Dmitry Ozerkov: “This is an experiment in creating a museum space from scratch. The exhibition will be held at the General Staff building

Anna Matveeva

Dmitry Ozerkov is responsible for contemporary art in the main classical museum of Russia. It was he who initiated the creation of the Hermitage’s contemporary art sector. Then he came up with the project “Hermitage 20/21”. He curated exhibitions of young American art "America Today" and British - "Newspeak", exhibitions of Chuck Close, Wim Delvoye, Henry Moore and other masters of contemporary art. At the end of this year, the Hermitage 20/21 project will open its own halls in the renovated General Staff Building. In a parallel program of the current Venice Biennale, the Hermitage, under the curatorship of Ozerkov, will present a large exhibition of Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov. He told Anna Matveeva about his huge plans.

Q: Dmitry, let’s start with the Prigov exhibition, which will open at Ca’ Foscari University on May 31, the day before the opening of the Venice Biennale.
A: The history of the project is as follows. The Prigov Foundation approached the Hermitage with a proposal to accept the artist’s works as a gift. It later turned out that Prigov had connections with the University of Venice. They were interested in making an exhibition. I talked with Piotrovsky and said that, in my opinion, the exhibition should be done during the Biennale. For me, as a curator, a difficult but important task is to show my vision of Prigov. We know Prigov the poet, Prigov the artist, Prigov the image character, Prigov reading about the “militiaman,” but we don’t know Prigov the man; he dissolves in these images. He immediately transferred all his human emotions - “I’m afraid”, “I’m sick” - to the character, and the character was already sick or afraid. In the modern world, there is usually an author and his work. There is Damian Hirst, he created the diamond skull. There is Yuri Zlotnikov, he painted his paintings. But in the case of Prigov, this connection does not work, it is attacked and destroyed by himself, the bridges between the person and the work are burned. For me, the essence of Prigov is the witty destruction of the figure of the author, the disorientation of the reader. The intrigue of the exhibition is to find this person, to bring him to light. I am sure that this can be talked about in an international language.

Q: Will the exhibition be shown in Russia?
A: Definitely. After all, these are things from our Hermitage collection. But not until 2012. The exhibition consists of graphic works, and after being shown somewhere, graphics must rest - this is a mandatory rule. I started as a graphics curator, and I know this well. The schedule was set for, say, three months - it should stay for six.

Q: Let's return to the Hermitage. The Henry Moore exhibition has just opened as part of the Hermitage 20/21 project. What are the future plans of the project?
A: There are many plans. We want to show something from German art, to make a really good, serious exhibition, to show such names as Georg Baselitz, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Jörg Immendorff. I look at several exhibition proposals every day. Some goes to the directorate, some goes directly to me. In the near future we will be showing an exhibition by Annie Leibovitz. She has a travel show, about 200 works, the exhibition travels all over the world, she will come to us from Australia, and from us she will travel to Moscow. But we don't show the whole show. We make our own curatorial selection; out of two hundred works, we selected about half. This selection is a complex process, Annie Leibovitz, her curator, and our curator take part in it - this is the Hermitage’s view of Annie Leibovitz. I don’t want to say that her selection is worse than ours, but we have the right to choose, and this is an excellent right. Next, at the end of September, will be Anthony Gormley in the ancient halls of the Hermitage: the invasion of a modern sculptor into the holy of holies - into the exhibition of the antiquity department. Of course, we want to do something with Russian art. We have been wanting it for a long time, some plans have already been made and failed, because Russian art is developing faster than we can represent it. But nevertheless, we really want to make a Russian project, some kind of Hermitage look at this Russian madness.

Q: You always say “we”. Don't you feel a certain dissolution of yourself in the institution?
A: The Hermitage has a tradition of saying “we, the Hermitage.” I didn't come up with this. I will come and go, but the Hermitage remains. I work under a contract with the Hermitage, and when I say something on behalf of the Hermitage, it is the decision of the Hermitage, the committee, the commission, and so on. Naturally, I try to lobby for what interests me, I try to turn my interests into the interests of the Hermitage. But there is no personal gain in this. Rather, the desire to show the Hermitage that I know the correct move in this game of chess. Accept it and say it's your move. I am not working on the Ozerkov project, I am working on the Hermitage project.

Q: You are barely thirty, but you are already at the top of the world’s museum curators, you have excellent connections, and a high status. Did the Hermitage give you this or, conversely, is this what you brought to the Hermitage?
A: The Hermitage did not have many connections in the world of contemporary art. The connections that exist now, of course, are originally mine, but I am happy to use them for the Hermitage. On the other hand, the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, is very supportive of these endeavors - without his will and desire none of this would have happened, I would still be working on old graphics. But he understands that contemporary art is the future, that if you do not engage in contemporary art, you are lost, you are a failure.

Q: The Hermitage is a huge classical museum, it has its own format. Are you comfortable in it? For example, you are on the Innovations expert council; the Voina group won there. It is clear that “War” will never be exhibited in the Hermitage. Do you have any internal conflict?
A: I understand that I cannot show some things in the Hermitage. And I don't even want to. The Hermitage is a frame. Large, baroque, gilded, into which something fits, but something does not fit in. I understand that even if I lobby and push through the exhibition of the “War” group in the Hermitage, it will look bad, this is a work that does not fit the frame. There is a certain level of etiquette in the Hermitage: after all, the Hermitage is a palace. In the palace you are supposed to wear a uniform or dress. You can’t run around there naked, you can’t wear a fur coat, you can’t drag bags behind you - there are rules of conduct in the palace. The palace is not a theater or a gallery. You have to put up with this. The Main Headquarters is being built for us, where we will have more freedom of exhibition. But while we are working in the Winter Palace, we are happy that we have the opportunity to listen to the old architecture, the old exhibition, and play a game with this space. Now I am interested in studying this format of a large classical museum. I understand that this museum is smarter and more interesting than some of my tasks. This museum contains a huge number of unexplored strategies, possibilities, and moves. Now it would be interesting for me to do an exhibition of old, classical art for a change - to do it differently than it is usually done. Those who live in St. Petersburg often do not even understand the level of the Hermitage: well, we have the Hermitage and we do. In fact, this is a fucking museum on the level of the Louvre or even cooler. In the buildings themselves, in the placement of work, there is an endless number of different systems and logics. This is a most complex construct, and it influences us: walking through the halls of the Hermitage, we succumb to their rhythm, the architecture sets the rhythm for us. It would be interesting for me to do a project on the physiology of perception that the Hermitage is creating.

Summer is a time of vacation and travel, and it’s not so easy to plan an interview in a work environment, but you can, for example, meet at the airport for a layover, where we were able to talk with Dmitry Ozerkov and discuss with the head of the contemporary art department State Hermitage strategy and exhibition activities of the institution entrusted to him, at the same time learning the latest news.

In October, an exhibition of the Belgian artist Jan Fabre opens at the Hermitage. Is this a tour of his project, shown at the Louvre in 2006, or something new?

No, a completely separate product created specifically for the Hermitage. After the Paris exhibition, it was decided to invite Fabre, and we began to look for common ground. But ten years had to pass for everything to happen. A good exhibition always takes a long time to prepare. It's a common thing. The preparation of Zaha Hadid's project at the Hermitage took eleven years.

So, the title of the exhibition is “Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty”...

Jan Fabre, as you know, has many faces; he is an artist, a sculptor, a playwright, and a director. Here he appears as a kind of knight of culture who comes to the museum, as if to an altar, in order to bend the knee before art.

It seems that he recently came to St. Petersburg and, dressed in knightly armor, walked through the halls of the Winter Palace?

This performance of his was recorded on video. It will be at the exhibition.

State Hermitage Museum
Photo: Dmitry Ozerkov

Why does the Hermitage still show Fabre today?

We try to alternate the names of artists, countries, techniques and methods of influence. Now at the General Staff there is an attempt to interpret one term, a kind of look at it from different sides, although perhaps a little intimate. In recent years, everyone has been talking about realism. We, as an academic museum, decided to deal with this. Takes a closer look at "realism" in all its forms and introduces three contemporary authors working in a realistic manner: Tony Matelli, Jim Shaw and Mitch Griffiths.

The Fabre exhibition is a different matter. An artist with his own “optics” through which he is invited to look at us.

Photo: Evgenia Gershkovich

Will the exhibition be held at the General Staff Building?

In the Winter Palace and the General Staff. It is no coincidence that the two wings of the museum are involved. Jan Fabre, a descendant of the famous French entomologist Jean Henri Fabre, saw the General Headquarters and the Winter Palace on the plan of St. Petersburg as a kind of butterfly pinned to the Alexander Pillar - a giant winged creature spread out on the map of the city.

The route for the exhibition, which is gradually being built into the museum halls, will be complex. We fill the enfilade of the General Staff Building with separate installations, including the hall where the “Red Car” by Ilya Kabakov is located, who is also, in his way, occupied with the life of insects, like Fabre. By the way, Fabre once had a joint project with Kabakov.

Fabre sees himself as a Flemish artist, a successor to the tradition of the Antwerp school. The presence of this school in the Hermitage is important to him, and thus his works in the Winter Palace will enter into dialogue with the masters of Flemish art, with the works of Jordaens, Rubens, Van Dyck. The exhibition will end in the Knights' Hall, apparently with a video broadcast.

Exhibition “Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty”, October 22, 2016 – April 30, 2017
State Hermitage Museum
Photo: Dmitry Ozerkov

Two years ago, Manifesta took place in St. Petersburg. Did this landmark event, the European Biennale of Contemporary Art, leave any mark on the Hermitage and the city?

The space of the Hermitage, as a temple of art, was deflowered by the Manifesto. It was important precisely at the moment when strong attacks on contemporary art began and an acute feeling of a “closing house” arose. The theme, films, and programs of “Manifesto” showed that everything is not so bad. In addition to the foreign policy effect, there was another one - the artists realized that they could continue to “breathe.”

It’s hard for me to judge the city. Of course, there is little art in St. Petersburg, and it is very uneven.

Do you follow the current situation on the domestic art market?

I don't know this experience well. This is what the Russian Museum and the Kuryokhin Center do, this is their bread. They track and purchase contemporary domestic authors. Zhenya Kikodze and Olesya Turkina curated the exhibition “Another Capital”, where there were many interesting artists whom I saw for the first time, although they all live in St. Petersburg, next door.

I'm doing something completely different. We create a situation in which an artist, if he wants, can learn at our exhibitions.

Exhibition "Realisms", 2016
Main headquarters of the State Hermitage

But the strategy of the Hermitage 20/21 project, which is led by the contemporary art department, is not only about exhibiting, but also about forming a museum collection?

We collect a collection, but do not purchase, that is, we do not spend money. These are mostly gifts. Unfortunately, there is still a certain prejudice against modern art. When the Hermitage buys, for example, Rembrandt or Rubens, even graphics, this is clear to everyone. And if some serious sum is rolled out for contemporary art, the question immediately arises: “Why did you buy this author and not another? Where is the criterion? We have to explain what government money was spent on.

But artists are flattered if their things end up in the Hermitage collection.

I try to collect good things. We have some key works in our collection.

What if, conditionally, Kabakov calls and offers his work as a gift?

If Kabakov calls, then of course...

Exhibition "Realisms", 2016
Main headquarters of the State Hermitage
Mitch Griffiths
"Modern Warfare"
2016

That is, you only accept donations of names that have already made their way into art history?

Or those that will get there tomorrow. In fact, we regularly review other people's proposals. But as soon as the Hermitage officially mentions someone’s name in a positive or negative way, it immediately causes a stir. If the artist Ivanov wants to donate his painting, and we say: “Sorry, Ivanov,” then Ivanov’s status immediately increases: “Yeah, the Hermitage doesn’t take Ivanov now, so it will later”! We need to somehow get out of this situation.

As for gifts, there are many of them, but many we do not accept. And we don’t make a secret of it. Everything we take, we publish in one way or another.

Goal: to collect a small but unique collection that would become a superstructure over the historical collection of the Hermitage and which would not be ashamed to show to future generations.

And are you playing the role of an expert here?

I have to.

Tony Cragg exhibition “Sculpture and Drawings”, 2016
Main headquarters of the State Hermitage
Photo: Evgenia Gershkovich

How many exhibitions have already been held within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project?

More than forty. There are many Western authors, and not only. We show Russians if they are important internationally, such as Timur Novikov, an important figure in the St. Petersburg art scene, or Boris Smelov. The exhibition made it possible to introduce many of the works of this St. Petersburg photographer into scientific circulation.

I love the word “line”. We have several project lines, including architecture and photography. For example, we featured Steve McCurry, a journalistic photographer whose “Afghan Girl” has already become an icon. Of course, the exhibition was partly made not without a secret intention to get this icon into the collection.

Exhibition “Steve McCurry. Moment of defenselessness", 2015-2016
Main headquarters of the State Hermitage
Steve McCurry
“Sharbat Gula. Afghan girl"
Nasir Bagh refugee camp near Peshawar, Pakistan
1984

What's next?

Next are the most important German artist Anselm Kiefer and the star architect Daniel Libeskind. But here, as always, it all comes down to the issue of money. In addition, we ask sponsors to play by our rules. There are many restrictions: the Hermitage does not park a promotional car at the entrance, does not hang a poster on its façade. But information can be found on the website and in the museum.

Does the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, take part in the formation of exhibition plans for the contemporary art department?

Some suggestions come from me, some he suggests. We constantly check our watches.

Exhibition “Bill Viola. Sea of ​​Silence", 2014
Hermitage Theater
Bill Viola
"Sea of ​​Silence" (video)
2002

I don’t feel censorship, at least in what I do. There are things I don’t do, not because I don’t want to, simply because I don’t think it’s necessary. Modern actionism, although it is an important part of art, especially now, I do not show in the Hermitage, it has no place here.

How is the permanent exhibition of the General Staff building constructed?

There was an idea to gather artists of the 20th century who were influenced by the St. Petersburg avant-garde, the works of Malevich and the Kruchenykhs. This is where the separate halls of Dmitry Prigov, Ilya Kabakov, Eduard Steinberg, and Jacques Lipchitz appeared. Today we are negotiating with Joseph Kosuth. I would like him to do something new for us. The artist is still alive. I hope it works out.

Jacques Lipchitz
Main headquarters of the State Hermitage
Photo: Evgenia Gershkovich

A branch of the Hermitage, designed by the American architect Hani Rashid, will soon appear in Moscow, in the ZILArt residential quarter. How is this project going?

The museum center project is adapted to our museum safety and climate standards. Everything has been sent for examination. The next stage is construction, which will last two years.

Are there rough plans?

It will be a museum of modern art. In it we will show part of the Shchukin-Morozov collection that Moscow wants to see. We will show St. Petersburg artists, because we are a St. Petersburg museum, and we will bring large things from the Hermitage storerooms that were not exhibited here. And, of course, there will be rotating exhibitions created specifically for Moscow. Exhibitions such as Zaha Hadid and Jan Fabre should be shown in Moscow, where they do not go for various reasons. Each one in its own way.

Hani Rashid
Project of the Hermitage-Moscow museum center

In 2015 you curated the Glasstress Gotika exhibition at the Venetian Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti. Was it interesting to work with glass?

I’ve never worked with glass, and that’s not what the exhibition was about. Glass was used more as a media. I wanted to present Gothic as the first international style that began and will never end, on the model of which modern art is built. Fifty works from the collections of St. Petersburg museums, including the Hermitage, plus fifty works by contemporary artists, many of whom have never worked with glass. It was interesting to me.

Journalist

Art critic, art historian, art critic, graduate of Moscow State University. Lomonosov, the author of over a thousand publications in the press and books, including such publications as “High Stalinist Style”, “Agitlak”, “Agitation”, “Moscow Rally”, “The World of the Russian Estate” (the “Let’s Go” series). Curator of exhibitions, including "VDNKh. The main exhibition of the country", member of the expert council of the "Archiwood" and "Archigraphics" competitions. Nominee for the Book of the Year Award.

In the year of the 100th anniversary of the October events, the Hermitage will show a project about the revolution and Eisenstein. In the meantime, TANR asked the head of the contemporary art department, Dmitry Ozerkov, about how the museum spent 2016

Head of the State Hermitage Department of Contemporary Art Dmitry Ozerkov during the award ceremony at the Garage Center for Contemporary Art. Photo ITAR-TASS/Stanislav Krasilnikov

Over the past year, the State Hermitage has become one of the main sources of high-profile scandals in St. Petersburg. Hardly a week goes by without events in or around Russia’s largest museum being in the top ten news. And almost all of them are connected with modern art: the Hermitage was accused of insulting the feelings of believers, of cruelty to animals, of showing and teaching the wrong things, of being more oriented toward the West, and of forgetting about “braces.” Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the contemporary art department of the State Hermitage, spoke about plans for the anniversary year for Russia and the whole world.

A worker drags a machine gun...

Dmitry, next year is the year of the 100th anniversary of the storming of the Winter Palace, that is, the Hermitage, where the main exhibition of the museum is now located. Such unity of time and place gives room for imagination. What are you thinking of doing? Will you take Winter by storm again?

For us, the meaning of this anniversary year is that everyone is talking about the revolution, and we live in the halls where it happened. The Hermitage - Winter Palace is also the place where the myth of the revolution was created. The room of the Provisional Government, the stairs along which the sailors ran, Kerensky- all this happened here, for us this is our habitat. In these halls Eisenstein shot his film “October” and created a historical and cultural myth that was very important for our history and all Soviet art. Arch of the General Staff, an architectural masterpiece Russia, also became part of this mythical film, and we live in this film and create modern art in it. Now the details of the project related to Eisenstein, with his myth of the revolution, with an attempt to understand what was real in the film and what was a legend, have already been worked out. After all, the director himself was also a revolutionary: in framing, in editing, in the use of sound. We will try to tell you about this.

Preparations for the evacuation of the Hermitage collection of Italian paintings. 1917 Photo by Alexei Popovsky State Hermitage Museum

Will it be live action or a static exhibition?

A large exhibition project with action, presentations, screenings, discussions. The second project of the anniversary year is photography. We would like to introduce two brothers Henkins, one of whom lived in Leningrad in the first third of the 20th century, the other in Berlin. But these are not famous actors Vladimir And Victor Henkins, and their distant relatives Eugene And Yakov. They photographed Berlin and Leningrad as they were in the 1930s. The brothers filmed a parallel reality, this is their dialogue about time and themselves, they managed to capture the establishment of a repressive regime in both Germany and the Soviet Union. There are several thousand photographs, they have never been exhibited or published anywhere, they are stored in one private archive in Europe. We will show both Berlin and Leningrad. After the Hermitage, the exhibition will travel to Germany. Perhaps to other countries, because this dialogue is now very important for the whole of Europe. Third event - Anselm Kiefer, and this will also be a very important exhibition. We asked Kiefer to create a special project especially for the Hermitage...

Will there be provocations?

Yes, we don’t have provocations, because a provocation is when someone stands naked or something is blown up! And here we have people who themselves decided that their feelings were offended. None of us imagined that at the exhibition Fabre animals will provoke someone to protest, that animals killed under the wheels of cars on the highways of Belgium will become headliners of the news.

Demonstration on the square in front of the Winter Palace in Petrograd. October 1917
Photo by Hulton Archive/Getty Images

The staples bite

When the Hermitage began actively showing contemporary art, it seemed that Piotrovsky was presenting it simply because it was fashionable, it attracted a young audience. The museum is self-sufficient in its collection, its history, and when the active introduction of the most current, fashionable Western artists began, there was a feeling that the Hermitage really wanted to “hide up its pants and run after the Komsomol.”

I just don’t have such a feeling, but I have an understanding that the museum, which is one of the main museums in the world, having embarked on the path of presenting contemporary art, is doing it quite boldly, although it risks a lot. Because the combination of traditional and modern always and everywhere causes confrontation. The Louvre held the first exhibitions of the same Jan Fabre in 2008, and as a result, the contemporary art department there was closed. If some lovers of scandals are against us, then the opponents of modern art in the Louvre turned out to be real academicians of the French Academy, with names and regalia. The professional press wrote very sarcastic articles. For example, the famous academician Mark Fumaroli, Renaissance specialist. I remember his articles against Jeff Koons at Versailles, against contemporary art exhibitions at the Louvre. And in France, the conservative line won - the department of contemporary art in the Louvre was closed, although exhibitions of contemporary art are held there.

Do traditional museums try not to get involved with contemporary art?

There is a struggle going on, and now no one can say for sure whether contemporary art should be shown in museums or how to show it. There is a debate about this. Because modern art either enters into conversation with the old, or it can happen, as with an old person who says: leave me alone, go away. But in this case, the museum remains a kind of archive, a warehouse. And we are trying to prove that the museum is alive. The Hermitage has chosen this path, it is consistently following it, and this is our advantage.

Tsarevich Alexey Nikolaevich. "Portrait of a military man." Paper, watercolor. GARF, State Archive of the Russian Federation

No place for discussion?

You uttered a cardinally important word - discussion. There is a catastrophic lack of places for discussion in our country. But do you consider the scandals that swirl around your exhibitions, especially the latest, long-running scandal around the Fabre exhibition, a debate?

Of course not. Not only do we lack a field for discussion, we lack the ability to conduct a professional dialogue with the museum and with the audience. Especially after several independent art magazines that emerged in the 1990s closed, independent peer review disappeared. Look, against the backdrop of this scandal with Fabre, there is not a single publication that would analyze the essence of the dialogue between his photographic works and his works Rubens. Although there is a lot that can be said about: the appearance and disappearance Bacchus, Christ, about the emergence of various themes and plots, including metaphysical ones. But no one talks or writes about this!

Before the opening of his exhibition, did you have any idea what would happen? Maybe it would be more logical to tell about her, about the artist, in the general press in advance?

Perhaps you are right, but it is not always possible to guess the reaction. Previously, we had an exhibition called “Realisms”, which, in my opinion, was much more provocative. This was a professional response to the Soviet-style lapidary realism, which we now hold in high esteem. There were mutilated mannequins on display, very hard work, and I was expecting a stronger negative reaction. Fabre is more multi-layered, complex, his works evoke a sea of ​​emotions and interpretations, laconic and easy to read.

Karl Kubesh. "White Hall. Security of A.F. Kerensky." From the album “Winter Palace in 1917”. Silver bromine print. Photo: State Hermitage Museum

You yourself answered: realism is understandable, but Fabre needs to be unraveled, we need to think about it. This causes a negative reaction, like everything unfamiliar and uncertain.

Not everything is so simple, and it's not just about biological reactions. People, due to a simple lack of time and information overload, are not able to digest long texts, complex designs, or evaluate complex exhibitions. Each section of the Hermitage requires serious awareness, and the modern viewer, buried in gadgets, expects simple texts and instructions on what is good and what is bad... I conducted many separate tours of Fabre for veterinarians, for animal activists, for bloggers, for Sergei Shnurova- for a variety of audience categories. It turned out that people simply do not read the texts that we specially present at the exhibition. After the excursions they told us: “You told us, but how will others know about it?” Although everything is written in the accompanying materials. But no one has time to read these two paragraphs!

mission Possible

Are the ideas to exhibit the Chapman, Gormley, and Fabre brothers in the Hermitage yours? Does the director listen to your opinion?

The ideas are mine, so you can blame all the mannequins, all the cats and dogs on me... Mikhail Borisovich It seems to me that my professional opinion is listened to, since I have been heading the department for almost ten years. But this does not cancel the constant dialogue when the assessments do not coincide.

Karl Kubesh. “The Cabinet of Emperor Nicholas II. After the storming of the palace." From the album “Winter Palace in 1917”. Silver bromine print. Photo: State Hermitage Museum

Does Piotrovsky understand contemporary art?

He understands, although maybe not in all the details, but in the main phenomena - yes, of course. In modern art, it is important to see everything with your own eyes, and Mikhail Borisovich, undoubtedly, saw a lot.

Does the Hermitage have any special mission, a special place? After all, a museum can do a lot both to promote contemporary art and to develop it?

The Hermitage does a lot: we have lectures almost every day at the Youth Center, most of them are broadcast online. Our main goal is to exhibit complex, intelligent art, which is what we do. We have also opened the doors to “Dialogues” and constantly organize master classes by leading contemporary masters. We recently held our first science art seminar with the Institute of Precision Mechanics and Optics (ITMO University is Russia’s leading university in the field of information and photonic technologies. - TANR). For the country, for the world, the Hermitage is the most important treasury, it needs to be preserved, and preservation today is development, movement...

It's been known since the days of Alice in Wonderland: to stay in one place, you need to run fast.

But for us this is not an incident or curiosity; for us, movement is the main component of daily life. The Hermitage is constantly developing and itself produces new projects, ideas, meanings.

Mom says she asked me what I would be when I was two years old. I answered: “I’ll be a writer.” That's pretty much what it became.

I don't remember my first impression of the Hermitage. This probably happened in childhood. Conscious impressions are associated with classes in the “Hermitage” circles during school years with the outstanding historian and poetry expert Dmitry Alekseevich Machinsky and with the orientalist Mikhail Vladimirovich Uspensky. We met in the Jordan Gallery and went to the halls or rooms of the School Center. The main impression was the huge amount of new information that the world seemed to be filled with.

I came to work at the Hermitage in 1999 for the position of laboratory assistant in the engraving department. This was right after university. I was twenty-three. Thanks to my work, I immersed myself in the study of artistic techniques and schools, but most importantly, in the vast world of iconographic subjects.

In the early 2000s, it became clear that contemporary art was not just another fashion trend., but the coming future of culture. Over ten years, we have held more than thirty exhibitions, large and small, with a total audience of tens of millions of people.

The Hermitage has been exhibiting contemporary art since the early 1990s, however, it was not a complete program. The decision to create a special project “Hermitage 20/21”, which I headed, which would consistently show the art of the 20th and 21st centuries, was formed in the mid-2000s. Then several of the world's major museums, including the Louvre, began to show contemporary art in dialogue with the old.

We never do commercial exhibitions and for now we are not consciously in a hurry to enter the contemporary art market: in the West the market is highly commercialized, but in Russia it still has to develop step by step. Until priorities are determined, we accept gifts from artists after exhibitions. I am proud of the works of Jacques Lipchitz, Ilya and Emilia Kabakov, Jan Fabre, and Antony Gormley that have arrived in recent years.

I am sure that the most interesting projects of Hermitage 20/21 are yet to come. Everyone remembers Jake and Dinos Chapman's The End of Fun, which in 2012 caused confusion and an attempt to dictate to the museum what exhibitions it should do. The latest attack on the Jan Fabre exhibition is also still fresh in my memory. At the same time, the strength of exhibitions is not in scandals, but in the complexity of information that you can find here for yourself. With our exhibitions we are raising a complex person, which I am sure the future needs.

I am convinced that the dialogue between contemporary art and the works of old masters, this contrast allows us to understand the objects of comparison. Artists think original, influence each other, turn to the past, invent the future. In many ways, we live today in a world dreamed up by artists of the past, while our contemporaries dream up the future for our descendants.

In the Hermitage you actually live in those halls where the revolution took place. The Department of Contemporary Art is preparing two projects for the centenary of the revolution: Eisenstein’s Hermitage during the filming of “October” and an exhibition by the outstanding German artist Anselm Kiefer, dedicated to the poet Velimir Khlebnikov, who predicted the fall of the Russian Empire in 1912. There will also be a large historical exhibition “The Romanovs and the Revolution”.

We are negotiating with many studios and funds. The ones we're planning to show next are Robert Rauschenberg, Roberto Matta and Richard Serra. There are also several group projects that are too early to announce.

Venice is the best city on earth, of course, after St. Petersburg. Working there at the Biennale is not easy, but the result always justifies the greatest effort. After all, the international art community comes to the exhibition, and these are the most picky critics. Their approval is worth a lot.

I really love spending time in archives, since nothing can be more valuable than working with primary sources. My discovery of the catalog of Catherine II's library is one of the amazing gifts. Currently, the project is divided into several topics on which publications are ready (some are still in print). Then the whole question is to find time to calmly finish everything and publish a large and smart book about how the library became a source for the creation of Catherine’s enlightened empire, and not just limit ourselves to a list of books.

Artists of the 20th century paid great attention to the theme of internal. Klee wrote about “inner life,” Kandinsky assigned the main role to “inner necessity.” Today, a certain drive is important, well, for example, internal. Although no one can still explain what kind of drive this is.

Photo: Pavel Kryukov, assistant photographer Pavel Notchenko, style: Laura Nazarova, MUA & Hair: Elena Liseeva​​

Dmitry Yuryevich Ozerkov(born January 26, Leningrad) - Russian art critic, curator, head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage, head of the Hermitage 20/21 Project (2007-present), curator of French engravings of the 15th-18th centuries. State Hermitage Museum (1999-present).

Biography

Born in Leningrad. He studied at the Hermitage with D. A. Machinsky. He studied at St. Petersburg State University under I. D. Chechot. Trained in Berlin, Paris, London, New York, Jerusalem, Williamstown, Fribourg. Candidate of Philosophical Sciences (specialty - “Aesthetics”), St. Petersburg State University, (supervisor - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor E. N. Ustyugova).

As a public figure, he successfully manages the controversial project “Hermitage 20/21”, an important episode in the development of which was the holding of the exhibition “Manifesta 10”, perceived by many as a landmark event in cultural orientation towards the West in the context of the national-patriotic course of modern cultural policy in Russia. Since 2011, he has been included in the Top 50 most influential people in Russian art according to Artchronika magazine.

Awards

• Prize-winner of the “Propylaea” competition of the New World of Art magazine in the category “Best Art Critic of the Year” (2000)

Books and articles

• Dmitry Ozerkov. Education of Cupid. St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Publishing House, 2006
• Dimitri Ozerkov, Satish Padiyar. The Triumph of Eros: Art and Seduction in 18th Century France. London, Fontanka Publishers, 2007. ISBN 978-0954309572
• Dimitri Ozerkov. Catherine II et les Loges de Volpato. In: Giovanni Volpato. Les Loges de Raphaël et la Galerie du Palais Farnèse. Ed. Annie Gilet. Tours, Silvana éditoriale, 2007, p. 75-86. ISBN 97888-3660804-1
• Dimitri Ozerkov. Jakob Philipp Hackert's Russian associates. In: Europa Arkadien. Jakob Philipp Hackert und die Imagination Europas um 1800. Hg. von Andreas Beyer, Lucas Burkart, Achatz von Müller und Gregor Vogt-Spira. Göttingen, Wallstein Verlag, 2008, p. 147-163. ISBN 978-3-8353-0308-9 (2008)
• Dimitri Ozerkov. La bibliothèque d'architecture de Catherine II. Premières observations. In: Bibliotheques d'architecture. Architectural libraries. Ed. Olga Medvedkova. Paris, INHA/Alain Baudry et Cie, 2009, p. 183-210. ISBN 978-2-35755-006-3
• Dimitri Ozerkov. Das Grafikkabinett Heinrich von Brühls. In: Bilder-Wechsel. Sächsisch-russischer Kulturtransfer im Zeitalter der Aufklärung. Hg. von Volkmar Billig u.a. Köln/Weimar/Wien, 2009, pp. 151-220. ISBN 978-3412204358
• Dimitri Ozerkov, Patricia Ellis. Newspeak. British Art Now. Exhibition catalogue. London: Booth-Clibborn Editions, 2009, 124 p.
• Dimitri Ozerkov. Jeder für sich und Gott gegen alle. In: Misericordia. Exhibition catalogue. Prism, West Hollywood CA, 2010, p. 30-34.
• Dimitri Ozerkov. Anna Trofimova: Antony Gormley. Still standing. Exhibition catalogue. London, 2011, 128 p.
• Dimitri Ozerkov and others. Dmitri Prigov: Dmitri Prigov. Exhibition catalog for the 54th Venice Biennale of Contemporary Art. Venezia, 2011, 384 p.

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An excerpt characterizing Ozerkov, Dmitry Yurievich

Kutuzov retreated to Vienna, destroying behind him bridges on the rivers Inn (in Braunau) and Traun (in Linz). On October 23, Russian troops crossed the Enns River. Russian convoys, artillery and columns of troops in the middle of the day stretched through the city of Enns, on this side and on the other side of the bridge.
The day was warm, autumn and rainy. The vast perspective that opened up from the elevation where the Russian batteries stood protecting the bridge was suddenly covered with a muslin curtain of slanting rain, then suddenly expanded, and in the light of the sun objects as if covered with varnish became visible far away and clearly. A town could be seen underfoot with its white houses and red roofs, a cathedral and a bridge, on both sides of which masses of Russian troops poured, crowding. At the bend of the Danube one could see ships, an island, and a castle with a park, surrounded by the waters of the Ensa confluence with the Danube; one could see the left rocky bank of the Danube covered with pine forests with the mysterious distance of green peaks and blue gorges. The towers of the monastery were visible, protruding from behind a pine forest that seemed untouched; far ahead on the mountain, on the other side of Ens, enemy patrols could be seen.
Between the guns, at a height, the chief of the rearguard, a general, and a retinue officer stood in front, examining the terrain through a telescope. Somewhat behind, Nesvitsky, sent from the commander-in-chief to the rearguard, sat on the trunk of a gun.
The Cossack accompanying Nesvitsky handed over a handbag and a flask, and Nesvitsky treated the officers to pies and real doppelkümel. The officers joyfully surrounded him, some on their knees, some sitting cross-legged on the wet grass.
- Yes, this Austrian prince was not a fool to build a castle here. Nice place. Why don't you eat, gentlemen? - Nesvitsky said.
“I humbly thank you, prince,” answered one of the officers, enjoying talking with such an important staff official. - Beautiful place. We walked past the park itself, saw two deer, and what a wonderful house!
“Look, prince,” said the other, who really wanted to take another pie, but was ashamed, and who therefore pretended that he was looking around the area, “look, our infantry have already climbed there.” Over there, in the meadow outside the village, three people are dragging something. “They will break through this palace,” he said with visible approval.
“Both,” said Nesvitsky. “No, but what I would like,” he added, chewing the pie in his beautiful, moist mouth, “is to climb up there.”
He pointed to a monastery with towers visible on the mountain. He smiled, his eyes narrowed and lit up.
- But that would be good, gentlemen!
The officers laughed.
- At least scare these nuns. Italians, they say, are young. Really, I would give five years of my life!
“They’re bored,” said the bolder officer, laughing.
Meanwhile, the retinue officer standing in front was pointing something out to the general; the general looked through the telescope.