אולגה פלורנסקי “RUSSIAN DESIGN”

10, July 2011 · אמנים אורחים

… and immediately made a suspicious-looking
telephone out of two twigs…
M. Bulgakov, “Master and Margaret”

…Bits of rope of no practical use. J. M. Montgotfier (as quoted by a withess)
We’ll collect the metal scrap To feed the furnace to make the guns To turn the enemy tanks and guns Into heaps of metal scrap.
S. Marshak

I know for sure: Soviet airships
will be the best in the world.
K. Tziolkovsky (from a letter)

The English exchange looks and say:
“It’s amazing.”
And Lefty tells them:
‘With us it’s always like this.”
N. Leskov, “Lefty”

…and this peasant, on constructing the wings,
crossed himself in his customary way and tried to fly,
but he could not take off. And he said that he had
made the wings too heavy.
A Chronicle of Flying in Russia

I don’t know whether everyday RUSSIAN DESIGN has ever been subject to close scrutiny of art critics. This wonderful phe¬nomenon, as natural as speech or climate, undoubtedly forms the character, psychology and esthetic predilections of the people inhabiting Russia. This creative trend exists due to the national aspiration toward some abstract autonomy, the proverbial “sol¬dier’s ingenuity” and the secret joy of tongue-in-cheek.

All this happens quite simply. Wherever possible, a Russian avoids the services of the obtrusive and mercenary civilization. Having proudly spat on the foreign microscope, our Russian, how¬ever, takes home with him the main idea of the useful device and reproduces it in his own barn as best he can, out of improvised materials, so as not to hand a single kopeck to enemies. While your own labor is free… plus the adolescent drive to construct something.
It is universally known that most innovative solutions come under very constricted and difficult conditions. The resulting object is neither attractive nor reliable. For this object to function it is necessary to make endless alterations in the overall scheme, to fasten the parts that unfastened themselves and to replace those that rotted through. These secondary depositions deprive the object of the remotest similarity to its prototype.

The list of materials used in everyday popular designing is inexhaustible, yet the worthiest place in it belongs to household rope, aluminum wire, rusty tins and curved nails. These are the four pillars of RUSSIAN DESIGN. Mention also must be made of the products of civilization that became an integral part of the life of the masses to such an extent that their origin has been com¬pletely forgotten: rubberoid, black insulating tape, pieces of thick rubber of the huge tractor tires and plastic bags. Slightly apart is the mysterious antifreeze.
If a product of civilization has somehow came into the life of a Russian, the latter wouldn’t leave it alone until he manages to shape the hostile object into some congenial form: to weld on a crowbar in one place, to board up another with plywood, to unscrew excessive nuts, and to connect the reminder directly. What comes is already a work of art, even if the creator is unaware of the fact. Take, for instance, the canvas folding bed, the sym¬bol of Russian mode of life. The ways of connecting its torn edges to the frame are so bizarre, and its lost springs are replaced with virtually everything!
Many generations of Russians have simple heartedly clipped the stick wrapped in rags into a can of tar, but it was the German, Joseph Beuys, who guessed that this was a work of art. It’s all right, really, we’re used to tag behind the Germans.

Inwardly we know that no Beuys could ever daub tar so artfully as a Russian, mend¬ing the roof of his country house. Innocence is invincible!
Much as I admire the esthetician Beuys, I definitely prefer Calder’s light rope-and-wire “Circus” where we see moving char¬acters and structures uncannily resembling the childish handicraft of my brothers: jumping skeletons, human figures made of cork and matchboxes, mechanisms conjured out of hell knows what…

It must be that in Calder’s childhood his Granddad made a ply¬wood machine gun, a tin saber or a wooden steamer for him.
Free improvisation also constitutes a part of RUSSIAN DESIGN. At our country house we still have some bits of the “Land Defenses Against American Air Invasion”: iron pipes, rails, wires, nuts and ceramic insulators, hammered deep under ground and interconnected – the product of abnormal diligence and Eskimo ingenuity of the former owner. The objects presented at the exhi¬bition include some parts of this tremendous installation.

I was always sorry to throw away things, once made by human hands. My sculptor parents have taught me very early to pick dis¬carded pieces of wire (preferably aluminum) that were later used for frames – what a brilliant example of RUSSIAN DESIGN! I want¬ed to become an archeologist or, better still, a garbage or scrap collector. I was slightly ashamed of these inclinations before I learned that they were very harmonious with a certain “Plyushkin” undercurrent in Russian mentality. “A broken piece of a wooden shovel and an old boot sole” — what purity, what power in this composition!
If we give a good thought to the history of technological change, the global environmental importance of RUSSIAN DESIGN for the world art becomes evident, since only the raw, the unfinished is alive; the hardened, the finished is dead. (I’m defi¬nitely opposed to electric welding!)

Putting together diverse objects, I infringe of their godly essence only so much as is required for the compositional bal¬ance. The emerging new meaning is not wholly my achievement. Things, strangely destined for each other, have finally met. Surely, they have something to talk about.

And how can we mix such obstinate paints on a palette so huge? Working on objects, I regard details at my disposal as charms of a kind, with their initial function long forgotten. I may suspect that this used to be a hammer, and that served to scare away birds during the harvesting. And out of all this 1 shall make, say, an airplane, and it will contain both the hard force of a blow and the rush of a terrified winged creature.

Why airplanes, exactly?
I like the image of a Young Pioneer with the model airplane in his hands, this sunny Russian archetype. The dream of fooling the nature and flying like a bird has stimulated most rash ventures in the field of RUSSIAN DESIGN. Where RUSSIAN DESIGN interfered with the matters of aviation, things took rather a desperate turn. Suffice it to remember poor Matzievich who imprudently attached a fateful Russian piece of wire to his French airplane. Again, if the two-pound weight (for poking into the enemy’s propeller on the mission) had not fallen out of First Lieutenant Nesterov’s craft during the takeoff, the hero would have performed many more loops. Finally, airplanes fly above our garden very often and very low.

In the meantime, I sneak into Plyushkin’s storeroom and write the word ETERNITY with bits of rope of no practical use.

Olga Florenskaya, November 1994
Translation by D. Pryatkin

SUMMARY

RUSSIAN DESIGN exhibition shows a part of the big, long lasting project of the same name, worked out by me and Alexander Florensky. The whole program includes art, literature, collections, scientific and historical researches, photography and animation.
Objects, exhibited in Borey Art Gallery (St. Petersburg, November 1994), are definitely inspired by pure, original examples of every day life con¬structions that you can see all over Russia, especially in the countryside.

Russians like to invent. The problem is, that they are always short of money, good materials, proper instruments and the high level “know how”. Yet, Russian people know very well how to make different use¬ful things, bounding together scraps, waste and other environmental materials, that can be taken absolutely free at home or from the nearby garbage hole.
All this undoubtedly comes from ART, but the cre¬ator doesn’t even think about it. The ordinary Russian country house presents a real museum of this mod¬est self-made art pieces.
Sticks, plankets, rusty metal pipes, cans, tires, bricks and stones, connected by wire, ropes and pieces of old plastic, transform step by step into the barns, fences, garden constructions, dog and mail boxes, benches, TV antennas, etc.

As an artist, I can’t reject this great experience. So, I want to follow up, how different objects, strange to each other at the beginning, at last become good friends in one piece of ART.
For a long time Alexander and I were gathering a rich collection of the “Original RUSSIAN DESIGN examples” at our “dacha” house, not far from St. Petersburg. The majority of my aero planes, engines and other constructions, shown in Borey Art Gallery, were created there.
I want to underline — these objects are not simply a joke, nor toys, and this work is not only a game. I tried to combine professional artistic point of view with the innocent methods of a Russian peasant, making the oven out of iron barrel and samovar pipe.

I consider, also, that there’s no big difference between oil on canvas painting and arranging objects. So, instead of paints I use sticks, chains, door han¬dles, hangers and cans. Hammer, wire, rope and nails play the role of brushes and turpentine. This kind of work is much more complicated than painting.

Aero planes are definitely in favor at the exhibition. Russian people like the idea of flying very much. Several braves in the past built self-made wings, try¬ing to reach the sky.
Later, pilots became the most popular figures in the list of national heroes. To say nothing about very well known soviet symbol — a child holding the aero¬ plane model! And at last — the airport which is not so far from Florensky’s country house, gives us opportunity to watch various planes over the garden.

I am sure that RUSSIAN DESIGN, the creative, wise and slightly self-ironical point of view, has the global, ecological meaning for the world art process.

Olga Florenskaya, May 2011

Olga Florenskaya – CV

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