Architecture historian Alexander Selivanova 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, the historian of architecture Alexander Selivanova shares his stories about favorite books.
Up to fifteen, I just wanted to read. My grandmother taught me about three or four years; I could not understand how to put the letters together, but she thought that they should be sung. Of course, it soon ceased to please everyone - the rest did not interest me, so I got the nickname “hook”. Everyone had their own libraries at that time, and, including their great-grandmother, there were as many as five. The collected works, of course, were repeated, but there were many specific ones, for example, art albums or Moscow literature. The most "tasty" books - and in general I perceive literature, especially poetry, tasted - were parental and children's grandmothers.
Among them - "One hundred thousand why" and "What time is it" by Mikhail Ilyin of the 1930s. Black-and-white little Lapshin’s pictures clung to me — especially the plan of a touching journey around the room, from the sink to the cupboard and the room shelf; at each "station" there were amazing stories about the everyday life of different eras, told easily and ironically. This close and curious look at the little things behind which hides something significant and deep, became for me the determining factor. From him it’s a step to everything I’m doing today: it’s a microhistory, a private memory, and even the Museum of Moscow where I work. Last year I did the exhibition "Constructivism for Children", about children's books of the 1920s, explaining how the world works. This is a very special feeling when, after thirty years, you put your favorite publications in the window and finally understand how cleverly this was done, since the magic has not disappeared in so many years.
Books in school times were a flight, although in general I had no reason to escape and nowhere. Not travels, not adventures, but completely built worlds with their own logic and laws: myths, especially Scandinavian, all Edda and Beowulf, and from them - a direct path to Tolkien; Then came the era of Latin Americans, then Pavic and Kafka. In parallel, there were some incredible in depth and complexity lessons of literature, where Mandelstam, Platonov, Zamyatin, Mayakovsky, and Oberiuts opened - here it was already important not only “what”, but also “how”. A program was perfectly brilliantly constructed in which the authors were studied not by chronology, but by proximity or, on the contrary, opposition of ideas, philosophy, tools. I was incredibly lucky with the school teacher, so in dialogs with Irina Borisovna Sipols the texts, despite the preparation, did not lose strength and attractiveness. Then, in the mid-90s, such experimental “seminar” formats were still possible. In general, I miraculously did not go to the philological department of the RSUH - the conviction won that I absolutely must be an artist.
In the tenth grade, Bulgakov happened; I cannot find another word - not the same novel, but the stories, “The White Guard,” “Last Days,” feuilletons. It was a turning point for me: I made a museum project and went to work in apartment 50 on Sadovaya. There I spent a bright thirteen years - the time of the formation of the museum. For the sake of fairness, I must say that I love Harms as much and I also tried to carry out a similar story with the museum - but Peter is there, and I am here, and it’s impossible to do it remotely, apparently. And then novels with stories gave way to non-fiction, and for the last ten years I have been reading almost exclusively non-fiction. I probably swallowed too much in childhood and adolescence, and I simply no longer have enough space to build in another world. Everything read in me swells, sprouts and becomes exhibitions, texts, works - and too much has not yet fired. For example, I have been walking for about five years with an unrealized exhibition about Platonov in my head, and this is hard.
Cultural studies, art history, historical studies, especially if they are devoted to the everyday life of the twentieth century, diaries, memories - now they all seem much more alive and rich than the finest fiction. This, of course, does not apply to books from second-hand books, where I regularly hunt for feuilletons, short stories, production novels and the "literature of fact" of the 1920s - early 1930s. The best book dealers, of course, in St. Petersburg: on Liteiny, on Riga Avenue; from there I always come back with piles of forgotten and useless literature.
A recent discovery of this kind is the novel The Artist is Unknown, the last avant-garde piece by Kaverin. These books are valuable to me and as artifacts - along with the design, shades of yellowed paper and typing errors. That is why I can not read electronic publications: it seems that they fall into a void, without lingering. I can not read in silence and at home: I have always swallowed up all the complex texts in transport, best of all in the subway. Moving closer to the center and reducing the routes were a serious blow. To learn something important, you have to invent some special places and circumstances: a street, a library, a flight, a ring metro line. Now I think to master the MSC for this purpose.
Lewis Carroll
"Alice in Wonderland"
As a child, this was my main book - and it remains important to this day. This is more than just a work: Carroll’s text is here, the best, in my opinion, translation by Zakhoder and the amazing design of Gennady Kalinovsky. A couple of first chapters I knew by heart from seven years old, copied illustrations or tried to draw something in their spirit.
If you take Escher's metaphysics, but add a fair amount of irony and play to it, mix it with the visual poetry of the 1970s (which costs one mouse tail of words), and also sophisticated manipulations with fonts and letters that live here independent lives, will turn out "Alice ". Everything - from puns to thin wavy lines, from architectural fantasies to the question "Am I, or am I Mary Mary?", From absurdist riddles to strange animals - it became just me, reflected in the choice of books, projects, aesthetic views and life strategies. In recent years, in various unpleasant situations I often feel at the trial of a jack, and I really want to jump up and shout out: "You're just a deck of cards!" Not to mention the regular presence at the March Hare tea parties.
Vladimir Paperny
"Culture Two"
Probably, I met her late in the day - however, for some reason, future architects in universities are practically not oriented in terms of art criticism literature: it is believed that students have very general ideas about the history of art, but the twentieth century usually remains completely out of bounds. I learned about Culture Two in 2004 thanks to the Moskultprog company, mainly consisting of historians and art historians from Moscow State University.
It was a real revolution - probably, this is the most lively and fascinating book written on the topic. The wit and ease with which Paperny showed the contrast between the 1920s and the 1930s infects so that, until now, we extrapolate his concepts for today: "Will culture Three ever come?" Although the reception itself is not new, and such a dichotomy was used even by Wölflin, describing the differences between Baroque and Classicism. But here the expansion into the categories "horizontal - vertical", "mechanism - man", "heat - cold", "uniform - hierarchical" is extended beyond the limits of the art history plots proper - and brought into politics, literature, cinema, history of everyday life.
My copy is a reprint of 2006, signed by the author at the presentation in the "Chinese Pilot". Since then, much has changed: I wrote and defended my thesis on the history and theory of Soviet architecture of the 1930s, largely under the impression of the book, but the author accepted my text rather coldly. Well, now I have cooled: there is a feeling that “Culture Two” requires revision, and the phenomena described in the book can be considered not as opposing each other, but as completely related. Over the years, many new documents and facts have surfaced, which, unfortunately, are destroying the puzzle inspired by Paperny. Which, of course, does not in the least detract from the value of the book for its time - it’s just the moment to move on.
Yuri Leving
"Station - garage - hangar. Vladimir Nabokov and the poetics of Russian urbanism"
Even though I really do not like Nabokov, I consider this book absolutely ingenious. The material here is much wider than the stated theme, all Russian literature of the early twentieth century (including half-forgotten authors) is analyzed in the context of the symbols of urbanization and new industrial aesthetics: telephone and street advertising, cars and aviation, poetics of railways in the spectrum from the rhythm of telegraph poles and the train crash to erotic accidents on the road. Masterfully layering associations, intersections of images and plots, with detailed footnotes and poetic examples (happiness is all right on the page itself, and not in the basement at the end), Leving convincingly shows a single metatext of Russian literature.
He tries to realize, appropriate and interpret the roar, dynamics and mechanism of the new century. Nearly a hundred small and very attractively named domes, many literary examples and not banal illustrations, and most importantly - the speed with which the author lays all this solitaire before the reader, does not allow not only to be bored, but even to pause for a minute! This book inspired me to several culturological seminars devoted to images of transport already in the Soviet era, and finally, in 2014, the exhibition “Avant-garde and Aviation”, which, according to Leving's precepts, turned out to be quite poetic and interdisciplinary.
Alexey Gastev
"Youth, go!"
The book is not mine, I once took it from a friend and colleague Nadia Plungian, but I still can not part with it. Gastev is one of my favorite characters. Poet, theorist, philosopher, revolutionary underground activist, visionary, a man who invented NOTs and headed the Institute of Labor, where, in addition to Ford’s ideas, all kinds of people, including artists, developed completely avant-garde experiments in form related to rhythm, movement fixation and motor culture , dance and optics. Gastev was a comet, he was very bright and quickly burned - he was shot in 1939. But his ideas about work organization sprouted in completely unexpected places; Shchedrovitsky became the heir to the Institute of Labor, and for several years, the top managers of efficient industries have been awarded the Gastev Cup. But for me he is first and foremost a poet. In my opinion, this text of 1923 is a clot of his passionary ideas.
It is difficult to define a genre: it is poetry in prose, and a training manual with appendices, and a collection of slogans. To my taste, this text is no worse than Mayakovsky’s poetry, and the appeals have not lost their charge for ninety years. Separately worth mentioning is the design by Olga Deineko, an artist from the 1920s and 1930s, who illustrated, among other things, a lot of children's literature. The book is somewhere on the border between the close modern aesthetics of early revolutionary romanticism (in the cover and illustrations) and constructivism (in typography and text layout). Of course, the mad energy of these cries and recommendations weakens by several times, if you read it in electronic or reprinted form; This book is completely alive. She is also read to holes, torn and painted by a child, which is logical to continue.
Michael Bulgakov
"I wanted to serve the people ..."
I don’t know how it happened, and it’s even awkward to talk about it - but this book with a bad title and this writer literally turned my life upside down; it sounds pathetic - but that's a fact. I read it, probably, in 1996: here is the preface of Bulgakov's friend and his first biographer Pavel Popov, then the most important are the stories, “The Heart of a Dog”, two plays - “Days of the Turbins” and “Last Days” (“Alexander Pushkin”) where, to my amazement, the main character never appeared, of course, “Master and Margarita”, letters and a small block of memories - in general, everything that the novice Bulgakofil needs to know. I did not like the main novel (and still read only pieces from there), and reread the rest dozens of times.
Immediately I was struck by the language, that is, literally - deadly precise phrases, the speech of people that you do not read, but you hear, sharp humor and inexplicable plots. And not the romantic chapters of the novel, but the "Red Crown" or, for example, "Notes on the cuffs." Texts of such strength that I remember very well how at the age of fifteen I began to faint in the subway, reading "Notes of the Young Doctor". I read everything, drew the project of the museum and went with him on a tip from Bulgakov's niece, Elena Zemskaya, to apartment 50 at 10 Bolshaya Sadovaya, where there was something else like a club. And she spent there thirteen years: exhibitions, seminars, experiments, friends, falling in love, finally a museum. All these years, in fact, I tried to understand: how, how did he do it, where did this language come from, this accuracy? I never found the answer - in the facts of his personal biography and the list of his personal books there is none. The last attempt was made last year, making the exhibition "Bulgakov vs Mayakovsky", it was a happy opportunity to return again to these texts - being no longer inside, but outside.
Gleb Alekseev
"Rose of Wind"
Probably, I would never have learned about this novel and would not have written out this book from Serov if it were not for the story of Bobrika (now Novomoskovsk) that struck me that should have become the largest chemical plant in Europe. Another forgotten utopian project of the 1920s was dug and built in the fields of the Tula Region, at the headwaters of Shat and Don. To fix the stages of construction sent artists and writers, one of them was Gleb Alekseev, who returned from emigration.
He himself defined the genre as “the search for a novel” - I would call it the deconstruction of a novel; This is one of the latest examples of experimental prose of the avant-garde era, when the work is assembled from production drama, poetic and even mystical digressions, fragments of newspapers and historical references. In addition to the very important for me the feeling of Plato's “Pit”, there are some rather interesting observations on the social and psychological underside of industrialization, which is especially valuable for an architectural historian. And, of course, the episode of the opening of the crypts of Bobrinsky graphs and the discussion of the ethics of using coffins upholstery for skirts and dresses is unforgettable.
Alexander Gabrichevsky
"The morphology of art"
The texts collected here became for me a discovery, a breakthrough, an exit to some completely new level of understanding of architecture, which is not comparable with either old or modern theoretical works. And how ridiculous it is: ninety years have passed, and we are still marking time somewhere on the spot, without absorbing it, having understood, reflecting fully everything that was written in the walls of GAHN (or outside the walls, but same circle of authors). I will not speak for art historians, but the fact that these texts are almost not comprehended by historians of Soviet architecture is a fact, alas. And it’s in vain - after all, Gabrievsky was able to identify the semantic nodes (and identify key problems!) Of the avant-garde architecture and predicted the crisis of the early 1930s, not at all related to politics, but, as it turns out, it had matured from within.
The articles and lecture notes of the 1920s by Gabrichevsky are read in one gulp. In general, of course, it is difficult to imagine this, but the pleasure of reading The Morphology of Art is close to the pleasure of a poetic collection. Although, perhaps, the trick is that Gabrichevsky’s formal method theory, his ideas related to the building envelope, his clothing, and the anthropomorphization of architecture somehow ideally combined with the dissertation framework, unraveled and explained the muddy places in the theory of Soviet architects, that this joy turned in general difficult lyrics into a song.
Selim Khan-Magomedov
"Architecture of the Soviet avant-garde"
The two-volume book of Khan-Magomedov is my desktop, more precisely, the sub-table books, because they do not fit on the table. Although "Architecture ..." was published in 2001, it is still the most complete and detailed publication ever published, dedicated to the architecture of the 1920s - early 1930s. The first volume is about shaping, the second is about social problems, that is, about a new typology (communes, kitchen factories, etc.). Naturally, many have a desire to say that "Khan, of course, is strong, but ...", I myself for some time thought that his "Architecture ..." is a raw material, from where it is convenient to get specific buildings, authors and projects. All this is due to the fact that few people have enough strength and patience to read all these almost 1,400 pages entirely. For me, somehow everything changed when he was gone; This is how ordinary you meet on the councils in your scientific research institute of a very old nervous person, and then once - and you realize that you didn’t have time to ask, discuss, listen.
In general, now I can say with all responsibility that a two-volume book is an incredible analytical work in depth and detail that does not at all ignore the social and political aspects of designing in that era — in fact, what Khan-Magomedov likes most to reproach. And yes, no matter how fresh and unexpected the thought occurred to me, no matter what architectural find it would have done, it is ninety percent likely to find it in his books. Да, есть специфика: Селима Омаровича не интересовала реальная жизнь внутри этих "конденсаторов нового быта" потом, ну и что, собственно, происходило со зданиями после снятия лесов, более того, часто из его книг вообще не понятно, был осуществлён проект или нет, - такие мелочи его не занимали, сами дома смотреть он не ездил, ему интересны были только концепции. Ну и прекрасно - есть хоть чем заниматься последователям.
Иосиф Бродский
"Letters to a Roman friend"
I do not like poetry very much and hardly read it, probably because I react too strongly and strongly and am afraid to fly out of the saddle. The poets I read can be counted on the fingers of one hand: Osip Mandelstam, Vsevolod Nekrasov, Mayakovsky, and now Brodsky. For some reason, this collection has sunk more than others, here the early poems are from the 1960s to the mid-1970s. Winter Peter, his lighting, colors, smells of communal apartments, trams - all I feel is my back, touch and taste, I hear as a continuation of Mandelstam city. Despite the fact that I was not yet in sight, for some strange reason from adolescence, this Brezhnev Leningrad is one of the closest, familiar landscapes of my head. And Brodsky’s early poems connected with this very special attitude to Peter and began to turn into graphics and book art. Every autumn I took the little book "Alphabet-Classics" and took it with me, trying to learn some things, for example "Do not leave the room ..." or "Song of innocence ...".
Franco Borsi, Pamela Marwood
"The Monumental Era: European Architecture and Design 1929-1939"
The main book confirming the theory that by 1932 the Soviet architectural avant-garde itself was gradually moving in the same direction as Western and Eastern Europe, the USA, Japan, South America and I don’t know who else: in the direction of monumental architecture playing with elements classic forms. The book has undergone several reprints and has been translated from Italian into all major European languages and proves that the term “totalitarian architecture” is exotic and has nothing to do with the reality of the 1930s.
It is not translated only into Russian, and therefore we still live in the realities of the late Soviet architectural theory, or even beautiful, but in the same way make the Soviet architectural experience "exceptional", theories of Paperny or Groys. The terminological porridge that exists now, in which "post-constructivism", "Soviet art deco", "Stalin's empire", and "1935 style" are cooked, could be stopped by introducing the term "monumental warrant" that would instantly unite Golosov's later projects, Friedman, Ginzburg, Vesnin and others with the experiences of French, Polish, Estonian, Turkish architects of the 1930s. But there is no translation, and I can only propagandize the term and the book.