Lara Kopylova:
Exhibition-gift “Collection! Contemporary Art of the USSR and Russia, 1950-2000 ", carried out on the initiative of Olga Sviblova with the support of the Vladimir Potanin Foundation, is a very large-scale project in which many patrons and artists took part. Tell us about the structure of the project. How did paper architecture appear there and what part does it take?
Yuri Avvakumov:
- Exhibition The collection at the Pompidou Center turned out to be really large - in total, about 450 works of Russian artists were donated to the French museum, and Paper architecture took a noticeable part in it: 30 projects by 32 authors in the amount of 52 exhibits. The idea of the exhibition was given by the famous kulturtrager Nick Ilyin, and he himself, so to speak, set an example - he offered two works from his collection as a gift: one is a painting by Kabakov, for which he could have earned at least half a million dollars at Sotheby's auction, and the second is a model of our Misha Belov of the Polar Axis project, which I once gave him for his birthday. The exhibition was assembled rapidly, the design of the works accepted by the museum for permanent storage (and this is a very difficult procedure - the museum accepts art very meticulously), was carried out according to a simplified scheme and it opened in early September last year. In addition to the Polar Axis, the curators selected several more of my works from the series of Temporary Monuments, and a model of Lenin's Mausoleum made of dominoes in 2008 by the Potanin Foundation was acquired, although this work went beyond the chronological framework of the exhibition in time. Soon after the opening, it turned out that there were gaps in the collection, there were proposals to supplement it, and among them was mine - to donate 10-15 works from my “paper” collection to the museum. When the Department of Architecture got acquainted with it, I received a counter offer - to increase the donation to 50 works and to arrange an exhibition in a separate room. My friends and colleagues in "paper architecture" supported me, and at the opening of the expanded exhibition in March of this year, the director of the Pompidou Center Bernard Blistin said that the museum already has priceless masterpieces of the Russian architectural avant-garde of the early 20th century, and now a wonderful collection of the end has been added to them century.
Is the majority of the works handed over to the Pompidou Center - is it sotsart? That is, the context of paper architecture was Soszart, non-conformist, or purely aesthetic?
- In the Soviet part, the exhibition was assembled as non-conformist, including Soszart, Russian - it was more represented by contemporary art. The context was the world art on the same fourth floor with temporary exhibitions, and on the fifth - with a permanent exhibition.
What works have you selected to be shown at the exhibition and why?
- As usual, I selected works according to my idea from what was available. Among the authors: Petrenko, Kuzembaev, Kuzin, Brodsky, Utkin, Bush, Zosimov, Labazov, Savin, Mizin and many others.
Is it true that after the end of the exhibition (April 2), some of the works were placed in the permanent exhibition? Does this apply to paper architecture?
- Honestly I do not know. According to the rules of museum storage, it is forbidden to exhibit paper works for more than three to six months, so by definition they cannot be on permanent display. But my housemate recently told me that he was in Paris, at the Center Pompidou and saw my mausoleum there. Maybe he did.
How did the idea of the “Paper Architecture” exhibition at the Museum of Architectural Drawing in Berlin come about? Who was the initiator
- In the year of the centenary of the October Revolution, the Sergei Tchoban Foundation, like some other Western museum institutions, decided to make a "dedication" to Russian and Soviet architecture. So on October 19 at the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris an exhibition of architectural projects of the Russian avant-garde will open, and on October 6 at the Museum of Architectural Drawing our exhibition “Centrifugal tendencies. Tallinn-Moscow-Novosibirsk ". It is not entirely “paper”, since Estonian architects at one time did not accept this term precisely because of its isolation from the pragmatic tasks of architecture. However, in 1988, when I was doing an exhibition of Paper Architecture in La Villette Park in Paris, I was able to include a number of works by familiar architects from Tallinn. In that exhibition there were both fantasy projects from Novosibirsk, and a rather extensive retrospective part from the Museum of Architecture named after V. I. Shchusev. So, in a sense, the two exhibitions prepared by the Foundation now repeat the composition of the Paris exhibition thirty years ago.
Comment on the expansion of the geography of paper architecture due to the works of Baltic architects. Tell us more about them
- The exhibition in the Berlin Museum occupies two small halls. On the third floor, 20 works by Estonians from the 1970s and 1980s are exhibited, and on the second, 30 works by Muscovites and Novosibirsk. The Estonian department, at my request, was prepared by the Tallinn art critic Andres Kurg. I am pleased that the exhibition will include several works from those that were exhibited once in Paris.
In the discussion at the FB about the exhibition, the term “paper architecture” was discussed. You have suggested an extended interpretation. Explain, please, the idea of the matryoshka: utopian-visionary-paper
- It's simple: “paper architecture” is a specific artistic phenomenon of the Soviet 1980s. So it is recorded in our art history. At the same time, “paper architecture” is a part of the broader concept of “visionary” architecture, into which many projects of the Russian avant-garde of the 1920s and futurological projects of the 1960s fit into, not to mention Piranesi or Jean-Jacques Lequeu. In turn, visionary architecture dates back to the literary Utopia of Thomas More. At the same time, the term "paper architecture" came from the professional argot, has been used in our workshop at least since the late 1920s, when the time for avant-garde projects began to decline. One could say, for example, "Piranesi's paper architecture" and "Leonidov's paper architecture." The second is already pejorative. In general, now everything can be called “paper architecture” in our country - both utopian projects, and narrative ones, and projects made in manual technique, and projects that for some reason have not been implemented. Depends on the context.
Selim Khan-Magomedov considered paper architecture to be Russia's contribution to world culture, along with the Russian avant-garde and Stalinist neoclassicism. Do you agree with this opinion? State, as far as possible, what is this contribution?
- I worked in the department of Selim Omarovich at VNIITE for two years and, I think, was inspired by him, in particular, by his love for the Russian avant-garde. It seems to me, however, that he should have missed the Soviet modernist period of the 1960s. Certain works of that time, both realized and research, such as the NER project, were performed at the highest international level, when not you, but you are followed. The same applies to “paper architecture” during its prize period, when the projects of young Soviet architects surprised many, and they themselves were not surprised at anything.
In what phenomena of our time do you see the continuation of the ideas first expressed by the wallets of the 1980s?
- You know, I like to tell the story about our Burial Skyscraper with Belov, as a joke, it was composed, and how the design of vertical cemeteries has now become a fashionable urban trend. Or about how the most "unpromising" of the "wallets", as he considered himself, Misha Filippov is now building up cities with neoclassicism of his cut. But in general, "paper architecture" is not about invention, but about creative freedom. She is now sorely lacking.
