The Anna Semyonovna Golubkina Museum, part of the Tretyakov Gallery complex, is located in Levshinsky Lane not far from Old Arbat. The entrance is in the courtyard, behind a heavy door - the furnishings of an art studio of the Silver Age; the lobby shows footage of the chronicle of Moscow and Paris at the beginning of the 20th century, Auguste Rodin, teacher Golubkina. Incoming are handed a funny guide based on a letter to Golubkina's friend, which mentions interesting places for her - there we find out where Rodin's workshop is located (now also a museum), and also that Anna Semyonovna does not advise going to the zoo.
The exposition, which contains the most famous and expressive works of the sculptor, occupies two floors. The first is more like a traditional exhibition space: two spacious halls, soft light, evenly dispersed sculptures that can be walked around, even museum workers, vigilantly observing the observance of order and silence, are the same as everywhere. But unlike a standard exhibition, where it is strictly forbidden to touch the exhibits, here visitors have a unique opportunity to get a tactile acquaintance with the work of art and the technique of the sculptor. For this, fragments of two works by Golubkina have been reproduced with the help of modern technology of three-dimensional printing.
Near one of the most notable works - the Fog vase - a tactile panel is installed, where fragments of the sculpture are exactly repeated. According to the idea of the author of the idea and co-curator of the exhibition, head of the architectural bureau "Mezonproekt" Ilya Mashkov, touching the details, one can understand much deeper how the artist worked, what he was thinking about at the time of creating his works. The second tactile panel is placed near the bust of the writer Alexei Remizov and demonstrates the sculptor's technique. On the opening day, going up and touching each of them was not that easy: inspired by the idea, the audience lined up, touched, thought, stepped aside and returned again.
On the second floor of the museum there is a workshop with a huge window on the entire wall and a narrow memorial room, where the organizers of the exhibition tried to reproduce the atmosphere of that time exactly. This room is very quiet, the only place where there are practically no sculptures. The main action takes place in the workshop. This room itself, in spite of its modest size, makes a magical impression - the darkened wallpaper on the walls, the high ceiling, cracked from time to time, pierced by a square light lantern, and everywhere - the work of the sculptor. Made in a variety of techniques from stone, marble, wood, they occupy all the shelves and tables along the walls, windowsill, chairs, grow in the center of the room, leaving visitors with narrow labyrinths for movement.
Special lighting helps not to get confused and not to miss something important in this variety. Spotlights installed under the ceiling alternately direct a powerful beam of light to a particular sculpture, forcing the visitor to turn to it. This is how another special project is revealed - "See". The absolute immersion and involvement of the visitor in the creative process - and this is exactly what the organizers of the exhibition sought - is due to the explanatory sound sequence. Excerpts from Anna Golubkina's letters, her dialogues with colleagues and friends read by the historian-medievalist, lecturer Natalia Ivanovna Basovskaya are continuously heard. This is how other aspects of the special project are revealed: "Seeing" and "Hearing".
On the opening day of the exhibition, we talked with its curator, head of the Mezonproject workshop, Ilya Mashkov:
“It all started with participation in the ArchMoscow-2015 exhibition, where our workshop presented an unusual stand: we invited visitors to perceive architecture through all the senses. We managed to make it so that it was possible to touch, hear and see it at the same time to an absolutely immaterial thing - a creative idea. Then our stand was very much liked by the visitors who willingly participated in the experiment. The staff of the Anna Golubkina museum became interested in our work and offered me, together with Tatyana Galina, to act as curators of the special project “Touch + See + Hear = Feel”.
It seems to me that our method of involving all the senses is very suitable for such expressive works of art. It is very difficult to convey their expression to a large number of people in another way. Visitors come, but do not always fully understand what they have seen and leave too quickly, not having time to be filled with the genius of Golubkina's creativity, which has no analogues in the world. She is a student of Rodin, but at the same time she is completely different, not like anyone else. She worked amazingly and reproduced all her inner experiences in clay. Her experiences - as a creator, a genius, a man of his time, a great master - we tried to show in the museum's exposition. And it was very difficult, because Anna Semyonovna was an unusual person - very lively, energetic, straightforward, original. She worked only on those images that were really interesting to her. For example, she gladly sculpted Andrei Bely, but flatly refused to work with the image of Sergei Yesenin. She saw and felt the world and the people around her in her own way. And it was precisely this that was difficult to reveal in such a small space of her workshop. Before me, as an architect, the task was to create the impression of expanding the space, despite the huge number of sculptures, and to make sure that none of them was lost against the background of the others.
The most emotional works are presented inside the exhibition. For example, a bust of Remizov, looking at which you understand that he has absolutely living skin, a real mustache and he is dressed in an almost palpably soft coat. You walk around it and wonder how it was possible to revive lifeless material by means of sculpture? To answer this question, we put a tactile panel near his bust and selected the most interesting fragments, touching which, you begin to understand how it was done. There is a fragment of Remizov's ear, sculpted with one movement of three fingers. Golubkina simply took the clay, pressed with three fingers and it turned out to be an ear, ran her hand and the collar of her coat wrapped around her neck, made several precise movements and the writer's face came to life. All this is impossible to understand without touching. Therefore, coming to the exhibition, you must definitely touch all the fragments with your hands and fix your feelings, trying to some extent to feel in the place of the sculptor, to understand how the technique that is visible with the eyes is implemented. The element of touch opens up a new, additional side to the perception of art.
In addition, we tried to accentuate each sculpture with the help of light, consistently focusing the attention of visitors on a particular exhibit. In addition to light, sound is involved. Natalia Basovskaya agreed to voice letters to Golubkina. And, in my opinion, it worked out very well. I listened to many actors, male and female voices, but could not find a suitable one. Anna Semyonovna had an extraordinary depth behind her voice. I heard such depth in the voice of Natalia Ivanovna, who read all Golubkina's lines literally in one breath. Voice recordings are broadcast all days of the exhibition in a circle without interruption. We specially entered the age code of Golubkina so that the visitor, at whatever moment he entered the workshop, could immediately understand what was at stake and listen to all the recordings to the end. And you can also compare your own feelings and perceptions at a particular age with the experiences that Golubkina talks about. For example, at 40, she admires marble workers and dreams of learning something from them. At 30, she doesn't listen to her teachers and insists that she will work in her own way. And at 60 she worries about the sculpture of Leo Tolstoy, which does not come out in any way, because the eyes of the writer are like “a hunted wolf”. She does not change with age, remaining a very lively and energetic person.
It seems to me that by simple technical means we managed to expand the space of a small workshop and achieve the effect of full visitor involvement."
The exhibition is open until January 31 inclusive. By 2017, the museum building is planned to be completely renovated, so this exhibition is also a chance to see the studio of the extraordinary sculptor in an almost intact form.
