Art critic Alexander Danilova 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 Alexander Danilov shares his stories about favorite books.
I don’t remember my life without books at all: books have surrounded me since childhood, and there were a lot of them. It was clear that I would never master them all and would need to prefer one thing to the detriment of the other. I, too, most likely owe the choice of life to books that have always been close by. One of the most vivid childhood memories: my mother, who scolds me for the fact that I am even at a relatively adult age of about fourteen, was read in fairy tales of the peoples of the world.
I got a real interest in literature at the university, where I had to read very large volumes of professional literature in a short time. It was the history of art, theory, critical articles. The time when I studied was specific: in the late 80s incredible books became available - and literally the whole country read. I reveled in the fact that I could read what I wanted, and I could discover Russian literature of the beginning of the century, never published by Western authors and artists, whom I spoke of or did not mention at all. This was the most intense period of my life: information was accumulated for the future, and the books were swallowed one by one — many of them were in the original language. One of the most painful memories of that period was Lacan’s reading in English: in my reading experience at that time, there was no difference between languages, although I envy the modern generation, which can read the same thing as I did then, but in a good translation.
In my youth there was a great fascination with the poetry of Gumilev, Blok, Bryusov and Akhmatova, which threatened to turn into a profession, but I stopped in time. I was going to do the art of the Silver Age and modern style as well. I wrote a whole series of works devoted to the synthetic space of the culture of the Silver Age, where painting intersected with poetry, smoothly passed into architecture: at some point the context became too much. I was so immersed that I read all the periodicals of that time - magazines like "The Architect" and "Niva". So I reached the state of the Gezamtkunswerk and strongly wanted something fundamentally different. At the same time I became interested in the avant-garde art of the beginning of the 20th century. But the fascination with American art of the 60s and literature of the time led me to pop art, beatniks and Updike.
There are several authors whom I love very much, but who are very hard given to me psychologically. The approach, the tragic gap and the constant inner need to return to these authors - I feel this with Nabokov and Dostoevsky. They do not accept a quick swoop, techniques of looking through diagonally. In the situation with Nabokov, this is most likely due to the structure of the language - thick, requiring attention. Dostoevsky inspires thinking - not only generalized philosophical, but also purely philological. If we talk about savoring the text, I would call Andrei Bely and the novel “Petersburg”, which is written in absolutely fantastic language. The second author, fascinating and very interesting in construction and imagery, in terms of the complexity of the phrases is Gogol. But Gumilev's poems, beautiful, complex and imaginative, are written in very simple language - their ease is striking.
The process of reading itself has always been difficult for me. It happens that I take a long time to approach the books - it is difficult for me to start reading. But when I am captured, it is just as difficult for me to stop - I can easily read the book avidly overnight. For me, literature has always been a sphere of emotional experience, although now reading for fun and for myself has become a rare luxury. Fiction always gave me a certain degree of freedom, a separate romantic world, where one could move from a professional space loaded with dry texts.
Susan Sontag
"Against interpretation"
Rarely is a meeting with a writer who is radical not only in his text, but also in life. At one time, I was struck by the language of Susan Sontag. Her complex and critical texts are written in absolutely clear words. It is freely readable in English, and one cannot tear it away; you are fascinated by the flow of thought and the very structure of the text, which (which is rare for criticism and theory) does not prevent reading. It is hard for me to read it in translations, because this lightness has been lost, and in the translation text I feel a slip in a language that was not in the original.
I met Sontag when I found a link to Camp Notes - an absolutely fascinating text that contains a free interpretation of the term in cultural space, and mixing Oscar Wilde and Greta Garbo and Crivelli on several pages. Sontag creates a new space in which a new character is born: he inhales the stench of the exhaust pipe and gets pleasure from it. Sontag's approach to me is that in order to be engaged in some subject you need, first, to love him, and, second, this subject should offend you. So begins the present study.
Cécile Whiting
"A Taste For Pop: Pop Art, Gender and Consumer Culture"
For me, as a professional, this is a very important attempt to look at the situation from the inside, not from the height of today's time - the book contains many cultural studies and context details. The curator needs a combination of several points of view and an understanding of the context in which art exists - this is an important condition for quality work. Whiting looks very broad, plunges into the atmosphere of magazines, design, fashion, everyday habits, which give her different starting points and allow you to make very interesting conclusions about the connection, say, the artist Tom Wesselman and American kitchen culture, new public space and the triumph of consumption.
Jonathan fineberg
"Art after 1940"
It is clear that there are probably a few dozen books with similar names, but I choose this one, not the most obvious one. For me, this is the perfect reference material, which is very poorly known in Russia. All the important trends in the art of the second half of the 20th century are given here in a close relationship and a very correct proportion: theory coexists with commentaries on important works and rich factology about the life of artists and key points in their biography.
George Kiesewalter
"These strange seventies, or the loss of innocence"
Any exhibition for the curator is accompanied by intensive reading, and the preparation of the exhibition on Moscow conceptualism was one of the most intense and intense in this sense. For several months, I read dozens of excellent books about the 70s, interviews with artists of the Tupitsyn authorship, self-published articles and typewritten texts of that time. But this book seemed the most interesting. The selection of heroes themselves, their relationships within the publication presented a whole slice of the era. They gave a new feeling from the time that I lived in a state of deep childhood. Memories gained volume, memoirs of Vladimir Martynov, Leonid Bazhanov and many others shed light on an era that was so important for unofficial art.
Haruki Murakami
"Subway"
A book that is hard for me to recommend and which is not to be said to inspire, but it has become an important turning point for me. At the peak of fashion Murakami, when everyone read it for any reason, this book somehow appeared at my house: I took it off the shelf and spent a couple of days with it - a classic forced reading situation. The description of the attacks in the Tokyo subway was very difficult for me to read, a real test. But thanks to this book, my own space was formed inside me, some other scale of values arose. All the conflicts before the opening of a complex exhibition project, with which the book was not directly connected, were experienced in a completely different way; All opening problems and anxieties seemed ridiculous and paradoxical. This book turned me around. She gave a sense of inner peace, which allows you to not respond to annoying little things.
Clive Staples Lewis
"The Chronicles of Narnia. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe"
This book lived on my children's shelf like a magic piece with incredible illustrations of the Traugot brothers. I returned to her as a student when other books by this author began to appear: all the Chronicles, the Lewis essay, and his famous Balamut Letters were published. Then I read Lewis in a completely different way: I never knew for myself how much of a Christian author he was and what story he tells by the method of a children's fairy tale. Lewis’s thought that it doesn’t matter how dear you walk, but what’s important is how you walked through it, seemed to me very accurate, and since then I have internally protected her, have lived with her.
Hans Richter
"Dada - art and anti-art"
The book of Hans Richter is not only the most complete history of Dadaism as an artistic movement. This is a very fascinating and lively story, which is overlaid with details and, as is now clear, with partially finished stories. An artist, a writer, an excellent director and an eyewitness to the events described, Richter creates his own space of art, in which everything is alive, real, paradoxical, complex and terribly interesting. This strange work between a critical article, scientific research, and fiction is the perfect combination of fundamentality and creative fiction.
John Updike
"Gertrude and Claudius"
This not-so-typical Updike book, in which he does not speak about modernity, but rather tries to play a postmodern game, came to me first. Roman Updike is "Hamlet" from a different angle, a masterly manipulation with the plot and the language of English literature. Why Updike? In the study of the history of American art of the 60s, I did not have enough literature of that time, and I turned to Updike, I was looking for textual parallels to pop art, which I was closely involved with. I still cannot explain to myself why the literary scholars of Updike are called pop art in literature, but my love for this author went through half of my life.
Jean Baudrillard
"System of Things"
Baudrillard touches on in this book one of the most serious problems of the twentieth century - the topic of a consumer society. He talks about the context of consumer culture and instills several important aspects of the attitude to the object and object in the 20th century: the symbolic role of the object, the idea of the loss of objectivity and functionality, the transformation of the object into a symbol. All this philosopher analyzes in detail in the description of Western culture. The anthropomorphic nature of the subject, which is considered both as a status thing and as an integral part of the personality, is a very correct remark of Baudrillard, which he expresses in a clear, easy language. Unlike many other philosophers, Baudrillard at the same time does not lose the flight of thought and is very easily absorbed.
Konstantin Balmont
Stories
Balmont's prose is the weirdest thing I've ever read. On the one hand, they have the magic language of Constantin Balmont, beautiful, melodic, verified to sound. On the other hand, indescribably wild space of fantastic stories, where live trivial scenes. This is literary trash: cliché and abuse of trails. “Only love”, “Evil enchantments”, “Round dance of times”, “Blood liars” - the names speak for themselves, and even it does not seem necessary to continue.