Mikhail Piotrovsky: When innovations aren’t for the money

A certain piece of research by the Higher School of Economics was made public recently. In essence, it stated that cultural workers in Russia show little interest in an innovative, business-oriented approach in their field. The text takes a somewhat disparaging attitude towards the cultural sphere and those employed in it, the so-called “budgetniki”. I have said on many occasions already that budgetniki are the Russian intelligentsia. They are schoolteachers, higher education lecturers, doctors, engineers. The tone in which they are spoken about – as poor people satisfied with the small amount they are paid, a docile lot – changes from time to time, but then switches back to the same.

People in culture are actually very much disposed towards innovations. Only they do not need them so as to make money, but in order to translate new things into the language of those who commune with culture.

Innovations are needed in the cultural sphere, but when cultural institutions get into that sphere, a problem arises. Innovations are a market, money-oriented or already shared out. There we encounter a certain resistance. Why are you getting involved in things that aren’t your concern? Not always, but sometimes you get to hear that.

Let me give some examples. The NFT (non-fungible token) that is being talked about so much, “translated” into Russian terms is an “unchangeable” rouble or five-kopeck piece like those in the stories by Leskov or the Strugatsky brothers. It is a digital certificate that guarantees the singular authenticity of an object and gives exclusive rights to it. A person buys a certificate to a work that does not itself move anywhere, and they become the owner of an original copy. They get a sense of being its owner. Materially the work exists in pictures, reproductions and so on. Other people can look at it without limitations.

The Hermitage got involved with this field, although it is connected not only with the latest technologies, but also with money, the market, cryptocurrencies. Shaky ground, but we decided to conduct an experiment. We announced in advance that we weren’t concerned about the money. We were interested to see what happened.

We selected five Hermitage paintings and made reproductions of them. At a certain point in time, with the cameras on me, I signed them: on such-and-such a day, at such-and-such a moment, fixing the uniqueness of the reproduction. The image with my signature is kept in the Hermitage. Meanwhile the paintings themselves are accessible to the public. Everyone can see them. No-one’s rights are being infringed.

The experiment proved quite successful. We put five things up for auction and unexpectedly people paid a lot of money for them. Ultimately it will not be all that much, because a fairly complicated procedure lies ahead. We don’t have cryptocurrency in this country. It needs to be exchanged somewhere. There are intermediaries. The museum will not be getting half a million dollars, but the amount will make it possible to provide benefits, say, for people with handicaps who come to the Hermitage. I am constantly saying that the museum ought to earn money so as to provide some benefits to visitors and bonuses to the staff.

Coming back to state-of-the-art technologies, I can report that we are beginning to experiment with works that only exist in cyberspace. We are putting together an exhibition that will allow people to see what that means. It will include both works by well-known NFT artists and others created especially for the Hermitage. It will be possible to see them using devices connected to the Internet by means of links or QR-codes.

There are many NFT platforms that deal in those “unchangeable roubles”. They all want to work with the museum. Our response is – you’re welcome. We will work with everyone. There are various ideas for a project. The big players are unhappy that we have already got into this market, agreed with someone about an auction and already obtained a result. As is usually in the media, questions are being raised, denunciations or accusations made. Cryptocurrencies are not allowed to circulate in Russia, how did we bypass the law? The sense behind it is: why are you intruding? If you want to do something, come to us.

When we get the money, we will be publishing the fact and telling how we did so completely legally. Since the start of perestroika, the Hermitage has had experience of resistance and struggle. We need our own staff to do as much as possible and not others. We have established international collaboration. We know how to clean up the sphere connected with money. It gets clean when cultural institutions are involved.

Let me give another example on the same topic of innovations. It has also aroused irritation, although not on the scale of the “non-fungible tokens”. I am referring to our theatrical project – Flora. The concept is that prominent and highly fashionable authors from around the world select paintings and compose an essay about them. On the basis of those essays, actors and musicians create performances that are given in the museum. The writers spot something new in the pictures, and so do the musicians. A distinctive interpretation results. Over a period of three hours, people go from painting to painting. The performers recite or dance; music plays.

The project was first put on in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna. We were invited to develop the project further. We are intruding into the sphere of contemporary art. There is constant argument over who that belongs to – museums, galleries or someone else.

The first evenings have been held in the Hermitage. In my opinion, the result is some splendid combinations of fine art, music and literature. It all starts off with Shakespeare’s poem Venus and Adonis in the Large Italian Skylight Hall, where Giuseppe Mazzuoli’s marble sculpture The Death of Adonis is displayed. The tragic nature of the subject is striking. Shakespeare wrote the poem while “working remotely”, during a plague epidemic in England. He unexpectedly got money for it and was able to buy shares in his theatre. One of life’s stories. The actors perform Shakespeare’s text wonderfully with a musical accompaniment.

The project includes another great surname – the Tolstoys’. Tatyana Tolstaya wrote an essay devoted to The Prodigal Son. All sorts of people have written about it, but she beautifully “extracts” from the story the plot line of Cain and Abel – two brothers, one favoured, the other not.

In Vienna, the project was called Ganymede. The museum there has Correggio’s celebrated painting Ganymede Abducted by the Eagle. We gave ours the name Flora. In the Hermitage, we have Rembrandt’s Flora and the recently restored Flora by Francesco Melzi. It was believed to have been painted by Leonardo, but that turned out to be untrue. It is still a wonderful painting, one of the best.

An essay was written about one of the Floras by the acclaimed Austrian author Martin Pollack. His is known worldwide and has been translated into Russia, but he’s not a household name. Pollack writes about Eastern Europe, about the tragedy of the Jews. During the war, his own father was one of the German slaughterers. Pollack atones for his feelings of guilt by telling about that. In his version, Flora is digging in the garden. If you dig long enough, you come across splinters of metal – the remnants of war.

The text for the other Flora was composed by the outstanding philologist and poet Olga Sedakova. In her work Flora comes out of the picture to the viewer. That is significant for an understanding of Sedakova’s own oeuvre.

I am very proud of the selection of Russian authors. Yevgeny Vodolazkin tells about Saint Jerome in Jose de Ribera’s painting Saint Jerome and the Angel. The man who wrote Laurus assumes the role of interpreter between cultures. His essay contains personal recollections. He has been in Jerome’s monastic cell.

After looking at Procaccini’s Madonna and Child, the Belarusian writer Viktar Martinowich relates a dreadful tale about welfare workers taking a child from its mother.

Events take a different turn with Zadie Smith. The English writer, who sold her first novel at auction while still a student, wrote an essay for the Viennese project. The museum there is home to a Portrait of an Old Woman by Denner. It is impossible to believe that in the 17th century the work was considered just as good as the Mona Lisa. There are many replicas of the painting, several in Russia alone. Smith had not seen our version and wrote about the one in Vienna. The story is about how paintings get repeated, how the public’s tastes alter.

The Austrian writer with Japanese roots Milena Michiko Flašar was drawn to Paulus Potter’s Wolfhound. The author of the best-selling novel I Called Him Necktie describes a modern social phenomenon in her works: grown-up people becoming hermits, living with their computers, not going out, not mixing with anyone. That fits in with the history of our museum. The Hermitage – a refuge of isolation, a place where one can live.

Not only has the performance Flora turned out well; it is in the spirit of the Hermitage. The European writers proved to be pessimists, but the way the essays are presented is superb, it touches the soul.

I never tire of saying that on the territory of culture special rules apply. We play by those rules. Each time, coming up with innovations, we transform them. Innovations are needed, not to destroy traditions, but rather to preserve them. When culture is actively inventive that irritates many people. Yet irritation too should do some good. Irritation leads to the appearance, I won’t say of truth, but of fresh development.