Stepan Lipgart: "It Is Right To Bend Your Own Line"

2024 Author: David Durham | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 02:26

A family

Wikipedia writes that Lipgarts are a family of the Ostsee nobility, known in Livonia since the 16th century, and in the 19th and 20th centuries this surname was borne by artists, engineers, and submarine designers. Which of them are your ancestors?

My mother's parents were fourth cousins to each other, both born Lipgarts, descendants of the old surname of the Baltic Germans, immigrants from Pernau (now Pärnu, Estonia), who once really had a title of nobility. My ancestors, however, lost it by the beginning of the 19th century. My grandmother's grandfather, Ernest Lipgart, an engineer by training, inherited from his father a large enterprise engaged in the production of cement and agricultural machinery. His son Voldemar (Vladimir) studied to be an architect, but preferred the path of an artist. His fate was tragic, in the late 1930s he “disappeared”: as it turned out in recent years, he was shot at the Butovo training ground. My grandmother, also an artist, was exiled from Moscow to Karaganda at the beginning of the war as a German.

My grandfather's father, engineer Andrei Aleksandrovich Lipgart, is a representative of another family branch, the head of a large and strong family, an outstanding personality. In 1933, he became the chief designer of the Gorky Automobile Plant, where over the course of nearly twenty years he created dozens of models of automotive equipment. The merits and achievements of Andrei Alexandrovich were mainly recognized in Soviet times, therefore, for example, his authority was enough to rescue a distant relative, my grandmother, from exile. This is how their acquaintance with my grandfather took place.

The privileges of my great-grandfather in the 1950s: a large country cottage and an apartment in a Stalinist skyscraper, became spaces where the best part of my childhood was also spent. The festive atmosphere of family meetings - solemn, but also sincere, which took place in a bright apartment with high ceilings, rich stucco molding, paneled doors, from which Santa Claus invariably appeared on the New Year - apparently became an impression that determined my artistic taste and aesthetic preferences for years …

What influenced your decision to become an architect, besides engineering and artistic genetics?

It seems to me that an architect is not accidental - a profession that is often inherited. In my case, the influence of my mother is undoubtedly, who, although she has been engaged all her life not in practical architecture, but in theory, but from early childhood explained that our profession is the best, universal, in it - creativity, thought, and beauty, and Moscow architectural - a place of rare grace.

Vocation

Which of the teachers at MARCHI is important for you to remember? Who inspired you, who did you start from?

I remember with awe and gratitude my two teachers, who have now passed away. When I entered the institute, I was immediately very lucky: my teacher in the first two years was Konstantin Vladimirovich Kudryashov. A man with a big heart and great charm, a brilliant schedule - I remember with what envy we watched how clear, lively lines of masterful sketches emerged from under his hand. The breadth of nature, it seems, was embodied in the plots of his drawings: hunting for dogs, which he loved very much, ancient weapons, horses, ships, sails … Apparently, architectural preferences corresponded to this romantic, slightly nostalgic perception of the world: he spoke of Venturi with great respect, Aldo Rossi. In general, postmodernism, according to Kudryashov, was something good. There was no negative on his part in relation to Stalinist architecture, on the contrary, at the very first practical lesson, which took place outside the institute, taking this opportunity, Konstantin Vladimirovich drew our attention to the house with the belvederes of the architect Rybitsky, which is on Zemlyanoy Val, having responded about this architecture as high quality and significant. Perhaps that is why the order elements and compositions, the study of which was the basis of the first year program, without a second thought, I made my own method in the first school projects in the second year of study. Kudryashov did not interfere with this, did not break, but at the end of the second year he warned: "You have a craving for order architecture, try to move away from it next year."

Warned that there might be problems?

I didn’t say it directly, but I put it that way. In general, from the third to the fifth year, my training in architectural design was rather strange. In any case, its main principle - to copy foreign magazines with projects similar to the topic, and then reproduce the found ideas and techniques in your project - seemed to me to be largely pointless. At the same time, the passion for classical architecture, the legacy of the Soviet 1930s - 1950s, became more and more conscious and profound. I remember how at this time I came to talk to Kudryashov and complained, they say, that the modern does not inspire, to which I received the answer: if you feel that you are right, you need to fight "with axes."

Of course, at first this "on axes" was fraught with low grades and an absolute misunderstanding of the teachers, later, however, they reconciled with the wonderful addictions of a negligent student, leaving me the opportunity to cook in my own juice.

In the sixth year it was time to choose a diploma supervisor, and then there was a second lucky chance - I got into the group of Vladimir Vladimirovich Khodnev. The graduation year was absolutely happy, the formal approach of the former teachers was replaced by some kind of heady freedom of creativity and self-expression. It turned out that it is right to bend your line, but what the soul lies in is valuable and important. The teacher's sensitivity and attention, which I remember with great gratitude, allowed me to understand and learn a lot. At the exit, the diploma turned out to be bright, I would say shocking, perhaps naive, somewhere ridiculous, but really mine. I must say that in the same year the Children of Iofan appeared, in which, by the way, Khodnev supported me very much. It was a good time - we believed in ourselves.

The group "Children of Iofan" made a splash. It was appreciated by representatives of all directions. How did it come about?

Twenty-two years is probably a happy time for almost everyone: the frantic energy of youth, enthusiasm without regard to money, reputation, connections. In the spring of 2006, we met and became friends with Boris Kondakov. I remember our first conversation: - "How do you feel about the Palace of Soviets?" "It's a pity … a pity it wasn't built." It was the password that determined, for the time being, a rare like-mindedness. We started working together, of course, there was no talk of any kind of commerce. Boris's artistic talent and my architectural vision were embodied in competitive projects, in art objects, and we then worked together on the aforementioned diploma, populating the imaginary Moscow of 2006 with people from the paintings of Deineka and Samokhvalov. A big role in our biography was played by the "City" festivals, which were organized by Ivan Ovchinnikov and Andrey Asadov. Do-it-yourself outdoor installations were the first opportunity to test spatial ideas in nature. For the first time, we took part in an event called "The City of Childhood", in this city we built an object that resembled the propaganda structures of the 1930s - the "Red Stand", while the team was declared consonant with the theme of the festival - "Children of Iofan".

The fiery and contradictory thirties, to which Iofan's project marked the turn, came into resonance with their own experiences of youth, thirsting for action and change. In contrast to the chaos and chaos of Luzhkov's Moscow, we tried to present another Moscow as it was conceived in the General Plan of 1935. We walked for hours in search of fragments of that city: red lines, directions, unfinished complexes, solving it like a rebus, imagining an integral and slender ensemble made up of high-quality architecture, created by bygone masters, some of whose names aroused awe: Fomin, Shuko, Rudnev, Dushkin …

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  1/5 Installation: Tank "Flowers to the Fallen". Architectural group "Children of Iofan" © Stepan Lipgart

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  2/5 Installation: Tank "Flowers to the Fallen". Architectural group "Children of Iofan" © Stepan Lipgart

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  3/5 Installation: Tank "Flowers to the Fallen". Architectural group "Children of Iofan" © Stepan Lipgart

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  4/5 Installation: Tank "Flowers to the Fallen". Architectural group "Children of Iofan" © Stepan Lipgart

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  5/5 Installation: "Aeronautics system - a tool for increasing the recreational comfort of Moscow". Architectural group "Children of Iofan" © Stepan Lipgart

What kind of scandal happened to you with Tom Maine?

Yes, in fact, there was no scandal, but even without it, that incident greatly influenced me. The lecture of the founder of the Morphosis group then, in my third year, caused a huge stir: almost all of the Moscow Architectural Institute appeared in the snow-white Vlasov hall of the Central House of Artists. Maine's creativity is bright, exciting, all these torn, levitating, disintegrating volumes could not leave indifferent. Then everything that he demonstrated seemed to me terrible, not organic, devoid of logic, and most importantly, anti-human. Having plucked up my courage, I asked after the lecture a question, they say, but what about people? I was impressed that Maine didn't even understand what I mean at first. His answer related to design technology, he talked a lot about this during the lecture, they say, the computer is just a tool, and people, that is, architects, are creators, authors. I never received an answer regarding the users of his buildings. Be that as it may, any modern architectural form after that lecture seemed unnatural to me for a long time.

It reminded me of how at one time the composer Arvo Pärt broke with the avant-garde, because he could not say in this language what he wanted to say. You have been asked many times why you chose the 1930s as a source of inspiration, but I still ask you to explain your attitude to this architecture

According to my feelings, by the beginning of the 20th century, the architecture of the Russian Empire, primarily in the capital, reached the world level, and if we compare it not with the cultural centers of that time - France, Austria-Hungary, but, for example, with Italy, then it surpassed. Take the buildings in Rome at the turn of the century, this is a solid, well-drawn, but still very secondary architecture: a reproduction of the Renaissance, absurd compositions on the theme of antiquity, or following the same French fashion.

Still, St. Petersburg of the Silver Age, the time of Benoit and Lidval, is the focus of high professionals, masters of architecture. Let us recall the construction of Marian Peretyatkovich, the Wawelberg House on Nevsky Prospekt, a brilliant work, a virtuoso synthesis of a Florentine palazzo and northern Art Nouveau, or the emotional opuses of the young Belogrud, filled with a vague energy of anticipation, expectations of shock and change.

When these shocks occurred in 1917, most of the architects of the older generation joined in the construction of the new country, and their pupils, a galaxy of outstanding architects who studied on the eve of the Revolution and in the first years after it, joined with even greater zeal: Lev Rudnev, Noah Trotsky, Evgeny Levinson and a lot others. It’s not only about the St. Petersburg Academy, because the founders of Moscow constructivism, Alexander and Viktor Vesnin, Alexander Kuznetsov, are professionals of the old school.

No matter how paradoxical it may sound, the turn of the early 1930s for some time enriched Soviet architecture: for several years, both avant-garde and classicist concepts coexisted. The masters of the old school got the opportunity to “finish writing” the neoclassicism that began in the 1910s, to fully transfer their knowledge and experience to a new generation of remarkable architects: Georgy Golts, Mikhail Barshch, Leonid Polyakov, Ilya Rozhin. In a word, in my understanding, pre-war Soviet architecture is a phenomenon of a very significant scale, rich in ideas and ambitions, inheriting high quality from previous eras.

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  1/3 Arch. M. Peretyatkovich. House of Wawelberg on B. Morskaya. St. Petersburg. 1912 © Stepan Lipgart

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  2/3 Arch. M. Peretyatkovich. House of Wawelberg on B. Morskaya. St. Petersburg. 1912 © Stepan Lipgart

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  3/3 Arch. E. Levinson, I. Fomin. Houses on Ivanovskaya Street in St. Petersburg. 1934-1938 © Stepan Lipgart

So your motive for the 1930s is to appeal to high quality

I am fascinated by the artistic potential of this time, probably as one of the forms of high quality.

What's your favorite piece of architecture?

There is a great temptation now to recall something from the aforementioned St. Petersburg Silver Age, but for the sake of clarity, I will name the building built in the 1930s, it really made an overwhelming impression on me. For the international exhibition in 1937, among other things, France erected two large-scale exhibition complexes, I would like to mention one of them - the Palais de Tokyo. The architecture of the palace is close to both the style of Mussolini and Soviet models, primarily the Lenin Library. However, the austere monumental appearance of the building is significantly softened, both by the picturesqueness of the clear volumetric composition, and by the sensual plasticity of the sculpture that fills the spaces near the palace facades. I think the emotion of the Palais de Tokyo, completely devoid of the officialdom of "totalitarian" architecture, but even, as it seems to me, implying a certain degree of intimacy, is due to the fact that the palace was nevertheless built in a country of bourgeois democracy.

For me, there is a certain criterion of the highest architectural quality: when a large-scale building is so perfect, integral, harmonious that the urban space, which is influenced by its architecture, is perceived as a world of unearthly beauty, which is noticeably different even from the beautiful ensembles of the surrounding city. In St. Petersburg, such a feeling is awakened by the colonnades of the Kazan Cathedral, in Paris - by the Palais de Tokyo. In the world of the latter, proportions and line, spirit and will, fiery love, imprinted in stone, triumph.

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  1/3 Palais de Tokyo at the World Exhibition in Paris. 1937

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  2/3 Palais de Tokyo at the World Exhibition in Paris. 1937

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  3/3 Palais de Tokyo in Paris. Fragment. © Stepan Lipgart

In what competitions and exhibitions have you participated, with what works? What are the awards?

In 2017, in Moscow, and then in St. Petersburg, two of my personal exhibitions were held ("The Seventeenth Utopia" and "Search for a Hero"), for which I am very grateful to their curators, respectively, Alexandra Selivanova and Lyusa Malkis. But with particular warmth I remember our exhibition with the dashing title "Forward, to the 30s!" at the Museum of Architecture, which opened in autumn 2008. Her preparation was somewhat reminiscent of the regular "City" festival. There was very little money, but a lot of friends ready to help, ideas, and my own strength in unlimited quantities. The curator was my friend, art critic Masha Sedova.

And now for two and a half months, we settled in a small community, were engaged in the construction of models, exposition installations, production of posters and other exhibition material. The result, it seems, was really bright, in any case, the special guest of the exhibition, Grigory Revzin, then drew attention to the Children of Iofan.

As for the contests, apparently, due to the specificity of the topic of our work, we did not succeed here too much, however, we did not strive to succeed, there are a couple of ARCHIWOOD prizes, but I think this can be attributed to an exception to the rule.

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  1/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

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  2/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

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  3/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

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  4/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

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  5/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

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  6/6 Installation "Pillars of OSVOD", laureate of the ARCHIWOOD-2012 prize Architectural group "Children of Iofan"

What are your impressions of working in the studio of Mikhail Filippov?

In my understanding, Mikhail Anatolyevich is a brilliant artist, and his vision of architecture presupposes a quality of reality that is unattainable today: social, cultural, technological. In order for Filippov's architecture in full sound to become a part of the material world, too much in the world needs to be changed, many things have to be remembered. This thought scares and disappoints me, but it seems that one person, even infinitely talented, cannot do it. I worked in Mikhail Filippov's Workshop for a year in total, I am glad that I know the master, I am grateful to him for his work.

Practice

At the age of 30, you began to design large residential complexes in St. Petersburg. House "Renaissance" on the street. Dybenko has already been partially built, "Petite France" on the 20th line of Vasilievsky Island is being built. Few people manage to get such orders at this age. What's the secret?

A couple of months ago we talked with Aleksey Komov, and he, in particular, defined this situation as follows: “There is your position of a master, a revivalist one. There is your world, in which you dwell without making a difference between paper and real projects, and top-level customers, the presence of this world, the firmness of artistic convictions, feel and want to join. And since this is a large-scale world, the projects turn out to be large: residential buildings and factories, and not private houses and not interiors."

It sounds very loud, laudatory, on the other hand, it is strange to write off some events in life on a blind chance. I remember that at the age of thirty, when selecting material for Arch-Moscow, I revised my numerous pictures: paper projects, competition projects, photographs of installations, and there was a feeling that enough images and ideas had accumulated so that they somehow broke through, came out into the real world. So it soon happened. Of course, previous acquaintances played a role: Grigory Revzin brought me together with Kusnirovich, Maxim Atayants, who is an example for me professionally and morally, facilitated a meeting with a St. Petersburg developer.

Tell us about the device and methods of the Liphart Architects workshop?

I see my main task in working with an architectural image, respectively, everything is built in such a way as to solve it with maximum efficiency, but with a minimum team. The workshop is very small, up to five people, it is engaged almost exclusively in sketch design. I prefer to draw the exterior of the building with my own hand, from the first pencil line to the last centimeter of the final computer model of the facade. I delegate the rest of the work to my colleagues. The project and working documentation are developed by external designers, we participate in the process as part of the designer's supervision.

The first house in St. Petersburg,

Residential complex "Renaissance", I painted according to the given layouts. Of course, the designers changed and adjusted them in the process, my decisions were also transformed, but in the end, it should be noted that the implementation is very close to the original idea. The customer's installation also affected: change the architecture in the last place, build as it is drawn.

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  1/6 View from the south-east to the rotunda. Residential complex "Renaissance" © Liphart Architects

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  2/6 Renaissance residential complex Visualization © Liphart Architects

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  3/6 Residential complex "Renaissance" Photo © AAG

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  4/6 Project of the residential complex "Renaissance" on Dybenko street, St. Petersburg, since 2015Computer graphics Under construction Customer: investment and construction holding AAG © Stepan Lipgart

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  5/6 View from the south-east, evening illumination. Residential complex "Renaissance" Photo © Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov / Courtesy of Liphart Architects

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  6/6 North facade view, evening lighting. Residential complex "Renaissance" Photo © Dmitry Tsyrenshchikov / Courtesy of Liphart Architects

In the case of the so-called "Little France" - our first house in the historical center of the city - I had more freedom of maneuver: the volume and number of storeys were set, a number of general ideas with apartment formats, everything else was decided on the basis of the external appearance I had invented. The design of this object coincided with my move to St. Petersburg, so it was drawn with great feeling, with a kind of neophyte fervor, the works of Lidval and Klenze, whom I really discovered for myself then, had a great influence on its architecture.

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  1/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  2/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  3/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  4/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  5/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  6/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

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  7/7 RC "Little France". 20th line of Vasilievsky Island. St. Petersburg © Liphart Architects

A number of St. Petersburg projects that we are currently working on at one stage or another: residential buildings on Magnitogorskaya Street, Malokhtinsky Prospect, on the Black River embankment - are being designed in a similar way. The house on the 12th line of Vasilievsky Island is very complex in configuration, dense, it was drawn for six months. Perhaps, the most efforts were invested in this object, I really hope for its implementation.

The "do as drawn" mindset for designers came about because the customers were your allies. Do customers feel the beauty?

It seems to me that the ability to see the beautiful is a gift given to everyone from birth; it is another matter that life circumstances, environment, prejudices can take this gift away from a person, or, in any case, cause him severe damage. Sometimes it seems that in today's Russia, which has suffered over the past century, the majority have forgotten how not only to increase beauty, but even to distinguish it from the ugly. The more wonderful is the meeting with the ambition to create the aesthetic. In my opinion, both Alexander Zavyalov, the owner of the St. Petersburg developer company, and Mikhail Kusnirovich have such an ambition.

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  1/7 View of the Administrative-Amenity and Production Buildings from the south-west. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  2/7 View of the administrative building from the south-east. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  3/7 Front staircase, fragment. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  4/7 Fragment of the western facade of the Administrative building. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  5/7 Hall of the 1st floor with the Winter Garden_fragment. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  6/7 General view of the stopping point from the south. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

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  7/7 The southern facade of the Administrative and amenity building, fragment. Garment factory "Manufactura Bosco" Photo © Ilya Ivanov / provided by Stepan Lipgart

Further, of course, the customer's taste preferences begin to play a role, changing, I must say, over time from complete coincidence with mine to complete misunderstanding. In the first projects with Zavyalov, for example, order, classical architecture was accepted with a bang, and we spoke the same language, but now more and more the task is posed according to the principle familiar from the institute years: "Make me like in this photo." Here the question involuntarily arises, to what extent am I ready for a compromise. In general, there is some disappointment in the profession after the first years of practical work. So far, the really important and valuable has been gained in paper projects, not in implementation.

Paper projects

More than two years ago, in a commentary to archi.ru, I mentioned that the main topic that interests me is the unresolved contradictions inherent in Russian culture and history, which manifested themselves especially strongly in the 1930s. The collision of the machine with the traditional and man-made. The line of heroic Petersburg architecture, embodied both in the art deco of Levinson and Trotsky, and in the gloomy archaic of Belogrud and Bubyr, and even earlier in the arch of the General Staff and the monument to Peter. A line of burdened impulse, overcoming, associated with the nature of the city, which has been subjected to violent Europeanization several times.

In your works, order architecture and technology do not deny each other, but, on the contrary, enrich each other: art deco and reactor, art deco and rocket … Which paper project is most dear to you and why?

The series "At the Reactor" is a personal dedication, it embodies the image of an atomic reactor as a force that warms this world, but also threatens to destroy it. This energy has a similarity to human passion. The station is like a temple, and the theme of the deification of the car is also present here.

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  1/5 Series "At the Reactor" 2014 Computer graphics Paper project © Stepan Lipgart

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  2/5 Series "At the Reactor" 2014 Computer graphics Paper project © Stepan Lipgart

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  3/5 Finlyandsky Railway Station 2014 Computer graphics Paper project © Stepan Lipgart

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  4/5 Project of improvement and reconstruction of the territory of the Neskuchny Sad park. Stage 2011-2012 Computer graphics Not implemented Customer: Bosco group of companies © Stepan Lipgart

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  5/5 Project of improvement and reconstruction of the territory of the Neskuchny Garden park. Greenhouse 2011-2012 Computer graphics Not implemented Customer: Bosco group of companies © Stepan Lipgart

I remember well how the plot of the work I call "Arc de Triomphe" came about. The day before, I had an inspiring conversation, where the interlocutor called for an image-manifesto, my idea of the future. Apparently he found the right words, the picture was born in a minute: a daring rocket, ready to break off in empiricism, framed by a gigantic architectural form. The conquest of outer space, made possible by a technological breakthrough, and dynamic lines sounding in unison with this movement, bearing the stamp of meaningful Art Deco.

At the exhibition in Moscow there were projects of quite aesthetic Art Deco villas. A villa is the image of a private person. What kind of person is this, with what properties?

It is interesting that each project is an offer for a specific customer, but none of them decided to build their house in such forms. It seems to me that Maxim Atayants gave a fairly accurate description, noting that these are not private houses, but exhibition pavilions for exhibiting the customer and his everyday life. Yes, perhaps, the emphasized representativeness, monumentality, solemnity of architecture do not imply privacy, comfort, serene flow of days. The image of this house challenges its inhabitant, and he must correspond to him, first of all in aesthetic terms, but not only. Here we come close to the theme of the exceptional personality, the Hero.

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  1/4 Project "Winged Villa" 2016 Computer graphics Not implemented Private customer © Stepan Lipgart

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  2/4 Project of the villa "Acropolis Litorinum" 2015 Computer graphics Leningrad region, Vyborgsky district Not implemented Private customer © Stepan Lipgart

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  3/4 Project "Villa ITR", 2011 Computer graphics Moscow region, Chekhovsky district Not implemented Private customer © Stepan Lipgart

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  4/4 Villa project "Pavillon Lecayet", 2015Computer graphics Moscow region. Not implemented Private customer © Stepan Lipgart

Metaphysics

What is the difference between your concept of a hero and a romantic hero of the 19th century, who enters into a battle with fate and opposes the crowd; from the superman and demiurge of the avant-garde; from a twentieth century libertarian?

I remember reading at Khan-Magomedov that Ivan Leonidov, creating his "City of the Sun", was hardly familiar with the text of Tommaso Campanella. His utopian constructivism gave a picture of a bright future, and the plot of the City of the Sun was in tune with his feelings. It is worth immediately determining that my “concept of the Hero” also does not have sufficient philosophical depth, behind it there are no long texts, research, attempts to test my own guesses empirically. The main thing here is your own intuition, the experience of certain feelings, exaltation. And the most successful way of the notorious search for the Hero is to observe the artistic display of human beauty. The most obvious example is the portrait of the Renaissance, exalting, deifying human nature. But even closer to the ideal are those canvases where the heavenly light comes into conflict with the dark side of human nature. A fresh, strong impression for me was to see live the works of Parmigianino and Bronzino, in them there is no light peace of Renaissance harmony, on the contrary, the piercing cold of impeccable features, the fragile balance of Apollonian and Dionysian, implying response, boldness, the work of the soul.

In Scriabin's Divine Symphony, the hero-demiurge creates a world out of nothing. The God-fighting concept gives rise to very beautiful music, but ethically it is at the limit. Your hero - who is he?

The hero is the middle step between a person with his weaknesses and vices and the Highest principle. The hero is not one who is miraculously endowed with divine abilities, but who strives with the strength of his spirit, his own soul, to the highest, ideal, both morally and in the sense of physical beauty.

But an artist is a hero at the moment when he creates something. The manifestation of beauty in a work is always a miracle and daring. Returning to the 1930s, both the creators and their images are heroic there. Architects built, and composers wrote, risking their lives. In 1938, Shostakovich sat every night in the stairwell of his house with a suitcase, awaiting arrest because his friend, Marshal Tukhachevsky, had been shot. Shostakovich has been hounded in print since the early 1930s. However, in 1937 he wrote the 5th symphony, in which, according to Pasternak, "he said everything, and nothing happened to him." The hero in this music dies in the fight against a hellish totalitarian machine

In the thirties, the ultimate attempt was made to endure the heroic, demiurgic to the maximum extent - the Third Reich. An attempt to change, to distort universal human morality, to create a new person, a new society, a new city. The cult of a hero that has captured tens of millions. The result is monstrous, and from an ethical, humanistic point of view, it is not subject to any justification. It must be remembered that the line is really thin here.

Yes. Because the means are monstrous, and the means are the most important thing. Yes, there was a monstrous goal

Are other means possible? Take knighthood - it is associated with violence and murder, and at the same time, good-looking, everyone remembers the majestic walls of medieval castles and the cult of a beautiful lady.

I disagree that the heroic concept is associated with violence, perhaps with confronting violence and overcoming oneself. If we reconcile life with a vertical dimension, then we are talking about a hero who sacrifices himself for other people

By the way, sacrifice was also promoted in Nazi society. As a result, there is already an opinion in modern Germany that the pursuit of self-valuable beauty can be equated with Nazism.

This is mistake. The artist creates a form, it is a domineering gesture, in a sense totalitarian, but art is an area where hierarchy is beneficial. Postmodernism tried to deconstruct this gesture, and the artistic result is not very convincing. The Silver Age balanced on the verge of art and life-building. He created beauty, but remained in the artistic field and did not go further (more precisely, poets and artists experimented with all sorts of obscene cults, as we know from the memoirs of Alexander Benois, but this was their private affair). Lenin is not the Silver Age

But the artists were gathering those clouds on the eve of the drama of 1917, calling and hungering for them. What are thunder and lightning? This is something uncontrollable. Scriabin, naturally, had a different idea of the appearance of a new man, it is clear that he was not a commissar with a Mauser and not a brutal attack aircraft. The Leningrad blockade as the realization of the most terrible dreams of the Silver Age lies in the feeling of superhumanity and sacrifice, in these twilight cold sensations embodied in the Belogrudov houses. They already had a premonition of an imminent tragedy, a premonition of the archaic, which appeared in the image of Stalin from the darkest depths. Sharpening the theme, I see the image of the hero in the works of the sculptors Josef Torak and Arno Brecker. The audacity there definitely leans towards the dark nature, but it is impressive.

As did the daring of many 20th century libertarian artists. Wright, Sullivan, Scriabin were Nietzscheans. But they understood Nietzsche in a vulgar way. Nietzsche, when he said his phrase about the death of God, meant that a person has ceased to turn to Heaven, has ceased to be capable of thanksgiving, to conform his actions with God. People directed the resulting free energy to achieve their goals, and achieved a lot. But fallen human nature manifested itself in all its glory

Fallen human nature is manifesting in full growth today. It's a pity these displays have no artistic value.

Yes. But people understood some things. The world has defeated fascism, and the balance is still maintained, albeit with difficulty. Albert Schweitzer said that having invented the atomic bomb, that is, becoming superpowered, man did not become superintelligent. Perhaps the hero is a superintelligent person. Not in the sense of caution, of course, but, on the contrary, in the sense of recklessness, the ability to mercy, sacrifice. The saint is quite a hero and superman. We have values that we don't want to lose. If we talk about architecture, a European historic city is a value, and the architecture of the 1930s is an organic part of it

Yes, but there was also a new quality in her. Returning to my Parisian impression, that visit was very short, concentrated: in eight hours I walked from the Pantheon to the Trocadero, having managed to visit the Louvre. The great city amazes with its scale, richness of facades made of natural stone, the sweep of avenues, the splendor of huge palaces, and yet, coming out to the buildings of the Paris exhibition, I could not help feeling another dimension, another degree of significance, an image of the future, which never came, because the destructive nature of man then prevailed over the creative one.