Sitting in his studio in north London for a huge table, where the real creative reigns disorder, British sculptor Antony Gormley (Antony Gormley) demonstrates the Financial Times columnist Peter Espdenu (Peter Aspden) on your computer screen photo of ancient Greek statues from the collection of Hermitage. This is Dionysus, the Greek god of wine lively, patron feasts and revelry. "He looked at Athena, standing on the other side of the hall - says Gormley - but she pays no attention to his call-up views of any attention. Her eyes were fixed ahead. " So ironically describes the famous sculptor, who perhaps do not give in to the courage and vigor of most of Dionysus, a fragment of his future, one might say, an innovative exhibition at the St. Petersburg Hermitage. By placing your antique sculptures, the artist played a witty drama between idleness and debauchery of Dionysus and the goddess of war, cold composure - among revelers and rude woman, who see their vocation ministry lofty goal. This unexpected dialogue hitherto lifeless statues filled with life and content.

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Gormley is not the first time with the art and the possibilities of the human body, both limited and unlimited, but the exhibition at the Hermitage - is perhaps the most daring of his visit to the field of traditional arts, as well as another attempt to revise the prevailing attitude towards it. The British were allowed, as he puts it, "frolic" in one of the most conservative of museums in the world. However, saucy sculptures rearrangement of ancient Roman and Greek collections of the Hermitage is not fashion and not ridicule over the classics is an attempt to revise the view of concepts such as human and divine, high and low, and reflect happened in our time shift the boundaries between them.

Gormley exhibition, entitled "Full growth, "opens at the Hermitage on September 23 and will be the first in the history of the museum as a precedent, when the avant-garde artist now living, so to speak," put his hand "in the priceless collection of classical art museum St. Petersburg. Gormley exhibition will consist of two parts: the first is created by the sculptor free composition of the nine original antique statues, while the second (in the room next door called "Rome Courtyard"), in fact, unveil seventeen new works by the artist. According to Gormley, it's incredibly surprised and delighted that he be allowed such a daring invasion of the sacred territory of the classics. "I shoot in front of them (referring to the administration of the Hermitage. - AI .) hat - says the sculptor, - for antique collection of the Hermitage has never been anything similar, especially with the alien. And even more so - by the modern artist-a foreigner ».

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first part of the exhibition can in many ways seem more revolutionary than a demonstration of new works by the master. Gormley on the project all the statues were "removed" from their pedestals (naturally, not in a literal sense: the pedestals of sculptures were simply buried under a temporary plywood floor), so that the ancient gods, who usually look down on us from above, now, out of habit, are the same level with the audience. Bold gesture Gormley mixed with a crowd of proud Olympians mere mortals - the museum visitors, mass consumer culture product comes from the XXI century.

Gormley hopes that this inexcusable overthrow of deities from the pedestal of a double take on a momentum effect: On the one hand, makes brilliant characters, as they say, "closer to the people," drop the ideal of heaven on earth, destroys the traditional, familiar to our perception of the hierarchy of values. In this sense, says the artist, the exhibition rhymes with his project "People and others," in which in 2009 at the empty "fourth plinth» (fourth plinth) in Trafalgar Square, climbed for an hour at a time over two thousand representatives of different strata of British society . But if the project "Those and others" raised up and glorified the everyday ordinary people, the current installation at the Hermitage produces the opposite effect, plunging the inaccessible deity in the center of human bustle.

Similarly Gormley also intends to give the viewer a better idea of ​​the usual, familiar from childhood images. The fact that near the statues of gods and goddesses are not so perfect, what seems to be the inhabitants of Mount Olympus: their sculpted "bodies" with numerous "scars" - traces of restorations and renovations, which they had endured over the years the museum's life . Someone from the Pantheon, one can clearly see the representatives of a new, restorers fastened nose at someone - glued to the leg or arm. Gormley believes that this should be a sad revelation for visitors: "The greatness of these figures - the fruit of our imagination. Even the most well-preserved work is assembled from fragments and debris. This pastiche. With it, we literally see with our eyes, that the classical ideals and values ​​of art - a concept which, alas, should be questioned ».

This reassessment of values ​​becomes a special meaning for those who are already familiar with the work of Gormley. Master has long maintained that the sculpture was "cornered" exhibition spaces, depriving the viewer the opportunity to observe it from all sides as a bulk product: "It is clear that the sculpture has become a secondary art form gradually in relation to architecture. At some point it became a bearer of architecture ideas permanence, stability, and horn are not of the cultural values ​​of the classical inflation. Sculpture was also assigned the role of a decorative element ».

That is why the upcoming exhibition of Gormley gives the viewer an opportunity to see the sculpture from all sides - they are free to have settled over the entire area of ​​the hall and look quite different than usual when they are forced to humble "stand aside". Gormley, commenting on occurs on your computer screen an image of one of the most famous sculptures of the Hermitage, which was also used them to create their songs - armless Aphrodite, indicates that it is visible damage and imperfections, and exclaims: "She's terrible, is not it? She has stuck his nose. Judging from her mind, she had long stood under the open sky. " This sculpture of Aphrodite - the favorite of St. Petersburg in love: they love to be photographed on her background, kissing. "Now, when they were on one level, it will be easier to do" - ironically Gormley. He clearly enjoys his ongoing procedures to rethink the traditional arts and cultural hierarchies. "We downgrade them to rank - he says about the ancient gods. - From the ideal turn into real objects. I want the visitors could see them close, unbiased look, just as things, man-made ».

inevitable that such a cardinal revision of traditional ways of perceiving and demonstrations of classical Gormley works leads to reflections about the nature of space, which is the "action" happens - the phenomenon of the State Hermitage. "Why in the Soviet era, it was decided to maintain this empire is essentially the idea - the collection of [classical] works of art? When in Europe were in full swing and the rejection of the revision of such concepts raised by the board in the XIX century, here [in Russia], heroic, classical ideas of art have remained unchanged. Is it because that in times of great social and political instability, it was important to preserve at least some stable reference points? As a result, [even now] the whole museum is not a bit changed [since the Soviet era]. The ideological principles of his collection are the same. And in Russia, and China's art institutions are built on the classical model developed by the French academicians. Not surprisingly, the [Russian and Chinese] museums still embody the principles of encyclopedia of material culture - the ideas of the Enlightenment of the XVIII century ».

result of this approach, according to Gormley, was the fact that museum collections do not bring any pleasure to visitors, representing a mournful collection of trophies or boring paragraph from the book by the same overwrought. "Honour and praise to the [Hermitage Museum], because it is now possible to put this approach into question and deconstruct the part of the exhibition, along with its traditional sense" - said Gormley.

According to Gormley, the role of sculpture in the world today than in the past has changed to the opposite: it has ceased to be a physical manifestation of the traditional hierarchy of cultural values, as in the days of unchallenged domination of classical aesthetics, and is today for the overthrow of tradition. "There is a huge difference between the traditional statues often solitary figure of the hero is associated with known historical or mythological subject, and employees always glorify the past, and my work, aimed at the future and focused on reflexive perception. I want to give the public a sense that it plays an important role in the arts, as well as to remind people that they - the creators and interpreters of their own future ».

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so that the second, even more "landing" of the exhibition is in sharp contrast with the grandeur of classical sculpture in the room next door. Seventeen massive prefabricated metal work, specially aged to simulate the old rust and corrosion have taken a variety of positions in the Roman courtyard. Figures, and referring to intentionally architectons Malevich (three-dimensional models of buildings that have not been implemented), just as a broken nervous, how confident the characters of Greek sculpture. "These images antiutopichny - explains the artist. - There is a huge sense of fragmentation in this - is the ability to quick destruction. They seem to try to pull yourself together, overcome their own silos. This is actually the antithesis of what is shown in the previous room ».

Images Gormley inspire the viewer an overwhelming sense of anxiety, and it seems that this artist and sought in every way. "Yes, this is not heroic and ethical character," - says about his work the sculptor, ironically alluding to the first exhibit hall. Gormley himself compares his installation at the Hermitage with another ambitious intrusion of modern art in traditional museum space - with an exhibition of works by Jeff Koons (Jeff Koons) in Versailles in 2008. It was aimed at creating confrontation and dialogue between modern kitsch and baroque interiors of the royal palace. "However, the brilliance and declared by the works of Koons' desire to please the public good fit into the overall context of the [museum] - believes Gormley. - This project is not so».

Gormley - the experimenter with a rich past: for example, in 2007 as part of Event Horizon, he deluged his bronze figures roofs and the streets of London. Then he talked about the importance of "leakage" of art from museums and galleries on the street. In the project "Full Growth" sculptor again turned to space museums, which are used to present the viewer with material peremptory historical perspective. But now, it seems, that view was correct, at least temporarily: Gormley exhibition in St. Petersburg comes to the museum space with the same terms as revolutionary in its presentation of the material a series of programs BBC «The history of the world in one hundred subjects," whose author, According to Gormley, the first time allowed the exhibits from the collections of the British Museum "speak for themselves, rather than serve to illustrate the culture and mores of a certain age, or geographical point of belief systems».

his exhibition of Gormley casts questioned the very foundation of the Hermitage collection, prompting the audience to question the legitimacy of how they were presented by art for many years. It seems that St. Petersburg this winter is worth a visit if only for the exhibition of Gormley, concludes the analyst Financial Times. A sculptor himself, while admiring the beauty of The North Venice, in a conversation with him immediately recalls that last year three people were killed in the city from falling icicles. The fragility of human life never goes to the artist of the head: the more surprising that he and his works still stand proudly at full length, as exemplified by the excellent opening in the Hermitage exhibition.

Prepared by Mary Estrova, AI

Source : artinvestment.ru