Valery Koshlyakov about art and Tsereteli

[SergeiSK]

Olga Ostrovskaya talks with Valery Koshlyakov

- Tell me, Valery, and that the gizmo you doing?
- This is a layout for the bureaucrats.
- What do you mean - for bureaucrats?
- An artist does not need a layout. He has a plan that should be implemented. And the bureaucrats want to argue, discuss ... That's for this and want the layout.
- So you could do without a layout?
- Well, if the object is not supposed to put in the forest, and somewhere in the city, you will surely need a consulting engineer, calculations, all sorts of permits, certificates ... Therefore, the layout still needs objectively.
- But what should get the result?
- That will have a tower of such "symbolic lighthouse on the shores of the Kama. You understand that if the structure without walls, without windows, without the apartments, it would certainly be symbolic (smiles). My tower is not television, will not bear any functional load, only a little light from above. Therefore, we tentatively named it the beacon. This project initiated by the Museum of Modern Art. In September there will be exhibition of my paintings, and the tower will illustrate it. The task of the museum [PERMM] - not only to create good exhibition, but also to actively implement the objects of art in the urban environment, to carry the art of the people. Therefore, we want to put a tower in the most beautiful place in the city, on the waterfront. It is made of metal, which is not afraid of water. However, contemporary art in Russia have always experienced a shortfall in funding, so I offered to make a tower made from recycled materials. But as it turned out, the metal is also not very roads - we are in Russia.
- Again, "poor art»?

Читать дальше... 

- No, in this case, art is no longer the poor. I came here from France by the museum, then by train from Moscow - it is no longer poor art. The construction of the tower laid a beautiful, large budget. There is funding for the museum from the city ... - I do not know whose money is, anyway, just not mine.
- Once you were in the group "Art or Death!". On the account of her and scandalous exhibition in a public toilet, and performance "Young atheist". Healthy young radicalism. Now that you have grown wiser artist's life, you share the old slogans like "Art and no trash»?
- Do not deny. But we must understand that the slogan was born in 1987, then was completely different cultural context, and he, in general, and gave rise to this phrase. In the 80 th issue of careless work was fundamental: the Union of Artists, career ladder, vystavkomy - all this produced, and nurtured vspaivalo hack. If we talk about careless at all, it exists at all times. But today there is no such pressure systems, today an artist can not make the pot boil.
- But the moonlight? Have you ever ever write such rubbish?
- Koneeeeechno! Many times. 've Got to live. For example, I wrote the scenery for theaters. This is also a bust, do not be surprised. I was just a performer, drawing those sheds XIX century - is a real quickie. Art is not buying. Who will buy this my tower? None. Taking the funds for the construction - this is just a conspiracy, a conspiracy of friends and nothing more. Art is not buy and not buy ever - it is an axiom. Among the artists were a unit, which fed their creativity. The pay Titian, paid Picasso - between five or six hundred years! Not bad pay da Vinci, but it is only a phenomenon of the era, the merit of enlightened bourgeois, who desperately need it to join this art. Since then, the correct bourgeois extinct. O noble patrons, we can perhaps that dream. Each "patron" for some reason expects that its patronage artist owes him something to. And this is not get no patronage.
- On what, then, living artists?
- Scamp! (Laughs) My colleagues are working designers, but design - insincere affair. Dali, for example, a book some draw, uninteresting. And how can you blame him, that he does hack? Makes for money, for life, for the family. I'm just lucky: I was spoiled by the fact that buy what I do for myself. So I have to boil the pot is smaller than others.
- So, still there is a demand? And who is this high cultural consumers of your work?
- Perverts poor collectors who do not know what they need, but sometimes something so buy it. Or when something someone liked it. Demand is largely random.
- And what do hack-work, to buy it?
- Well, what do they want? Birch on the wall, or a portrait of his son - I do not know.
- But for something of modern art you can say: here it is trash! It was he, he shalturil, I saw!
- You can, but it will be very vague. We must talk about something concrete, then I can say: That's good, but it is bad. Otherwise it will be too abstract.
- Here Brodsky - it is good?
- Yes, definitely good. For a variety of parameters I can criticize it, but overall it was good.
- Polissky - this is good?
- Good.
- A Tsereteli - good?
- Bad.
- Why bad? I'm certainly not a connoisseur of modern art, but Tsereteli love.
- Then you and I seem to have nothing to say. You Tsereteli is good, but I feel bad - it's not a conversation. For me, first of all important audience to which the artist calls. Who directed the work of Zurab, you know? Who called it Luzhkov with a shovel? Do not trash? Is not art a crime? And Peter, having destroyed the embankment of Moscow, the embankment, on which worked best Soviet architects? Did Peter not a crime? And I'll tell you: it is a crime century. The crime, which was attended by the artist - the artist, who has since ceased to be an artist. For an artist the world - is a danger, the danger of destroying the fragile harmony. Artist inhibits posted traditions claim forms. And where, I ask, this post by Zurab? It is that avant-garde? Suppose he had the right to strike out Pushkin (tradition) and try to offer something special. But in his works any suggestions, I do not see. He broke the horizon garmoniyu its colossus, but it has to offer in return? I can only swear, curse and abuse him on all parameters. I can swear professionally. What do you personally like about Peter?
- It is a lace. Unusual.
- Unusual?! (Starts to get angry) Then I ask you: the city - is a public space or private? And he will answer: the public. This is the first reason that can not be to the detriment of the city and its space to satisfy personal ambitions. And secondly, the city - it is the only product of man, namely in the quintessence of our culture. Therefore, the architect, change its appearance, is a huge responsibility. To make the right decisions, what kind of house can be built in the historic center than is permissible to decorate the city - for that an architect gets higher art education. And for this mess should be given on the hands. Here in the garden you can put a Peter the Great - a wish: a very unusual, with the chickens without a rooster, and the city can not: it is the law. In Paris in the 18 century, decided to build a five-and six-storey building - not higher. Modern technologies allow to make stoetazhnye home. Beautiful! Unusual! But do not. What are they, in your opinion, idiots, or what? But there is a culture, there are prohibitions. And culture - above all the prohibitions and no freedom to do what want to solitary confinement, at the expense of beauty, which belongs to many.
- Here you build a tower. It just will not spoil the appearance? Just decorate the city?
- I still am not doing Peter the Great, as a temporary structure, an illustration of his exhibition. After that, it can be rearranged somewhere, if not thrown out.
- So this tower, your personal artistic statement, you can take and throw it away, right? This is a normal end to a work of art?
- Of course! Of course, normal. That is the truth, to which we came. No need to clutter the planet. The next generation will say to me thanks for what they do not have to rack their brains, as over some Peter the Great, what to do with my tower. Of course, they over Peter will not break my head - they will break Peter. And it will happen in our lifetime, you'll see.
- Now you make a tower and do not mind the fact that in future it will be broken. Your pictures too short-lived: cardboard, scotch tape, which you use at work, kept very badly. So, you have no ambitions to stay in centuries?
- Staying in centuries - it's not my problem. And it's not the problem, and stupidity. Geniuses, you know, made the culture of a hundred, two hundred, five hundred years after their death. If life were merely craftsmen who were doing their work and not trying to get into immortality with soap and water. Just so happened, there was a selection. I will not dissemble, of course, I want to at least edge, to somehow enter into artistic tradition, but it depends not on me.
- From what is being done, anything left in the history of culture? Well, not for centuries - at least for a decade?
- No, probably not.
- And what you do, too, will be left?
- Of course not. All this will die in my own life. And it's not terrible, it's not a tragedy, why all so afraid of? Even if the earlier and thought to create for eternity, they thought wrong. And they are not at all the job.
- Good. For what ultimately you build these mysterious structures, the painting, which are also more and collapsed a couple of years? In eternity you do not want to enter, we have already found out.
- How - Why? For beauty!

Olga Ostrovskaya
(The newspaper "Sol", Perm, 27 April 2010)
http://www.saltt.ru/node/484

[dedulya37]

and did not try to climb into immortality with soap and water.