The monument established in 1997 caused one of the most violent city-protective disputes in the history of Moscow-which was not once awarded by critics of the image and the secondary of the image and the secondary of the image. Its gigantic scale. However, it is not surprising that such a discussion arose. You can argue about the architecture of the Nautilus shopping center or the Chaika Plaza business center-the iconic objects of the Luzhkovskaya era-but these are at least functional buildings (in addition, built with private money). The only purpose of the monuments is to look at them. We need to try not to see this hundred -meter colossus in the very center of Moscow. And the insulted Muscovites are still recalled by the budget rubles. They argue about the monument to this day, but it seems that the justifying point of view predominates in discussions. In the fact of its existence, the narratives of cosmopolitanism and new Westernity important for the first post -Soviet years now see. The stronger these narratives contradict the modern political agenda, the more value the monument receives. And Peter is dressed in the western manner, and he is turned in a western direction, and traditional motives from European monumental art are visible in the pedestal. And the very personality of the first Russian emperor contrasts with revolutionaries and party figures – characters of monumental propaganda of previous decades. And as for the scale, if it was smaller, I could not have kept the composition of the difference on the spiral development that has developed on the shores of the Moscow River. If you leave disputes behind the brackets, whether the monument to Peter I is needed in Moscow, we have absolutely definitely the work of a great artist. Its simple-minded optimism, which caused a separate line of criticism, the verbatim and excess form, not fulfilled by noble wisdom, the expression and the artlessness of the posture that gives something medieval-all these are conscious techniques that helped Cerethels to overcome the Soviet school of monumental art with its didactics and official officials. Against the backdrop of the story with Peter I, all other reproaches addressed to the work of Cerenetheli seem insignificant. Many note the excessive expressiveness of the manner, excessive pathos embedded in the images of heroes. Someone is annoyed by naivety in Manezhnaya Square, others are more disturbed by the mistakes made in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior. All these arguments are pointless to disassemble in isolation from specific works. And how appropriate such analysis is for the art of the postmodern era appropriate? After all, the sensual in it is more expensive than rational, the discussion is better than the unambiguous, the individual is more important than the collectivist and equalizable-building. Ceretheli himself did not share the installations of postmodernists: say, in an interview with the newspaper “Culture”, he insisted that “the hierarchy of cultural values has not gone away” and that the artist would “die like the Creator, if he forgot how to talk with eternity”. However, all the brightest works of the sculptor quite fit into the aesthetics of world postmodernism: eclecticism, kitsch, provocation, playing with the scale – what if not he? And if so, then the criticism of his work in the categories of compositional harmony, balance and scale here is simply inoperative. Having made this or that construction of the era, we sometimes pay the absence of some basic feelings and concepts to the authors. But in postmodernism, non -standard, controversy and odion are most often signs of a conscious struggle against aesthetic norms. In other words, this is not a bug of the system, but its feature. It is possible to endlessly discuss how appropriate such objects are in urban space, but all of them are material evidence of those one and a half decades when such author’s gestures were simply possible. Neither before nor after we can imagine the appearance of something similar in removal, creative independence and sometimes good folly. These monuments and buildings fully reflect the liberal spirit of their time with the inherent freedoms – conscience, self -expression and artistic taste. Perhaps that is why today we take them less and less for the symbols of urban planning arbitrariness and increasingly, in paradoxically, for the evidence of normality. The sculptor was severely wounded by the unknown person during the war, during the thaw – a ban on work from Khrushchev. But he remained the most important hero of world monumental art. The sculptor was seriously injured in the unknown photo of the unknown 100 years during the war, during the thaw – a ban on work from Khrushchev. But he remained the most important hero of world monumental art. Photos (Tagstotranslate) News
Zurab Tsereteli died – the most criticized Russian sculptor why his work, which everyone used to scold, is actually real postmodern art
