The exhibition epic about Russian Palladianism was prepared by notable curators and researchers Arkady Ippolitov and Vasily Uspensky. Its first chapter was drawn in Venice, in the Correr Museum last fall. The exposition was hosted by the palace wing, designed in the style of the "Napoleonic" Empire style, somewhat authentic Russian version of neoclassicism. The Venetian version of Russian Palladianism was reviewed by me on the same portal archi.ru. The curators have confirmed for certain: the composition of the second, Moscow, head of Russian Palladianism has hardly changed in comparison with the Venetian one. The impression from the two projects is radically different. What's the matter?
First of all: the Moscow version of the exhibition is divided into two museums. One of the reasons for this decision is diplomatic. At one time, the initiator of the idea of an exhibition about the Russian version of the art of the Vicenta genius of the 16th century Andrea di Pietro della Gondola (Palladio) was the director of the Tsaritsyno Palace Museum Natalia Samoilenko. However, her museum was not able to participate in the Venetian version of the exposition: no items on the topic were found in the relatively new Tsaritsyno museum. Our main museums (Historical, State Tretyakov Gallery, Hermitage), palaces-museums of the suburbs of St. Petersburg, venerable estates near Moscow, long ago turned into museums with rich archives, archives themselves, and some regional museums (Tver) became donors. The main supplier of the diplomatic order is the A. V. Shchusev. And the main political manager of the show was a former Soviet institution with an abbreviation, which can be deciphered as follows: "Russian pictorial propaganda." Today this institution has become the ROSIZO museum and exhibition center. Its selfless director Zelfira Tregulova spent a lot of effort on organizing the Venice tour. However, today the first chapter of the epic has become a distant history, if only because Mrs. Tregulova works in the new position of director of the Tretyakov Gallery.
They decided to arrange the Moscow head of Palladianism in a different way, in accordance with the rules of high politeness. Respected the initiator of the topic, Natalia Yurievna Samoilenko and the Tsaritsyno Museum. The main part was given to this estate museum. The main donor, the Shchusev Museum, was also respected. A section dedicated to Soviet Palladianism was installed in the front suite of the main building of the museum.
An undoubted plus of this solution in comparison with the Venetian version: in both museums, "Shchusevsky" and "Tsaritsyno", exhibits - primarily masterpiece architectural graphics - feel at ease, comfortable and cozy. Thanks to the delicate direction of the performance, which is not easy in the case of the newly-made interiors of the Tsaritsyn Bread House, a semblance of that brilliant theater of architecture, which the master of classicism Pietro di Gottardo Gonzaga once called "music for the eyes", has turned out. In the study rooms of the suite of the Bread House, Arkady Ippolitov and Vasily Uspensky managed to arrange the path to Russian Palladianism quite gracefully and convincingly. From the introductory sections with the first translations and experiments in the spirit of Palladio of the first half of the 18th century, the viewer moves to the “politically splendid apotheosis” - the era of Catherine II. Several sections await him: St. Petersburg, suburbs (Tsarskoe Selo, Pavlovsk). A separate part is devoted to the most zealous Palladian, the great autodidact Nikolai Lvov. In all the chambers of Catherine's time there are ink illustrations for the "four books on Palladian architecture." According to the originals of the Italian, they were made in 1791 for the Russian edition by Nikolai Lvov and Ivan Tupylev. From the heritage of Lviv, the exposition slowly turns into the landscapes of Russian estates, where the Palladian style was especially welcome. The curators clearly mark three periods: the flourishing of the manor culture, the “golden autumn” (which may be symbolized by Vasily Polenov's painting “Grandmother's Garden”), and finally, the retrospectivism of the Russian Silver Age. All materials can be viewed slowly, as if in the silence of the cabinet of curiosities.
Each exhibit in the part of Soviet Palladianism in the Museum of Architecture is perceived in the same volumetric manner. The voyage there begins with a pre-revolutionary theme, then - the most difficult - Palladianism and the avant-garde. Next - the totalitarian style and devoted Palladian of the era of Soviet Art Deco Ivan Zholtovsky.
Everything is beautiful and quite musical for the eyes. The impression that the exhibits have become an order of magnitude more than there were in Venice. The only question is: is this an undoubted advantage?
It's time to move on to the main disadvantage of the Moscow chapter of the exhibition epic: the idea of the curators has not undergone any changes in comparison with Venice. In Serenissima, the crowdedness of the exhibits, stretched out in a chain along a single long suite, was justified by the fact that the exhibition itself was perceived as an integral, personal author's statement. The same right to an individual, largely subjective perspective on understanding the topic is clearly outlined in the texts of the catalog, which can in many ways be called a literary and artistic book signed, first of all, by Arkady Ippolitov. The exhibition was assembled as a very talented, in many respects controversial, but interesting even in its polemical parts action, in which (to paraphrase Akhmatova) "Palladio's aerial bulk, like a cloud, stood over me." Palladianism was chosen by Ippolitov and Uspensky as the same constant of Russian culture, which is Pushkin's "Eugene Onegin" for her. Moreover, structurally, this author's speech of curators, as I formulated in
autumn review, was consolidated by two key exhibits. These are two models. In the first hall there was a model of the Villa Rotunda, made in 1935 by the folk craftsman Alexander Lyubimov. In the latter, there is a model made in 1997 by the conceptual architect Alexander Brodsky: a house of the Soviet architectural empire style of the totalitarian era, made of raw clay on a metal frame, tilting at an angle like a sinking ship. Authorship of Zholtovsky, most likely. Thus, two themes were introduced, clearly readable and necessary for the aspect of "Palladio as a standard, a measure of the global text of Russian culture." First: the charmingly tongue-tied piety towards Palladio ensures the flourishing of art (recall the whole way of life, the architectonics of manor life). Second: Russian Palladianism is Atlantis, the culture of drowned empires.
As soon as the exhibition was divided into two parts, the personal, purely author's statement with all its complex allusions and references turned out to be unreadable. And the material of great value began to be annotated somehow very simply, with absolutely tiny, reference, like "Wikipedia", explications about the heyday of Palladio under Catherine, about the golden age of the Russian estate, about the totalitarian time … The problematic links of the curatorial approach were exposed. In the version of "total Palladio", it turned out that the gaze of an architect was sorely lacking. So that it is difficult to make unique documents talk, and not to make them an excursion delight for the eyes. So that the presentation of the English version of Russian Palladianism would correspond to the context of the English itself, too. And the theme "Palladio and the avant-garde" would be subtly interpreted in connection with the logic of form-creation, its historical laws. The exhibitions convince: the legacy of Palladio, like Pushkin's novel in verse, is an inexhaustible topic. Therefore, you can begin to invent a new exhibition.
