Rembrandt is eternal; contemporary art is a carnival: a dialogue with Mikhail Piotrovsky and Alexander Sokurov

Hermitage Director Mikhail Piotrovsky and film director Alexander Sokurov met at the Dialogues of the Open Library project in New Holland in St Petersburg to discuss how joint efforts created Russia’s pavilion at this year’s Venice Biennale. Sobaka.ru is publishing extracts from the conversation from which we learnt when the installation will be coming to St Petersburg from Venice, who provided the money for it and why large museums in particular are the bastion of European art.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Mikhail Borisovich, at what point did you decide that you wanted to work with Alexander Nikolayevich again.

Mikhail Piotrovsky: Almost immediately, I think. As soon as it became known that the Hermitage would curate the Russian pavilion, the feeling arose that Sokurov should play the main role. We did everything differently from other people, which is typical for the Hermitage, but not for Venice. First of all, the state did not contribute a single kopeck to the display – the money was obtained from a sponsor. When gallerists do the pavilion, they get money from the Ministry of Culture. Secondly, the artists are usually chosen by commissioners and curators in a way that involves society politics. That didn’t happen either. The pavilion presents people who were chosen by the Hermitage and the aim is to tell about the Hermitage. The Hermitage chose Alexander Nikolayevich after The Russian Ark – the whole world is aware that nobody knows and senses the museum better than him. Alexander Shishkin-Hokusai is also a man with great understanding. These people presented the Hermitage and not themselves. The result was an image of the Hermitage as a temple, where one needs to think philosophically, but the philosophy is bound up with entertainment and pleasure. To what degree that is understandable for the viewers is a different matter. We are fond of the expression “accessibility of art”. Accessibility is not when you kick open the door, but when you know what lies behind it.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Why did you not use state funding, though?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: No-one offered, and we didn’t ask. In point of fact, we expected there to be plenty. Russian Railways gave money, but it turned out not to be enough. We turned to the firm Mercury and received financing. Actually, people do give money when they see that we can’t manage without.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Alexander Nikolayevich, you say that Venice, the Venice Carnival is not the place for serious contemplation. You could have said no to participating in the project but didn’t. Why was that?

Alexander Sokurov: For every person that has some professional relationship to culture, it is a reward of fate to have the opportunity to create something non-incidental, to reflect on what is important. We are granted so little time for life, so little time to express something artistically. When this proposal came up, I did not hesitate for a second. There were three alternatives for what we could tell people about. The first was the one we implemented – based on Rembrandt. The second was connected with the Winter Palace fire – a catastrophic picture. There was the idea of showing how evil triumphs and everything gets burnt up. But we know that within two years everything was reconstructed. Even by today’s standards that’s impossible. That, too, is an astonishing occasion in the history of the Hermitage and Petersburg that has still not found reflection in the visual arts. No films have been made about it, although the topic is there for the taking. It has proved very difficult technically, though. The subject of the prodigal son has always been very important to me – it’s an eternal theme. We understand what is happening with society in Russia and Europe, the fine line we are walking. Previously we defined the Hermitage as a national ark, a Russian ark. That concept, that formulation is ineradicable, and it will remain in existence as long as Russian art and the Russian state exist, while we are in a civilized sphere, with civilized brains and civilized energy. The Hermitage is one of the few examples of a creation in Russian history that has an absolutely honest and pure space, clean hands, pure heads. It was impossible to turn down such an invitation.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Mikhail Borisovich, you’re an experienced person – the head of the country’s main museum. You knew perfectly well what the Venice Biennale is like, what had been presented there recently, including in the Russian pavilion. You also knew what the work of Sokurov and his colleagues is like. It was clear what sort of reaction could be expected from the European establishment that is connected with contemporary art in one way or another and has such veneration for the Venice Biennale. What were your feelings as you travelled there?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: As I said before, we do things differently from other people. Incidentally, it was a splendid idea that came from the commissioner, Semion Mikhailovsky, to make the Hermitage the author. That meant that it was not a case of the Hermitage choosing the artists, but of the Hermitage inspiring the artists – that’s a revolutionary idea. No-one in the world had done that before. Now all the major world museums – the Louvre and Metropolitan – envy us. A museum can be a creator; a museum determines fates and history. As for the global establishment, the very next day the Financial Times numbered our pavilion among the five best and most important. We did not win a prize, of course, but for the first time in many years representatives of Russia were invited to the awards ceremony. Venice, as Alexander Nikolayevich said, is a carnival. Contemporary art is also a carnival. Serious questions are posed, but in a playful, carnival manner. There is much of that playfulness in contemporary art. In our pavilion people need to stand and look. There are no benches or chairs. With us, like in an Orthodox church, it’s stand and look. We created a sort of manifesto. I saw the uncomplimentary articles in the public press. At first our feelings got hurt, but then we realized that that’s usual. People can say anything at all about the Prodigal Son and opinions can differ.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Alexander Nikolayevich, how did you react to the opinion of the Russian press and of your colleagues who discussed the picture?

Alexander Sokurov: I wasn’t entirely well in Venice and, to be honest, I wasn’t at all aware what the reaction in Russia was. I saw that there were good reviews in the European press. While we were working there, not a single journalist from Russia approached us, nobody was even curious what Russia was showing. I know the attitude towards myself. The attitude in my own country is generally negative. I’m used to that. Tolerance is ending, though. I understand that I’m seen as a guest here and not “one of our own”. Still, there is nothing dearer to me than Russia and its culture. In recent times, I have been distressed by the situation in Europe, by what is going on in the European cultural realm and in journalism, where far more forbidden topics are appearing than with us. Talented people are not entering the spheres of the state and politics in Europe. We are not used to people with mediocre tastes and mediocre political positions becoming political leaders in Europe. There are very important questions: does present-day Western society and do gallerists grasp serious fundamental art or not? And if five or ten artists or sculptors emerge there, will they be accepted, will their exhibitions be accepted, will the museums take them in, will society notice them or crush them? The general state of European quality arouses great alarm.

The only hope now is the great museums. They stand around the world like fortresses and castles: the Hermitage, the Prado, the Louvre, a couple of museums in America, and that’s it. They stand and prevent arrogance from developing, do not allow young people to become swell-headed and lose taste, a sense of evolution. When you go to exhibitions in St Petersburg, it’s hard to find even five or six works in which you can sense some fundamental inner basis. You’ll rarely see portraits, and you won’t find such de-religious subjects as The Return of the Prodigal Son at all among the paintings by today’s young people. Because there’s a lack of fundamental ideas. Christianity has gone away and, with it, the biblical subject matter that strictly, maniacally, kept the culture of visual art in a particular direction. Yet, despite that, El Greco and other individual artistic personalities appeared. With the lose of the canonical structure, we are losing the evolutionary nature of art. Will the major museums and specialists withstand this siege? Will they remain in artistic evolution? Will they turn to look back? After all, artists need very often to turn and look back: “What’s there? Oh, there’s all sorts of things! What was it like there?” The art world does not have a past tense.

Nikolai Solodnikov: Mikhail Borisovich, since Rembrandt was a Dutchman and we have the Hermitage in Amsterdam, will the project for the Venice Biennale be shown to the Dutch public and is it important to show it to them? Most importantly, though, when will the project make its appearance in the Hermitage?

Mikhail Piotrovsky: We will be showing it to the Dutch public, but they are in a queue, because Petersburg, Moscow, Astana and the Far East have already been announced. Also, at the end of the year, we are opening the Hermitage in Omsk. The exhibition in Petersburg will be in the first half of next year. We will present the project in the setting of the General Staff building, It won’t be like in Venice. It will be Petersburg-style. The rough date is February-March.

Alexander Sokurov: I am really looking forward to that moment and I am very pleased that alongside a name like the Hermitage some young names will appear – the youngsters who made this work with me. The Hermitage is something lofty, significant, great, but it gradually brings those people close who usually stand very far from it. The theme of a son returning to his father is always tragic. Rembrandt is the present day. I would like for the people who see our display to go and take another look at that great work and to view the painting in a human way. That is the task of culture in Russia – to be closer to the original, closer to an understanding of its creator. As I see things, that is very important.