The interior of the Kennedy Center Russian Living Room, or Washington DC Performing Arts Center, was completed and inaugurated in 2014. The radical transformation of the two premises of the center into a space symbolizing the presence of Russia in this fundamentally multicultural institution designed to develop international friendly ties was made possible by means of a charitable contribution that Vladimir Potanin made for the 40th anniversary of the Kennedy Center in 2011. The project was curated by art critic Natalya Zolotova, who ten years earlier supervised a large jubilee project for the Potanin Foundation in Paris on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of St. Petersburg, within the framework of which she held a successful exhibition “Moscow-St. Petersburg. 1800-1830. When Russia spoke French. " Then in Paris, Natalia Zolotova managed to get an unusual and grandiose space of the famous cathedral for the exhibition, now she proposed an ambitious idea for the Russian living room: to completely transform the old living room space, to try not just to redesign the existing interior, but to create a new integral modern artistic image, proposing this task to well-known Russian architects and artists. The idea was supported by the organizers of both sides - the leadership of the Kennedy Center and the Potanin Foundation. The curatorial condition of refusal from interior design, from common tourist or mono-ethnic symbols ("since Russia, as we all know, is a modern and multinational country," Natalya Zolotova comments on this decision) received the approval of customers. Moreover, as Vladimir Potanin explained in 2011, visitors to the living room should have a "new idea of Russia, stylish, beautiful and modern."
To accomplish this task, Zolotova proposed to customers and held a small closed competition in which she managed to attract wonderful participants; The competition was attended by: Alexander Brodsky, Vladimir Dubossarsky, AES + F group, Vlad Savinkin and Vladimir Kuzmin, Ivan Lubennikov, Georgy Frangulyan, Ilya Utkin, Valery Koshlyakov, Georgy Ostretsov, Sergey Skuratov - all of them presented bright and expectedly different projects. The curator explained the choice of the participants not only by their well-deserved fame, but also by the fact that all the invitees had long worked with the topic of actual Russian self-identification.
As a result of the work of the bilateral Russian-American jury, the joint project of Sergei Skuratov and Valery Koshlyakov won, where the former proposed a rather radical transformation of the interior, and the latter wrote two very bold, mesmerizing, and at the same time almost ingrown into the interior space, paintings.
“Before starting work, I was not personally acquainted with Valery, although I knew him as an excellent artist. But we worked well together. - says Sergey Skuratov. - At first, I offered two options: one completely mine, and the second focused on the paintings of Koshlyakov, in the same tone. This last option was liked by representatives of both sides and was implemented with great precision."
I must say that the American Kennedy Center is such a popular cultural and political symbol of friendship between peoples in the United States. “School trips are constantly conducted here,” says Sergei Skuratov. The Center was created by President Eisenhower in 1958; after the assassination of Kennedy in November 1963, the Senate allocated money to speed up construction, and the building, which thus became a "living monument" to Kennedy, opened a year later, in December 1964. It is located in the memorial part of Washington, on the banks of the Potamak, opposite Roosevelt Island and next to the Lincoln monument. The White House is a 20-minute walk away. Among the antique porticoes designed to symbolize the founding fathers' belief in the value of ancient democracy, the Kennedy Center stands out for its sixties lightness and modesty: low, surrounded by wide terraces with awnings on rare and thin pillars, sprawled on the ground, almost hidden behind trees. In the center there are three auditoriums separated by double-height galleries: States and Nations, similar as twins. The interior of the center will remind post-Soviet people of Brezhnev's architecture - it looks like the Lenin Museum in Gorki: marble walls, bronze details, red carpets, tall stained-glass windows, chains of crystal chandeliers.
This is how the lobby of the Kennedy Center looks like (interactive Google panorama):
The Kennedy Center, according to the approach taken in the United States to such organizations, as well as the papers signed by Eisenhower, exists on annual contributions from private donors, who, in return, receive, in addition to mentioning their names in honorary lists, the opportunity to be photographed with the stars, prioritize booking seats in the audience in halls and during intermissions to relax in special living rooms with refreshments - this service is usually called VIP. There are four living rooms, and by 2011 the interiors of three of them had already been decorated as: Israeli - with a bright plafond in the spirit of Klimt; African with sloping walls and knitted mats; and the gloomy and luxurious Chinese, where the wood paneling of the walls is decorated with ornamental and hieroglyphic paintings. The largest remained, consisting of two rooms with a total area of 330 m2 - Golden Circle Lounge, whose name comes from the so-called "circle" of corporate donors: the smallest of the donations is $ 5,000 per year and is called the Corporate Golden Circle. In other words, "golden", the widest circle of sponsors gathered in this living room. However, it is visited by the American president and other high-ranking guests.
“It was a serious challenge,” comments Natalya Zolotova. - To create a new space that creates the atmosphere of the Russian cultural presence in two small rooms with a low ceiling and no windows - this did not seem to be an easy task from the first minute. And not just anywhere, but at the Kennedy Center, where for more than forty years, on seven stages, in hundreds of annual performances, they build new decorations, transform space every day, create magical worlds. It is difficult to surprise a spectator spoiled by impressions here”.
Before the reconstruction, the living room of the Golden Circle was covered with a red carpet, furnished with assorted furniture, and its main attraction was a large crystal chandelier - a gift from Ireland, which was placed in a round gilded niche on the ceiling, a kind of dome - a "golden circle" symbolically reflecting the name.
The center asked to keep the Irish chandelier and its smaller "sisters" hung on the walls, but the rest was allowed to be changed. And Sergei Skuratov would not be himself if he limited himself to the inexpressive and banal volume provided to him. Having examined in the section that a considerable space is hidden behind a low ceiling, almost half of the entire height of the room, he requested detailed drawings from the center, received old blueprints by mail, and, having meticulously studied all the possibilities, proposed an unexpected and radical solution, in some places raising the ceiling by almost three meter and changing the ventilation system.
The architect proposed to arrange real windows in the living room, cutting through the southern wall, which adjoins the Gallery of Nations, - from there, very little sunlight would penetrate, and an impressive view from above of the flags in the double-height gallery would open up. But the leadership of the center could not agree to this. However, Sergei Skuratov, not at all disappointed, moved apart or even cut through the living room space not only physically, but also figuratively - with the help of perspective and light techniques that go back to Baroque architecture; they look, however, quite modern, balancing on the edge of cultural traditions.
“All the employees of the Center, from the management to the loaders, ran to look at the suddenly widening space of the living room,” says Natalya Zolotova. - It really looked like a miracle and reminded me of the words of Hamlet "Enclose me in a nut shell, and I will feel like the lord of infinity." Shakespeare expressed what Skuratov had done so well that the Americans and I decided to put this quote on a booklet published by the Kennedy Center for the opening of the Russian Drawing Room.
In the raised ceiling, the architect arranged deep wells with wide promising slopes, placing chandeliers in them, disassembled and reassembled with a minimum of gold elements and a predominance of silver in the frame. Being almost completely removed from the space, the chandeliers do not squeeze it, and the niches, due to the brightly lit slopes, look like the lamps of the upper daylight. This is the first illusion because the light is white but artificial; it seems that the crystal structures are almost suspended from heaven.
Further: Sergei Skuratov divided two rooms of the living room: a larger hall and a smaller room, located behind it on the right, with the white "blade" of the extended space of the bar counter. The counter is Corian, the wall behind it and the floor beneath it are tiled with gray-veined white marble, all lit with a matte but bright light. At the northern end of the white space, the "beam", the architect succeeded, also with the permission of the Kennedy Center leadership, to step outside a little, increasing its length by about two meters: there used to be an unused ledge-pocket in the corridor, Sergei Skuratov occupied it with a glass ledge … The architect also slightly, about thirty centimeters, pushed the entire entrance southern wall towards the corridor, thereby also increasing the internal space. "Russia has long, since the time of Ivan the Terrible, strives to expand its borders, so we have succeeded a little here," Sergey Skuratov comments on this quite functional decision.
Inside, to the right of the bar, a nook-appendix for two tables has formed, with a completely white interior, in particular, due to the fact that the two outer walls of this half-hidden and almost miraculously cut room are glass, two-thirds of the height covered with a white gradient matte silk screen printing. All the doors of the living room have been designed in the same way: both the entrance door and the sliding door leading to the small hall. The glass covered with matte whiteness is an image of an endless snow-covered plain and thaw at the same time: “the glass seems to have partially thawed, but it cannot completely thaw out, it cannot become completely transparent,” says the architect. “So we are in Russia: we rejoice at the thaw, then we freeze again, we balance between transparency and opacity.” And I must admit that the topic has been caught for sure, somehow nagging even.
It was originally planned to make the white gradient slightly lower, about half the height; but then, at his request, he was raised to the height of a human being. So after all, the thaw has since froze, what can I say.
But the main thing is different: the architect occupied the rectangle of the other, southern end with a mirror, which almost perfectly reflects, visually doubling, the lines of the bar's space, and since the entrance looks a little at an angle, the person who entered does not see himself and the illusion of the enfilade going deep into the wall, turns out to be quite reliable. The opposite, glass wall also slightly reflects the lines of the light markings, making the series of reflections almost endless.
This is a metaphor for a rush through the looking glass, an arrow of light, an abstract and ruthless aspiration: a steam locomotive of our time, an armored car, a carriage, a bird-three, to be continued. It can also be understood as a kind of axis of the Universe, a fragment of a gigantic supernatural structure that indifferently permeates the space of human existence. We know that Russia often claims to possess some truth hidden for others, and so, here we may see this - I emphasize that it is illusory, but embodied the axis of abstract goodness or light. Both: striving for both a breakthrough and the light of truth easily fits into a number of notorious features of the Russian soul; It is also interesting, and frankly, internally ironic, that the axis of light coincided with the bar counter. “I went out to go to the beginning, but I drank and fell, that's the whole story” ©. In a word, the topic is solved easily and leaves room for reasoning, if not to say - theoretical speculation, which is required of any image of something that claims not depth. If we recall the "semi-thawed" glass, then it turns out that the movement of the bright arrow occurs from one thaw - to another, future, in the looking glass. Well, that's the way it is, if you think about it.
On the other hand, the blade of pure light is also a kind of border, the Styx-Rubicon, since it cuts the living room into two parts, whose completely metaphysical meaning is manifested by Koshlyakov's paintings. In the first, perceptibly b about In the largest hall - "Ideal Landscape", where the recognizable contours of the Palace of Soviets and the Tower of Babel of the Third International appear in the fog of colorful streams, symbolizing the ideals of striving for the far, and perhaps the reality of their endless, hopeless construction in a single country.
Panorama of the large (first) hall on Google maps. We are looking at the painting "Ideal Landscape", the bar is on the right:
The second part - a four times smaller room located outside the "ray of light" border - is decorated with a painting "Pastoral" with clearly visible putti and a park flowerpot. This is a paraphrase of another kind of idyll, a dream no less crystalline, but private, from the Manilov, although, incidentally, the same Borisov-Musatov, estate paradise - to, may these words forgive me, petty bourgeois elephants and canaries, so dangerous according to Mayakovsky. And if the promising breakthrough of the bar counter correlates with the towers of the Ideal Landscape, it is even in its own way a horizontal skyscraper, then in a small pastoral hall the architect arranges a different kind of mirror in a pandanus painting with a putti: in a small niche with a promising white frame on a mirror background is suspended crystal sconce. And it turns out great: firstly, the sconce is a fairly common interior detail, doubles up, and another dream through the looking glass is formed behind it. In contrast to the prospectively directed enfilade, here it is small, crystal-palace, and behind it there are no arrows of linear perspective, but only the haze of the reflected wall and the sparkle of candles.
Small room panorama on Google maps. We are looking at a sconce mirror, the painting "Pastoral" is on the left:
And I must also say that Koshlyakov's paintings and Skuratov's mirror plots that echo with them are illusory windows, because it is known that a picture is a window and another world, and a mirror too. They both expand the space and fill it with meaning.
And the meaning can be read like this. There are two dreams here: one is about a great flight into superhuman infinity, whether horizontally - beyond the horizon, or vertically - like a daring staircase to heaven. It is, in one way or another, imperial, as it is conditioned by the movement, and therefore subordination, of the human masses. The second dream of the life of a private person, here in the looking glass is not a flight, but cute crystal pendants. Two opposite aspirations of the Russian people: to the big and the small, the far and the near, communism and the canary, relatively speaking.
In Russian life, these dreams are enemies, and as a rule coexist as follows: they always conflict and interfere, do not allow each other to come true. Both are unreal because one destroys the other. Sergey Skuratov and Valery Koshlyakov created a reconciling mise-en-scène: the architect divided the antagonists, separated them on two sides of the imaginary border, the bourgeois on the right, and the life-builders, for whom disorder replaces comfort, on the left. So, one must think, the Lord God would have divided them in paradise. Therefore, we must agree with the words of the architect that "this is the image of Russia, what it could be, or what it wants to be when all problems have disappeared, when prosperity, beauty and harmony reign around us." Yes, if you separate the belligerents and give them what they want, one staircase to heaven, others white windows to the garden - perhaps harmony will come.
Everything else - the floor, the ribbed carpet of which resembles the furrows of a plowed field seen from a helicopter height, and the grayish-brown glittering walls made of plaster panels made by hand on the spot - Sergey Skuratov separately emphasizes their hand-made - make up an earthy, slightly shimmering and a vibrating background that perfectly matches the tone of Koshlyakov's paintings, and at the same time symbolizes an empty, unfilled earth, space in general, but not striving, but an abiding, inertly swirling, material background, a kind of dream of the serpent of Chaos.
There is a lot of matter of "earth" and walls, but it does not become either heavy or voluminous. On the contrary, acute-angled intersections of various kinds, from underlined material to completely illusory, not only lighten the space and endow its plot with additional intrigue, but also give it the quality of a certain “paper” or “virtuality”. It is especially noticeable if we consider the main "node" - the place of transition to the small hall, where the gray planes of "matter" meet with the mirrored and white ones. Due to the fact, in particular, that the mirror is of very high quality, the spatial orientation gets confused and the effect of interpenetration of surfaces sounds especially sharp and at the same time somehow at ease, as if falling through the looking glass is a completely natural state of this place. A similar effect occurs in a computer game, when the surface of a painted wall suddenly interrupts, revealing a void, in this case a shining one. Or in a stage setting when the circle turns. Needless to say, the emphasized convention plays into the hands of the main idea: the dream space should not be too material, it should be like a dream.
The image of Russia is a responsible matter, all the more so - with the volume of restrictions on commonplaces, which was laid down in this order. The artist, however, for himself puts limits on banality and too clearly readable meanings. As far as it was possible to limit, the result is just as artistic. In this case, the abstraction is not complete, there are many clues and hints, but all this barely manifested concreteness, everything that is figurative does not come forward, but recedes from the viewer - into the depths of the paintings, into the space of mirrors, or even hides in the lime mixes of the walls, in the drawing carpet - as if afraid to be too noticeable, to impose oneself. Here even the furniture behaves emphatically modestly: round armchairs are a way to take up a minimum of space, and transparent tabletops simply tend to be invisible. …
In a sense, the image of Russia that has turned out here is so unobtrusive that it seems to be placed in a space of detachment. One can understand something only by peering - not that not with the mind at all, but by making efforts and getting used to it; This, by the way, is the happy similarity between Koshlyakov's paintings and Skuratov's interior. Another, less thoughtful viewer - can simply enjoy the graceful ease of solution, space and light, leaving the "sphinx" to itself for a while. Well, to argue that Russia is not only nesting dolls, balalaikas and even not only the Hermitage would be simply inappropriate here.
