Art historian Anastasia Mityushina 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 art historian and curator of the Garage museum public program shares his stories about favorite books.
When I was a child, my mother picked up the books: first there were publications from her childhood, and then new ones — my mother was then the editor of English literature in Fiction publishing and worked with outstanding translators Natalia Trauberg, Irina Gurova, Irina Immortal. Since childhood, I knew what proofreading is, and sometimes even helped my mother to glue it (before, editing was done on paper and pages of almost finished imposition were pasted on A4 sheets, so that the fields could be edited). Her choice always resonated with me: the stories liked and fascinated - be it Clive Lewis or John Tolkien.
At some terrible moment for my mother, I stopped reading. Then she made a cunning move and sent me to the linguistic camp with the children - the winners of the Olympiads, the students of the legendary 57th school and the applicants of the best universities. There I saw people who drink, hang out and have fun, but at the same time know the literature thoroughly. We had contests who quotes poets longer, whose pun is sharper, performances, lectures on the history of languages and so on. That summer I realized that literature is a living world with which you can operate today. From camp I returned with an endless list of what I needed to read, and a thirst for knowledge, which was enough for the next few years.
I entered the university where I studied the history of art in 1999: during this period pokerbooks began to appear. This time was associated for me with the drive of collective knowledge. The scholarship was small, someone bought the book alone, and she walked in a circle. Then there were hot discussions of the plot and form, reader's sensations and tastes. To learn books through friends, to read back, to understand something about the interlocutor and his position - this experience of sharing has always remained with me.
With age, I had one important change. In my childhood and youth, I was absolutely deaf to poetry. For me, learning a poem was a hell of an effort, although I did well learn foreign words. At the university, thanks to Mikhail Mikhailovich Allenov, a fantastic specialist in Russian art of the 19th and early 20th centuries, who brilliantly knows the poetry of all times and peoples and every lecture, analyzing visual material, skillfully imbued his text with the metaphors of Mandelstam, Pushkin, Shakespeare and many others — my relationships with the poetic text changed dramatically. This man taught me to appreciate a word, to hear it, and to know that every word has its place. So my responsibility was formed before the word, which became a guide to writing texts, and so, suddenly unnoticeable to me, poetry became the world where I feel good and free. Now from two verse pages I get inspiration no less than from a big novel.
In book-making, I am a retrograde, for me a book is a thing, with weight, texture of the cover, the smell of paper and the usefulness of fields in the layout for pencil notes. This attachment to books as a whole object (as opposed to digitized text) has remained in me since the time when books were hard to get (especially in the history of art), and the hunt for them was a separate sport. For the first two courses, I phoned the friends of my parents and took turns borrowing books from them for a week, a day, or even one night. Dad once brought me a copier from work, so that in one evening I would make a copy of Andy Warhol's Philosophy (from A to B and vice versa), and Sontag's early edition.
If we talk about professional reading, now I simultaneously have to delve into a variety of topics: from the architecture of Soviet modernism to the work of Francisco Goya, the music of John Cage or the early experiments of Yoko Ono. Because sometimes you have to read in fragments and several books at once. I absorb information from various sources and look for role models that guide me more in ethics than in specific techniques. By nature, I practice and first master some things — for example, how performances and concerts are integrated into the museum’s program — implementing projects, then accumulating a critical mass of what has been done, formulating questions, and after that I begin to think through comparison of experiments — read tactics and strategies other practitioners. In the same way, correcting and updating what I started, in six years I built the structure of the educational and public program "Garage". So, I believe, you should behave in young and dynamically developing professions, to which I assign curatorial work.
At the same time, I re-awakened the taste for knowledge in the old sense of the word, and I like to read those who are in no hurry and do not want to impress anyone with a novelty, but simply live with their subject and enjoy how it becomes text. Such, for me, are the works of art historian and curator Arkady Ippolitov and, in particular, the book "Especially Lombardy. Images of Italy in the 21st Century." What admires, inspires and knocks you down in his texts is that a person knows how to vary the language, while remaining an expert. The syllable of Arkady Ippolitov can be simultaneously academically strong, reckless, brilliant and modern.
In this top ten, books of two groups are collected: random finds, opened on holidays or trips contrary to plans and references for today, are shelter books in which you can easily hide from your everyday routine and be alone with yourself, and several books of university times, without which story about me as a reader will be incomplete.
Henry Miller
"Colossus of Marussi"
Once, thanks to windsurfing in the Prasonisi, the songs of Manos Hadzidakis and the hospitality of the Athenian curators, I fell in love with Greece: the non-touristic nature of its beauty, its simplicity and earthiness is its essence. And then I searched for words for a long time in order to convey this fascination to my friends. So, Miller could do it for me. His text is a half-essay, a semi-artistic narrative about the journey through Greece at the end of 1939. Miller had to leave Paris because of the gaining pace of the Second World War, and Greece turned out to be for him the distant oasis that lives by some other age-old laws. And it is in him that the attainment of that very world, which we, in one way or another, are always looking for, is peace with ourselves.
Miller here does not speak at all in his typical voice: he is full of tenderness to the beauties surrounding him, attentiveness to people and slow delays in conclusions. “Tropic of Cancer”, to be honest, I couldn’t read it to the end: explosive adventures quickly get boring, and the “Colossus” can be read and reread endlessly - immersion in this text is like meditation on the seashore in the early morning.
Gertrude Stein
"Ida"
My friendship with Stein began with the Russian edition of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas. Picasso. Lectures in America, donated by a friend for the New Year. Then there was a collection bought in Berlin, in which there was also an "A Long Gay Book", which I really like to savor. "I go," I chose, as it was recently published and can fit in a pocket, which is very convenient for summer walks. In the preface, there are recommendations from Time magazine in the 1941 review, with which I fully agree: "Read as a poem or listen as music: several times" and "Read only for pleasure. Otherwise, leave a reading."
The story of Ida was inspired by the loud media event of the time: the English king Edward VIII abdicated to marry an American, Wallis Simpson. For Stein, this fact was only a reason to reflect on the identity of the person and the personality habits. I read like this: I chose some characteristic and tried it on myself or my friends and colleagues. For example, this property of Ida is completely mine: "She liked to watch people eat in restaurants and wherever they eat, she liked to talk."
Nicholson baker
"House of Holes"
Lying in the hotel on vacation and reading the International Herald Tribune, I found an article about the "crazy master of obscenity" (included in the list of 100 geniuses of modern times). Having learned that Baker boldly invents new erotic words and has an inimitable sense of humor, I decided to read him. So furiously, I laughed only at the Woodhouse dialogs. And never did I blush like that when reading about sex. The plot is simple: if you are lucky and your sexual fantasy is so lively and rich, then at the most unexpected moment you will be able to get into the country of holes, a country where all sexual fantasies - yours and other lucky ones - come true. Each chapter reveals one of the fantasies and its owner.
Baker writes about sex so simply and excitingly (and absolutely not vulgarly) that you wonder how a set of familiar words may sound so unexpectedly to you. And, of course, in addition to sex, there are many witty observations of the human nature of the modern inhabitant of the metropolis. The chapter "The Moon Goes to the Concert" with such a stunt and grace describes the glory of the works of Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin, that any music critic will envy.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez
"Twelve stories-wanderers"
I almost missed this treasure: the book was presented to me by my mother, and the bawdy cover design made it difficult for me to notice that the author was Marquez. Marquez conceived them in the early 1970s in order to convey the joyful feeling of dreaming about his funeral: usually the sad event for everyone in the writer's dream was filled with happiness - all the friends are with you and there is no reason to be sad. The story about parting with oneself was never written, but with interruptions and adventures 12 short stories were born with one mood-state.
Marquez's signature magical realism, which habitually transforms the perception of Latin American everyday life, is transferred to Europe: Arezzo, Rome, Barcelona, Madrid, Geneva. In each of the stories there is this quivering and slightly aching feeling of disappearance and escape of native places (Marquez has been in them), at the same time accompanied by such joy in finding the main knowledge about life, that I want to reread them regularly. My favorite is "Maria dos Prazerish", I would like to be just such a sober-looking beauty in old age: prudently awaiting death to meet love.
William Burrows
"Cat inside. Collection of short prose"
I am a dogman to the bone. I understand cats badly and therefore I treat them with caution, but this text is my student friend. The one with whom you rarely see, but with whom you have lived so much, that you are always happy to each other. Like all students, when we left our parents, we organized parties with nights. Tzimes of these night vigils - a common breakfast in pajamas with savoring yesterday’s tusy or talking about life. I loved to lurk, as if still asleep, and wander through the bookshelves: "The Cat" stood across the roots. Every time I came to visit, I read a little bit (it was the publication of Kota itself as a separate book).
The compactness of this prose and the interweaving of cat details from the life of Burroughs with his attempts to once again philosophically comprehend death make it ideal for a slow morning: the capacious paragraph makes you think carefully. And in the suspension, though not always close to you thoughts, slow waking up makes sense. I could not read all the novelties to the end from my today's non-enriching "I", and my book of another edition. But still the text "Kota" is a trouble-free time machine.
Italo Calvino
"Invisible Cities"
If you suddenly want to be where you have long dreamed of being, and at the same time find yourself in a place that you couldn’t even think of, and there is no money for a ticket, this book is the best transport. As Gore Vidal said, describing its content is extremely difficult and completely useless. The plot outline is very simple: Marco Polo tells the exacting Khan about the cities he visited. And the story of a daring merchant-traveler turns into such fairy tales of Scheherazade.
Every city in Calvino is fiction and is called a female name. But it is their invisibility, the impossibility of seeing them live, so excites the imagination. Smells, architectural details, and the sounds of the streets are inscribed in universal memory mechanisms that give individual access: here everyone will precisely discover his memory-sensation. In terms of freedom of movement for the mind, this book resembles the flickering space of an afternoon nap, when it dreams especially well, only instead of laziness after the taste of it, there remains a strong motivation to find time for the next trip faster or at least learn Italian.
"Nota. The life of Rudolf Barshay, told by him in the film by Oleg Dorman"
I rarely read biographies and autobiographies (except at work). I always tried to avoid unnecessary personal details: it is more comfortable when heroes remain mythical inhabitants of heaven. But very likely, this book and “Subscript. The life of Lilianna Lungin ...” will force me to reconsider my point of view. Both heroes confirm that only a couple of generations ago, people were of a different caliber: they could be ordinary people and live their historical time with dignity, with tact to tell about it.
The historical realities of the Soviet twentieth century are known to everyone, but it’s one thing to know about the fact of persecution of D. D. Shostakovich, and another thing is to hear first-hand how these persecutions reflected on his everyday life. But the book was here primarily because of the music. A violist who grew up as an outstanding conductor, Barshai shares his student and late professional accomplishments so easily that the way to the rapture of these treasures is completely open to the reader. I want to listen to each piece and artist, occurring in the text. I started with Beethoven's string quartets, the 15th of which Shostakovich called "the best music."
Abram Efros
"Two centuries of Russian art. The main problems and phenomena of Russian art of the XVIII and XIX centuries."
I was ashamed to completely bypass the history of art in my top ten. I decided to pull out some of the old stock to remind myself of my past hobbies. And, perhaps, provoke readers to trek the Tretyakov Gallery in Lavrushinsky in a new way. It is believed that the Russian art of the second half of the XIX century was visually monotonous and not worthy of understanding. Before getting on the course of Mikhail Allenov, my opinion was the same. It turned out that the development of the everyday genre in the XIX century and all the searches and disputes that accompanied it - the plot is exciting and direct to the discovery of non-figurativeness in the early twentieth century.
“Two Centuries” is almost 300 pages of a fine and, moreover, living text, which were invented mainly in the 1930s, partly printed in 1941, and in the final version were prepared for publication in 1948. As a result, the book was published only in 1969 (15 years after the death of the author) with a foreword by a workshop colleague who was shyly justified by the "controversial positions" of a 1930s researcher. It is clear that any analytical model describing large historical movements is based on assumptions, but the concept of Efros gives answers to so many questions about the internal processes in Russian art and makes his knowledge so fascinating and structured that there is still hardly any work that would be able to get ahead of “Two centuries” in clarity.
Marcel Proust
"In Memory of the Murdered Churches"
I can confess here the terrible thing - the discovery of Proust the novelist is ahead of me; I have not read any of the seven famous novels yet. And this recent essay from the time of the university I recently wanted to re-read in connection with the comprehension, destruction, conversion of monuments of the Soviet era, which we are actively living now. The familiar realization of the construction in the wider context of culture (as a complex overlay of the meanings of the past and the present) was new to France at that time. Basically written in 1900, the essay was published in 1919, that is, after the First World War.
In walks through the cathedrals and the analysis of the architectural form, Proust masters the connection of times as a narrative fabric, which he later develops in novels, and ardently argues with another famous esthete - John Ruskin. Let the proust groping "out of the present" look today may seem timid and sometimes even naive, it incredibly inspires with full hope for the possibility of a harmonious solution. The authors of the guidebook on the architecture of Soviet modernism in Moscow, Anna Bronovitskaya and Nikolai Malinin, with whom I was fortunate enough to work, are implementing it, of course, in their own way (preparing to go to the Garage this summer).
Thomas Sterns Eliot
"Four Quartets"
This little book was bought in London during a regular trip to Frieze Fair. You see a lot of contemporary art, run into the opening days, chat with new acquaintances, and among all this quivering there is a keen desire to lie down on the bottom. On a business trip, only mental escape is permitted. Why precisely Eliot? It all started banal - with the musical "Cats". It was one of my first CDs from the time of school, and I knew almost all the lyrics by heart. Then in the late 1990s, we went to it in London, and soon a re-release of the bilingual book "Barren Land" was published. Reading about Eliot, I went to Pound, Auden (funny, it was these three who brought me to Brodsky, and not the other way around).
"Квартеты" путешествовали со мной в метро, были моими собеседниками в кафе. I did not know then that Eliot worked on them from 1934 to 1942 and almost stopped writing after them, did not think that "the theocentric structure of the universe corresponds to Dante's cosmography," I just absorbed their music and wisdom. The line "The sea is all about us" seems to me one of the most humane and reconciling of the written about the futility of human ambitions. As for Eliot's translations, Andrei Sergeev, by his closeness to the English structure of the phrase, is more to my liking.