Читать онлайн Марина Кеслер, Михаил Шемякин - Steps, Ladders, Stairs in Art. Volume 1

Originally published in Russian as «Лестница в искусстве» by the Mihail Chemiakin Centre with the support of the Antropov Foundation, 2018.

This publication was effected with the help of the Preservation and Digital Transformation of World Cultural Heritage Foundation (Moscow).

The Mihail Chemiakin Centre would like to thank Andrei Georgievich Reus and Alexei Borisovich Antropov for their invaluable support of Mihail Chemiakin’s Musée Imaginaire, as well as

Tatyana Chemiakine, Marina Kesler, Leigh Warre, Vladimir Ivanov and Alan Lamb for their help in the preparation of the exhibition and catalogue.

Concept, compilation, analysis – Mihail Chemiakin

Image pre-production – Sergey Krylov

Exhibition curator – Olga Sazonova

Translations – Sarah H. de Kay

© Algis Grishkevicius (LATGA), Andre Nagel (BILD-KUNST), Garcia Fernando Garcia (VEGAP), Gerardo Feldstein (SAVA), Jakomo Balla (SIAE), Joe Tilson (DACS), Joseph Beuys (BILD-KUNST), George Brecht (BILD-KUNST), Dorothea Tanning (ADAGP), Joan Miro (ADAGP), Ivan Ignacio Navarro (ADAGP), Yinka Shonibare (DACS), Ilya and Emilia Kabakov (BILD-KUNST), Christoph Medicous (BILD-KUNST), Larisa Stenlander (BUS), Louise Bourgeois (ARS), Marina Abramovich (BILD-KUNST), Marc Chagall (ADAGP), Marseille Duchamp (ADAGP), Massimo Campigli (SIAE), Peter Klemensovich (ADAGP), Paul Bury (ADAGP), Rene Magritte (ADAGP), Robert Raushenberg (ARS), César Martinez Silva (VEGAP), Sophia Hülten (BILD-KUNST), Stephanie Zohe (BILD-KUNST), Fernand Léger (ADAGP), Hans Hemmert (BILDKUNST), Juan Muñoz (VEGAP) Reproduced per a license agreement with UPRAVIS.

Reproduced per a license agreement with UPRAVIS.

© M. Chemiakin, 2019

© O. Sazonova, D. Lobanova, K. Chernyshova, D. Abramova, text, 2019

© V. Ivanov, text, 2019

© R. Saikia, text, 2019

© S. H. de Kay, translations, 2022

«A ladder, quick, give me a ladder!..»

Gogol’s last words, noted by Dr. A. T. Tarasenkov 20 February 1852

Aurelia Raffo, Ugo La Pietra in The Big Chance, 1972, photograph

2000 – The Sphere in Art

2002 – The Reaper: Images of Death in Art

2003 – The Hand in Art

2004 – Monsters in Art

2005 – The Metaphysical Head in Art

2006 – Out of Focus: Blurred Images in Art

2009 – Not Made For Walking: Shoes in Art

2010 – Cries in Art

2010 – Images of Death in Art

2012 – Seats of… Chairs in Art

2012 – Disturbed Images: Cuts in Art

2013 – Children in Art

2015 – The Automobile in Art Letters, Words, Text in Art

2016 – Clothing in Art

2018 – Swaddled, Bandaged and Wrapped Figures and Objects in Art

2019 – Steps, Ladders, Stairs in Art

“Musée Imaginaire” is a research project created by the artist and sculptor Mihail Chemiakin. At its core is the analysis and academic classification of object, artistic devices, signs and symbols in the works of various genres of visual art. The analysis is conducted through the juxtaposition of images culled from books, exhibition catalogues, engravings, and photographs of works in museums. In decades of work on this project, Chemiakin, working not only as an artist but also as a philosopher, analyst, art historian and educator, has created a unique research laboratory-library of artistic expression. The research materials reveal whole previously unexplored areas of world culture, and demonstrate how an image is transformed and interpreted in the art of different cultures and epochs. Among approximately 400 themes examined in the context of the research are “Children in Art”, “Images of Death in Art”, “Blurred Images in Art”, “The Hand in Art”, and the subject of this book, “Letters, Words and Text in Art”. The laboratory and library are currently housed in the artist’s studios at his residence in France, where artists and art historians come from Russia to study.

The Russian television channel“ Kultura” produced a series of 21 filmed lectures titled “Mihail Chemiakin’s Musée Imaginaire” in 2002–2009. In 2003 the series was nominated for the TEFI award, and was awarded four prizes at the VIII International “Velvet Season” Television Festival, for best film in the category of “Cultural and Educational Programming”.

Beginning in 2000, Chemiakin has curated numerous thematic exhibitions in Hudson, NY; Loches, France; and in Russia, in St. Petersburg, Khanty-Mansiisk, Nalchik, Maikop, Kaluga, Voronezh, Lipetsk, Novosibirsk, Moscow, Kaliningrad, Sochi and Norilsk.

In 2013 Chemiakin published a book dedicated to the study “Chair in Art”. Then in 2015 the first full catalog of the exhibition “Letters, Words, Text in Art” from the project “Imaginary Museum” was brought out. In 2018 a book based on the materials of the exhibition “Swaddling, bandaging, wrapping in Art” was released. This publication is a part of the catalog of the project “Imaginary Museum” and includes materials from the exhibition “Stairs in Art”, held in the Centre of Mikhail Chemiakin in 2019.

This exhibition, like all the Centre's thematic exhibitions, is complemented by a series of one-man shows by contemporary artists on the given theme. These shows are the result of open international juried competitions conducted in the period leading up to the thematic exhibition, and serve to involve artists more profoundly in the research and creative process of “Mihail Chemiakin’s Musée Imaginaire“.

The Mihail Chemiakin Centre works through the Mihail Chemiakin Foundation in St. Petersburg, which was created in 2002 and is the primary venue for public programs of the “Musée Imaginaire“ project and programs of The Institute of the Philosophy and Psychology of Art. The Centre's goals are to support Russian culture, organise cultural exchange with other countries and assist young artists, writers, performers and musicians. Since 2015 the “Musée Imaginaire“ operates under the aegis of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation.

Back in the 1960s I began collecting, comparing and analyzing reproductions of works of fine and ritual art – Metaphysical Heads, Metaphysical Figures, – with the goal of synthesizing what these works by different masters had in common, understanding the essence of the image, and on that basis I hoped to create a system of “signs” in the art of the 20^>thcentury. With time my research and the number of themes I explored broadened, along with the development of my own artistic work and the broadening of my analytical visual experience.

It is important to stress that this research were and continue to be purely visual, independent of place and time. I have always been less interested in who created the work that interests me, or when it was created, than in the linear, rhythmic, compositional, coloristic and conceptual similarities of different authors, regardless of where and when they worked.

In the late 1990s it became clear that my research and the material I had collected and organized was of interest not only to me. Scholars, first scientists, then philosophers, theologians, historians, writers and art historians approached me with requests to work with my materials. Some of these colleagues and students needed more detailed information about the images collected in order to pursue their own work.

Unfortunately it is not always possible to obtain precise information about certain artists and their work. In recent years I have made efforts to collect and conserve information on the images in my research, and for exhibitions and publications I try to provide more historical information. But, again, I stress that exhaustive historic documentation of this or that work is not the primary goal of my research.

Mikhail Bakhtin, the author of a brilliant analysis of medieval carnival culture as seen in the work of Francois Rabelais, wrote, “The image is always broader and deeper (than the historical character upon whom it is based), it is connected to tradition and has its own aesthetic logic independent of the allusion.” This method allows the reader to avoid “foolish historicity”. Bakhtin’s phrase expresses the essence of my analytic method.

In this book the reader will find captions and notes to each illustration, but I do ask that he not concentrate on the “entourage” of an image, but rather attempt to read the visual information in the analysis I have constructed.

Mihail Chemiakin’s research on “Stairs, Ladders and Steps in Life, Consciousness, and Art” examines and interprets this archetype as it appears in the work of modern artists. Archetypes take form as symbols through the process of objectification. “Ladder” symbolism not only unites many religions and worldviews, but also through its system of imagery reaches across time. We find the theme in the Babylonian ziggurat, in the Christian icon, in African ritual objects. The very shape of ladders and stairs, consisting of vertical and horizontal lines, is imbued with inter-cultural symbols: vertical lines literally suggest ascension and progress, horizontal lines evoke the ancient sign of the horizon and of passive contemplation. When connected in the form of a ladder, they become a universal metaphor for the spiritual path.

Stairs or ladders can be counted among prototypes dating back to the birth of mankind. The earliest images we know are from the Paleolithic era, 65,000 years ago. Ladders and stairs figure in fairy tales, fables and folk expressions, poetry and myths, as well as classical and modern literature. They appear in ceremonies and rituals as well as on the stage. The obvious narrative element has inspired artists, architects, directors and psychoanalysts to study stairs and ladders in depth. They impart a wide variety of meanings to stairs, building on their traditional form and initial function; the degree of depth and actualization of those meanings depend on the religious or social context of the work. The religious context applies to such themes as the ladder as a link spatially connecting the secular world to heaven; the ladder as the path of or obstacle to spiritual ascent or liberation. In the societal context, on the other hand, the functional structure of stairs determines movement within architecture and society. Stairs provide a convenient way to convey the hierarchy and position of the individual in society, or to describe his evolution, referring to personal or socio-historical memory.

At the same time, many artists focus solely on exploring the possibilities of the very form of stairs. Going beyond the given static structure, they treat stairs as malleable plastic material for their experiments, often creating absurd staircases.

The Biblical story of Jacob’s Dream has long fascinated artists both religious and secular, from icon painters to Marc Chagall. The St. Petersburg artist Vladimir Tsivin has treated the subject extensively.