At the exhibition in memory of Andrei Voznesensky, his pop art was shown
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They say – Andrei Voznesensky, imply – a poet, songwriter, publicist. But Voznesensky is much bigger and wider. He was an artist, and an architect, and a pop artist. These lesser-known facets of Andrey Andreevich’s talent are the subject of an exhibition in the center named after him, timed to coincide with the poet’s 90th birthday. Project “Voznesensky. Yet” not only presents the author’s paintings, art objects, installations, but also proves that the heyday of a genius happened twice – in the era of the “thaw” and during the years of perestroika. For our publication, it is also important that many visual metaphors were created by Voznesensky with the support and participation of MK: for many years we published videos and poems by Andrey Andreevich. Some of those already yellowed pages are now on display as exhibits.
In the Voznesensky Center, three halls have been given to the anniversary exhibition, and each is like a separate chapter. The first one opens with a watercolor self-portrait of 1957, written lightly and airily. The usual grater nailed to the frame next to the throat adds conceptuality to the image. Andrei Voznesensky was called “the voice of the era.” And the great fear of any public figure is to lose your voice, both figuratively and literally. In the last years of his life, something happened to the poet that he was afraid of even in his youth: a sonorous voice began to fail (about which the poet wrote the poem “Losing my voice” in 2002), but until his last breath, dying in the arms of his beloved wife Zoya Boguslavskaya, he continued to whisper his poems … And yet, 13 years after Voznesensky’s departure, we continue to hear and listen to this piercing voice of the era.
“Black water is gushing from the tap, / red, infused water is gushing, / rusty water is gushing from the tap. / I’ll wait – the real one will go. These lines from “Nostalgia for the Present” (1976) Andrei Voznesensky inscribed in sharp handwriting on one of his graphic works. Only the word “rusty” was replaced with “red” and written with a bright scarlet marker. Under the lines there are abstract stains, reminiscent of Rorschach spots, in which the subconscious guesses images: as if a monster is about to eat small human figures. Andrei Voznesensky made this graphic series in New York, in the studio of the famous American artist Robert Rauschenberg, a prominent representative of abstract expressionism, conceptual art and pop art. Next to the lithographs, released in a limited edition (7 copies), there is a black-and-white photograph of 1978, capturing the moment of joint work of two stars of the creative Olympus. The graphics are designed in red, blue and black colors and are based on a game of images and words. Here we have a wheel in front of us, along which they walk without gaps – “Mothermother …” And here it all depends on which letter to read from, the beholder chooses for himself what is in front of him – darkness or mother.
Voznesensky the artist had four exhibitions – in New York, Paris, Berlin and Moscow (Pushkin Museum – 1993). The presented works were exhibited at several of them. Andrey Andreyevich created many visual works on the go, a few days before the opening. Like, for example, a dedication to Oscar Wilde – in the form of a worn bowler hat, sewn in a theater workshop. It has a grill built into it, and a white bow tie is also pinned. The cylinder lies on its side so that the viewer looks through the image of the dandy into the prison cell. In the center of the hall is another videome: this is how the author himself called his visual metaphors, which are inextricably linked with the poetic word. “Ipatiev’s ballad” – an eye made of transparent glass, in the pupil rests a piece of the house where the royal family was shot. Nearby you can read the lines that explain everything extremely accurately and figuratively: “The MORGANatic transom / I broke it out of the window circle, / How I saved her days. / The house was liquidated without a sound. / God Save the Tsar! / This treble clef is made of wood, / The light outside the window, the pattern is deceptive, / Those who were shot at close range saw it…”
The next hall is cut by a false accordion wall, which in itself becomes a video mine. On one side of the strip of printed publications, where the poems of Andrei Voznesensky were published in the 90s. The author’s strip of the poet in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” occupies a central place here. Voznesensky’s visual thinking can be read here: here are not just lines of poems, but a “montage” layout of images and text, consonant with pop art works with Rauschenberg. Letters are twisted in circles, sheets with individual poems are folded into a single work. On the strips you can read the author’s pencil notes and postscripts.
On the other side of the wall, you can find a reproduction of the painting “Girl with Peaches”, decorated with piercings. Nails protrude from the throat of Verochka Mamontova, who posed for one of Serov’s most famous paintings. Next to this ready-made object is another video: bast shoes are nailed to the wall, inside of which are miniature chess (a gambit is played on the board) and poetic lines imprinted in different colors into the bast. On the contrary, a series of watercolor portraits painted in the late 1950s and early 1960s. So it is easy to feel how mobile Voznesensky’s talent was, throughout his life he changed and absorbed the latest trends, while maintaining the author’s style and handwriting.
The final hall presents Voznesensky’s most ambitious works. Among them is the 42-meter-high Friendship Forever monument, erected in 1983 on Tishinskaya Square. The sculptor of the stele, composed of the letters of the Russian and Georgian alphabets, was Zurab Tsereteli, and the architect was Andrey Voznesensky. Along with historical photographs and a description of the monument, there is an unrealized project, no less ambitious in concept. “Poetarch” is a golden sphere that symbolizes human culture – language. From a ball with a diameter of 25 meters, vibrating cables with letters from different languages of the world go up. According to the idea, they were supposed to sound, as if turning into an extraordinary harp, soaring above the audience. The installation was going to be presented at the Paris Exhibition in 1989, the then Minister of Culture of France, Jacques Langu, approved the project. However, the exhibition was suddenly cancelled. “Maybe the black hole intervened again?” – the author wrote about those events. Maybe her time will come? I would like to answer him hopefully.
But it was possible to implement another project – “Easter Egg”. It was not just an egg, but a map of the world, written in verse, only on the site of the territory of Russia – a breach, a black hole. “I am writing Easter on a wooden canopy – “Russia is risen!” / Above the black hole in the very place / where we failed, where we lived in the sharpest anguish of the unearthly, believe me misinformation. / We are the beggars of Croesus. The world beggar on a prosthesis / Russia is risen! – Voznesensky wrote in the introductory “Descriptive Psalm”. The installation was erected on Nezhdanova Street in 1993 and stood there for several years. And its premiere was accompanied by a concert and performance, in which the singer Chris Kelmi, Vyacheslav Spesivtsev’s theater and Andrey Bartenev’s botanical ballet took part. Moskovsky Komsomolets was then responsible for the energy field of the event.
Newspaper headline:
Andrei Voznesensky appeared as a pop artist
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