The All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts opened the exhibition “Opening”

Artists have come up with a new calendar, where there are days of a man, a fly and a glass

The All-Russian Museum of Decorative Arts has opened an exhibition with the unusual name “Opening”. Its authors invented such a strange word, remembering the holiday cards popular in the Soviet years. And although the winter holidays are over, the exhibition keeps the New Year mood, presenting a fantastic calendar created on the basis of the works of contemporary artists.

The first day of the calendar is dedicated to the Letter Day, invented together with a collage in the form of an installation of skyscrapers strewn with letters, by microcosmist Mikhail Molochnikov. January 9 is declared by the media artist Anton Batishev as Wine Glass Day and is accompanied by his work “The Illusion of a Holiday”, reminding that “it’s time to drink with the taste of winter”. February 11 is the Day of the Plate, recorded by the ceramist Natalya Khlebtsevich. Her Leaking Orange china set appears to be on display on a windowsill. Looking at the plates, you look through the window at the luminous Moon of Leonid Tishkov and believe that thanks to it, a person is really able to overcome loneliness. The artist himself travels with his Moon all over the world, lights it up, photographs it, and moves on. The day of the moon fell in a fantastic calendar on September 16th.

Visitors are invited both to the bygone 1960s and to the distant year 2068. On the opening day of the exhibition, guests were oriented towards the fashion of the 60s, and some came in stylized clothes. That time is now remembered in the images of Jacqueline Kennedy, Audrey Hepburn, Jane Birkin and Catherine Deneuve, forgetting that Soviet fashion was different. But the 60s have long become a myth that fits well into the context of a freshly composed calendar with its flights in a dream and in reality. Next to the new works is the Sputnik vase, created in 1959 by Vladimir Filatov. On the wall hangs the carpet “Building Lights” by Lidia Kolosova, 1967, kept in the Museum of Decorative Arts. It was rarely exhibited, and this is also a look into the distant industrial future with its pipes, power transmission towers, railway tanks that have become a reality for us. Now we can fantasize about the future, but what it will be like is hard to even imagine.

An oval table was installed in the center of the exhibition hall, filled with rare magazines “Decorative Art”, the first issue of which was published in 1957. The first visitors were present at the editorial planning meeting of the times of the USSR, where the forthcoming issue was discussed. At the table are art historians, Lyubov Savelyeva – the author of the Sokolniki glass composition (1975), presented at the exhibition, reminiscent of trees placed in glass flasks or icicles, as well as the curators of the Otkrytika project – MK journalist Maria Moskvicheva and our author Dmitry Grazhevich . After the business part, you could settle into a corner with armchairs from the thaw era, taking magazines and art books from an old closet, and then return to the calendar of the future.

Each of the “futuristic holidays” is presented in two forms – these are the original works of artists and their copies in postcards. In addition to the above-mentioned holidays, modern artists have come up with Industrial Opera Day along with handmade puppets from Vera Sazhina, Fly Day from Konstantin Khudyakov, who invented how to build cities using artificial intelligence back in the era of stagnation.

The poet and one of the founders of Moscow conceptualism, Lev Rubinshtein, proclaimed June 3 as Parachute Day in honor of one of the first paratroopers, Jean Pierre Blanchard. Especially for the exhibition, he found long-forgotten library cards, wrote on them the text that on this day people will freely float in the air, decorating themselves with multi-colored shreds of parachute silk. Andrey Mitenev called June 21 the Day of the Snail and accompanied it with the “Snail on the Fu Slope”, which rises on a slice of bright red watermelon. Rashid and Inessa Azbukhanov, who work with wood, which they can talk about endlessly, came to the opening of the exhibition from Dmitrov to present the carved panel “First Snow” with “elementary particles” made of natural pigments, gold leaf and silver, resembling fantastic gears. Inessa was born on November 5, and this day became the Day of the first snow.

It was difficult to bring some works from other countries, and Oleg Tselkov’s last painting “The Man”, which has not yet been exhibited anywhere, never made it from Paris to Moscow, although the artist’s adopted daughter contributed in every possible way to this. I had to exhibit not the original, but a print on canvas. On July 15, the curators named Human Day, “when you understand yourself.” The last sheet of the postcard calendar – December 2 – became the Day of the microbe. It, according to the idea of ​​Lyudmila Krutikova, who presented a work made of stone mass with the use of “Clash of Sets” glaze, symbolizes the stage when a person has ceased to be afraid of invisible microorganisms. Many artists whose works are exhibited these days at the Museum of Decorative Arts have become the heroes of Maria Moskvicheva’s publications in MK.

Published in the newspaper “Moskovsky Komsomolets” No. 28947 dated January 11, 2023

Newspaper headline:
Calendar of the future: days of a man, a fly and a glass