The Intellectual Marathon “Realisms” in the State Hermitage. Postscript

For the first time at night, the General Staff became the venue for a many-sided discussion by over 2,500 viewer-participants and over 40 of Russia’s leading specialists – scholars and artists with the aim of reflecting on the phenomenon of realism in the realms of classical and contemporary art. From six in the evening until six in the morning, such prominent specialists as Mikhail Piotrovsky, Dmitry Ozerkov, Semion Mikahilovsky, Zelfira Tregulova, Ivan Chechot, Alexander Borovsky, Vitaly Pushnitsky, Anatoly Belkin, Olesia Turkin, Ilya Dorochenkov, Alexei Boiko, Victor Mazin, Yelena Kolovskaya, Liudmila Davydova, Mikhail Busev, Milena Orlova, Anatoly Rykov and others spoke, agreed, debated and joked. By dawn, they had managed to discuss what makes the horrors of the real so fascinating, whether there is a limit to realisms, the endless succession of neo-realisms and their transformations in the history of art, realism in philosophy and photography, and, most importantly, does it make sense today to employ such an ambiguous term as “realism”.

The starting point for the discussions was provided by the exhibition of contemporary art «Realisms» that is working in the General Staff until 18 September 2016. One more subject for keen discussion was the figure of Vladimir Vasilyevich Stasov, the founder of the Russian school of Realism, prompted by the 110th anniversary of his death.

There were also discussions around the performances that took place during the marathon. The action artist Oleg Kulik gave this interpretation of his own: “I wanted to present my conception – sculpture as living bodies, real objects in weightlessness. Since here the viewer sees the actual process of moulding, it will be more an intention than a sculpture. It will be ‘rapid’ moulding. That gives unpredictability, a thing with presence. I want to say everything now through sculpture, moulding, pure form, pure materiality. When you mould a sculpture, you begin to think about the boundaries of reality. Does it have a value in itself on account of its forms invested by me through incredible efforts? Or is it unreal? Is it my projection, a construction? Will no-one see what I will see?”

In a single night, using the unique “Prasolov’s net”, St Petersburg sculptor Pavel Ignatyev produced from clay before people’s eyes a 150cm-high head of Vladimir Stasov. The artist’s conception unexpectedly coincided with the musings of one of the discussion panel, Ivan Sablin: “Is it possible to imagine Stasov as a topically relevant figure for 2016?”

In the performance entitled “Models of Reason” Professor Ivan Govorkov of the Academy of Arts and Alexei Grachev presented a hybrid of monumental graphic art and actions in the spirit of Abstract Expressionism and late Surrealism. Govorkov’s two-dimensional realist improvisation was transformed into a three-dimensional abstraction by the author of the 3D program Daniil Frants.

At 2 a.m., the audio-visual set Die|Kassette/GhostNoir by Ladomir Zelinsky took place in the Realisms display, bringing the euphoria of a turn of the 1990s rave to the event.

With the first rays of the sun, the nocturnal discussions and performances gave way to a spiritual practice, one more unusual experiment in the Hermitage – yoga with the artist Alexei Sergiyenko.

The first Hermitage intellectual marathon ended at dawn with a reading from Homer’s Iliad in the great atrium of the General Staff.

The organizers of the marathon express their gratitude to the sponsors and partners of the event – the IN ARTIBUS foundation, the publishing house of The Art Newspaper Russia, the Manege Central Exhibition Hall and the Nevskaya Palitra artistic paints factory, and also personally to Yekaterina Sirakanian.

A recording of the Intellectual Marathon can be viewed here:
http://online.hermitage.ru/videos/recent/page1/