Anna Bronovitskaya, Nikolai Malinin and Yuri Palmin wrote their guide to the architecture of modernism in Alma-Ata, it seems, for two years, now and then staying in the city under study. Observing their work from afar, I had absolutely no doubt that all buildings had been passed, including closed back streets, archives had been raised, people had been interviewed - in a word, the question would be closed. So, in essence, it turned out. And meanwhile, in the preface, the authors very accurately (and honestly) define the historiographic position of their work: “this is just a“guidebook”: over 50 of the most interesting buildings in 30 years is not a“catalog”that assumes completeness and thoroughness (by this noble deed our friends and colleagues from "ArchKoda" are just busy); and this is not a "history of architecture", which must be consistent and logical (Elizaveta Malinovskaya has been writing it all her life). " So the Moscow “Varangians” added precise positioning of their efforts to the obviously considerable volume of labor. What can I say, it should be.
It seems that some years ago, the historian of ancient Russian painting Levon Nersesyan lamented that the genre of travel guides had seriously grinded in the pursuit of market solvency: the shelves are filled with superficial enumeration books, which only allow a person who has not bought a mobile Internet to find their bearings on the spot. atmosphere, value - they do not convey, in contrast to many favorite "Images of Italy" by Pal Palych Muratov. However, "Images …", we note, is not a guidebook.
And here is a guidebook (well, it seems to be) and is completely devoid of the listed shortcomings - as if it was a response to a request from an audience of connoisseurs. But it doesn't look very much like the usual guidebooks. It merged with the genre of the book, the very images, and the images of the modernist Alma-Ata were obtained.
The book is built on the same principle as"
Moscow "2016, solved in the same design, the same range 1955-1991 is defined; the introduction is short, instead of a conclusion - chapters on water and monumental art (there were separate VDNKh, metro and Zelenograd). But in" Moscow "78 objects and 327 pages, in Alma-Ata there are 351 pages and 53 objects, and the pages, ahem, are wider. So, each object got more attention. So it is - the texts are longer and include many digressions, which, again, do not allow doubting, that in addition to interviews with contemporaries Bronovitskaya-Malinin-Palmin read all the magazines and books (Dombrovsky is often remembered), watched all the thaw films, worked in archives, communicated with historians. in social networks.
For example, the story of the Alma-Ata restaurant incorporates the history of its predecessor, the wooden dining room of the Kazkraisoyuz (1931-1933), built by Gegello and Krichevsky from a high-quality Altai forest in 1931-1933. The history of the Alma-Ata hotel includes the adjacent Stalinist Opera and Ballet Theater. And so on, in almost every article: predecessors, neighbors, foreign analogies, criticism, stories about regional leaders, the joys of Soviet social and cultural life, shortages, queues, the fate of buildings in the 1990s - 2000s, recent disclosures of monumental reliefs disguised with drywall, the fate of the sculptures and facades transferred to other places. Diluted with historical stories and anecdotes. Truly “the broad context of art and culture, social and political history” - this is how the authors themselves define their approach.
Therefore, the book is read not as a guidebook, but as sketches of Alma-Ata modernism. Gradually, from building to building, you recognize the main characters: Nikolai Ripinsky, who inspired a significant part of the modernist buildings in the city; in the 1970s, he headed Kazgorproekt, an institute that built for itself (however, earlier,by 1961) a completely glass building-aquarium, and "welded" in it until the complete alteration of the facades. Ivan Belotserkovsky, the chief architect of the city since 1941, who persistently drew Stalin's columns into the facades. Or Evgenia Sidorkina, who was born in Vyatka, studied in Leningrad, “fell in love with a fellow student [Gulfayrus Ismailova], and then - in her hometown,” for whom a cutout and l monumental sgraffito. Gradually you realize that Alma-Ata, the small town of Verny, rebuilt on a metropolitan scale precisely after the war, received many decisions of modernist architecture first in the country of advice: the first all-glass facade, the first blinds, the first curved plate, and in general “Moscow has not yet It was". And this is in Kazakhstan, where “every tenth adult resident is engaged in construction, [but] only a hundred people are architects” [words of Nikolai Ripinsky, 1971]. In addition, after the transfer of the capital to Astana, Alma-Ata modernism suffered less from demolitions and reconstructions. Although he suffered, about this in almost every essay. In other words, Alma-Ata is a city filled with examples of first-class, often advanced for the Union of modernism, well-preserved and not too well known to a wide circle of even fans of modernism.
Here you are just torn about what to do: to break down and urgently go to Almaty, watch such interesting things, or with comfort and pleasure, lying on the couch, reading wonderful stories about her, assimilating the names and historical sequences given to us with literary ease. Perhaps, first the second, then the first, and then again the second - a book, and this architecture itself, not at all about the exoticism of Kazakh modernism, but about post-war art in general, about its essential part.
Presentation of the guidebook “Alma-Ata: architecture of Soviet modernism. 1955-1991 "is scheduled for October 1 (Monday), at 19:30 in the" Garage "in Gorky Park.
