Art critic Alexandra Rudyk about favorite books
IN BACKGROUND "BOOK SHELF"we ask journalists, writers, scholars, curators, and other heroines about their literary preferences and publications, which occupy an important place in their bookcase. Today, art historian and editor-in-chief of the magazine "Dialogue of the Arts" Alexandra Rudyk shares her stories about favorite books.
I wanted to read since I remember myself. First, the elder sister began to read - the difference between us was only two years old, so it was simply vital for me to learn how to do everything that she could. Mom read before bedtime. Dad played a big role: he read in any free time, swallowed books at night and reluctantly got up in the morning, if too good and long history came across in the evening. And being like a dad is terribly important. I was: dragged books from the "adult" shelves, put them in a box for linen and took out after the release. As befits a generation of dreamers, dad loved science fiction - and I followed him. One of the first books that lingered in my head is Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. Then there were a lot of adventures, books about science, spaceships and humanoids: the green multi-volume Fenimore Cooper, the Strugatsky brothers, Alexander Belyaev, Stephen Hawking. Then there were badly published foreign fiction writers and mystics on gray paper, whose novels obviously did not suit me in terms of age — I happily erased the contents of these books from my memory, but did not forget the nightmares that I dreamed after reading.
I was the ideal consumer of books: I always read to the end, scared the hell out of my goose, cried where it was supposed to cry, laughed out loud in places that the author thought was ridiculous. Then I entered the university, moved to Moscow, settled in a dormitory. Since I didn’t have any particular literary preferences in my adolescence, I read everything that those around me gave. One friend shoved Jeeves and Wooster (I remember how I entered the tree for the first time while reading), another slipped three Jane Austen volumes that I read enthusiastically. A teacher of Russian art advised the diary of Alexander Benois, who still remains one of the most beloved books. Floor mates (now they are the backbone of the Noize MC group) gave Irwin Welch's tattered orange book, On the Needle. It was very scary: a good girl from the Moscow-based science city with a prosperous childhood, I had no idea about the furious and hopeless life of the nineties. She cried for a long time and inconsolably - it seems, for the last time: no other literature was able to shake me so emotionally.
By the fifth year, I stopped reading everything that did not concern my diploma and study. She studied metaphysical painting, architecture of futurism, fascism, Russian constructivism, Italian rationalism, neoclassicism, lectures by Aldo Rossi and a few studies of his work at that time. Then I didn’t want to read at all for a couple of years: I was only interested in magazines, books and articles meeting the main professional interest - art.
Honestly, I do not remember what brought me back to reading (it is possible that the newer beautiful publications from the non / fiction fair), but at some point it became clear that I needed it again. I am not a bibliophile - although I sometimes like to smell a fresh edition, check the binding and touch the paper. I got hooked on thick novels, memories and memoirs - probably, people go to theaters for similar sensations, but I don’t like it, so I read. I spent a lot of money on books and a bit of health when I brought in thick volumes from travels, bought up market novelties and dragged it all with me at endless journeys.
Only three years ago, I discovered Bookmate. She brought a lot of fiction to the staircase - she left exhibition catalogs, the works of the main pillars of world art history, art books, autographed books, some modern art books, books in foreign languages, books in which she wrote texts or edited herself, and a ton children's publications. But even such a small library doesn’t have enough space in the house: racks specially built along the walls of the largest room are packed. Books lie on the window-sills and the player, come across in the linen closets, some are put in boxes on the mezzanine "demand". Once every two weeks I rush to buy another closet or two, then review all the bookmarks in Bookmate (119!), Remember how many books on the shelves I have not read, and rush to the "Magical cleaning" Marie Kondo.
Jean Effel
"Adam Knows the World"
My very first comic. The book of atheistic "funny pictures" was always in my life - it was published in 1964 and got into the house before I was born. Sitting on a rock and thoughtful of Adam from the cover, he replaced Rodin's "The Thinker" for me. Until now, when the need arises to recall in detail the sculpture, a caricature pops up first. Naked bearded bear Adam and kind, like a bald Santa Claus I liked God a thousand times more than any children's fairy tale.
"A lesson in divinity. What is God? You, damn it!" It is wonderful that there were no less atheists in the Soviet Union than there were humorists, otherwise such a book would not have been published. Even more beautiful is that the birthplace of this comic is Catholic France, where freedom of speech is honored and there were times when no one took offense at the cartoons.
Daniel harms
"First and second"
"First and second" - children's book. I bought it a year ago to my son; I opened the house and realized that I know it by heart. The record with this text (the cover was designed by Victor Pivovarov) has been with me since childhood, now I managed to love and learn it from my two-year-old son. We can recite the book in two voices: I am not looking at the text, but he is unable to read.
This is a story about the journey of carefree company - a boy and his friend Petka, the smallest and longest person in the world, and also a donkey, a dog and an elephant. I love this text, but not this particular book: I hope to find the edition of 1929 once, which was illustrated by Vladimir Tatlin, that will be happiness.
Ernst Gombrich
"Art History"
It would be worthwhile to advise less popular and equally beautiful publications like "Art and Illusion", but I love it and I can’t do anything about it. This is the fundamental work of the German art historian with a crystal clear and understandable presentation - a consistent history of changing ideas and criteria of art. It not only gives guidelines in architecture, sculpture and painting from different periods, but also helps to better understand that you yourself are pleased when studying a work.
When acquaintances are asked to advise a book on the history of art for children, I always recommend this. This is not a dry allowance or abstruse textbook, it is read with ease of the novel. Gombrich also has a children's book - “World History for Young Readers” - a debut piece written by him at the age of twenty-six. Gombrich was offered to translate a history book, he pushed, fought over carelessly written text, and then spat and wrote his own.
Alexander Rodchenko
"Articles. Memories. Autobiographical notes. Letters"
The book consists of autobiographical notes, manuscripts, letters, thoughts about art, articles for the magazine "LEF" and memoirs of contemporaries about Rodchenko. Letters are my favorite part of the collection. The Soviet man first went abroad - and immediately to Paris, where he was faced with all the temptations and temptations of a beautiful life. In Paris, Rodchenko doesn’t like it very much, he scolds the advertisement (it is weak, and he admires only its technical execution), "art without life", fake houses of bad films, the French public, the organization of labor. He devotes many passages in letters to his wife to the way women are treated in Paris - they are called “chestless”, “toothless”, “things” and “under rotten cheese”. Rodchenko condemns this attitude, as condemns and excessive consumption.
With a general negative attitude, Rodchenko notes something worthy: for example, how organic the French are smoking a pipe, or wonderful textiles with geometric patterns. “Tell me at the factory - from cowardice, they are again trailing behind,” he writes to his wife, fabric artist Varvara Stepanova. The book is a bibliographic rarity, but letters recently published in a separate edition by AdMarginem.
Bruno Munari
"Speak Italian: The Fine Art of the Gesture"
More than the rest, I like picture books, and from picture books, artists' books. This is both an object and a miniature exhibition in one. Important Italian artist Bruno Munari published a bunch of cool books, all with first-class design. In "Fantasy" he analyzes the mechanisms of creative thinking. "Art as a craft" is dedicated to the tasks of the creator. "Da cosa nasce cosa" carries the good news: talent is not something innate, it can be developed, and Munari knows how.
"Speak Italian" is especially dear to me. It was presented to me by a friend when I went to study in Italy and was very worried that I could not cope: it’s one thing to learn the language at the university, and another to go and listen to lectures, speak and that's it. The book is an addition to the Italian dictionary, it consists of short texts and black-and-white photographs fixing the eloquent gestures of Neapolitans, like "sparare" (shots) or "rubare" (stealing).
Aldo rossi
"L'architettura della città"
Aldo Rossi has become so close to me that if conscience would allow me to call a Pritzker Prize winner twenty years ago a relative, I would have done so. I fell in love when I read the history of the Venice Biennale, for which Rossi built the “Teatro del mondo” for two hundred and fifty spectators, put the structure on a raft and sent it to float on the canals of Venice, because there is no place for new architecture in this city.
I spent the last two academic years with Rossi. He was the object of my passion, and its architecture - the subject of a thesis. I respect him as an architect and, moreover, I love him dearly for poetic and theoretical books. In "L'architettura della città", Aldo Rossi writes about cities, which have evolved over the centuries, about their souls associated with history and collective memory — all of this together is the driving force of urban planning. The reasoning is supported by the analysis of specific cities and places, attentive attitude to the works of like-minded people and opponents.
"The Life of Cyril Belozersky"
There was a year when I cried a lot. A friend and boss, Yura Saprykin, advised him to engage in the sin of despondency and turn him into a gift of tenderness, like Kirill Belozersky. I found the life in translation with comments by Evgeny Vodolazkin. She learned that Kirill Belozersky (the founder of the Kirillo-Belozersky monastery) became a monk at the age of forty-three, adhered to strict austerity, and he was always drawn to excessive feats and virtues. His path to harmony was difficult, but for his diligence God gave him affection - such that he could not eat bread baked without tears. If you combine reading with a trip to Kirillov, sadness goes away at times.
Albert Speer
"Spandau: secret diary"
Description of the life and work of the chief architect of the Third Reich, one of the few who at the Nuremberg Trials took the blame for the crimes. Everything is striking here: how a free, intelligent, apolitical professor of architecture for the company goes to meet with the young Hitler, where he immediately succumbs to his gift of conviction. And the way no one noticed the anti-Semitism of the latter. Moreover, when the Crystal Night happened, Speer burned so much at work that he simply walked the streets and did not notice anything. In the thirties, he quickly enters the Nazi Party, is engaged in the device of party buildings. In 1933, by the first congress of the ruling party, he proposed to establish a wooden eagle with a thirty-meter wingspan. Hitler approves - and then everything develops rapidly.
The barracks, the residences, the restructuring of the Zeppelinfeld stadium, the incredible scale of the scenery for all Nazi events, the building of the Reich Chancellery with the four-meter-high Führer cabinet and an incredible reconstruction plan for Berlin, which were going to be used by prisoners from the concentration camps (this was before the start of the war). Everything is hand in hand with blind faith and devotion to Hitler. In diaries, written after decades in prison on toilet paper, he coolly describes the Fuhrer, all the time emphasizing his inexplicable "magnetism", and even expresses some concern about his antics and political ideas - but imagine that such an approximate person was not even devoted to in part of the plans, impossible. I have a complicated relationship with this book: as I read, anger and a feeling of “I do not believe” are interspersed with pity for the architect with a once brilliant career, after which there are really no buildings left.
Orhan Pamuk
"Istanbul. City of Memories"
Two years ago, by the ninth month of pregnancy, there was plenty of time to read books, and the memory became like that of a goldfish. I could go back to the same page four times. Spas Pamuk - “Istanbul” caught first. The slow and sad manner of the narrator, the meticulous description of the details, which seems familiar to many of my friends, were built into my head. Autobiographical essays tell about a Turk who grew up in a cold black and white city, with dilapidated houses, early twilight, gray alleys and white snow. About the city that has lost its luster and glory of the empire.
The words "sadness" and "sadness" are the most popular in the text. But this is not a reflection of the melancholic, but the thoughts of a city dweller, who loves every peeling wall and appreciates every fragment of the monuments of the past. From “Istanbul” there is a feeling of dissatisfaction of the author with the collective Istanbul for inattention to the past, but at the same time one feels admiration for the city itself, its people, street vendors, life, way of life, traditions. Last week I was in Istanbul, where I met local book publishers who believe that Pamuk hates the Turkish people and writes poorly, and they have many other worthy authors. Oh well. I also met Pamuk himself this year: he tells as interestingly as he writes. By the way, already in the maternity hospital, I read the second book of the author "The Museum of Innocence" - I missed the start of contractions.
"Amanita"
"Amanita" - a group of informal art. The artists of the association engaged in painting, photography, absurd performances and recorded musical discs with texts in the spirit of postmodernism. This is a very beautiful book, documenting the crazy era, with wonderful pictures and hilarious texts for a good mood. Konstantin Zvezdochetov wrote me a deed of honor: "Sasha, read and retell the content, if you can. If you cannot, reread it again." And this is a comprehensive description of what is inside. I am not a fan of the recitation of poetry, but it is impossible to read these about myself. When I collected books for shooting, I read the passages for an hour.