From March 7 at the Pushkin Museum. A. S. Pushkina there is an exhibition “Facing the Future. 1945-1968". It became the final part of the museum festival dedicated to the art of the post-war decade. The Museum of Moscow and the Tretyakov Gallery have already presented their exhibitions about the thaw. Buro 24/7 talks about each exhibition in the trilogy.

"Moscow Thaw: 1953-1958"

Where: Moscow City Museum

Curators: Evgenia Kikodze, Sergei Nevsky, Maxim Semenov, Alexandra Selivanova, Olga Rosenblum

The exhibition of the first “Thaw” is a kind of breakthrough for the Museum of Moscow. In addition to the usual paintings, the curators paid great attention to architecture, music, cinema and literature.

“We thought about what modernity means. There are external symbols of modernity - computers, but we understand that on a computer you can write Domostroev’s ideas, for example, that you can beat a woman. Our contemporaries do just that. The Thaw interested us as the beginning, the starting point of modernity as a type of consciousness necessary for today.”.

In addition, they outlined nine main directions that shaped the life of a person during the Thaw. The first of them - the lattice or matrix - determines not only the concept, but also the design of the exhibition. The term “grid” comes from the works of the American art critic Rosalind Krauss, the heiress of the French structuralists - Roland Barthes, Jacques Lacan, Gilles Deleuze.

“The grid explains the meaning of the new, democratic distribution of information. It develops horizontally; there cannot be a center or dominant in it. It is multicentric and simultaneous” (Evgenia Kikodze).

The exhibition opens with materials from the 20th Party Congress in 1956. This event marked the beginning of the debunking of the cult of Stalin and the formation of a new attitude towards man. Next comes main story era - “The Thaw” by Ilya Ehrenburg. There is no longer a Stalinist-Stakhanovite hero in it, and the characters are occupied with art and human relationships, and not with a bright communist future. Overall, the exhibition immerses us in everyday life, which has finally become possible for ordinary people - here Zverev’s self-portrait in an impressionistic manner is juxtaposed with still lifes by Roginsky and Sobolev.

After “The Lattice” comes the “Capsule” section, where the viewer finds himself in the world of a person’s personal space - “a kind of egg that protects him.” In addition to excerpts from the films “Once More About Love” and “Three Poplars on Plyushchikha”, where the characters are setting up a new life in their own apartments, the curators also give a direct analogy - the painting “The Egg” by Soster.

Mikhail Roginsky, " Still life with a jug", 1966; “Apartment Suite”, fragment, 1994

The “New” section reconsiders the remnants of the Stalin era that come to new system. « New values ​​are the beginning of construction, the very moment of breaking down the old and huge masses of earth on the site of the future building“, says Kikodze, discussing the painting “Construction of New Arbat” by Shilnikov.

« Controlling rhythm is equivalent to controlling matter; setting accents, slowing down or intensifying means creatively rearranging the world"(Evgenia Kikodze).

Jazz comes to life in the works of Yakovlev, Pankin, Kulakov, Kropivnitsky - epigones of Western painting who were influenced by Jackson Pollock. The latter was presented at the American National Exhibition in Moscow in 1959. Next to them is a portrait of Duke Ellington by Shelkovsky, taken from the record cover. The “new rhythm” even affected lectures—using archival materials from the history of the Faculty of Mechanics and Mathematics at Moscow State University, we can trace how the tempo of lectures changed.

Mikhail Kulakov,« Apostles» , 1964

« New youth are emerging who need not to be forced, but to be captivated. Here interaction techniques appear: rhythm, accents, pauses. This is how a dialogue arises between student and teacher"(Evgenia Kikodze).

It is impossible to imagine the Thaw era without space - the “Mobility” section is dedicated to it, which reveals the theme of speed. Moskvich from the collection of the Museum of Moscow sits next to Turetsky’s works in the spirit of pop art as a symbol of new luxury, now accessible not only to the elite. Next to the mock-up of a liquid-propellant jet engine are photographs of ekranoplanes, meteors and rockets from Alekseev’s design bureau. Space extends to ordinary life— vacuum cleaners, hair dryers and siphons resemble space units, postage stamps are replete with images of rockets, and sweets are called “Belka and Strelka.”

Ekranoplans named after. R.E. Alekseeva

Another important category for the era is “Transparency,” which is reflected in several factors at once: transparent materials, common work space in factories and the absence of boundaries and walls in the dissemination of information. Sketches of new factories from the archives of the Markhi stand side by side with a portrait of Landau made of reinforced concrete and glass by Lemport.

“In science there is a unification of knowledge, new sciences are emerging at the intersection of traditional disciplines, cybernetics is finally justified and is rapidly developing. Similarly, in art, complex genres arise,”- Evgeniya explains using the example of an abstract work by Lydia Masterkova, created from pieces of various fabrics, including a soldier’s overcoat. The topic of confrontation between the scientific community and Lysenko is also raised - in the “Synthesis” section the first collections on the problems of cybernetics of the late 50s are presented.

The exhibition ends with “Emptiness”, from which all the work began. The theme of “Emptiness” refers to the artist Yankilevsky’s story about the destruction of the exhibition of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists in Manege in 1962. This event, as a well-thought-out political action, was also given special attention in the stories and testimonies of contemporaries. Seeing a black spot on Yankilevsky’s abstract work, Khrushchev said: “Hole!” - this phrase was repeated after him by each of the delegation members. Discussing this act of Khrushchev, Kikodze sums up:

“The attitude towards emptiness is what distinguishes a totalitarian system from a democratic one. This is something unknown, a chance for discovery. There is no chance of this in a totalitarian system” (Evgenia Kikodze).

"Thaw »

Where: Tretyakov Gallery, Krymsky Val, 10

Curators: Kirill Svetlyakov, Yulia Vorotyntseva, Anastasia Kurlyandtseva

In mid-February, its own “Thaw” started at the Tretyakov Gallery - work on the exhibition began more than two years ago.

“There were several factors - mass interest in the era, expressed in the ratings of the series. The historical moment is also important - in the art of the avant-garde or socialist realism, which often become the topics of exhibitions, people do not go beyond the existing body of ideas, and the 60s are new material that was turned to in different institutions. The third point is interest in recent history, when people understand how irreversible processes took place at different moments, and this is not only the 1917 revolution. Interest first appeared in the 90s, and from there came interest in the 60s” (Kirill Svetlyakov).

Anastasia Kurlyandtseva notes that there is interest in the 60s not only in Russia - this is evidenced by the popularity of the series “Mad Men” and “11.22.63”, as well as exhibitions dedicated to design cold war.

Viktor Efimovich Popkov,"Two", 1966

“We have rather a populist project in which we set general vectors and models of perception. It is impossible to show 15 years of the life of a huge country on a full scale; you can only open the box. We tried to show not art, but a document. Revealing art as a document, an artifact - this causes a number of bewilderments among those who come to look specifically at paintings” (Yulia Vorotyntseva).

The entrance to the exhibition opens with fragments from the films “Give me a book of complaints”, where students symbolically destroy sculpture and old architecture - removing false decorative elements to expose modernism. Immediately behind them are fragments of the films “Ilyich’s Outpost”, “Nine Days of One Year” and “The Cranes Are Flying”, paintings by Korzhev, Kryukov and Nikonov - all this makes up a section called “Conversation with Father”.

Still from the film “The Cranes Are Flying,” 1957

“The father cannot always answer; often it is an internal conversation. People don’t talk about the camps and participation in hostilities; stories are taboo from the inside,” Kirill Svetlyakov comments on what is happening. Following the gloomy corridor, a bright square opens with a bust of Mayakovsky, around which thaw vectors chosen by the curators from “The Best City on Earth” and “New Life” to “International Relations” and “Atom-Space”. The search for a new language took place at this time not only in painting, but also in everyday life - people did not openly talk about relationships and feelings. “The 60s were a search for language. Emotion, trauma, fear, pain are modernist, it is impossible to express them through socialist realism,” explains Svetlyakov.

The exhibition concentrates on human feelings - alienation in the painting “Two” by Popkov, erotic abstractions of the Belyutins, gentle graphics by Dubinsky. The heroes of the era are not afraid to be infantile, to show their feelings and sometimes naive dreams. The new lyrics are followed by great aspirations - the discovery of space and the development of virgin lands. A washing machine in the spirit of space satellites is adjacent to a sculpture by Ernst Neizvestny, and space interiors by designer Balashova are adjacent to Nesterov’s large-format canvas “Listening to Space.” Although the theme of individualism becomes important for the urban dweller, it is combined with a collectivist perception.

Tair Salakhov, “At the Caspian Sea”, 1966

And now geologists and polar explorers are turning from labor shock workers into ordinary workers. “They are monumental, but ordinary, which shows the artist’s reverence for them, although he also does not have the image of an intellectual,” Svetlyakov continues. The theme of space turns into abstraction - Bulatov’s optical composition echoes Zlotnikov’s Geiger counter. On the other side of the square is the section " International relationships", dedicated to the confrontation between the USSR and the USA, the Cold War and relations with Cuba. Walking around, we again find ourselves in the “Best City on Earth”, among the images of Pimenov, Gavrilov, Stepanov, Salakhov. Probably, “The Thaw” is only the first part of a trilogy, where “Stagnation” and “Perestroika” will also await us.

“Facing the future. Art of Europe 1945-1968 »

Where: Pushkin Museum im. A.S. Pushkina, Volkhonka, 12

Curators: Eckhart Gillen, Peter Weibel, Danila Bulatov

If in the Tretyakov Gallery and the Moscow Museum the Thaw era is shown using Russian material as an example, then in the Pushkin Museum the viewer gets acquainted with the art of post-war Europe. The exhibition was created in collaboration with the Brussels Center for Fine Arts BOZAR and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karsruhe, where it was previously exhibited.

“In our exhibition, we tried to debunk the classic myths about American superiority, the dominance of abstract painting and the New York school. We tried to focus specifically on European trends - after all, conceptual art, pop art, and media art appear in Europe(Danila Bulatov, curator of the exhibition “Facing the Future”).

The exhibition opens with Ossip Zadkine’s sculpture “The Destroyed City,” which the artist dedicated to Rotterdam, which was destroyed during the bombing. The first section “The end of the war. Grief and Memory" combines abstract and figurative painting of the post-war years - Alfred Hrdlicka's sculpture "Crucified", transferring the iconography of the crucified Christ into the language of new painting. She is surrounded by paintings by Max Beckmann, Gabriele Mucchi, Hans Richter and Jean Fautrier. All of them are connected with the experiences and traumas of the post-war years. Western artists coexist here with Soviet ones - paintings by Tatlin, Belyutin and Roginsky, sculptures by Sidur.

Ossip Zadkine, The Ruined City, 1954; Mikhail Roginsky,“Wall with a rosette”, 1965

“Adorno’s famous phrase that “to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric” defines the discourse of post-war German art. Abstraction becomes important language because otherwise it is impossible to convey the full horror of war. The move away from figurativeness and calls for anti-art are the most important trends of that time.”(Danila Bulatov).

At the colonnade, the curators continue to develop the theme of the Cold War in two directions - realism and abstraction. Portraits of Lucian Freud and Vladimir Yakovlev are adjacent to canvases by Werner Tübke and Harald Metzkes, dedicated to the suppression of the Hungarian uprising in 1956, and Picasso’s dove, a symbol of peace. Next comes the formation of a language of abstraction using the example of painting by Tadeusz Kantor, Lydia Masterkova and Eliya Belyutin. From the Cold War we move on to the construction of a new world in the paintings of Léger and Deineka through Hans Haacke’s “Blue Sail” and a copy of Yves Klein’s “Blue Globe” - an expression of the absolute of color and the search for a new, ethereal form. The struggle for peace is expressed in the paintings of Picasso “Massacre in Korea” and Jorge Castillo, inspired by him, in the work “Palomares”. Next to them are triptychs by Karl Goetz and Hans Grunding, related to the threat of nuclear war. Artists consider it their duty to speak out about issues that concern them - the death of civilians, the suppression of uprisings, bombings and mass destruction.

Hans Grundig, Against Atomic Death, 1958

In addition to Western artists, Soviet masters are also widely represented at the exhibition - Belyutin, Deineka, Masterkova, Infante, the already mentioned Zlotnikov and Roginsky. “There was a cartoon in Krokodil magazine where people watching TV mistook for interference a report from a contemporary art exhibition showing an abstract painting by Adam Marczynski.”- Danila says about the exhibition dedicated to the World Festival of Youth and Students in 1957.

Such a comparison of artists from Western and Eastern Europe with Soviet ones destroys another myth - about the division of art into Eastern and Western, abstraction and figurativeness, uniting their language and schools in line with general European trends.

Alexander Deineka, Mosaic sketch, “Peaceful construction projects”, 1959-1960; Fernand Armand, "Burnt Violin", 1966

Following the Cold War and the struggle for peace, the exhibition includes sections dedicated to the formation of the new language of the 60s - “New Realisms”, “Overcoming the Past” and “Conceptualism”. Here the viewer encounters new techniques and forms of expression in the works of Hines and Arman, encounters the nullification of art in the works of the Zero and Nul groups, finds himself in the luminous room of Otto Pinet and gets acquainted with the conceptualists “Art & Language”. The end of a long journey from post-war trauma to the search for new means of representation is “The End of Utopia,” where the political events of the era - demonstrations in France, the formation of terrorist groups in Germany, the entry of Soviet troops into Prague - are reflected in the works of the Situationists. A large-scale exhibition, including more than 200 exhibits, shows the development of art in a variety of directions.

« This exhibition is aimed at bringing the viewer closer to contemporary art; it shows the moment of its formation, the mechanisms that were used to move from classical to contemporary art. At the same time, this is not a textbook on contemporary art or an anthology - the authors could be different. The ideas that are illustrated by the represented artists are important. It is not the painterly qualities that come to the fore, but rather the technical ones, as is the case, for example, with the light room of Otto Pinet or the work of Heinz Mack. Post-war art can also be very beautiful and impressive, and of course there are very strong things related to the theme of memory and war"(Danila Bulatov).

The exhibition really requires from the viewer not only openness, but also a certain preparation - it will not be easy for a person who is accustomed to seeing only classics within the walls of Pushkin. However, works related to the themes of memory and war will be close to everyone - even traditionalists.

As you know, every presentation begins with a free buffet, where there is something to drink and snack.

The exhibition was visited by high authorities. Here Olga Golodets is with the director of the State Tretyakov Gallery Zelfira Tregulova and a representative of Russian Railways.

A few words before the ceremonial cutting of the red ribbon.

Organizers, patrons and sponsors of the exhibition are on the improvised stage.

The guests listen carefully. Among them, professor of Moscow State University and Stroganovka Vladimir Borisovich Koshaev was noticed.

The first section of the exhibition "Conversation with Father". The tense dialogue between generations in post-war Soviet society was fueled by two topics that many preferred to remain silent about: the truth about the war and the truth about the camps. The history of the Thaw is the history of rehabilitation processes that began immediately after the death of I.V. Stalin.

The next section is " Best city Earth." The city in the Thaw era is the main "scene of action", the place of contact between the private and public spheres: the inhabitants of this city have not yet locked themselves in small apartments in front of the TV, have not gone into the kitchens (as will happen in the 1970s), and the city serves for them as a public forum or “big house” - a space for feasts in the courtyard, dancing and reading poetry in squares and parks.

Next - "International Relations". The confrontation between the USSR and the USA determined the political picture of the world in the second half of the 20th century. The Cold War and the threat of nuclear annihilation had a decisive influence on the cultural thinking of this time. The two superpowers competed not only in the arms race, but also in promoting their way of life at international exhibitions and in the media.

Festival:

Next - "New Life". The promise to provide each family with separate housing that meets the requirements of hygiene and cultural life was enshrined in the new party program of 1961. The society, which in 20 years was supposed to live under communism, had as one of its main goals the creation of a comfortable private life. The slogan of the 1920s, “The artist goes to production,” has regained relevance: peace Soviet man must be improved with the help of the everyday environment, and artists and designers need to educate citizens in the “correct” taste as opposed to “philistinism.”

The organizers called the open space in the center of the exhibition Mayakovsky Square.

Section "Atom - space". Atom and space - as the smallest and largest quantities - determine the range of thinking of the sixties, looking to the future, which will come tomorrow. Massification of higher education and development scientific institutes give birth to new heroes of the time - students and scientists. Since the launch of Sputnik 1 in 1957, space has captured minds and become one of the main themes in Soviet culture, affecting not only paintings or poetry, but also the design of household objects and appliances.

Employees of the Institute of Physical Problems - members of the Kapitsa family:

Section "Mastering". The propaganda campaign that accompanied the development of virgin lands exploited the “romance of distant travels” and the desire for self-affirmation and independence. Development was also associated with the idea of ​​“massification” of the heroism of hard “workdays” at all latitudes of the Soviet Union, at large-scale construction sites, on the virgin lands of Kazakhstan, in the forests of the Urals and Siberia. Artists and poets went on creative trips to construction sites and virgin lands to capture the “young romantics.”

The final section "Into communism!" In 1961, at the XXII Congress of the CPSU, in his speech N.S. Khrushchev promised that “the current generation of Soviet people will live under communism.” Advances in space exploration and new scientific discoveries stimulated the imagination, and in the culture of the 1960s one can find many futuristic predictions similar to those made during the first revolutionary decade. The ideas of robotization of production processes were partially implemented in practice, and this made it possible to think that people of the near communist future would be able to afford to engage only in self-improvement and creativity in a variety of areas.

With communism, I didn’t quite understand what the organizers wanted to say. Apparently the exhibition requires a more careful and thoughtful reading.
Several general, panoramic views:

Time to go:

"The ice floes of totalitarianism are melting"

The "thaw" has begun! The Tretyakov Gallery prepared so thoroughly - 3.5 years - for this exhibition that it even ordered appropriate weather. There are spring waters outside, and in the halls, as then, in 1953–1968, the ice floes of totalitarianism are melting and streams of renewal are making their way. It was water as a symbol of variability that became the central image of the project.

They wanted to install a swimming pool in the center of the hall, but it didn’t work out for technical reasons. But we managed to collect almost 500 exhibits from 23 (a record for a gallery!) museums and 11 private collections. The point, of course, is not in quantity (during the “thaw”, 3,000 paintings were shown at exhibitions), but in the quality of things and their proper hanging. The curators of the exhibition, headed by Kirill Svetlyakov, unobtrusively and comfortably for the eye managed to place approximately equal amounts of painting, graphics, sculpture, decorative and applied art, photography, film fragments, documents, household items...

The tone of the dialogue, and the “thaw” was primarily distinguished by the opportunity to discuss, is set at the entrance to the exhibition hall. On a three-meter screen, performances from fragments of iconic films of their time are scrolled in parallel: “Come Tomorrow”, “Give me a book of complaints” and “Noisy Day”. A sculptor (Papanov) smashes his works, Tabakov chops up bourgeois furniture with a saber, and an architecture student abandons old models.

It would seem that a marvelous new world, but the organizers play on the contrast and send us into a gloomy corridor. This is one of seven thematic sections of the exhibition, called “Conversation with Father,” which talks about the opportunity that has arisen to find out the truth about the war and the camps. Hence the bronze warriors of the Unknown and Sidur, the portrait of Shalamov, shots from the play “My Poor Marat” directed by Anatoly Efros, where the charming Olga Yakovleva pours water into a glass for Alexander Zbruev. A bust of Solzhenitsyn is also piled here, in which the sculptor Niss-Goldman reflected the disappointment of the writer, who undeservedly served eight years in the camps.

Maybe it's in the black corridor? In the next white space, Solzhenitsyn is photographed, quite cheerful, getting wet in the rain at the door of the New World, where Tvardovsky, on Khrushchev’s personal recommendation, published One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Here, in the “Best City on Earth” zone, almost everyone is joyful: on canvases, photographs, posters, screens... Lyubimov, Rostropovich, Magomayev laugh, Mikhalkov laughs, walking through wet Moscow and briskly between similar houses.

The scale of Khrushchev's massive development can be felt from the central point of the exhibition - Mayakovsky Square. From here opens the architectural solution of Vladimir Plotnikov - the construction of an exhibition according to the formula of a city with a radial-ring system. Slender paths are separated by dozens of similar walls and shelving, reminiscent of Khrushchev buildings. Everything is in black and white: following the example of the Unknown and his famous sculpture, the designers decided to convey the dualism of the era.

Some enjoy the comfort in the modernized residential area of ​​Novye Cheryomushki, drink teas from the services of the Leningrad Porcelain Factory, use Saturn vacuum cleaners and marine-colored fabrics from the calico factory. They dress in elegant Zaitsev outfits, and for umbrellas and other accessories they go to GUM, which provided rare shots of its windows of those years. Having fun on vacation Black Sea coast, as evidenced by the vibrant ceramic series of sculptor Olga Rapai.

At this time, others, like Rabin and Kabakov, are chasing cockroaches and flies in communal apartments and barracks. They are fiddling around in the mud, laying a railway and building more high-rise buildings, like in Pimenov’s painting. They are developing virgin lands, building the Bratsk hydroelectric power station, extracting oil in the North, while being malnourished, not getting enough sleep, and washing themselves in sea water. All this was captured by artists of a harsh style: Salakhov, Andronov, Pavlov... Through deliberate rudeness they conveyed the truth of the time.

And it was such that the USSR competed with the USA in almost everything: from weapons and space exploration to architecture. Then, on the site of the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, a swimming pool was built and cinemas with podiums for international festivals began to be built. And by building wide avenues they wanted not only to outdo New York Avenues, but also to fit into global geography. This is what happened with New Arbat, which became a sister city to the main street of post-war Rio.

The exhibition conveys all this through posters, graphics, and archival documents without any extra charges or discounts. Although some art critics accused the Tretyakov Gallery of whitewashing and partially distorting reality. Of course, it is easy to judge for those who did not live during the Thaw. Its eyewitnesses (Tair Salakhov, Zoya Boguslavskaya, Marietta Chudakova and others) who came to the opening day approved the project primarily for its objectivity. And that says a lot.

On Thursday, February 16, the Tretyakov Gallery opened the “Thaw” exhibition. The exhibition, prepared with the participation of dozens of museums, research institutes, private collections and running until June 11, makes you think not only about the era of the 1950-1960s, but above all about the time in which we live.

The question is why suddenly, on the centenary of the collapse of the empire, there are three important cultural institutions of the capital at once - the Museum of Moscow, where the exhibition “Moscow Thaw” opened in December last year, the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum. A.S. Pushkin (there a project on this topic starts in March) - they guessed large-scale exhibitions about the thaw, hanging in the air. But many questions generally arise here, and this is in tune with the era that came after Stalin’s death: for the first time in the country, a time has come that is conducive to the search for meaning. Fear ceased to be the defining background in the lives of Soviet people. Having ended quickly, the most free and fruitful period in the history of the USSR nevertheless gave rise to worthy fruits: perestroika was started by those who grew up and were formed during the thaw years. And even the differences in assessments of the current exhibition - it can perhaps be considered too blissful - remind us: the thaw is the time to ask questions and look for a variety of answers to them.

From Tyutchev to Ehrenburg

We are accustomed to thank Ilya Ehrenburg for the historical term “thaw” - that’s what he called his story, published in 1954 in the magazine “Znamya”. But in the article about “thaw” literature written for the exhibition catalog (this book, representing detailed analysis thaw, revealing its intrigues and conflicts, is worthy of separate study), another author emerges -. His poem “The Thaw” was written back in 1948, when the poet returned from the camps and exile. Fyodor Tyutchev was the first to use this word to define the political climate - after the death of Nicholas I. This fact makes us think about the inevitable change of seasons not only in nature, but also in society, and look for traces of unprecedented cold in the halls of the Tretyakov Gallery, after which came a thaw. But there are almost none here.

Abstraction and parody

In the first section, which presents a dialogue between young sixties and the generation of parents, the curators of the exhibition (head of the department the latest trends Tretyakov Gallery and his colleagues Yulia Vorotyntseva and Anastasia Kurlyandtseva) called it “Conversation with Father” - there are two topics for reflection: the truth about the war and Stalin's repressions. The memory of the repressions was fresh then - the survivors had just been released, mass rehabilitation was underway: for the first time in national history The authorities admitted that they were wrong.

The theme of repression is illustrated by “Portrait of a Father” by Pavel Nikonov - the white officer Fyodor Nikonov spent ten years in exile in Karaganda. But the viewer, without finding an annotation for the picture, will probably think that the father came from the war. There is also a tempera by Igor Obrosov, which refers to 1937, and a portrait by Birger (I introduced him to the writer). The curators are worried that the Thaw artists almost did not touch on the theme of Stalin’s terror, so the visual range is limited. One can argue with them: there are, for example, prison drawings by Hulo Sooster (his pictorial “Egg” is present in another section of the exhibition). You can also recall the painting of the executed man - Muscovites saw it in 1962 at an exhibition in Manezh for the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists, the same one where Khrushchev cursed nonconformists, and the merit, in particular, of Pavel Nikonov was that repressed and forgotten artists were generally shown there . This story apparently does not fit into the concept of a light and pleasant thaw as it was shown to us.

Nikonov and Geliy Korzhev hang next to each other - but are they both heroes? It was at the exhibition in Manege that a watershed took place: Korzhev spoke out against the “formalists” and independent artists, Nikonov was in favor. But we learn about the Manezh exhibition here only thanks to the participation in the historical exhibition of the abstract artist Eliya Belutin’s studio - meanwhile, in the Manege then they were exhibited for the first time. Yes, their works also participate in the current “Thaw” - along with canvases by Belyutin’s students and representatives of the harsh style - Geliy Korzhev,. Abstractions by Nemukhin and Zverev, Vechtomov and Turetsky, works by Oscar Rabin and Lydia Masterkova, sculptures by Sidur, Neizvestny, Silis are shown in the same space with a giant triptych by the socialist realist Reshetnikov - a caricature of Western abstractionists. The fact that these things are placed on equal terms, side by side, can give the uninitiated viewer - and does create - the erroneous impression that both were exhibited during the Thaw years. But it was not like that at all.

Before it gets cold

In essence, what we see in the halls on Krymsky Val is a digest of the era, the next version of the defunct program “Namedni”, a cross-section of a specific time layer: how contemporaries lived, where they worked, what discoveries and victories they made... Such a view, of course, has the right to exist. It is clear that victories here are more important than defeats - the country lived from good to better: “Cuba is Nearby”, great scientific discoveries, interior design of spaceships, touching paintings by Academician Blokhintsev, Romm’s best-selling film “Nine Days of One Year” (thaw films are hardly represented at the exhibition no more complete than art).

Image: State Tretyakov Gallery

The genre also determined the structure. Starting from the dramatic “Conversation with Father,” we find ourselves in “The Best City on Earth,” from there we move on to “International Relations” or find ourselves in “New Life.” Then “Development”, “Atom - Space”, “To communism!”. Gagarin is again our only everything.

In the center of the exhibition, the architect Plotnikov built a conventional Mayakovsky square, which provokes thoughts about poets and poetry (the sculptural portrait of the work cannot be missed). There's a lot of really great art here. The Tretyakov Gallery won the battle against Pushkinsky for Yuri Zlotnikov’s “Geiger Counter” (Yuri Savelyevich, who died a few months ago, did not live to see this moment - meanwhile, there are several of his things on display). There is also a “red corner” - a fence with works of kinetic artists hung on dark walls: Lev Nusberg, Raisa Sapgir, Francisco Infante. But it seems that there are more photographs than canvases. Happiness is in the air. The transcripts of the meetings of the Writers' Union, which condemned Pasternak and Sinyavsky with Daniel, do not disturb the romantic picture. Rain on canvases

We know how the thaw will end. The graceful form in which the curators presented the finale of a happy era cannot but be appreciated. This is a giant painting by the Karelian artist Nieminen “Tyazhbummashevtsy”: workers during a lunch break or a smoke break, one of them with a newspaper in his hands. The date is clearly visible in the corner of the newspaper sheet: August 23, 1968. The day when Soviet troops entered Prague. The second title of the picture is “Tanks 1968”. The thaw froze.

But it didn't end. The topic requires continuation. It cannot be considered closed, if only because, as has already been said, another study on the thaw theme awaits us - the exhibition “Facing the Future”, dedicated to European art of 1945-1968. The project, prepared by independent Berlin curator Eckhart Gillen, the famous Viennese actionist, and today the head of the Center for Art and Media Technologies in Karlsruhe, Peter Weibel and Danila Bulatov from the Pushkin Museum, has been traveling around Europe for six months. It will open at the Pushkin Museum in March. Independent Soviet art will be presented there as part of European art - this will be another look at our thaw. From afar.

Yuri Pimenov. "Running Across the Street", 1963

The curators, who have been preparing the exhibition for several years,

tried to create as complete a picture as possible of a polyphonic time, with its artistic searches, uncomfortable questions about the war, euphoria from scientific discoveries and the entry of the first man into space, virgin romance and the arms race.

The exhibition included about five hundred exhibits from more than two dozen public and private collections, including the Tretyakov Gallery, Russian and History museums and the Institute of Russian Realistic Art.

In the Khrushchev Thaw it is impossible to identify clear dominant artistic, intellectual or political life. The Thaw is an entire era and state of mind, and therefore cannot be reduced to a few names or phenomena - this is exactly how the curators, who have done enormous work, look at it research work. That is why there is no single center in the exhibition architecture. More precisely, it exists, but it is an open space - “Mayakovsky Square”, around which there are six thematic sections: “Conversation with Father”, “The Best City on Earth”, “International Relations”, “New Life”, “Development”, “ Atom - space", "To communism!".

The opening of the exhibition, “Conversation with Father,” touches on two sore topics of that time, which were not accepted to be discussed: the truth about the war and the camps. This section presents not only artistic works of that time, such as “Auschwitz” by Alexander Kryukov or a portrait of Varlam Shalamov by Boris Birger, but also footage from iconic films: “Silence”, “Nine Days of One Year”, “The Cranes Are Flying” , as well as photographs of performances of the Sovremennik Theater, which became one of the voices of the era. The second half of the 1950s was a time of rehabilitation processes for political prisoners, which began immediately after Stalin's death, but began to gradually fade away in the early 1960s. Thus, Grigory Chukhrai’s 1961 film “Clear Sky,” about a pilot in German captivity who receives a government award after several years of obstruction and public censure, would have been impossible in the late 1960s.

The section “The Best City on Earth” is dedicated not so much to Moscow (although, undoubtedly, it is its main character), but to the city as a public space in which the private and public intersect. The city of the Thaw era wants to meet world standards; it abandons the strict hierarchy and pomp of the Stalinist Empire style in favor of a free layout and vast spaces (the Palace of Congresses in the Moscow Kremlin, the Moscow swimming pool, Kalinin Avenue). And artists - like, for example, Vladimir Gavrilov and Yuri Pimenov - watch with interest the life of ordinary people unfolding on the street.

“New Life” complements the urban theme with artifacts and illustrations of the private life of Soviet people, including many designer interior items (and they, by the way, would rightfully decorate a modern home today).

International relations of the Thaw period are not only about the build-up of the arms race and the escalation of the Cold War between Soviet Union and America, but also cultural exchange, unthinkable during Stalin’s lifetime. In 1955, Soviet musicians began to go on tour in the United States for the first time after a thirty-year break, and George Gershwin’s opera “Porgy and Bess” was brought to Leningrad, performed by the African-American troupe Everyman Opera. A little later, the Soviet capital will enthusiastically welcome the artist Rockwell Kent and pianist Van Cliburn. In 1959, the American Exhibition will be held in Moscow, where for the first time in the USSR the works of Georgia O'Keeffe, Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Edward Hopper and many others will be shown. Works in this section of the exhibition include views of New York by Oleg Vereisky and watercolors by Vitaly Goryaev from the series “Americans at Home.” And a little further on is the abstract painting of the studio “New Reality” by Eliya Belutin, as a roll call with the Western avant-garde artists invisibly present here.

In the “Exploration” section we find ourselves among the main characters of the Soviet heroic epic - polar explorers, participants in large-scale construction projects and virgin lands shock workers, and in the adjacent section “Atom - Space” - surrounded by students and scientists, in the atmosphere of the famous dispute between “physicists” and “lyricists” . Here are photographs of huge demonstrations in honor of the first man in space.

Eric Bulatov. "Cut", 1965-1966.

Section “Into communism!” ironically opens with Eliya Belyutin’s large-scale painting “Lenin’s Funeral” (“Requiem”). Interpreting the classic plot of Soviet mythology in modernist aesthetics, it turns out to be a kind of visual oxymoron and symbol social project, doomed to remain a utopia.

Walking through the “districts” of the city built in the exhibition halls, you invariably return to the central square - a space of free expression, artistic experimentation and new meanings that the thaw takes on from a historical distance.

Details from Posta-Magazine
The exhibition is open February 16-June 11
Tretyakov Gallery on Krymsky Val
St. Krymsky Val, 10
https://www.tretyakovgallery.ru/