The starting point for this exhibition was the publication of Ivan Nikolaev's book Aqueducts of Ancient Rome. The book includes the architect's doctoral dissertation, defended by him in 1945, then revised by the author for several years, but never fully published (some of Nikolaev's materials were included in the volumes of the World History of Architecture). Now the granddaughter of the architect Maria Shubina has collected and edited the entire text, supplemented the illustrations and published - partly at her own expense, partly on a grant from the Moscow Architectural Institute; the current rector of the institute, Dmitry Shvidkovsky, wrote an introductory article to this book. The second reason for organizing the exhibition was the anniversary of Nikolaev, whose birthday in June will be 110 years old.
The publication of the text of the doctoral dissertation of the famous avant-garde artist added the obligatory word "science" to the title of the exhibition, a word that is rarely found at avant-garde exhibitions. Probably, it prompted the organizers not to limit themselves to the framework of a regular exhibition, but to saturate a short-term exhibition with events, turning it into an occasion for discussion and study of various problems of the avant-garde. On the opening day, a round table was held dedicated to the preservation of the most famous building of Nikolaev in our time - the House-Commune on the street. Ordzhonikidze. On Monday, November 7, the VKHUTEMAS will show a film about Moscow constructivism, tell about archival research into the history of the same commune house, and present the recently published book Architecture of the Moscow Avant-garde in the Second Half of the 1920s – 1930s. Then, on Wednesday, an experimental lecture is planned - a comparison of music and architecture of the 1920s, and finally, on Thursday, November 10, Rector Dmitry Shvidkovsky himself will present Ivan Nikolaev's book on aqueducts. The program is more than rich - it is understandable why the central part of the gallery is occupied by rows of chairs for listeners. In this case, the exposition, placed on several laconic white stands, matching the color of the gallery, becomes an addition to the cycle of meetings.
However, a very nice addition. It in no way pretends to be a complete retrospective - this is a selection of Nikolayev's original works of different years, extracted from the funds of the Moscow Architectural Institute and from the collection of the architect's family. There are not very many of these works, and the chronology is not read very clearly, but somehow along a Leninist spiral. The earliest (and therefore the most interesting) sketch of the time of Nikolaev's studies at the architecture department of the Moscow Higher Technical School is adjacent to the projects of the NER, the initiator of which, it turns out, Nikolaev was during his rectorship of the Moscow Architectural Institute in 1958-1970. Next to the sketch of the competition project for the USSR pavilion at the 1964 World Exhibition in New York, we find on the wall a ribbon dedicated to the commune house on the street. Ordzhonikidze. At first, this spread is somewhat confusing, but the space of the exhibition hall is not large and the viewer quickly passes from confusion to thinking about the vicissitudes of Ivan Nikolaev's life. And above all, of course, about the most painful thing for all avant-garde artists without exception - about Stalin's violent transition to the classics in the 1930s.
The peculiarity of the exhibition is that it shows very little, but - works of different years, the life of a famous architect as a whole, without an emphasis on the avant-garde or the classics. Unexpectedly for yourself, you discover that Ivan Nikolaev, whose biography, written by S. O. Khan-Magomedov, ends with a short afterword in the 1930s - he was successful almost throughout his life. There were avant-garde artists, whose life literally collapsed in the 1930s, and Nikolayev passed all stylistic storms, not so much without losses, but without visible injuries - that's why Dmitry Shvidkovsky in his preface to the new book called him "an iron man."
There are at least two reasons for this stability: the first is very accurately named in the same place, in the afterword by S. O. Khan-Magomedova - this is Nikolaev's belonging to the industrial direction of the avant-garde. Brought up at the Moscow Higher Technical School, he apparently considered the main thing not to search for a completely new (pure, proletarian, then everywhere) form, but to rationalize practical, functional problems. He designed factories and dormitories with them, the dwellings of the proletariat, came up with ways to resettle the workers as efficiently as possible (read - closer), his communal houses were called "social condensers". Its architecture did not pretend to be a machine, it simply was: a well-oiled mechanism, and (this is already due to political and economic reasons) it was more of a harvester than a personal car. If stylistic and formal delights were the least important for Nikolayev, then the authoritarian turn to the classics could not affect him emotionally as strongly as, for example, Leonidov, for whom form was everything.
The second reason is probably the very science that appears in the title of the exhibition. Nikolaev began teaching immediately, as soon as he graduated from the institute, in 1925, and practically did not stop this occupation. In 1929 he defended his Ph. D. thesis on industrial buildings, and in the 1930s, just from the moment he turned to the classics, he began to prepare the same, already mentioned doctoral dissertation on Roman aqueducts. And it cannot be said that the architect has left the classics for science. He is engaged in science in parallel, and in the 1930s he actively designs, and not even in the classics at all - his 1938 Kuibyshev hydroelectric power plant project is a completely industrial building, without a hint of decor. Rather, it looks like the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris than the "Stalinist Empire" style.
One could, of course, say that apart from science and "prom" the architect "fled" from the Stalinist classics … to Turkey, where he, together with I. F. Milinis, A. L. Pasternak and E. M. Popov designs (1932-1933) and builds (1935-1936) a textile mill. This, little-known to the uninitiated, Turkish combine turns out to be one of the main heroes of the exhibition, where you can see both the project and the sketches - beautiful, downright Italian sanguines. The forms of the combine, however, are only slightly affected by the classical influences (the thin supports of its propyls vaguely resemble the porticoes of the Moscow RSL).
So, Nikolaev began to study aqueducts. The topic is formally quite classical, but at the same time he studies not porticos and capitals, but engineering structures. That is, the leading architect of the 1920s "prom" chooses in the ancient heritage, since they are ordered to deal with, the most industrial, in essence, section. And he begins to explore the origins of his industrial architecture. He enthusiastically studies the design features of aqueducts, and at the same time - the tools of labor of the ancient Romans and other related (very fascinating) things, but most importantly - proportions.
Measuring proportions is a curious trend in the history of architecture. One of its main ideologists was Kirill Nikolaevich Afanasyev, who measured absolutely everything: from the galleries of St. Sophia of Kiev to the icon of the Mother of God of Vladimir (if you put the needle of the compass in the eye of the Mother of God and measure several distances, you get a slender diagram). If we look at the measurement of proportions as a method, then the main feature of this method is that it gives absolutely nothing for the study of the history of architecture. When the use of formulas by architects of the past can theoretically be proven, talking about proportions makes sense, but in most cases it turns out to be a pure play of the mind of those who measure, historically a little more meaningful in relation to cultures keen on mathematics (Egyptian pyramids or Roman aqueducts Nikolaev), and completely meaningless for the study of ancient Russian architecture (Ivan Sergeevich Nikolaev also wrote a book about it, edited by K. N. Afanasyev).
But the life story of the architect and scientist Ivan Nikolaev, clearly shown at the exhibition in the VKHUTEMAS gallery, very well demonstrates what the real, vital and real value of proportional theories is.
Everyone knows that the classics (broader historical styles) and the avant-garde are enemies. They can temporarily reconcile, find common ground, and one of these points is the stereometric classic of the French Revolution from Bull and Ledoux, and the second is proportions. That felt both Le Corbusier and the masters of the Soviet avant-garde, especially when it came to the classic twist. The architects of the classicisms, however, although they respected the Golden Section, never made such a complex and ramified science out of their dimension as the former avant-gardists made of it in Stalin's time.
Simply put, the situation can be imagined as follows: if you deprive the classics of all the decorations, then a box will remain, proportioned in a certain way. In general, similar to the architecture of the avant-garde. When the avant-garde felt like an implacable enemy and conqueror of the old styles, that is, in the 1920s, he came up with fundamentally opposite proportions so as not to look even like “stripped” classics. When they demanded from above to do the classics, the transitional projects of the early 1930s received, first of all, new proportions: square windows instead of ribbon windows, and so on. Proportions are that part of the classical heritage that a modernist architect can apply to his buildings without fear of completely losing face and being accused of the "crime" of ornament (another thing is that the Stalinist time did not tolerate compromises, and everyone who designed, after wars used ornaments too. Including Nikolaev, see his project of the arched entrance of the Volgograd plant, decorated with reliefs. Now the reliefs are stripped, only arches remain).
One way or another, proportions are the point of contact of warring paradigms, and when the Soviet government found it necessary to knock these paradigms against their heads, the study of proportions became neutral survival territories for architects brought up at the forefront of the 1920s. And if this method helped the former avant-garde artists to survive or not go crazy, it must be recognized as very useful. From an everyday point of view and from the standpoint of the history of art of the 20th century.
Moreover, since the end of the 1950s Nikolaev again returned to the theme of the "prom" of the twenties and, being the rector of the Moscow Architectural Institute, probably became one of the initiators of the theme of the NER (a new element of resettlement, which was subsequently dealt with by A. E. Gutnov and I. G. Lezhava). He makes the author's inoculation of the avant-garde "prom" into post-war modernism. Although it must be admitted that now the effect of grafting seems to have ended - in our modern architecture this heritage is rarely and weakly felt.
