Sculpture Revolution: sculptures of the Thaw were shown in Moscow

More than four dozen sculptures made of bronze, aluminum, wood, limestone, granite and other materials settled for two and a half months in the stone chambers of the 17th century on Maroseyka. The exhibition "They were different. Sculpture of the Thaw", a joint project of the AZ Museum and the State Tretyakov Gallery, located in the AZ/ART Center for Contemporary Art, can be perceived as a chamber echo of the Tretyakov blockbuster 2017 about the Khrushchev era, or even an echo of the recent retrospective of Ernst Neizvestny. But the approach here is completely different. And the meanings too. Which ones — Izvestia dealt with.

Names and freedom

This is a very unusual project for the AZ Museum and its AZ/ART space: there has never been a purely sculptural exhibition here before. Well, any experiment is a risk. As for the Tretyakov Gallery, after the sensational story of Ernst Neizvestny's fake works allegedly sneaking into his retrospective (which has not yet been proven, and there are still more questions than answers), it is also a very bold decision to draw attention to the sculptures of the same author again. But, of course, such an exhibition could not do without the Unknown, and at least there is no doubt about the things of the master exhibited in AZ/ART. Why deprive the audience of the opportunity to see the beautiful statues?

There's nothing to worry about, the creators of the project, led by curator Irina Sedova, head of the sculpture department at the State Tretyakov Gallery, decided. And they did the right thing. Moreover, there are only four works of the Unknown here (two from the collection of the State Tretyakov Gallery and two more from the AZ Museum), and despite their significance, they are far from defining the concept as a whole. This exhibition is not about names at all. It's about diversity of views and inner freedom. That's exactly what unites all the sculptures involved in the project.

And here it turns out that all this hardly fits into our well-established ideas about the confrontation between official art and nonconformists. Yes, of course, the works of Ernst Neizvestny, as well as Vadim Sidur, Nikolai Silis, Igor Shelkovsky look extremely non-Soviet, rebellious; these are definitely not the images that one would imagine on the squares of Moscow. But here, for example, is the muralist Daniel Mitlyansky, who is well recognized by the authorities, crowned with awards and represented on the streets of the capital. His "Self-portrait with a mask (Self-portrait with a portrait of his wife)", where the sculptor depicted himself in front of a frightening, otherworldly face-a sheet (copper) on a chair, seems no less bold.

And Oleg Komov? People's Artist of the USSR, academician. Is Komov less audacious in his textbook sculpture "Glass" (a girl washes glass, which is only conventionally indicated by a steel frame — the viewer needs to think about it, imagine it) than the same Unknown in his quite traditional "Cosmonaut" (a male figure with an outstretched arm seems to break out of a spacesuit)?

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Young art

The title of the exhibition "They were different" is exactly about this. Although with all the stylistic diversity, thematic diversity and diversity of materials, there is something else besides freedom that unites the works. The art of thaw is still very optimistic. Yes, tragic notes could not be avoided — this is the "Explosion" of an Unknown Person, and Sidur's "Monument to those who Died from bombs", and Komovsky's "Portrait of A. A. Drevin" (an artist who was repressed in 1938). But they make you feel even more vividly the happiness found in other works.

Tatiana Sokolova's "Motherhood" (a new look at the eternal theme of Madonna and Child) and her lyrical "Friends" — two girls in boots and defiantly short skirts; the bohemian group portrait "Young Artists show their Paintings" by Yuri Alexandrov and Nina Zhilinskaya's extensive sculptural composition "Adults and Children" made in the form of a wooden relief filled with some surprisingly light intonation… One of the sections of the exhibition is called "Youth of the World". And this is not only about physical youth, but above all about the youth of the soul, the perception of reality through the prism of the cloudless faith in a bright future inherent only in youth.

To emphasize this and, moreover, to help the sculptures "come to life" in the viewer's mind, the soundtrack helps — perhaps the main know-how of the project. At the entrance, we receive headphones with a remote control, and if we touch them to the vertical racks in each section, we will hear works by composers of the same era, selected by the Nikolai Karetnikov Foundation and musicologist Sergey Terentyev, permanent curator of AZ/ART music programs. These opuses are little known to the general public. And they, in fact, become another argument in favor of the idea of the diversity of the artistic world of the thaw, which is by no means reducible to the opposition of two "camps".

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Sound plasticity

The first exhibit that a visitor sees as soon as they enter the building, "Musicians" by Tatiana Sokolova, is accompanied by a Concert for a symphony orchestra, three electric guitars and solo instruments by Sergei Slonimsky. The composition is an absolute rarity and a surprise for those who know Slonimsky from a completely different, not at all jazz repertoire. But it is this thing that perfectly matches the bizarrely deformed figures of three dudes with guitars and bell-bottomed trousers.

In turn, the section "Youth of the World" is suggested to be watched to the tune of Alexandra Pakhmutova, but not the most textbook — "A song about anxious youth." In addition, Andrei Eshpai, Boris Tchaikovsky, Vladimir Yurovsky, Sofia Gubaidulina sound, and the soundtrack of the great animated film by Andrei Khrzhanovsky "Glass Harmonica", created by Alfred Schnittke, becomes the finale. And it is thanks to this sound image — sublime, nostalgic, and paradoxically combining features of a wide variety of styles and eras, but today definitely associated with the 1960s - that it is possible to find the key to the harmony that permeates all the exhibits in one way or another.