An exhibition of graphics by the chief architect of Moscow, Sergei Kuznetsov, opened yesterday at the Moscow Multimedia Art Museum. It features over 120 works in pencil, ink, felt-tip pen and watercolors, created over 10 years since 2007. Many new, mostly watercolors - 2016 and 2017, including those made specially for the exhibition. We are publishing a fragment of a conversation between the exhibition curator, art critic Yekaterina Shalina, and Sergei Kuznetsov. The full version of the interview will be published in the catalog dedicated to the exhibition “Sergey Kuznetsov. Personal contact / Architectural graphics (21.07 - 10.09). In addition to graphics and painting, it will include stories of famous cultural figures, architects, photographers, journalists and artists about their perception of different cities of the world - from architectural experiences to taste sensations. Contributors include Mikhail Shvydkoy, Sergey Tchoban, Dmitry Bertman, Alexey Tarkhanov, Mikhail Belov, Artemy Lebedev, Alexander Ponomarev, Alexey Naroditsky, Peter Kudryavtsev, Ekaterina Pronicheva, Sofya Trotsenko, Elena and Irina Kuznetsov. The release date of the book and presentation will be announced later. ***
Ekaterina Shalina:
Exhibition “Sergey Kuznetsov. Personal contact / Architectural graphics "in the Multimedia Art Museum of Moscow brought together more than 120 drawings and watercolors. Different techniques, different cities of the world, buildings and spaces. What is the main idea of this project for the author?
Sergey Kuznetsov:
- This exhibition - thank you for the invitation to make it and help in its implementation to Olga Sviblova, director of MAMM, and his entire wonderful team - in fact, another form of saying that the urban environment and architecture, as its main part, have a very strong impact on human consciousness. Regardless of whether he is aware of this or not. This is a story that the city is an interesting phenomenon that makes sense to live as inclusively as possible. For me, the most natural and accurate method of this "inclusion" is drawing. But there are other ways as well. Someone, going out into the city in order to get to know him or get to know better, checks with books and films, someone just loves to wander without a map and discover something new, someone photographs or records their feelings. Therefore, along with my graphics, screens with video collages from cult films, conveying the atmosphere of several beautiful centers of the world, where I was lucky enough to visit and draw repeatedly, appeared in the exposition.
Do you somehow specially prepare for acquaintance with new places?
- If I'm going to a city about which I had a vague idea, I try to read something about it beforehand. But the most effective method is to take a good guide. For example, in Buenos Aires, we chose the Constructivist route. It is difficult to do it on our own - the monuments are scattered in different areas, and we were advised by knowledgeable guys who conduct this excursion on an authentic, excellently preserved truck of the 30s. It turned out to be a real time travel. We walked in the center ourselves. I must say, Buenos Aires is very European in spirit, it reminds Paris, only everything is on a greatly enlarged, American scale. Grandiose avenues, a lot of artistic architecture of Art Nouveau and Art Deco, buildings with articulated plastic, they respond, react to each other with turrets, balconies, decor. The scale and grandeur of the city is considered, and at the same time, unfortunately, it is felt that its best times are in the past. If I go somewhere for just a couple of days, then on the first day I try to go around as much as possible and see, along the way I outline and remember, photographing possible points for the plein air. And on the second day I go out into the city with a sketchbook or a tablet.
Are there any objects for drawing planned before the trip? Is there some kind of system, a principle for choosing an architectural nature?
- When we just started to cooperate with Sergei Tchoban and opened the SPEECH bureau in 2006, the practice of going to the open air became a system. At first it was interesting for me to sketch the famous monuments of world architecture - antiquity, Renaissance, Baroque. I think that most of the architects who paint have sketches for the structures of the Roman Forum or the Colosseum. Once in Rome, we followed in the footsteps of the drawings of Alexander Benois, who at the beginning of the 20th century discovered for himself, and a century later for us, non-trivial views of St. Peter's Cathedral. In Venice, I also first turned to the legendary nature, which was portrayed by famous masters more than once - not with the aim of competing with them, but in order to train my hand and eye on masterpieces, to grasp the proportions, the ratio of details and the whole. Then began his own, reminiscent of a hunt, search for little-known interesting buildings, points and angles. I especially love the Venetian backyards. Two steps away from the tourist routes, the crowds are gone, but the beauty is the same.
From Venice in the personal archive most of the works. Favorite city?
- Venice has some irresistible "narcotic" attraction, and its nature is not completely clear to me. Either the point is that there is water all around, or the fact that the whole city is pedestrian. Perhaps the secret of his charm is in some ingenious irregularity, obvious, for example, in the main buildings - the Cathedral of San Marco or the Doge's Palace. How their creators came up with such a bizarre combination of shapes, colors, ornaments, asymmetry and atectonics is incomprehensible to the mind. This is a stunning man-made environment in which everything is art: iconic architecture filled with paintings by great masters, and the most ordinary terracotta houses created not by architects, but by simple artisans with excellent taste, whose names we most often do not know. And gondoliers with their habits and songs, and eye-catching Murano glass products and attributes of a masquerade, even service in restaurants is a separate theatrical performance. I first came to Venice ten years ago, celebrated my thirtieth birthday, and since then I have been celebrating my birthday there almost every year. Working on projects for four architectural biennials only strengthened my love for this city. It would seem that it all came up and down, but every time something unknown is discovered.
Sheets from Venice clearly demonstrate the full range of techniques and materials - from a simple pencil to watercolors. What determines the choice, what and what to draw on, for different objects? How did the evolution from graphics to watercolor come about?
- Nature itself often leads to some kind of technique. For example, my image of Venice is dominated by white houses with black patinas. Once I tried to paint them with white on tinted paper. The technique itself is not a discovery of America, but in this case it effectively highlights the picturesque scuffs and destruction that give the city on the water its irresistible charm. I usually don't use an eraser or anything else that can correct the drawing. Whoever draws in the open air knows how much this process depends on the weather and light. You try to do everything quickly, and roughness appears somewhere, something turns out imperfect, but there are techniques that compensate for this by accurately conveying emotions, the state of the moment. And these certainly include watercolor. For the last three years I have been using it mainly, I consider it one of the most difficult techniques, the possibilities of which are far from exhausted for me. At some point, I wanted to get away from the "documentary", detailed image of architecture and to give out on paper rather my feelings from what I see. This tendency has manifested itself before. For example, the roofs of a pagoda and a gate in Kyoto, drawn with a simple pencil, actually do not “fly off” so dashingly, but I wanted to enhance the feature indicated in real architecture, and on the sheet this exaggeration animated it. Watercolor fully meets my perception of the world. For example, in reality, there may not be such long oblique shadows that appear in some compositions, but it is these shadows that give the image the dynamics and energy of the urban environment that I feel.
Do architects and artists depict architecture differently?
- One can argue that an analytical and archaeological approach is closer to architects, and a romantic and emotional approach to artists. That architects often build forms with lines, shading and love monochrome, and artists pay more attention to color spots and light-air environment. But this is not a rule, which is confirmed by my work. The main difference is that architects, even in the process of spontaneous, free drawing from nature, receive visual information, which is then somehow refracted in their professional activities. In my practice during my work at SPEECH, from the "portraying" of Gothic cathedrals, the Aquatics Palace was born in Kazan with its lancet structures, however, from a different material - wood. The domes of San Marco influenced the domed shape of the central hall of the Russian pavilion of the Venice Biennale in 2012, when we showed the projects of the Skolkovo innovation city. And the principle of the color layout of marble on the walls of Santa Maria dei Miracoli formed the basis for the facing of the buildings of the Nevskaya Ratusha. There are many other examples as well.
Does drawing help the work of the chief architect of Moscow, bring ideas that can be implemented on a town-planning scale?
- Of course it helps. If, for example, I hadn’t painted the High Line Park in New York, laid out on the tracks of a closed light metro, I would not have so much defended the participation of its creators Diller Scofidio + Renfro in the design and construction of Zaryadye Park. This territory in New York is amazing. You are at the same time surrounded by "wild" nature and the city. Not a forest or a city park, but something else. This is a truly innovative idea of landscape urbanism, which, I hope, will be fully implemented in the very center of Moscow. When I became the chief architect, travel time naturally decreased, but I began to paint more of Moscow. I found many places for plein-airs on central streets and in lanes, on embankments and at VDNKh, in industrial zones and on construction sites of objects that are being erected and reconstructed with my personal participation - this is the Zaryadye park and the Luzhniki stadium. Through drawing, I get to know and understand our city more deeply. It seems to me that if you wish, beauty, an object worthy of an image, can be found in any of its areas. And, of course, I continue to take pencils, brushes and paints with me on all trips. Of the recent ones, the trip to Bukhara was especially fruitful - I brought a lot of watercolors.
What impression did Bukhara make?
- Dual. The city is not small, in the center there are magnificent monuments, in good condition, but it is almost empty, there are few tourists. The heat - and I was in May - is terrible, 38-40 ° C. Everyone is looking for salvation in the shade. And also because of the temperature, all life takes place in the courtyards. If you look from above, the whole city is cut into squares - one-story houses face the streets with blank walls, there is no public front, you walk like a labyrinth, and only narrow passages lead inside, to private territory. Introverted city. All of its architecture is conditioned by the climate. Take, for example, portals with niches richly decorated with ceramics. Niches create the effect of a funnel, getting into which the air cools down before entering the room. The colors are really the same as in the paintings of Vereshchagin - turquoise, ocher, sharp contrasts of light and shadow. People are friendly, welcoming, many wear national clothes, men wear skullcaps - a very sensible headdress that protects from overheating. Many people know three languages each - Tajik, Uzbek and Russian, which indicates a high potential. And at the same time, it is clear that they live in general poor, private business is barely developed - at the level of trade in ceramics and skullcaps, which are sold without packaging. There is no marketing as such. Although architecture, cuisine, and the same ceramics could become national brands, tourism could develop more intensively. But the strict control of everything by the state, which we have personally encountered in the manifestation of excessive inspection at the border, obviously limits the freedom of entrepreneurship.
The exhibition will run until September 10.
