"… going as a tourist to the USSR" Samuil Marshak
Exhibition - Italian-Russian, Moscow-Petersburg. Curators: Federica Rossi of the Max Planck Institute in Florence; Marina Maiskaya, Yulia Merenkova, Alexandra Danilova from the Pushkin Museum and the rector of the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts Semyon Mikhailovsky. A voluminous catalog with an article by Nikolai Molok has been published. The opening was attended by the Italian Ambassador; it sounded that the exhibition is a continuation of the "Italian autumn in the Pushkin Museum" - a theme begun on September 13 with the opening of Raphael's retrospective.
Piranesi's exhibition is several times larger and brighter than Raphael - after its dark walls and directed bright light, reminiscent of Caravaggio in 2013 and everyone's almost school duty to visit the museum to see the "great masterpieces" - in the White Hall, where the Piranesi exhibition begins, breathes easy and free. It is also pleasant that there is no excessive excitement, which in recent years has become a kind of disease of every major Moscow exhibition. The relative calm is probably due to the fact that the exhibition is "imported" only in part: its core was made up of a series of Piranesi's printed sheets from the collections of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts - things that are well-known and, moreover, are often found in private and museum collections. This massif, meticulously flavored with commentary, is encrusted with rare treasures - such as the copper boards of the Prisons from the Central Institute of Graphics in Rome, several drawings from the Cini fund, and is supplied with spectacular additions: Antonio Gnocci's models kept in the St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, and graphics by Soviet architects from funds of the Museum of Architecture. One way or another, the exhibition is large-scale, but it does not overwhelm me with its weight and significance.
The exposition is divided into several parts, in each of which, strictly speaking, you can see a separate, isolated exhibition plot. The genre of engraving is not easy for an unprepared viewer, so the desire to add a variety of entourage to Piranesi's works: objects, photographs and videos, as well as lengthy comments seems to be a good idea. In addition, as Marina Loshak, the director of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts, rightly noted on the opening day, one of the best was the brilliant exhibition of the Cini Foundation in Venice in 2010, but in general, Piranesi exhibitions take place in different cities of the world several times a year. Piranesi is famous, and some of the material related to him has a happy circulation quality, which, on the one hand, is convenient, and on the other, requires originality from exhibitions. In the current Moscow version, it is achieved by staging the works of the maestro in a wide and, frankly, diverse context. Hence the "before and after" in the title. Long before and long after.
The ceremonial White Hall with columns himself, apparently, dictated to the curators the theme of the first part of the exhibition - it is dedicated to the studies of antiquity and the theoretical works of Piranesi: here is the famous plan of the Field of Mars, "Roman Antiquities", "On the Greatness of the Romans", paving schemes of the Appian Way and devices for lifting stone slabs, "better than Brunelleschi." In the Greco-Roman dispute of the 18th century, Piranesi was known to be a supporter of Rome, whose great predecessor he considered Egypt. Piranesi was one of the first meticulous explorers of Rome, who contributed to the transformation of Italian architecture from the plastic emotionality of the Baroque towards the neoclassicism grounded in ancient examples. Piranesi's antiquity is Roman, not so much classical as imperial. And he considered the charm of Greek art "empty" [Kruft H.-W. Storia delle teorie architettoniche da Vitruvio al Settecento. Roma: 2009]. In order to immediately avoid the accusation of Piranesi that he “did not build anything”, let us say that his only building is mentioned in the White Hall - the Church of Santa Maria del Priorato in Rome.
In the same room there are fireplaces, vases and candelabra, and not only in graphic series, but also one luxurious candelabrum with herons - a life-size copy of a thing made (presumably!) In Piranesi's workshop by his son Francesco, commissioned by I. IN. Tsvetaev for the museum. This side of the work of the great graphic artist was opened by the already mentioned exhibition of the Cini Foundation in 2010 - in Piranesi's workshop, copies of things of ancient times were collected, recreated literally in fragments. For sale, saturating the market with the opportunity to "live like the Romans"; Piranesi was also a successful entrepreneur. The candelabrum is surrounded by copies of Roman things from the funds of the Pushkin Museum, from the Etruscans to the 1st century AD - they are not from the workshop and, strictly speaking, have nothing to do with Piranesi, but, as stated in the explications, similar tripods are found on his engravings. These things are designed to form an idea of the objects that the workshop was engaged in, but they also take on a playful role - to revive and color the severity of the engraving range for visitors; people with imagination will probably allow themselves to be pictured "in the Piranesi shop." I just want to buy something like that for the interior or, for example, order a fireplace in an antique or Egyptian spirit.
After the theme of antique archeology, vividly developed in the White Hall, with its interior interest, the galleries on the sides of the main staircase of the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts may seem like a paraphrase of the street porticoes of the ancient city. Here - a series of views of the ancient monuments of Rome, Herculaneum and Paestum are accompanied by modern photographs of the same places, made especially for the exhibition by the photographer Gianluca Baronchelli. It is noisy, crowded and crowded, like the streets behind the Pantheon on a spring day. The impression is complemented by showcases-tables: from the side of Herculaneum on them Roman coins with views of monuments: the Temple of Vesta, the Villa Publica and the quadriga from the Arc de Triomphe - all from the collection of the Pushkin Museum - indicate one of the initial stages of the tradition of depicting famous buildings, so successfully developed, including and graphic series by Piranesi. In the gallery from the side of Rome, under glass, caricatures by Pier Leone Ghezzi are found, whose drawings from antiques Piranesi used in his etchings. All this, of course, immerses us in the context of the work of the hero of the exhibition, although when moving from the black, harsh sheets of Piranesi to the watercolor Gonzaga, pastoral Hubert Robert or the colored Clerisso, one shudders a little: they are both contemporaries and also admirers of antiquity, but still they are similar, and are not alike. This is the peculiarity of the method of setting in context: we are not allowed to completely immerse ourselves in one author, constantly offering a comparison.
But the surprise of the comparison of Piranesi and Clerisso is nothing compared to Melnikov, Rudnev and Chernikhov, whom the visitor finds in the next hall-lobby with the company with the three-dimensional film "Karcheri" by the Cini Foundation, first shown at the already mentioned 2010 exhibition. This hall is a crossroads; Suppose that, starting from the video - very impressive, since it almost immerses us inside the expressive graphics of "Prisons" - the viewer will walk forward to see the two famous Carceri series in the dark last hall. This topic is strange, frightening, and most importantly, its appearance has not been explained by Piranesi himself. Hypertrophied architecture, visual effects with flights of stairs leading to nowhere, torture machines - all this repels and attracts, makes you want to consider each sheet for a long time and in detail. There are plenty of spectacles. The mysticism of engravings and the dark hall intensify the atmosphere, but do not convince in the reality of these gloomy places. Frightening but theatrical. The theme of the theater is supported by Piranesi's stubbornly accompanying Gonzaga exhibition and set designer Giuseppe Valeriani, who was born in Rome and died in St. Petersburg, who joined Piranesi at the Gonzaga hall, who was born in Rome and died in St. Petersburg: “… judging by the bars on the windows, a prison is depicted. Piranesi ". However, analogies make it possible to trace the similarities and differences, but do not explain the appearance and repetition of "imaginary prisons", now without prisoners, now with them (the exhibition shows a late version with torment), in the works of Piranesi. We will not try to explain this series, but we will refer you to the recent book of the curator of the Hermitage's graphics, Arkady Ippolitov, Prisons and Power, published in 2013.
Melnikov is tied to Piranesi in the same way as Valeriani - through the arch: in the project of the People's Commissariat for Heavy Industry "the entrance to the stairs was decorated in the form of colossal circles, and this motif refers to Piranesi's sheet" The Huge Wheel "from the series" Dungeons … "- written in the explication. The scope for thinking and building associations turns out to be huge. And it continues, step by step, from Iofan to Rudnev, Pavlov, through many Soviet Piranesians, gathered under the heading "Giovanni Batista Piranesi in the USSR." There are "stars" of unrealized objects here - competition projects by Melnikov and Leonidov, Iofan's Palace of Soviets, Chernikhov's fantasies; there are also lesser-known projects on the topic of engineering structures, reminiscent of the detailed images of the Roman apparatus for the construction of Piranesi. Exhibition theme: Piranesi. Before and after”- fully justified itself.
For some reason, probably in order not to forget about the main character of the monographic exhibition at all - among the Soviet graphics there were wonderful original copper boards of the later "Prisons", exhibited in the next room. These exhibits are one of the most interesting, since few non-specialists have seen not only the works of Piranesi himself, but generally the boards from which the engravings are printed.
Soviet graphics are larger, brighter, not distinguished by particular delicacy, and Melnikov's noteworthy project is for some reason placed on a small enclosure and is difficult to see - while it seems to acquire an even larger scale and become a work of colossal architecture, suppressing the viewer. And after walking around Rome and looking at the candelabra, you don't want to be depressed, almost as much as you don't want to go to Raphael right after Piranesi. In explications to the Soviet exposition, every now and then slips: "Soviet architects will embody the" Prisons "in the Palaces of the Soviets …", "In the ruins of Piranesi were read tragic prophecies, which were truly appreciated in a harsh country inhabited by people who are nothing like ardent Italians … ". Even when the visitor seems to agree to compare the paper architecture of Piranesi with Soviet projects, this is not enough for the organizers of the exhibition. Piranesi the vedutist, Piranesi the architect, Piranesi the set designer suddenly becomes the Piranesi the prophet? Here, the prisons already look completely different, not at all theatrical, and Piranesi's appeal not to Greek, but to Roman, imperial antiquity provokes a different interpretation, begs for speculation in the spirit of the “Third Rome”. The analogies meticulously found by experts specially for the exhibition create a good basis for such reflections - Iofan saw Piranesi, Melnikov loved Piranesi … But what's so surprising if engraving is a mass-circulation art, and on the walls of any creative Russian university you can still see Piranesi inspiring students … Of course, it was impossible to do without Chernikhov with one completed building and given the name "Soviet Piranesi", since the theme was declared "through the centuries", but did the architectural fantasies on the theme of the antique ruins of Piranesi and the competition for the monument of the People's Commissariat for Energy not by lyrical appeals to the past, but by the proclaimed road to a brighter future, it still remains a big question to which each visitor will answer for himself on his own. For some reason, the “paper architects” of the 1980s were not included in Piranesi's set of interpreters, maybe because there was already an exhibition about them recently?
However, the last contextual accent, completing the weaving of interconnections from the 5th century BC to 2016, is a vague vision of the colonnade, written by the main Moscow vedutist of our time, Valery Koshlyakov, specially for the exhibition on glued scraps of cardboard boxes. It closes the main axis of the exhibition, opposing itself to the video with "Imaginary Prisons" and serving as an attempt to return from the pathetic Soviet crescendo to the serene contemplation of the classics.
Meanwhile, the exhibition seemed to me rather festive and, as strange as it may sound, amusing, made with great love and interest in the material and its details. Whether to ask questions about analogies that go much deeper than a simple analysis of paper architecture of different eras to the level of ideologies, or just spend time looking at ancient elements and virtuoso compositions - everyone will decide for himself. You can even imagine yourself buying antique copies in Piranesi's workshop and even bargain a little with the maestro - in your imagination, of course.
