"Triumph of the bad things," Andrei Erofeev

[Dogel]

Triumph of bad things

Andrei Erofeev about the aesthetics of garbage and careless

The Russian art world as Kurdistan. The population is, the name is, and the country on the map does not exist. Ask anyone what the Russian art today? Hear in response to a few names of artists whose work did to each other are not related. Our "great tradition"? We are trampled them. Children giggle over Malevich, MPs and officials cursing a social art. Only lazy people do not throw a stone in Kabakov. What did complain that the tradition carried off on other people's apartments.

Constructivism and Suprematism claimed himself to the Dutch, Germans and French. Sots Art shulerski Stribro Chinese and is now happily sell them worldwide. As for the image of today's Russian mainstream, it is changeable as a chameleon that is entirely dependent on the friendly ties of some influential individuals. In Paris, the Pompidou Center, for example, love and promote the Alexander Ponomarev, while in Moscow it or do not know at all, or is confused with a Buddhist-namesake. In Berlin, the couple appreciate Kopystyanskih, rare Documenta do without them in the United States respects Andrei Roiter. Prominent artists, but the absolute fringe. The Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale is filled at all, like a tent on the market: who will pass out, he and exposes his protege.

In our artistic community is not installed to view the specifics of contemporary Russian art. No key visual image that would be recognizable as a sign of our culture. Work on selecting and public recognition of any direction or type of creativity as the main reference framework on local art in an aesthetic canon, and the shaping of the matrix, which would have appealed artists of different generations, different philosophies and professions, not done. And yet, no need to negotiate the Russian artistic identity does not negate that very identity.

Читать дальше... 

The style identified with the stable national or regional school of art, there is virtually every country of the Western world. This does not mean, of course, that it has reduced the diversity of artistic phenomena of the country. But he is - a stable identification sign of her art, it is reduced to information on the country in the world digests of contemporary culture. It is part of a set of minimum mandatory knowledge and, therefore, is an integral part of museum displays, historical and art publications.

Almost all recognized to date identity styles are related to the epoch of 1960-1970's, when art was no longer conceived as a representation of a personal manner, and was understood as a place of aesthetic phenomena and demonstrate the qualities that have a universal language in this cultural nature of the region. This is the American pop art, turning to the industry and pictures of items of mass consumption, such as the French New Realism, which became a showcase of the latest materials, such Italian Poor man, relying on natural objects, and English is a new sculpture, actively used second-hand industrial stuff. Of course, no coincidence that the national styles were supporting the movement, to prioritize found other people's things. Today, artists around the world operate on very similar techniques and strategies. A context of their work strongly differ. Each country has its own formal tradition, its own culture thing, its kind of human communication through language and images of objects. These context properties willy-nilly, they appear in the work of any master, but in a contextual art they naturally focus on.

In Russia, the peculiarities of the local context artists turned, as we know, in the late 1960s. The object of their initial interest was not slogans, not social realism, and no monument to the leader, that is not propagandistic Soviet entourage and household items, a world of communal apartments, barracks and dormitories. Artists of the sixties (especially Michael Roginsky) discovered a characteristic feature of everyday Russian life: "life is not on the project," that is existence beyond any imposed by the society of the system of culture and character of things. On the horizon, household life was not in an ideal environment, urban planners and architects drawn, and the spontaneously existing environment that no one program. Most household items, clothing, interior bore the imprint of homemade.

Do not hurt differed from homemade items and products that come out from under the hands of professionals. Characteristics of our industrial goods - THEIR intentionally bad madeness, "careless" - the subject of many texts and installing Ilya Kabakov. Nedovedennost items to match the image of the project, believed Kabakov, the Russian world generally deprives the subject of sustainable basis.

Roginsky, and then not so much Kabakov opened, how many have made the rehabilitation of this context, it raised at the (imaginary) Museum buskins. Put a "bad thing" above their own feelings of plastic, subjecting their work dictates it. Own limited selection of their work and exposure, monitoring of the "bad things". The act of going beyond the limits of taste and corporate ideas about "quality", which made both the artist was not motivated by internal considerations of art - they are not trying to catch up with the art world. He was not due to political motives and the intention to denounce or to show the power of citizenship. In my opinion, it flowed from an understanding point of historical development in which they appeared, and the forms of culture, which was measured with him.

This, apparently, was that in the absence of a clear program zhiznestroitelnoy design environment, making art is the work pretentious, pointless and even dangerous, while at the same time, any development of new programs are already known to be discredited by the failure of previous attempts terrible design life, which in Russia in the twentieth century was enough. As a surgeon who refuses to risky surgery with an uncertain outcome, lowering the scalpel and humbly zashtopyvayuschy belly patient artist stopped himself, imposed a ban on their own "creative" activities. Shifted the emphasis of his work with the spontaneous self-organizing willed life to her humble acceptance as an object of study.

In the 1990s, the context of a "bad thing" was the main theme of creativity of the architect Alexander Brodsky and artist Valery Koshlyakov. They have also been generated by "deprofessionalization", but not literal, as in Roginsky and Kabakov, and role-playing and gaming. Of "bad things" Brodsky Koshlyakov learned its aesthetic essence, a set of formal means of expression, textures, materials, techniques, tricks, they cleared the functional parameters and the ontology of "bad things". Their efforts transformed the context of life demonstrated in aesthetics. On its basis, and originated the style. It is not surprising that in contrast to Kabakov's Soviet studies' construction-garbage "left in the art of his time without continuing, lyrical installation Brodsky Koshlyakov about life on the" ruins of empire "have contributed to a sharp deterioration of public interest in the aesthetic exoticism of" bad things ". Narrow tradition of working with "the aesthetics of garbage" suddenly became a supporting platform for a wide range of creative artists. At the turn of 2000-2010-ies, "the aesthetics of garbage" carried away almost all of the latest generation. Among architects, examples ekspozitsionerom besproektnoy role of architecture, not to mention the well-known conceptual group "Iced Architects", as well as Nicholas Pereslegin. Aesthetics "bad things" seared "antiglamurnuyu" art-photography and a new "veristskoe" movie. It is reflected in the latest novel by Vladimir Sorokin. She was devoted to a spectacular exhibition of Marat Gelman's "Russian Povera". Furthermore, the aesthetics of the "bad things", as it may seem, has penetrated into the realm of glamor, subjugating salon art design, fashion, interior decoration of restaurants, boutiques and hotels. Today, virtually no secular magazine for architecture and interior decoration is complete without material on the methodology and uses of objects pomoechnogo origin.

Thus, the aesthetics of the "bad things" has become a real style of life, although its official institutions and try to ignore it. Will it be recognized as the Kremlin's authority and the Orthodox Church, for whom beauty - a synonym of gold bullion and belokozhannogo salon Bentley? Hardly. Although who knows? After all, fashion style - a terrible force, penetrating to the heart.