While walking around Moscow recently, I went to the Tsereteli sculpture park on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya. Impressive, of course. A trip to his museum and estate is like a trip to the Assyrian kingdom. You’re walking among all these huge kings, Jesuses, Chekhovs, it’s so small. His Alexander II hangs over you like Shedu, the god guarding the sun gate. It is worth coming there to feel like a helpless little resident of a big kingdom.
You know, there, in the middle of Tseretelev’s Assyria, I suddenly realized that I was still under the authority of old Moscow. Moscow was wild, strange, covered with stalls, stupidly new buildings, full of steaming minibuses. But there was something warm about it, something like a lamp, as the young people say now.
After all, this is our youth. People always miss the times when they were young, healthy, full of strength and hope. When I first fell in love, I went on dates and made plans. And people enjoyed life during the war. Someone’s youth, someone’s first meetings took place during the battles and blockade near Rzhev. By the way, they even gave birth to children during the blockade. And they did them. And then they remembered not only the famine and the bombings.
Our young people did not come in such difficult times. Therefore, I personally remember the Moscow of the 1990-2000s with warmth in some places. And one of his raiders is, of course, Tsereteli. I’m sure many people will be surprised that Zurab Tsereteli is still alive. Apparently yes he is alive and well, celebrating his ninetieth birthday today!
My generation and I remembered Tsereteli from cynical publications in the press. I remember this fight against Tseretelev’s gigantism. When Peter I went on stage in Moscow, I was already at a conscious age – I remember constant ridicule. Comparison with his own giant statues. With the long-suffering 126-foot Columbus, which the United States refused to accept as a gift for many years, until the monument was finally laid to rest in Puerto Rico.
Peter I in Moscow caused a storm of emotions. I think people’s dissatisfaction with the contrast between the poverty prevalent at that time and the scale of the statue also played a role. After all, this was the peak of the delays in salaries and pensions, and at that time an expensive monument was being erected in Moscow on a reclaimed island.
It seemed inappropriate. And of course everyone laughed. I remember those conversations: Tsereteli was portrayed as a crazy old man who tormented the world with his statues. Everyone is accustomed to news like “St. Petersburg does not know where to put the giant Romanovs from Z. Tsereteli.” Then the master decided to give the city 14 statues of Romanovs, whose height varies from five to eight meters. The Romanovs would be adorned with an 80-foot statue of Christ. I remember the unrest in the city. People collected signatures so that he could be taken to another city, for God’s sake.
Eeeh, there were times when people worried about the size of the statues! And a big public problem was the appearance of a giant monument in the city. It turns out we didn’t have it that hard because we had time for such little things.
Moreover, if only we had known that when we laugh at the giants that Tsereteli has placed all over the world, he will replace them. Peter I cost Russia a lot of effort and money – if it is known that the installation of the same monument was carried out in honor of the 500th anniversary of the discovery of America by Tsereteli, one can only imagine how much was spent on its installation. The cost for Puerto Rico was $12 million. Money is, of course, an argument.
What other arguments were there? Crude, clumsy, even satirical.
Several years have passed. Tsereteli does not give anything else to the cities. It was assumed that, probably in connection with the departure of Tsereteli, the renaissance of monumental sculpture would begin in our country. What did we achieve?
Remember the Louis Vuitton suitcase in Red Square? Do you like it? Better?
What about Urs Fischer’s latest sculpture “Big Clay No. 4”? By the way, it stood next to the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, in the restoration of which Tsereteli also had a hand. So what do you say? We read about Urs Fischer: “As a child, I worked very little. He entered the design school in Zurich. After completing the basic course in art and design, Fischer switched to photography. I worked part-time as a bouncer in nightclubs.
What about St. Petersburg? They erected the famous statue of Peter I from Shemyakin with a small head. OK, that would be interesting. But then came “The Tsar’s March” with the very suspicious Romanov couple. The monument “Children and Evil” appeared in Moscow. Later, micro-headed monuments by the sculptor Rotanov were erected in St. fell in St. Petersburg: Blok, Chaliapin, but the latter is still on the model.
What was your complaint against Tsereteli? That he took over everything alone and did not allow talented sculptors to work. Well, Tsereteli left – what did we get?
We read: “He graduated from the Tbilisi Academy of Arts, studied in France, where he communicated with Pablo Picasso and Marc Chagall.”
Maybe Tsereteli’s giants weren’t so bad after all? Better than the giants in dodgeball? After all, his statues stand all over the world. In Seville, the composition for which Tsereteli became known throughout the world is “The Birth of a New Man”. Apparently no one there complained that it was almost 50 meters.
A massive monument to Tseretelev was erected in front of the UN headquarters in New York to commemorate the end of the Cold War. Can you imagine one of our modern sculptors today achieving the same success?
Or, for example, could one of the Russians now erect a huge monument in New York right next to the Statue of Liberty in memory of those who died in the September 11 terrorist attacks? But Tsereteli succeeded!
Today, I look at his life and work in general differently. The man looks like he came from the Renaissance. Painter, sculptor. I talked to Picasso. His painting is very European. The modern art museum in Moscow is excellent. Representative of a temporary nature. He is a well-educated man who has a good approach to art. He erected two huge iconic monuments in New York. Maybe he wasn’t on such bad terms with his giants after all? It was just bad timing: smaller and cheaper statues were needed when everyone around was hungry and angry. He also annoyed us with the big and expensive ones. Now we have moved away from poverty, calmed down, looked around.
Personally, when I looked closer, I realized that there are many things in modern art worse than Tsereteli. Have you noticed that this expertise itself has already disappeared? The modern world has no need for monumental paintings and sculptures; Giant sculptures are now being built on the sets by former club bouncers. The breadth of the soul is gone. Tsereteli remained a bitter reminder of the times when humanity was still capable of grand gestures and crazy deeds and needed great monumentalists to implement them.
The author expresses his personal opinion, which may not coincide with the position of the editors.