On October 21, the exhibition “Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty” opened in the Hermitage, prepared by the Department contemporary art State Hermitage within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project. One of the greatest masters of modern European art Belgian artist Jan Fabre presented two hundred and thirty works at the Hermitage: graphics, sculpture, installations, films. The exhibition caused a mixed reaction among museum visitors, which indicates the unconditional interest of the St. Petersburg audience in the creative statements of the author. The Hermitage receives letters from museum visitors criticizing Fabre's works and asking to remove some of the artist's works from the exhibition. We have prepared answers to the most frequently asked questions.
– Why is Fabre exhibited not only in the General Staff Building, which viewers are already accustomed to associating with contemporary art, but also in the Main Museum Complex?
Indeed, the works of Fabre. The idea to present Fabre in the Hermitage - in dialogue with the Flemish masters of the 17th century - arose seven years ago, when the director of the museum, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky, and Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Department of Contemporary Art, visited the Jan Fabre exhibition in the Louvre, where the artist’s installation was adjacent to masterpieces Rubens. According to the curator of the project D. Ozerkov, “this is not an invasion. Fabre, a modern artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to bend the knee before the old masters, before beauty. This exhibition is not about Fabre, it is about the energies of the Hermitage in its four contexts: the painting of the old masters, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived” (The Art Newspaper Russia).
Photo by Alexander Lavrentyev
The Belgian’s shimmering green compositions, created in the genre of vanitas vanitatum (vanity of vanities) on the motif of memento mori (remember death), are embedded in the walls of the New Hermitage (Hall of Flemish and Dutch painting). Jan Fabre – subtle colorist. In the Twelve Column Hall he works in the colors of gray marble and decorative gilding. His precious emerald panels remind the viewer of the Hermitage malachite bowls and tabletops, and of the decor of the Malachite Living Room of the Winter Palace.
Photo by Kirill Ikonnikov
His drawings with a "Bic" pen are close to the lapis lazuli of the Great Skylight vases of the New Hermitage.
Fabre’s laconic and austere reliefs with “queens” are adjacent to ceremonial portraits English nobility and court ladies by Anthony van Dyck.
Fabre’s juxtaposition with Snyders’s “Shops” is fortunate; the modern artist does not quote the Flemish master, but only carefully adds a skull motif – a meaning that is obvious to an art historian: the theme of vanity and the vanity of existence.
Photo by Valery Zubarov
Fabre himself, at a meeting with St. Petersburg residents in the Atrium of the General Staff Building, said that his works in the art halls of Flanders are designed to make viewers “stop, take time for art.” “Visitors walk past Rubens like they walk past the windows of a large store; they don’t look at the details,” says the artist.
– I appeal to all services of the State Hermitage! As an animal rights activist and volunteer, I consider it unacceptable for public display age categories and a stuffed dog on hooks, destructive for the child’s psyche! The Jan Fabre exhibition is a lack of culture. This is especially immoral in light of the huge response to the cases of knackering in Khabarovsk. Please remove stuffed animals from the exhibition!
Jan Fabre has repeatedly told journalists that the dogs and cats that appear in his installations are stray animals that have died on the roads. Fabre tries to give them new life in art and thus conquer death. “Many of my works are dedicated to life after death. Death is part of life, I respect death,” says the famous Belgian. The dead dog in Fabre’s installation is a metaphor, a kind of self-portrait of the artist. Fabre states: “The artist is a stray dog.”
Fabre calls for careful attitude to animals that have accompanied humanity for many centuries, entering history and mythology. Today, people's attitude towards animals is consumerist. Cats are left at dachas. Old dogs are kicked out of the house. By emphasizing cats and dogs in old art, Fabre shows that in all their qualities they are similar to people, and therefore their love and joy, their illness and death, are vilely forced out of our consciousness.
By presenting stuffed pets, Fabre, together with animal rights activists around the world, opposes consumerism towards them.
Often we love not animals, but our love for them. Calling them our little brothers, we often do not realize how cruelly we treat them. We are ready to get rid of them at the first opportunity, should the animal get sick or grow old. Jan Fabre is against this. He transforms the bodies of animals hit by cars that he finds along highways from the waste of consumer society - into a reproach of human cruelty.
– Why couldn’t Fabre use artificial materials instead of stuffed animals? Modern technologies make them completely indistinguishable from the real thing.
“Why marble and not plastic?” asks Fabre, answering this question at a meeting at the General Staff. “Marble is a tradition, Michelangelo, it is a tactilely different material. The material is the content.” This thesis of Fabre can be compared with the thought of Russian formalists about the unity of form and content.
For Jan Fabre, the “erotic relationship with the material,” the sensual component, is very important. He recalls that the Flemish artists were alchemists; they used blood and crushed powder to make paints. human bones. The artist views the body as “an amazing laboratory and battlefield.” For him, the body is “something beautiful and very powerful, but at the same time vulnerable.” When creating his monks for the installation “Umbraculum”, Fabre uses bones – the hollow, “spiritual bodies” of his characters have an “external skeleton”, they cannot be injured, they are protected.
Photo by Valery Zubarov
– Stuffed animals have no place in the Hermitage, they should be in the Zoological Museum.
In the Knights' Hall of the New Hermitage, horses from the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal of Nicholas I are presented (these are horse skins stretched over a wooden base). In the Winter Palace of Peter I (Peter the Great's Office) a stuffed dog is exhibited; this is an Italian greyhound, one of the emperor's favorites. Their presence in the Hermitage does not seem strange or provocative to visitors, and does not cause fear or indignation.
Photo by Valery Zubarov
The artist uses certain means based on the principle of internal necessity and his own ultimate goal. To perceive contemporary art, a cursory glance is not enough; it requires (from each of us) internal work and spiritual effort. This effort is associated with overcoming stereotypes, prejudices, fear, ideological and psychological clichés, and religious attitudes. It requires courage and patience, forcing us to expand the boundaries of our perception. Contemporary art is something for which one cannot be completely prepared. Fabre himself says that his work “is associated with the search for reconciliation and love. Love is the search for intense dialogue and civility.”
Photo by Valery Zubarov
Text: Tsibulya Alexandra, Dmitry Ozerkov
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“Our goal has been achieved, people are talking about protecting animals”: Dmitry Ozerkov - about the scandal surrounding stuffed animals at an exhibition in the Hermitage (Paper)
Yesterday the Hermitage opened an exhibition of the most famous Belgian artist contemporary art of our days, as well as theater director Jan Fabre. At the opening of the exhibition, Jan Fabre revealed to the Fontanka correspondent the mysterious meanings of his objects built into the historical and modern collections of the Hermitage.
This summer, multi-ton golden sculptures by Fabre appeared next to the great works of classical Italian art in Florence, eight years ago the artist’s works were exhibited in the Louvre, last year in Berlin there was a high-profile theatrical premiere by Fabre, a 24-hour continuous marathon “Mount Olympus”, which was attended by all the leading representatives of the world theater. The exhibition “Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty” in the Hermitage was included in the top five most significant events for Russia this fall in the field of contemporary art.
“It was a very long project and a long conversation,” says the curator of the exhibition, head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage Dmitry Ozerkov. “We initially understood that the exhibition should become a dialogue Flemish artist with Flemish art. And at the same time talking about chivalry, about medieval culture. Therefore, the route naturally lined up along the Flemish part of the collection. Paintings and sculptures by Jan Fabre are neatly integrated into the Hermitage collection. Fine filigree work has been done. The condition of this exhibition was that we could not remove any paintings from the permanent exhibition. Jan Fabre is built in the middle, in the walls - this is the condition of the game, the main difficulty and, it seems to me, main luck as a result."
Jan Fabre himself, who draws inspiration from the work of Peter Paul Rubens, as he has repeatedly stated in interviews, says the following about this technical necessity: “I tried not only to exhibit my works, but also to highlight Rubens.”
In a sense, you are the Napoleon of modern art and even more: you have conquered not only France, Italy, but even Russia. What do you think about it?
I don't think this is the terminology of art - submitted. I do not perceive art in the concept of conquest, rather, of vital necessity, pleasure, energy. Happy to be in the Hermitage - a fantastic, great museum in the world. Here is the best collection of Rubens, Van Dyck, Snailers. I really love Russian culture, its depth. I grew up on it, in my youth I was interested in Gogol and Dostoevsky. For me, being in Russia, in St. Petersburg, is a great joy. Rubens - great artist, as a child I redrew his paintings. In the halls of Van Dyck, a student of Rubens, who mainly painted members of the royal family and nobility, I placed the series “My Queens”. On the bas-reliefs made of Carrara marble are images of my assistants, princesses, my team. And in the center of the hall there is a sculptural image of the current Princess of Belgium Elizabeth. All this is my dedication to women, feminine power. As for the festive caps on their heads, this is a metaphor for the crown, and at the same time, a symbol of joy and triumph. From an object of officiality, the crown turns into a Belgian celebration, a holiday. In the halls of Snyders there is mine new job- sculpture with a swan. Snyders's paintings depict freshly killed animals, looking at which it is as if you feel the warmth of a creature that has just died. My works are a continuation of his works, a dialogue.
In Flemish art, in addition to triumph and energy, there is aggression and violence: it is no coincidence image of the dead animals. How are aggression and violence related to the joy of life?
I don't think it's violence, I think it's a celebration of life. Don't forget that in Russia they still eat rabbits. And this is a normal process, this happens. In Belgium there is a special attitude towards animals. We believe that they are the best philosophers in the world. AND best doctors. We, people, must listen to them, and in some ways even learn.
- Who came up with such a poetic title for the exhibition: “Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty”? And what does it mean?
Photo: From the personal archive of Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Hermitage’s contemporary art department
Artist. ME: I am a knight of despair, so I feel like Lancelot who takes on the challenge. The challenge is to protect the vulnerable beauty of our human world. And, of course, as an artist I am always in despair, so I am always close to failure. At least that's how I feel.
- Therefore, your works, in particular, animal skeletons, skulls - can they be considered guardians?
In any art, animals are always a symbol of something. My art is no exception. Each of them is a guard, but also a designation of something. There is such an interweaving here. For example, the taxidermied dogs and cats that you see at the exhibition were, of course, not killed by me. They were already dead when I found them on the side of the highway. These are street, stray animals. By the way, they are the same as me. In society, the artist exists on the same rights as they do. As soon as we express our real opinions, society throws us overboard.
- How do you come up with your works? What comes first - structure or content?
Content. But then everything takes the right form. For example, the exhibition in the Hermitage: its dramaturgy was born from the form when I saw the photo of the museum from above. Two buildings nearby, the Winter Palace and the General Staff, reminded me of the wings of a butterfly, and Alexandria pillar- the needle on which it is pinned. Content is always expressed through form, and dramaturgy arises from content.
- What is the most controversial review about your exhibition?
I really love it when children visit my exhibitions - this happens quite often in Europe. I admire their reactions. Truthful and honest. For example, among my works there are two gilded sculptures, the surface of which consists of protruding needles. So the children say: “Look, this man is like a hedgehog.” They are absolutely right, because the artist at the moment of creativity and in general is very vulnerable. We are all forced to create some kind of protection for ourselves. Children react and explain everything better than any art critic. And most importantly, they look to the very essence.
Olesya Pushkina, Fontanka.ru
The "Afisha Plus" project was implemented using a grant from St. Petersburg
Egor Russak/TASS
Exhibition of the famous Belgian Yana Fabra“The Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty” opened at the Hermitage on October 22 in buildings on Palace Embankment and premises in the General Staff Building. Opponents of modern art found a weak point in the exhibition. They turned out to be cats and dogs: in the paired installation “Carnival of Dead Mutts” (2006) and “Protest of Dead Stray Cats” (2007), located in the General Staff Building and occupying one of the enfilade halls, the artist used stuffed animals against the background of classical Dutch and Flemish painting , including still lifes with killed game. The museum immediately explained: Fabre picked up corpses on the sides of the highway, where animals thrown out by their owners had been knocked down. The corresponding exhibition halls are marked with an age marking of 16+.
However, this story continued: on November 10, at exactly 15:00, a network attack on the museum began - massive reposts with the hashtag #shame on the Hermitage. As always in such cases, these posts are dominated by aggressive statements using profanity. People who were not at the exhibition (as evidenced by the photo attached to their complaints with a crucified kitten, which is not in the exhibition) and are not able to write the name of the museum director without errors, called for the closure of the exhibition, the dismissal of the director, voices were heard in the same crowd about physical violence against the artist and museum workers.
The singer was predictably among the uncompromising critics of contemporary art Elena Vaenga and deputy of the State Duma of the Russian Federation Vitaly Milonov.
Fabre's outrage at the exhibition is shared by Liana Roginskaya, the artist's widow Mikhail Roginsky, known for her fanatical love of animals. “In my opinion, this has nothing to do with art, but it is an excellent example of the vileness to which narcissism and exhibitionism, combined with a lack of talent, can reach. One question: if the corpses were not dogs, but human ones, would you also applaud this? Hurst for the poor? — declares she.
On November 11, opponents of the exhibition created a petition on the change.org portal to the Minister of Culture demanding that the exhibition be closed. It is characteristic that the text itself again mentions the “crucified cat,” which “shocked the believers, deeply hurting their feelings,” although, we repeat, there is no such work in the exhibition. To date, the petition has been signed by almost 10 thousand people.
In response, the Ministry of Culture posted a comment on its website, declaring that it did not consider it necessary to interfere in the exhibition policy of the museum: “The State Hermitage, like others Russian museums, having sufficiently broad independence and freedom, independently determines the priorities of exhibition activities, their thematic focus, artistic solutions and design.”
Head of the Department of Newest Trends at the State Russian Museum Alexander Borovsky, who is very critical of Fabre’s work, wrote: “I think, regarding this particular petition, it’s not about the animals at all. I’m ready to apologize to simple-minded lovers of living things - I’m not talking about you. I would simply urge you not to take art literally - otherwise it will be difficult to find anything completely neutral and pleasing for yourself. Especially in contemporary art. So take care of yourself. Or try to take a slightly broader view. I'm talking about the authors of the petition. And the comments on the networks - I was not too lazy to look through them. They are written in surprisingly angry, uncompromisingly accusatory language. In such an intolerant tone that you understand: dislike for people exceeds the love for animals, allegedly trampled upon by the artist and his Hermitage curators. If you care about living things, they don’t write about people like that. This is the tone in which demands to apply the highest measure were written in ancient times.”
Fabre's side is a St. Petersburg animal rights activist Anna Kondratieva, wrote on his Facebook account: “And in order to show (tell - TANR) kind and impressionable viewers about those thousands and thousands of abandoned animals that died under the wheels and were brought to be euthanized. Fabre seems to be taking skeletons out of closets and presenting them to the public. IMHO, fur coats and fur boas on the shoulders of fashionistas are much less appropriate than stuffed animals in the halls of the Hermitage.”
St. Petersburg artist and volunteer at the Sirin Center for Wild Animals Alexandra Garth exactly noted on his Facebook page: “Due to the last outbreak zooschizoid activity in the feed came the following thought - and Hirst is a great guy, a smart guy. No one feels sorry for the pigs and sharks, even though they were killed specifically for his works. And the evil, bad man Fabre stuffs cats and dogs, even though they are already dead, to hang him on hooks!”
On November 12, the Hermitage launched a response hashtag #catszafabra and received support, in particular, from the museum and cafe “Republic of Cats,” where cats taken from the Hermitage live, among other things. “Not a single cat was harmed during the preparation of the Jan Fabre exhibition, no matter how the authors of the hashtag #shamethehermitage might have wanted it,” he wrote on Facebook. Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the contemporary art department of the Hermitage.
The Hermitage is the only museum in the world that has had an entire team of cats on its staff for decades and even holds an annual “Cat Day” holiday.
General Director of the State Hermitage Museum Mikhail Piotrovsky in his article for the newspaper St. Petersburg Vedomosti he wrote:
“An exhibition of a wise artist has opened in the Hermitage Yana Fabra. Everyone is looking at still lifes Snyders and think how beautiful they are. But cut fruits and killed animals are reminders of death. It’s worth imagining for a second what Snyders’s “Game Shop” or “Fish Shop” smells like. His still lifes have a second meaning. Looking at them, a person should see the artist’s skill and think that life is passing by.
That's why Fabre inserts skulls between the paintings. Remember! Opposite he places a stuffed peacock held by a skeleton. Remember! He places his image close to the picture so that blood “flows from his nose.” Getting too close to art is dangerous. Fabre has complex meanings everywhere.
His installations with stuffed cats and dogs in the General Staff building are shocking. But this is a reminder of the barbaric attitude towards animals, as even the name indicates. We should not be indignant, but think about what the artist is talking about.
Yes, very sharply. But art should not always provide only aesthetic pleasure. Fabre “screams” about what is happening in the world. Uncomfortable? Yes, but remember what is happening.
I have a stack of protests on my desk. They write like a carbon copy: “remove Fabre from the Hermitage” (this, they say, is “lack of culture”). They reproach: how can you show this now, when the country is agitated by the story of the Khabarovsk knackers. Right now it sounds special. Horrors are characteristic of our time, as is intolerance.
There is a lot of deep meaning in Fabre’s “cry”. If you don't want to hear, don't listen. He is flawless, as if he stops on the edge beyond which there is horror and dirt.
Contemporary art is a challenge. By provoking, it makes people think. We should be happy about this, and not snap at it. If someone doesn’t like this kind of art or not everyone understands it, that’s normal.”
Jan Fabre looks impeccable - in patent black parquet shoes, a dark gray suit and a long gray coat with gray fur collar, silver Thick hair and graphic black glasses frames. Taste and style, which are completely optional for a modern art figure, make him even more modern - he is beyond all cliches about the artist, both romantic and nonconformist. There is no special “bohemianism” in him, no ostentatious anti-consumerism, no boring bourgeoisism. He understands that clothes are for modern man- the same characteristic as the choice of music, like the choice of a favorite artist, like any intellectual choice in general. In Moscow, during a public talk at the Territory festival, he was wearing cool jeans with neat fraying, a white shirt and a thick blue sweater - and also impeccable in appearance. Fabre has a perfect sense of what to wear to sit in the small hall of the Gogol Center, and what to wear when running back and forth across Palace Square(one part of his exhibition is in the Winter Palace and the New Hermitage, the other in the General Staff Building). Fabre generally has a perfect sense of time and place, form and content.
He walks through the halls of the Hermitage on the eve of the opening, where not all the labels have yet been hung and not all the fences have been placed, and patiently answers the same questions from journalists - he recites a memorized text about what works he specially made for the Hermitage (a series of marble bas-reliefs “My queens" in the Van Dyck halls, a series of small paintings "Falsification of a secret celebration IV" in the Romanov Gallery), repeats his favorite self-definition - "I am a dwarf from the land of giants", tells a witty story about his beloved Rubens, "who was Andy Warhol 500 years ago" . And all this - for the 125th time - with lively energy, emotional and fiery, as if for the first time. “Art is not experience, but curiosity,” says Jan Fabre and demonstrates how brilliantly he masters this professional quality.
"I Let Myself Expire", 2006
“I am a dwarf in a land of giants!”A series of small paintings “Falsification of a secret celebration IV”, 2016
Performance« Love - high power » , 2016
For the Hermitage, this is, of course, an unprecedented exhibition - never before among its walls and collections has contemporary art looked so convincingly, rather than simply arranged, and never before has modern art entered into a real dialogue with old art, rather than simply overshadowing it. Fabre in this sense is an ideal artist - especially for the Hermitage. He grew up in Antwerp, where he lived near Rubens's home and went there to copy his paintings, learning to paint and draw. He says that Hermitage director Mikhail Piotrovsky and exhibition curator Dmitry Ozerkov gave him the opportunity to choose any halls, and he immediately decided that he would choose his native Flemings, among whom he grew up: “You best Rubens, great Jordaens, great Van Dijk, great Snyders.” Dmitry Ozerkov explains the principles of working with Hermitage paintings - the canvases could be moved left and right and up and down, but could not be swapped, although some paintings, for example, in the Rubens hall, were removed to hang Fabre's blue canvases in their place - “ The Appearance and Disappearance of Bacchus”, “The Appearance and Disappearance of Christ”, “The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp”, where images appear only if you point a smartphone or camera at them. Nowhere would this statement by Fabre about the role of old art in modern art life look more appropriate than next to Rubens’ “Union of Earth and Water,” “Bacchus” and “Christ Crowned with Thorns.” “Avant-garde is always rooted in old art. There is no avant-garde without old art,” says Jan Fabre.
"A devoted guide to vanity." SeriesVanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas, 2016
"The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp I", 2016. Rubens Hall
The reverence with which Fabre’s things are hung and arranged among the great Hermitage collection is extremely touching. In the Snyders hall hang Fabrov's signature skulls made of scarab beetles (their shells are purchased from restaurants in Southeast Asia), in the teeth of which there are stuffed birds and animals and, as if flowing, in the style of Dali, art brushes. A group made especially for the Hermitage - a skeleton made of scarabs and a stuffed swan in its arms - floats in the air against the backdrop of the same swan with famous painting"Bird Concert". And you understand that you are not just following Fabre’s witty play with the old masters, but you are suddenly seeing this Snyders himself with a completely fresh look - the look of a person who grew up next to these paintings, spent hours copying them, absorbed from these paintings every feather of every bird and every scale every fish. That is, you see them with great love and gratitude.
Gravetomb and skulls series, 2000
One of the best halls Fabre's exhibitions are Van Dyck's hall. There are huge bas-reliefs made of Carrara marble “My Queens” - these are real women, Fabre’s acquaintances and friends, all in modern clothes, with earrings protruding from the bas-relief, freely hanging in their ears and carnival caps on their heads: “Brigitte of Antwerp” or “Helga” Ghent", for example. And in the center, on a high pedestal, stands the future Belgian Queen Elizabeth - the heir to the throne, who is now 14 years old, a fragile marble girl in jeans and a T-shirt and in the same cap. And the entire hall, filled with ceremonial Vandyck portraits with their emasculated gloss (you immediately remember Pushkin’s “Olga has no life in her features. Just like Vandyke’s Madonna”), immediately turns into a living and convincing hymn modern women with their strength and fragility, freedom and struggle - all that progressive fashion designers usually write about in press releases for their collections, but which is so difficult to express without completely worn cliches. Fabre knows how to do this - to say understandable things freshly and convincingly: “My goal is to protect the vulnerability of the human being.”
Series “My Queens”, 2016
What is shown in the General Staff building - large installations and large sculptures - is of a completely different kind. These are two large installations - “Red Transformer” and “Green Transformer” - and large-scale spatial objects. In the huge halls, next to Kabakov’s “Red Carriage” and with a colossal Rubens on the wall, Fabre looks strictly conceptual and social. The most exciting thing here is to see how a work placed in a new context appears new meaning. For example, an installation with stuffed cats and dogs, which Fabre once made for the Geneva Museum and for which he collected dead animals on the sides of the highway: on the floor, under the stuffed animals hanging among the tinsel, there are unwrapped packs of butter. Fabre says that he was referring to the alchemical significance of oil as a mediator, and the dog here, as in Flemish painting XVII century, - a symbol of fidelity and devotion. For us, it looks like an acutely social statement on the topic of human responsibility and high-profile stories of poisoning stray dogs. And this living life art that unfolds right here and now, in front of the viewer.
« Chapters I-XVIII» , 2010
"The Man Who Measures the Clouds", 1998
The fact that we have a Fabre exhibition is not just a joy. This is also a sign that we are finally beginning to recognize contemporary art in parallel with the whole world - because Jan Fabre is one of its most relevant figures today. And not just an artist whose exhibitions are held in grand museums around the world, but also a director whose 24-hour performance “Mount Olympus” became the main theatrical event recent years, and the author of plays, and the creator of videos, and in general a humanist of Renaissance proportions. To see it is to see the main thing in modern art. And to see it in Russia means to see Russia in the context of the main contemporary art. And the way the small figurine of the golden man with a ruler in his hands - “The Man Who Measures the Clouds” - looks in the courtyard of the Hermitage is not at all what it looked like just now in the Belvedere fortress in Florence. Because, as Fabre says: “Every time you destroy, and then you build again.”
The editors of Buro 24/7 would like to thank Kempinski Hotel Moika 22 for their assistance in organizing the material.
On Friday, the Hermitage opens the exhibition “Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty” - a large retrospective of one of the most famous contemporary artists. Projects of similar scale (and the exhibition will use the halls of the Winter Palace, the New Hermitage and the General Staff Building) have not yet been awarded to any contemporary author. There are several reasons why the museum grants Fabre special rights, but the main one lies in his reverent attitude towards classical art, in dialogue with which he builds most of his installations.
Fabre also has experience in projects similar to the Hermitage. Eight years ago, he had already done something similar in the Louvre: in the hall of ceremonial portraits he laid out tombstones, among which a giant worm was crawling with human head, in another - he exhibited an iron bed and a coffin, inlaid with iridescent gold beetles; there were stuffed animals, and gilded sculpture and drawings. Fabre is the grandson of the famous French entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre, whom Victor Hugo called the “Homer of the insects.” It is important to keep this in mind when you see shells, skeletons, horns and dead dogs, stuffed animals of which he often uses - to understand that all these objects that shock the unprepared viewer are not an end in themselves, but a natural way of understanding reality for a person who, since childhood, was surrounded by collections of creatures preserved in alcohol in flasks.
Stuffed animals will inevitably become the most talked about exhibits. For example, Fabre places several works from the “Skulls” series in the Snyders room next to his still lifes, replete with game, fish, vegetables and fruit, as if hinting at the decay that lies behind the tables laden with food. But stuffed animals are only a small part of what will be shown in the Hermitage as part of the artist’s exhibition.
The Village has compiled a short guide to Fabre's work and asked assistant curator Anastasia Chaladze to comment on individual works.
Science and art
In 2011, at the Venice Biennale, Fabre presented a replica of Michelangelo's Pietà, in which the figure of Death holds the artist's body in his lap with human brain in hand. The exhibition then caused a lot of noise: some did not like the borrowing of a canonical Christian image, others saw in the work only an attempt to shock the public. In reality, the idea should be explained by the genuine delight that Fabre evokes in the ghost of a medieval artist-scientist. At the same time, given that since the time of da Vinci, science has stepped forward and really contributes to scientific progress modern authors they cannot, Fabre has only one thing left to do - to idealize and romanticize the image of a person experiencing the world.
"The Man Who Measures the Clouds" (1998)
a comment Anastasia Chaladze:
“This is the first work that the viewer sees if they begin to get acquainted with the exhibition from the Winter Palace: the sculpture meets people in the courtyard, right behind the central gate. In my opinion, this image perfectly reveals Fabre as a sentimental person and artist. We are accustomed to the fact that modern authors often turn to political and social spheres life of society, and Fabre remains a romantic: to some, the image of a man measuring clouds with a ruler may seem stupid, but for him this hero is a symbol of service to his idea and dream.”
Blood
One of Fabre's first exhibitions, which he showed in 1978, was called “My Body, My Blood, My Landscape” and consisted of paintings painted in blood. The idea of using one’s own body for work was no longer new, however, perhaps it was Fabre who was the first to transfer experience from the plane of artistic experiment to the area of conscious expression, not just hinting at his own exclusivity, but also emphasizing the sacrificial nature of art. Besides early works blood, the modern installation “I Let Myself Bleed” was brought to the Hermitage - a hyper-realistic silicone self-portrait mannequin that stands with its nose buried in a reproduction of Rogier van der Weyden’s painting “Portrait of a Tournament Judge”.
"I Let Myself Bleed" (2007)
a comment Anastasia Chaladze:
"It's a metaphor for invasion contemporary artist in art history. On the one hand, the result is sad: a nosebleed is an illustration of the defeat of a modern artist before the masters of the past. On the other hand, the installation will be placed between two polychrome portals depicting scenes from the life of Christ, and this gives the whole composition a new meaning, hinting that Fabre sees himself as a Savior from the world of art. This is a rather bold statement, but there is nothing fundamentally new in it: since the Middle Ages, it has been customary for artists to suffer torment in order to experience the states of sacred history, giving up wealth and entertainment in order to be closer to the state of the characters they depicted in their paintings."
Mosaics from beetle shells
One of the most famous technicians Fabra is a mosaic that he lays out from the iridescent shells of gold beetles. With them he laid out the ceilings and chandeliers of the Royal Palace in Brussels and countless more compact installations and sculptures. Zhukov Fabre quite sincerely considers them to be almost the most perfect living creatures and admires the natural logic that was able to so simply and effectively protect these very fragile creatures from dangers.
"After the King's Feast"
(2016)
a comment ANASTASIA CHALADZE:
“Vanitas is a phenomenon that was very popular in the 17th century, it is such a negative, negative perception of entertainment, a hint that the joys of life are empty and you need to think about some more important things. In the hall hangs the famous painting “The Bean King” by Jacob Jordaens depicting a feast, and next to it is Fabre’s work “After the King’s Feast”, which is not a direct commentary, but in a sense shows what happens after the holiday. We see here emptiness, bones and flies gathered for carrion, and in the midst of this a lonely dog who remained faithful to who knows what.”
Drawings with Bic ballpoint pen
Another one unusual technique in Fabre's collection are drawings that he makes using simple Bic ballpoint pens. The most famous work in this technique - a giant panel “Blue Hour” from the collection of the Royal art museum Belgium. For the Hermitage, the artist painted a special series of replicas of Rubens’ works, which will hang in the same room with the originals during the exhibition. Their value is especially high since Rubens plays in Fabre's fate special role. Actually, it was after visiting Rubens’ house in Antwerp as a child that Fabre, as he admitted, became interested in art.