avant-garde curiosity shop
Text: Michael Bode /Infox.ru
The exhibition of "Paris heritage Mikhail Larionov, which opened in the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky, no futurism, or" Rayonism "or sketches for Diaghilev's productions. Another behind the scenes, Larionov - frequenter of Parisian booksellers and junkman, collector of prints and Lubkov all times and peoples. Small part (300 pages) of his huge collection tretyakovtsy combined under titer "The whole world - the theater ...".
The artist-collector - a special type of collector. Of course, in this industry it is driven by artistic taste, but it was his own, quite original, but that happens and capricious. And, of course, a practical interest. For instance, Rembrandt bought the precious utensils, armor and oriental fabric, which, before going to the creditors, were on his paintings. Van Gogh collecting Japanese prints ukiyo-e and it studied the methods of contour drawing and decorative letters. It is not the academics, Rodin, however, collecting antiques, however, later they were all fakes. However, in collecting the artist's most important - not authentic and not the pursuit of masterpieces, and, so to speak, find food for the eyes. This, if not food, exactly closet artist. If you continue with this analogy, we can say that for each forthcoming Wallpapers recruited its own basket, which folded in such a case the necessary products.
On his arrival in Moscow from Tiraspol, Mikhail Larionov began to walk on the collapse of the famous Sukharevka, where you can cheaply buy splints, wooden gingerbread printed boards and other folk crafts. As we know, this storehouse of folklore served him a visual aid when creating a Battle of Kosovo opus. However, he was not fond of one "grass-roots culture: many of his colleagues on a" Jack of Diamonds "and" Donkey's tail then looked at the "Cezanne" and "Matisse", then on street signs, the antediluvian handbills booths and circuses and those same splints. Leaving in 1915, along with Natalia Goncharova for Diaghilev's first engagements in Switzerland and then France, Larionov left Russia in his collection, which then disappeared. Clearly, presented at the current exhibition - the artist is the catch on the banks of the Seine, the fact that he was able to pick up over the years with second-hand book stalls and antique shops.
Big fishes in his basket nearly there: Is that three or four masters of engraving by Jacques Callot and several woodcuts Utamaro and Hirosige. However, Larionov for them and not pursue - and the funds are not allowed, and interests are special and unique. With skill hunter with Sukharevka he catches everything that one way or another had to do with spectacles - whether the cancan at the Folies-Bergère "(poster by Jules Cheret), posters or prints of Kabuki theater with Cambodian dancers. Theatrical Veduta XVIII century, boldly and carelessly painted a trader for a better distribution, side by side in his meeting with Dutch engraving tool to combat the XVII century, lubok Malevich during World War II and the Chinese and Vietnamese "people's pictures." However, Larionov - not Bakhrushin, and it is not collected for the museum's theater, and, most likely, for practical purposes: in 1920 he and Goncharova, continued to cooperate with the Russian Ballet. And really how the collected art ingredients transformed into his creative cuisine in the sketches for Diaghilev's productions, said no one can - recipes knew only one artist.
Of course, not everything in the collection Larionov due to his professional work. For purely personal pleasure, he, like the monarchs of the Baroque period, collecting a kind of cabinet of curiosities. This engraved gallery of curiosities and original typecasting and monsters were like Edward Bright, the very fat man in England of XVIII century (300 kg), and Dutch painter chudik Joos van Cleve, who wrote his feet, and the first swallow of feminism, Anna Maria von Schurman -- - only in the XVII century woman - a student of the University of Utrecht.
Surprisingly, the avant-garde, that is "left" artist, Larionov in a foreign land suddenly imbued with the charm of the monarchy. And the exhibition organizers, who invented its many parts subtitles ( "Parisian Life", "In the rhythm of the dance", "Under the cherry blossoms," etc.) would cost to start and this section as "God Save the Tsar". There could be incorporated and to French splint c Cossack and the text of the hymn «Dieu, protege-nous le Tsar», and an engraved portrait of the King of Cambodia Idalkanena, and a series of woodcuts with lavish ceremony of the Japanese Emperor Meiji. Although perhaps all this can be attributed to the dramatized, mock monarchism artist-exile.
http://www.infox.ru/afisha/show/2010...larionov.phtml