Review of the exhibition “Cup of Consonances. Towards Rozanova” at GES-2

The GES-2 cultural center hosts the exhibition “Cup of Consonances. Towards Rozanova.” The work of the outstanding avant-garde artist Olga Rozanova (1886–1918) is represented by a corpus of her own works from different periods, including collages that anticipated Malevich’s Suprematism, and the famous “Green Strip” (1917) from the Rostov Kremlin Museum – the painting is touring for the first time after restoration. But also the dialogue of this creativity with the works of artists of subsequent generations – from representatives of the Soviet underground to our contemporaries. Tells Igor Grebelnikov.

“At one time she was a realist, an impressionist, a futurist, a cubist, and, finally, in recent years, when the art of painting went beyond the boundaries of the material world and became the pure art of color (Suprematism), here too Olga Vladimirovna took an outstanding place and played a major role “- artist Ivan Klyun wrote about Rozanova in the catalog for her first posthumous exhibition. Her career turned out to be very short – only about eight years, the artist died in Moscow from typhus when she was 32 years old – but Rozanova lived “quickly”. After graduating from high school in Vladimir, an eighteen-year-old girl goes to Moscow to study as an artist; she failed to enter the Stroganov School, and in 1911 she moved to St. Petersburg, where she continued her studies at a private school, but, most importantly, plunged headlong into artistic life – stormy in those years as never before. It was possible to choose with whom to be friends and exhibit—Rozanova joined the Youth Union, the first avant-garde association in Russia. She successfully participated in their exhibitions, and on March 23, 1913, the manifesto of the Youth Union written by her was distributed in the form of leaflets at the next artistic debate. “We declare a fight against the Corner Creativity of the “World of Art”, which looks at the world through one window… We want to see this world wide open!.. We declare that restriction of creativity is the poison of Art! That freedom of creativity is the first condition of originality!.. Here is our motto: “The future of Art lies in continuous renewal!” – the world’s first artistic manifesto written by a woman sounds like a battle cry. However, now a completely different company has been gathered under his banner than at one time, and even later, at the epoch-making exhibition “Amazons of the Avant-Garde,” launched in the late 90s by the Guggenheim Museum and triumphantly shown in Europe, America and Moscow.

By choosing Olga Rozanova as the main character of the exhibition season, the curators of GES-2 bring to the fore her openness to everything new and her ability for constant self-renewal. Instead of the role of a classic, “Amazon of the avant-garde,” here she is destined for the role of a contemporary of artists of several generations right up to the present day. The exhibition is built on the “consonances, echoes, reflections and resonances” of these works, sometimes obvious, but more often very ephemeral.

40 paintings, as well as books and book graphics, were collected from 18 Russian museums. Rozanova’s paintings, dating from different periods of her work, have not been shown in such quantities in Moscow for a long time. However, at GES-2 they did not adhere to retrospective hanging, but grouped the works in four spaces and each of them was called a line from Rozanova’s poems (linking her work with the circle of futurists, the artist also tried herself in abstruse poetry – with the main abstruse poet Alexei Kruchenykh her had close relationships, not to mention the books they published together). These chapters can be correlated with the chronology of her work, but the juxtaposition of the works of Rozanova and other artists is more important, they change the focus of perception. Let’s say the first chapter, “The crispy bow sways in the hair.” Along the perimeter of the space is a selection of Rozanova’s early works: city landscapes, scenes on the streets or in cafes, painted in a daring neo-primitivist manner; An image of an energetic young lady appears, immersed in the capital’s artistic life. There is also her famous “Portrait of her sister, Anna Vladimirovna Rozanova” (1912): she is depicted in a provocative pose of Madame Recamier, so much so that every detail of the outfit and decoration of the room screams in bright color. This work inspired the duo of contemporary artists from Tomsk “18:22” (sisters Aksinya and Nika Sarychev) to create the installation “Fair Portrait of a Princess” – a dark room decorated with gloomy props, including a mirror, in front of which the viewer involuntarily tries on a female image in a pink dress . So, apparently, it is proposed to generally take into account the efforts that women are forced to make in order to achieve success: artists say that they were shocked by the story of Rozanova’s rapid success and her long posthumous oblivion (by and large, in Soviet times, the artist was remembered only in the 70s years when the Russian avant-garde began to collect and show to guests in his apartment George Kostaki).

The chapter “Crystal of the Sky in Elevated Space” is a completely different matter: a huge space flooded with light and color, responsible for the Suprematist period of Rozanova’s work, as well as the last years of her life, when she began searching for “transformed color” (as she called her attempts to dematerialize color , separate it from the objective world). Rozanov’s Suprematism is the complete opposite of Malevich’s: he has the dominance of geometric figures over a white background, their ominous soaring in space, “Victory over the Sun”; she has a riot of color, dynamic piles of volumes and planes that are mutually attracted and seem to turn towards the light.

Both artists claimed the right to pioneer geometric abstraction, and this dispute has not yet been resolved in an amicable way. In December 1915, immediately after the opening of the “Last Futurist Exhibition “0.10””, at which Malevich for the first time showed his Suprematism, including “Black Square”, and at the same time the works of like-minded people, including the works of Rozanova, the artist accused him of plagiarism. The fact is that in the summer of that year she actively corresponded with Kruchenykh, who lived at Malevich’s dacha in Kuntsevo, and sent him her “stickers” – collages of geometric shapes made of colored paper, essentially non-objective compositions. Apparently, Kruchenykh showed them to the inventor of Suprematism: be that as it may, the appearance at the exhibition “0.10” of Suprematist paintings similar to these collages became the reason for her quarrel with Kruchenykh and a temporary cooling of relations with Malevich. Later, Rozanova joined the ranks of his followers, but was still able to find and declare her line in art: to overcome both the materiality of the picture and the colors, as her painting “Green Line” (1917) convinces her – its pulsating core seems to exude a glow and dissolves in him. In the hall, this painting occupies a separate wall opposite the one where Rozanova’s Suprematist works are hung: these things of hers seem to frame a large selection of works by artists of subsequent generations, each of whom claims the right to their own abstract language in art.

It is believed that Rozanov’s “transformed coloring” anticipated the color field painting of Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, but those subtle harmonies and echoes that the current exhibition establishes are also valuable. Fragments of found lace and fabrics, which Lidia Masterkova has included in her abstract paintings since the 60s, seem to add “memory volume” to her works. A labyrinth of multi-colored plexiglass—Anna Titova’s installation “You’ve Been Here Sometimes” (2011), where the viewer encounters his own reflections, “colored” silhouettes of other visitors to the hall, and figures of strange creatures—seems akin to a mystical experience. The sculptural composition “Cradle” by Bella Pokrova, created especially for this exhibition, the openwork ceramic sculptures seem weightless, which is especially noticeable next to the “Green Strip”.

Comparisons and echoes, which, according to the curators, make it possible to catch the echo of Rozanova’s creative freedom in the works of artists of subsequent generations, train the viewer’s eye, and in fact, such treatment of a classic of avant-garde art seems even more respectful than a retrospective. Fortunately, this freedom was also embodied in the design of the exhibition: due to the brightness of the walls, the complexity of the lighting, the abundance of mirrors, and the differences in volume, it can, of course, be called too “Instagrammable.” But, on the other hand, why not develop Rozanova’s ideas, which so easily made the material presence of the viewer phantom, that is, digital.