Formalists are looking for formulas. Structural diversity Structures in the Russian Museum

State Russian Museum

The State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg is the most extensive museum of Russian art in the world. It was founded by Nicholas II in 1895 and officially opened to visitors on March 19, 1898.

Until 1917 it was called "Russian Museum of Emperor Alexander III". Emperor Alexander III (father of Nicholas II) was a passionate collector; in this regard, he can only be compared with Catherine II. The Emperor's Gatchina Castle literally turned into a warehouse of priceless treasures. Alexander's acquisitions no longer fit in the galleries of the Winter Palace, Anichkov Palace and other palaces - these were paintings, objects of art, carpets... The extensive collection of paintings, graphics, objects of decorative and applied art, sculptures collected by Alexander III after his death was transferred to the Russian Emperor Nicholas II founded museum in memory of his father.

State Russian Museum

Initially, the museum was located in the halls Mikhailovsky Palace. The museum's collection at that time included 1,880 works of painting, sculpture, graphics and ancient Russian art, transferred from the Imperial Palaces, the Hermitage and the Academy of Arts.

History of the Mikhailovsky Palace

The building was built in the Empire style. The idea of ​​building a new residence for Prince Mikhail Pavlovich belonged to his father, Emperor Paul I. But Paul I did not have to see the embodiment of his idea, since he died as a result of a palace coup. Despite this, the emperor's order was carried out. When Mikhail turned 21, Emperor Alexander I decided to begin construction of the palace.

The architect planned not only the palace, but also the square in front of it and two new streets (Inzhenernaya and Mikhailovskaya).

Mikhailovsky Palace

The groundbreaking ceremony for the building took place on July 14, and construction itself began on July 26. On the side of the Champ de Mars, a garden appeared at the palace - also Mikhailovsky. On September 11, 1825, the palace was consecrated.

Museum branches

The Russian Museum today is located, in addition to the Mikhailovsky Palace, in buildings that are architectural monuments of the 18th-19th centuries:

Summer Palace of Peter I
Marble Palace
Stroganov Palace
House of Peter I

The museum space is complemented by the Mikhailovsky and Summer Gardens.

Peter's Summer PalaceI

Summer Palace of Peter I

The Summer Palace was built in the Baroque style according to the design Domenico Trezzini in 1710-1714. This is one of the oldest buildings in the city. The two-story palace is quite modest and consists of only fourteen rooms and two kitchens.

The residence was intended for use only in the warm season: from May to October, so the walls are quite thin and the windows have single frames. The decoration of the premises was created by artists A. Zakharov, I. Zavarzin, F. Matveev.

The facade of the palace is decorated with 29 bas-reliefs, which depict the events of the Northern War in allegorical form. The bas-reliefs were made by the German architect and sculptor Andreas Schlüter.

Marble Palace

Marble Palace

The Marble Palace was built in 1768-1785. designed by an Italian architect Antonio Rinaldi. It completes a series of ceremonial buildings adjacent to the Winter Palace. The outstanding architect A. Rinaldi, the author of more than twenty-five large buildings in St. Petersburg and its suburbs, was considered an unsurpassed master of “marble facades.” His architectural techniques and solutions are always easy to recognize.

Rinaldi came to Russia at the invitation of Count K.G. Razumovsky, and in 1754 received the position of architect at the court of Prince Peter Fedorovich and his wife, the future Empress Catherine II. He built the Chinese Palace in Oranienbaum, the palace of Count G.A. Orlova in Gatchina, etc. But the Marble Palace is perhaps the most significant of all its buildings. The palace was intended for Grigory Orlov, the favorite of Catherine II, the main organizer of her accession to the throne. The building received its name because of the unusual for St. Petersburg decoration of the facades with natural stone. At this time, rich deposits of marble were discovered in Russia. Thirty-two types of northern and Italian marble were used for the interior and exterior decoration of the palace. The austere appearance of the building is characteristic of early classicism.

The main facade of the Marble Palace faces the Champs of Mars. It is decorated with columns, and the opposite façade is decorated with pilasters of the Corinthian order. Famous sculptor F.I. Shubin made two statues on the attic and compositions of military armor. In collaboration with M.I. Kozlovsky, he participated in the creation of the interior sculptural and decorative decoration of the palace. The decoration of the main staircase and the first tier of the walls of the Marble Hall have been preserved to this day. An elegant fence of spears and posts with vases and trophies encloses the vast front courtyard. Later, a service building was built on the eastern part near the Marble Palace. Bas-relief “Service of a Horse to Man” by sculptor P.K. Klodt decorates the western façade of the building.

In the 90s of the 20th century, the palace became a branch of the Russian Museum.

Engineering (Mikhailovsky) Castle

Engineering (Mikhailovsky) Castle

Built by order of Emperor Paul I at the turn of the 18th-19th centuries and became the place of his death.

Mikhailovsky Castle owes its name to the temple of the Archangel Michael, patron of the House of Romanov, located in it, and to the whim of Paul I, who accepted the title of Grand Master of the Order of Malta, to call all his palaces “castles”; the second name - “Engineering” - comes from the Main (Nikolaev) Engineering School, now VITU, located there since 1823.

The palace project was developed architect V.I. Bazhenov on behalf of Emperor Paul I, who wanted to make it his main ceremonial residence. Construction was supervised architect V. Brenna(who was mistakenly considered the author of the project for a long time). Brenna reworked the original design of the palace and created artistic decoration of its interiors.

In addition to Bazhenov and Brenn, the emperor himself took part in the creation of the project, who composed several drawings for it. Brenn's assistants also included Fyodor Svinin and Carl Rossi. Paul I accelerated the construction; Charles Cameron and Giacomo Quarenghi were sent to help him. By order of the emperor, construction was carried out day and night (by the light of lanterns and torches), since he demanded that the castle be rebuilt in the same year.

On November 21, 1800, on the day of St. Michael the Archangel, the castle was solemnly consecrated, but work on its interior decoration continued until March 1801. After the assassination of the emperor, 40 days after the housewarming, the Mikhailovsky Castle was abandoned by the Romanovs and came to into desolation. When Alexander I needed silver for a luxurious service - a wedding gift to his sister Anna Pavlovna, Queen of the Netherlands, silver gates from the palace church were melted down. Nicholas I ordered the architects to “mine” marble in the palace for the construction of the New Hermitage.

In 1823, the castle was occupied by the Main Engineering School.

In 1991, a third of the castle’s premises were donated to the State Russian Museum, and in 1995 the entire castle was donated to the museum.

Stroganov Palace

Stroganov Palace

The Stroganov Palace, built according to the project architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli in 1753-1754, one of the examples of Russian Baroque.

In addition to F.B. Rastrelli, A.N. participated in the creation of the palace. Voronikhin, I. F. Kolodin, K. Rossi, I. Charlemagne, P. S. Sadovnikov.

Stroganovs (Strogonovs) - a family of Russian merchants and industrialists, from which came large landowners and statesmen of the 16th-20th centuries. They came from wealthy Pomeranian peasants. Since the 18th century - barons and counts of the Russian Empire. The family died out in 1923.

The building has been a branch of the Russian Museum since 1988.

Peter's houseI

House of Peter I

The first building in St. Petersburg, the summer home of Tsar Peter I in the period from 1703 to 1708. This small wooden house with an area of ​​60 m² was built by soldier carpenters near Trinity Square in just three days. Here, on May 27, 1703, a celebration was held on the occasion of the annexation of lands and the founding of a new city.

The house was built from hewn pine logs in the manner of a Russian hut. The canopy divides it into two parts. Apart from this feature, as well as doors decorated with ornamental metal overlays - typical features inherent in Russian architecture of the 17th century - everything in the house recalls the Tsar's passion for Dutch architecture. So, Peter, wanting to give the house the appearance of a stone structure, ordered the logs to be cut down and painted to look like red brick, the high roof to be covered with shingles to match the tiles, and unusually large windows to be made with small glazing. There were no stoves or chimneys in the house, since Peter lived in it only during the warm season. The house has been preserved almost in its original form.

Collections of the Russian Museum

The most complete collection is the art of the 18th - first half of the 19th centuries. It is enough to list only a few names to get an idea of ​​the artistic wealth of the museum: A. Matveev, I. Nikitin, Carlo Rastrelli, F. Rokotov, V. Borovikovsky, A. Losenko, D. Levitsky, F. Shubin, M. Kozlovsky, I Martos, S. Shchedrin, O. Kiprensky, A. Venetsianov, F. Bruni, K. Bryullov, P. Fedotov, A. Ivanov.

Painting by K. Bryullov “The Last Day of Pompeii”

K. Bryullov "The Last Day of Pompeii"

Bryullov visited Pompeii in 1828, making many sketches for a future painting about the famous eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. uh. and the destruction of the city of Pompeii near Naples. The painting was exhibited in Rome, received rave reviews from critics and was sent to the Louvre. "The Last Day of Pompeii" represents romanticism in Russian painting mixed with idealism. The artist's image in the left corner of the painting is a self-portrait of the author. The canvas also depicts Countess Yulia Pavlovna Samoilova three times - a woman with a jug on her head, standing on a raised platform on the left side of the canvas, a woman who fell to her death, stretched out on the pavement, and next to her a living child - both, presumably, thrown out of a broken chariot - in the center canvases, and a mother attracting her daughters to her in the left corner of the picture.

In 1834, the painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” was sent to St. Petersburg. A.I. Turgenev said that this picture brought glory to Russia and Italy. E. A. Baratynsky composed a famous aphorism on this occasion: “The last day of Pompeii became the first day for the Russian brush!” A. S. Pushkin also left a poetic review:

K. Bryullov "Portrait of A. Demidov"

Vesuvius opened its mouth - smoke poured out in a cloud - flames
Widely developed as a battle flag.
The earth is agitated - from the shaky columns
Idols fall! A people driven by fear
Under the stone rain, under the inflamed ashes,
Crowds, old and young, are running out of the city.

By the way, the famous painting was painted by Karl Bryullov to order Anatoly Demidov, Russian and French philanthropist, who was at the Russian embassy, ​​first in Paris, and then in Rome and Vienna. He inherited from his father colossal wealth and a collection of wonderful works of painting, sculpture, bronze, etc. Anatoly Demidov, following the example of his father, was generous with large donations: he donated 500,000 rubles to establish a house for charity for workers in St. Petersburg, which bore the name of the donor; together with his brother Pavel Nikolaevich, he donated capital, with which a children’s hospital was established in St. Petersburg; at the Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg established a prize of 5,000 rubles for the best work in Russian; in 1853, he sent 2,000 rubles from Paris to decorate the church of the Demidov Lyceum in Yaroslavl, donated all his publications and several other valuable French books to the Lyceum library, and also generously patronized scientists and artists. So, it was Anatoly Demidov who presented Bryullov’s painting “The Last Day of Pompeii” to Nicholas I, who exhibited the painting at the Academy of Arts as a guide for aspiring painters. After the opening of the Russian Museum in 1895, the painting was moved there, and the general public gained access to it.

The second half of the 19th century is represented by the works of artists: F. Vasiliev, R. Felitsyn, A. Goronovich, E. Sorokin, F. Bronnikov, I. Makarov, V. Khudyakov, A. Chernyshev, P. Rizzoni, L. Lagorio, N. Losev, A. Naumov, A. Volkov, A. Popov, V. Pukirev, N. Nevrev, I. Pryanishnikov, L. Solomatkin, A. Savrasov, A. Korzukhin, F. Zhuravlev, N. Dmitriev-Orenburgsky, A. Morozov, N. Koshelev, A. Shurygin, P. Chistyakov, Ivan Aivazovsky.

Painting by I. Aivazovsky “The Ninth Wave”

I. Aivazovsky "The Ninth Wave"

“The Ninth Wave” is one of the most famous paintings by Ivan Aivazovsky, the world famous Russian marine painter.

Depicts the sea after a severe night storm and shipwrecked people. The rays of the sun illuminate the huge waves. The largest of them, the ninth shaft, is ready to collapse on people trying to escape on the wreckage of the mast.

Everything speaks of the greatness and power of the sea element and the helplessness of man before it. The warm colors of the picture make the sea not so harsh and give the viewer hope that people will be saved.

The size of the painting is 221 × 332 cm.

The museum also presents paintings by the Itinerant artists: G. Myasoedov, V. Perov, A. Bogolyubov, K. Makovsky, N. Ge, I. Shishkin, I. Kramskoy, V. Maksimov, I. Repin, V. Vasnetsov, V. Surikova, N. Abutkova.

Painting by Nikolai Ge “The Last Supper”

N. Ge "The Last Supper"

The artist’s painting depicts an episode from the earthly life of Christ, described in the Gospel of John (chapter 13). It was Ge's favorite Gospel. An excerpt of this text coincides in detail with that shown in the picture.

Jesus got up from supper... poured water into the laver and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with a towel... When he washed their feet... then, lying down again, he said to them: Do you know what I have done to you? ... if I, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, then you should wash each other’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do the same as I have done to you...

…Jesus was troubled in spirit and said, “Truly, truly, I say to you, one of you will betray Me.”

Then the disciples looked around at each other, wondering who he was talking about. One of his disciples, whom Jesus loved, was reclining at Jesus’ breast. Simon Peter made a sign to him to ask who it was... he, falling to the chest of Jesus, said to Him: Lord! Who is this? Jesus answered: the one to whom I have dipped a piece of bread and given it. And, having dipped the piece, he gave it to Judas Simon Iscariot. And after this piece Satan entered into him. Then Jesus said to him, “Whatever you are doing, do it quickly.” But none of those reclining understood why He told him this... He, having accepted the piece, immediately left; and it was night.

An amphora with water, a laver with a towel in He’s “The Last Supper” is the theme of Christ’s sacrificial love. After Judas left, the famous words were spoken to the apostles: « I give you a new commandment, that you love one another; how I have loved you... Therefore everyone will know that you are My disciples if you have love for one another.”

The end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries are represented by artists I. Levitan, P. Trubetskoy, M. Vrubel, V. Serov.

Painting by I. Levitan “Twilight. Moon"

I. Levitan "Twilight. Moon"

At the end of his life, it became especially characteristic of Levitan to turn to twilight landscapes filled with silence, rustling sounds, moonlight and shadows. One of the best works of this period is this painting from the collection of the Russian Museum.

Works of the association “World of Art”

"World of Art"(1898-1924) - an artistic association formed in Russia in the late 1890s. The founders of the “World of Art” were the St. Petersburg artist A. N. Benois and the theater figure S. P. Diaghilev. The artists of the “World of Art” considered the aesthetic principle in art a priority and strove for modernity and symbolism, opposing the ideas of the Wanderers. Art, in their opinion, should express the personality of the artist.

The association included artists: Bakst, N. Roerich, Dobuzhinsky, Lanceray, Mitrokhin, Ostroumova-Lebedeva, Chambers, Yakovlev, Somov, Tsionglinsky, Purvit, Sünnerberg.

In the Old Russian department, icons of the 12th-15th centuries are widely represented (for example, the Angel of Golden Hair, the Mother of God of Tenderness, Dmitry of Thessaloniki, the Miracle of George on the Dragon, Boris and Gleb, etc.), works by Andrei Rublev, Dionisy, Simon Ushakov and other masters. The total collection of the Russian Museum is about 5 thousand icons of the 12th - early 20th centuries.

Andrey Rublev

Andrey Rublev "Apostle Paul"

Andrey Rublev(died c. 1430) - icon painter, student of Theophanes the Greek, reverend.

At first he was a novice with St. Nikon of Radonezh, and then a monk in the Spaso-Andronikov Monastery in Moscow, where he died and was buried.

Currently, the collection of the Russian Museum includes the following departments: Russian and Soviet painting, sculpture, graphics, decorative and applied and folk art(furniture, porcelain, glass, carvings, varnishes, metal products, fabrics, embroidery, lace, etc.). The museum's collection includes more than 400 thousand items.

The exhibition "Structures", which opened at the Russian Museum, presents more than 200 works by almost 50 artists. Fifty years ago the participants would have been in trouble: official criticism would have pecked them for their formalistic delights! The word “formalism” in our art criticism has long been a dirty word. Although this is only a search for the exact expression of thought.

Fragment of work. Alexey Kostroma "Nano 720" (2012). Photo: Alexey Kostroma

Here, for example, is “Skyscraper Woman” by Igor Shelkovsky or his “Cage House”: everyone could easily see such buildings on the streets of megalopolises. And his wooden sculpture “sitting” is somewhat subtly reminiscent of antique sun loungers. But this gigantic log house, intricately composed of wooden “corners” (“rotation structure” by Vitaly Pushnitsky), could well decorate some city square.

Many works, it seems, would be more reasonable to describe using mathematical formulas. For example, Kirill Alexandrov’s triptych “Destruction of a Sphere”: the author “explodes” a ball, turning its pieces into new spatial objects.

Art critic Alexander Borovsky also spoke here about the anatomy of the material environment: “Conceptualism has proven that fine art can live on ideas alone, actionism on direct actions. But formalism convinces: the study of the forms and structures of an object is more productive for the artist. It is eternal.”

In essence, the exhibition shows that every object has a skeleton, a structure. Revealing it makes obvious important, perhaps the main properties of what is depicted. It is no coincidence that Vyacheslav Koleichuk’s “Spatial Hieroglyph” makes you see a burnt-out forest in a black-and-white pile of crosses, and in Alexander Dashevsky’s “Dormitory” you see the honeycombs of a human hive, which the exhibition curator Irina Karasik wittily calls “a human tree.”

The exhibition demonstrates the inextricable connection between artistic consciousness and a scientific approach. Thus, in Gleb Gavrilenkov’s canvas “Structure of Thought” we see an interweaving of either wires in the “stuffing” of a computer, or neurons under a microscope, but overall an expressive decorative panel that seems to be filled with talking signs, like an ancient ornament.

“In the diaries of Malevich’s student Lev Yudin,” says Irina Karasik, “there are entries that outline Malevich’s understanding of the phenomenon of structure. “Structure is an internal structure,” he said. - It can be determined by cutting the thing. We recognize it when the thing is being built. All living things are necessarily structural."

The exhibition covers a large period of time: from works of the 60s, for example, by Francisco Infante-Arana, to installations like “Crystals of Time” by Sergei Katran, in which many hourglasses, immersed in a dozen aquariums, float, ringing.

“Contemporary art in Russia,” notes Irina Karasik, “turns primarily to social aspects, leaving the viewer’s internal, visual searches out of attention. If Western artistic practice went through a similar experience in the 1960s, then in Russia this stage was skipped , and subsequently remained undeveloped."

The exhibition "Structures" fills this gap.

The next - after the well-remembered "Current Drawing" of 2014 and "New Storytellers in Russian Art" of 2015 - the exhibition project of the department of the latest trends of the Russian Museum, headed by Alexander Borovsky, could have appeared last year, but it opened only now. The curators, department employees Irina Karasik and Vladimir Perts, collected the works of more than 50 contemporary artists to show the art they defined as “new Russian formalism.”

One of the main properties of any structure is its totality, so in the exhibition halls the feeling of crampedness is especially strong. Many artists are represented at the “Structures” with such a number and composition of works that it can turn out to be a small personal exhibition: Kirill Alexandrov, Vladimir Nasedkin and Tatyana Badanina are given an entire hall. In others there is a surprising juxtaposition of artists of different generations: Vyacheslav Koleichuk next to the works of Olga and Oleg Tatarintsev, Tigran Malkhasyan. In this mixture of eras, carried out by the curators as a principle, there are successes: the paintings of Alexander Dashevsky are in close proximity to the works of Vitas Stasyunas - these are two very different “Real Estates”, Khrushchev’s and new buildings of recent years, but the structure of domestic house-building, captured by the artists, has not changed. Architects and artists with an architectural background - from Yuri Avvakumov to Harry Fife in alphabetical order - stand out most clearly. But still, “Structures” would have become much clearer if Igor Shelkovsky and Mikhail Shvartsman had not been expositionally separated from Lydia Masterkova and Francisco Infante by several halls. A clear chronological sequence can reveal the structure, connecting art with the intellectual passions of the time - such as the structuralism of the Tartu semiotic school, which in the late 1970s was influential in the wider humanities community, not excluding artists.

The curators find the historical roots of the art shown in the work of Pavel Filonov, Vladimir Sterligov and his school - the structure was primarily an organic phenomenon for them. One can mentally supplement the exhibition with other names missing from it - Russian constructivists and, above all, Alexander Rodchenko, not only with spatial structures of the 1920s, but also with photographs of Stalin’s parades. And all the same, there is very little place for “pure formalism” in the history of Russian art: op art and minimalism were not developed and were not rooted in tradition, conceptualism found its expression in completely different forms, not without reason receiving the epithet “romantic”. It is time to admit that the national sense of form in Russia is opposed to structure, just as the Russian social sense resists any order imposed from outside.

Oleg and Olga Tatarintsev. “Storage”, 2013. rusmuseum.ru

“The exhibition is a large project, including works from the 1960s to the present, which addresses the concept of “structure” - a quality of form that has serious ideological consequences. The exhibition will present models or matrices of structures that are most common in the art of the past and present centuries and have turned into stable plastic motifs (lattice/mesh, crystal, chain, spiral, etc.),” the museum’s press service reported.

Visitors will see works by Vitaly Pushnitsky, Alexander Kozhin, Alexey Kostroma, Francisco Infante-Aran and other artists. In total, the exhibition will include more than 200 works - objects, sculptures, paintings, graphics from the collections of the Russian and New Museums, the Museum of Organic Culture in Kolomna, galleries, private collections, as well as from the property of the authors.

K. Alexandrov. "Tesseract (cube in the fourth dimension)."

V. Pushnitsky. "Rotation structure".

Image source: rusmuseum.ru