The publishing house of the Garage Museum has published a guidebook and guide to the architecture of Moscow during the Soviet modernism. It includes buildings and ensembles that appeared in thirty-six years between 1955-1991. The authors of the texts are Anna Bronovitskaya, Nikolai Malinin, and Olga Kazakova wrote the chapter about Zelenograd. Photos - specially for the book were taken by Yuri Palmin, an excellent photographer, but not only a photographer, but also a knowledgeable enthusiastic researcher of the architecture of modernism. Nikolai Malinin had been planning and collecting a book on the architecture of modernism for ten years, if not more. Anna Bronovitskaya is a historian of modernist architecture who lectures and studies it at the Institute of Modernism. Two days ago, she wrote on Facebook that the new guidebook-guide filled the gap between the guide to Moscow 1920-1960, written by her with Natalia Bronovitskaya and published in 2006 - and Nikolai Malinin's guide to modern architecture in 2009. What is true, the two researchers met and wrote a book about architecture that was pretty much promoted and popular in a narrow circle, but still despised and not recognizable in a wide circle.
"The architecture of Soviet modernism […] is a subject that not only has not become a national treasure, but also risks not becoming one at all - given the current state of mind and the difficult prospects for the development of domestic culture" - these words of the authors of the book reflect the situation well: some people are now modernist architecture study, photograph and idolize, others do not notice, still others are planning new demolitions. Moreover, not only in Moscow, but throughout the world - the reputation of modernism is still completely ambiguous. So the book is also an educational project. But it is more a study, because the authors arranged the material not geographically, but chronologically, and even made the maps schematic. "A sketch for the history of Moscow modernism through its monuments" is probably the best author's definition of the problem posed and solved.
Strictly speaking, this is almost a textbook: key buildings have been selected - there is almost no housing, and the list of buildings has almost halved during the editing process. But, as the authors again admit, the book no longer fits into the pocket. Since the texts of descriptions are much more than guidebooks usually allow themselves in our hurried times, they are not at all the two words that "can be read while standing at a traffic light." There are old photographs here, design graphics, which allows you to get a better idea of the idea - after all, many Soviet buildings were so distorted during the construction process, not to mention the cheapness of materials. There is a statement of problems, there are many of them! In guidebooks, problems are usually not posed. There is a bibliography and a miniature, but very adequate historiography of the issue. And analogies with the masterpieces of constructivism "in the fields". And the very term "Soviet modernism" is used by the authors "with caution", emphasizing the heterogeneity of the material … What can characterize the conscientiousness of researchers better than caution in terms of terms and recognition of the complexity of the problem? This is a study, and a pretty serious one.
And at the same time - here, I think, the merit of Nikolai Malinin is great - the book was written not only conscientiously and in detail, but amazingly easy and exciting. Each monument is accompanied by a cut-lead, which captures its essence not only accurately, but also poetically, and even humorously. For example, the theater Sats: “Modernist volumes are packed in such a quantity of sculpture that the building looks like exemplary postmodernism” - here is the acuteness of the paradox, and the stylistic definition, and the setting in context. Descriptions do not lag behind either - this is not at all a book of boring, difficult for speculation descriptions, which we, art historians, sometimes sin, is a book of stories. Fascinating reading with pictures. Which is great.
The planned price is about 900 or 1000 rubles.
Presentation at Garage on Sunday, October 9th, at 16:00.
Login by registration.
