Exhibition “Author Unknown” at the Museum of Russian Impressionism. Review

One of the most anticipated exhibitions of the season, “Author Unknown. Touch the main thing.” The expectations were not in vain, as I was convinced Alexey Mokrousov.

Neither the public, nor critics, nor gallery owners like unknown artists. They are difficult to write about, they are not particularly profitable to sell, and how can they be included in exhibitions? Curators of the exhibition “Author unknown. Touch on the main thing” Anastasia Vinokurova and Konstantin Tsalikov decided to show not only paintings and drawings traditionally labeled as “Unknown artist” (in professional slang “n/x”), but also works whose authorship, even years later, was still able to be established . However, it was not possible to open anyone specifically for the exhibition; it was a painfully labor-intensive process. But over the past 60 years, many authors of previously anonymous works have been identified in Soviet and then Russian museums. The Museum of Russian Impressionism shows, in particular, “No. 207. Untitled” by Wassily Kandinsky from the Tyumen Museum, “Suprematist Composition” by Ivan Klyun and “Fire in the City” by Olga Rozanova from the collection of the Yelets Art Museum, double-sided paintings by Robert Falk and Alexei Yavlensky: in the first case, this is “Portrait of a Circus Artist” and a still life 1909 year (from the Khimki Art Gallery), in the second there is a self-portrait of Yavlensky with a portrait of Elena Neznakomova on the back from the Omsk Museum.

In general, there are many portraits – from the caricatured Balmont to the legendary Evdokia Nikitina, the organizer of the literary association and one of the best Moscow publishing houses of the 1920s, Nikitin Subbotniks (all works from the collection of the Literary Museum). Nikitina (1893–1973) is depicted in two portraits at once; the arithmetic, exceptional for the exhibition, is clear. After the revolution, in her apartment on Vspolny Lane there was an intellectual salon where writers, philosophers and artists gathered, from Andrei Bely to Konstantin Yuon, from Evgeny Lanceray to Mikhail Prishvin. Nikitina’s huge archive has not yet been properly sorted out.

Of particular interest is the portrait of the writer Lydia Seifullina. As Literary Museum curator Daria Reshetnikova quite reasonably suggests, its author was the writer and ballet historian Mikhail Borisoglebsky, notorious in the history of choreography for appropriating the two-volume work of another ballet connoisseur, Denis Leshkov, and his conflict with fellow writers in the late 1920s. x due to suspicions of collaboration with the GPU, many could not forgive him.

But there are few works with revealed names; the basis of the exhibition is precisely unknown artists. To give the inspection some dynamics, the organizers structured a journey through the world of anonymous people as a journey into the world of form: “Eyes and Light”, “Composition”, “Movement and Sound”. Inside the sections there are not only the works themselves, but also all sorts of art fun such as construction sets for children and adults. More than a hundred exhibits were selected from 30 museums and six private collections; collection owners and art historians describe works in the catalog, the history of their appearance in the collection and assumptions regarding authorship. Only the St. Petersburg Russian Museum, whose collection contains many anonymous works, refused to participate in the Moscow exhibition. In St. Petersburg, for many years now they have been preparing a volume of a catalog raisonné dedicated to unknown authors, and they are planning to coincide with its release with a corresponding exhibition.

You can reveal names endlessly. During the opening day, gallery owner Ildar Galeev proposed a new interpretation of the initials on the graphic sheet “Hunger” from the collection of St. Petersburg collector Andrei Vasiliev – probably this is Mikhail Tsekhanovsky, a famous cartoonist and illustrator (he, in particular, is the author of the famous “Mail” – a book and cartoon based on the fairy tale Marshak). Galeev himself reattributed the portrait of a boy, previously attributed to the unknown “B. Goscinsky.” After macro photography of fragments of the “Portrait of Mukhitdin” and translation of the inscription in Arabic script on the canvas, it became clear that we are talking about Boris Pestinsky, a student of Petrov-Vodkin, who, after his arrest and deportation to Central Asia, worked at a herpetological station, collecting snake venom for pharmacologists. He died from multiple bites of the viper.

The question remains open of what to do with artists who did not consciously sign their works. Many wanted to remain anonymous because they worked within the framework of utopian art projects – like the students of Mikhail Matyushin or Pavel Filonov, for example, or, to take more recent examples, in the art groups Guerrilla Girls or Pussy Riot. What to do in this case, should I look for the author’s name? And having found it, should it be entered only in the inventory books or should it be opened to the viewer? Or should we treat our conscious choice with respect and accept the rules of the game proposed by the artist?

One of the dramas of such a violation of the copyright will soon play out in an English court, where the mysterious Banksy, it seems, will still have to officially reveal his name by a judge’s decision. It is unknown whether art history will benefit from this, whether the museum will remain a free space where the tearing off of masks is not yet forced.