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On March 1, 2016, the exhibition “Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings”, prepared by the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project, designed to collect, exhibit and study the art of the 20th-21st centuries. ekov. The exhibition is organized with the participation of the Berengo Foundation and with the support of the Falconeri brand, Italy.
The exposition presents 55 works, including sculptures and drawings from different years: the already classic compositions "Monastery" and "Absolutely omnivorous", new glass works and graphic works of the last two decades. The project of the exhibition was prepared by the artist especially for the State Hermitage.
Tony Cragg (b. 1949) is a British sculptor, one of the recognized classics of modern art. In 1977 he moved to the city of Wuppertal (Germany), where he currently lives and works. In 2008, the Tony Cragg Sculpture Park was opened near Wuppertal.
Tony Cragg started out as an artist in the 1970s on the wave of minimalism and conceptual art. His first works are monumental compositions made from household waste. Subsequently, the artist turned to the study of the properties of form and surface, experimenting with a wide variety of materials - from traditional wood, stone and metal, to the little expected Kevlar in sculpture (a new bulletproof material from which airbuses are made), rubber and plastic. "The original interest that inspired me to create images and objects was - and still is - the creation of objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, which can reflect and transmit information and sensations from the world and my own existence," emphasized Cragg in 1985.
In his works, the sculptor turns to the most complex study of the existence of sculpture - outside of design, outside of the vicissitudes of the museum and gallery world, outside of the art market. He is interested in sculpture beyond its suitability, applicability, usefulness and utility. The infinity of the logical variability of its forms is one of the main themes of his research. The artist never ceases to admire the human ability to realize their earthly existence, to reflect on it. Sculpture is, in his understanding, a kind of response to such thinking.
Cragg's drawings have a different, rather official status. They prepare the birth of sculpture, look for support for it and outline the existential justification on a formal level. Drawings are inseparable from sculptures and in a strange way live by their plastic laws. The abstract forms drawn here are fraught with real, and, therefore, materializable objects.
From 1979 to 2016, Tony Cragg held more than 250 solo exhibitions in leading museums and galleries in Europe, America, Asia and Australia, including the Louvre, Paris; the Tate Gallery, Liverpool; National Museum of Modern Art, Seoul; Museum of Contemporary Art MACRO, Rome, and others.
Tony Cragg is the laureate of the most prestigious Turner Prize in the world of art, many other prizes and awards, he is a laureate of the Order of the British Empire II degree (the last title before the title of sir), an honorary Chevalier of Arts and Literature (France), a member of the Royal Academy of Arts (London), laureate of the Shakespeare Prize, member of the Academy of Fine Arts (Berlin), professor at the University of the Arts in Berlin.
The artist will arrive in St. Petersburg with his team for the installation and opening of the exhibition in the Hermitage.
In the summer of 2012, as part of the Sculpture in the Courtyard program, Tony Cragg's Luke was shown in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace.
Exhibition curated by Tony Cragg. Sculpture and Drawings” - Dmitry Ozerkov, Head of the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage Museum, Candidate of Philosophical Sciences. A scientific illustrated catalog has been prepared for the exhibition, the author of the text is D. Yu. Ozerkov.
A large educational program has been prepared for the exhibition, including a lecture by Tony Cragg, master classes and round tables.
Falconeri is an Italian brand with vast experience in the production of knitwear made from natural materials for men and women with exquisite taste. The collections use the highest quality yarn; from it create versatile and extremely comfortable wardrobe items, the perfection of which is visible in every detail - a combination of sophisticated beauty and elegance. From sketching to quality control, from knitting to packaging, every step of the production is carried out in the Italian factory in Avio. The combination of affordable price and high quality products is combined with great attention to detail and continuous improvement of technology in the best tradition of "Made in Italy". Falconeri, which has over 80 stores worldwide, entered the Russian market in 2011. Today, clothes of this brand are sold in 11 stores located in three major Russian cities - Moscow, St. Petersburg and Rostov-on-Don. Falconeri has always been congenial to the world of art. Not so long ago, this Italian brand sponsored the Taormina Film Festival and a major exhibition of works by Paolo Veronese at the Gran Guardia Palace in Verona.
La Fondazione Berengo. Fondazione Berengo is an independent cultural organization founded by Adriano Berengo. Its aim is to promote glass as a material in contemporary art, design and architecture, and to preserve the age-old traditions of Venice and Murano. The Fondazione Berengo also contributes to education, in cooperation with art schools and other institutions, by offering courses for glass artists, as well as internships for students to bring their creative ideas to life with the traditional glass furnace. Fondazione Berengo became one of the sponsors of Glasstress 2015 Gotika - the 56th Venice Biennale, as well as a joint project between Berengo Studio and the State Hermitage Museum.
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In the mid-70s, Tony Cragg collected plastic waste, called it new stones, and used it to create sculptures in the spirit of the British punk revolution. Only a few years later, the groundbreaking exhibition "Objects and Sculpture" recognized "urban materials" as suitable for art. For almost 50 years of experimenting with form and materials, Tony Cragg has been awarded the prestigious Turner and Imperial Prizes. Today he heads the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts and lives in Germany.
on the picture: work by Tony Cragg "New Stones"
Tony Cragg. Biography: From Liverpool to Wuppertal
was born in Liverpool on April 9, 1949, the son of an aviation engineer. From the age of seventeen, he worked as a technician for the National Rubber Research Association.
In parallel, he studied art at the Gloucestershire College of Art and Design, then, in 1969-1973, at the Wimbledon School of Art. The education of a sculptor was crowned by training at the Royal College of Art in 1973-1977.
After completing my education, Tony Craig Mr. immediately moved to the German city of Wuppertal, where he lives and works to this day. In 1978, Cragg began teaching at the Dusseldorf Academy of Arts, and in 2009 he became its rector.
"Heap". 1975
Tony Cragg. Early Works from Garbage: Young-Green
Early works are mostly made from waste - tires, pieces of plastic, pallets, children's toys, etc. From the mid-70s to the early 80s, the young sculptor presented compositions from primary structures, as well as colorful, relief works on the floor and walls of various galleries. Cragg created these objects by combining individual fragments of mixed materials by color or by shape, forming large images. An example of this technique is the work "Red Indian" (1982-1983).
"Red Indian". 1982
Other work "View of Britain from the North"(1981) (Britain Seen from the North), made from multi-colored scraps of various objects collected on the wall, is considered outstanding in creativity. The work represents the outlines of Great Britain on a white wall. At the same time, the image is oriented so that the northern part of the country is on the left, and the sculptor himself in the form of a multi-colored man looks at it. He seems to be looking at the country from the position of an outsider. View of Britain from the North is often interpreted as a commentary on the country's social and economic difficulties during Thatcherism, which had a particular influence in the north of Britain. This work is currently in the collection of the Tate Gallery.
"View of Britain from the North". 1981
By the way, many of Tony Cragg's works are highly social. Among his early wall paintings are those where individual fragments are folded into a policeman, then into a commando with a baton, who disperse demonstrations. Perhaps this is due to the British punk revolution of 1977-1979.
Creation of the work "Policeman"
In 1981 London and then Bristol hosted the groundbreaking Objects and Sculpture exhibition, which proclaimed that the use of "urban materials" in art was the norm. Our hero took part in it, as well as Richard Deacon, Bill Woodrow, Edward Allington, Anish Kapoor and other young sculptors.
And in 1982, the work was presented in the British pavilion at the Venice Biennale. And from that moment the exhibitions of the sculptor succeeded one another. The dynamic success of the innovative method was recognized by the prestigious Turner Prize in 1988.
Tony Cragg. Mature experiments with materials and form
In the early 90s, he began to explore more traditional sculpture materials - wood, bronze, glass, plaster, stone, steel and others.
"Broken Landscape". 1998
During the 90s he continued to develop two large groups of works, which are replenished today. These are "Early Forms" and "Reasonable Beings". “Early Forms” represents the possibility of various containers familiar to us - vases, chemical vessels, plastic bottles, etc. - relate in space and create new sculptures by playing with protrusions, depressions, folds and shadows.
Glass experiments
Winner of many prestigious prizes and awards. His large-scale sculptural work can be seen in many cities in European countries - primarily in his second hometown of Wuppertal, but also in Austria and others. At the same time, there is only one large-scale work in the UK - "Terris Novalis".
Work from the series "Early Forms"
In 2005, Moscow hosted a retrospective of one of the leading contemporary sculptors Tony Cragga at the Central House of Artists. The exhibition made enough noise and was one of the most visited at that moment - then, as, indeed, now, the capital was not spoiled by the visits of international star artists. One of the founders of the movement "New British Sculpture"(His associates included such artists as Anish Kapoor, Barry Flanagan and Anthony Gormley), who emerged in the early 1980s, came to the opening day, was extremely nice and handed out batches of interviews. Now St. Petersburg is next in line, where his exhibition will open on March 2 "Sculpture and drawings" at the General Headquarters of the State Hermitage Museum, year by year asserting itself in the status of the flagship of contemporary art in the northern capital.
1. False idols, Gremania, 2011
2. Elliptical column, Germany, 2012
Today, the 66-year-old sculptor lives in Germany, and his recognizable floating forms of steel and bronze, in which a thoughtful viewer distinguishes human profiles and elements, filled many squares and squares of the world, from Shanghai to Houston.
Stack of transparent glass, Germany, 2000
© Tony Cragg Studio, Fondazione Berengo
The exhibition in the Hermitage will also include works of this kind, as well as many graphics and works made from a variety of materials - glass, rubber, wood, concrete - created in different years under the influence of Italian arte povera ("poor art"). The use of these materials in his sculptural installations Cragg usually attributes to technical and artistic progress: “Hundreds of new materials appeared in the 20th century, and Marcel Duchamp realized at the beginning of the last century that anything can be a sculpture. Including an industrially made object, even if it is an ordinary urinal. And we just can't ignore all these innovations."
Monastery, Germany, 1988
© Tony Cragg Studio, Fondazione Berengo
For the first time in Russia, a large-scale exhibition of Tony Cragg was held ten years ago, it was in the Moscow Central House of Artists. "Heaviness and Tenderness" was the name of the retrospective, and this line, taken from a poem by Osip Mandelstam, perfectly describes what awaits guests now at the Hermitage's General Staff Building. The exposition includes more than 50 works of the once representative of the famous British "new wave" of the 1980s, and now one of the recognized classics of contemporary world art.
Sculptures (this word, perhaps, is best suited for the monumental works of the master, each of which weighs no less than a hundred kilograms, or even a whole ton) are created from a variety of materials. Some of them are traditional - wood, metal, stone. But how often have you seen sculptures made of rubber, plastic or, for example, kelavra - a bulletproof material that is used in the construction of airbuses?
In general, I do not sit and do not think what exactly I will create. Being in my workshop, I first catch the feeling of a certain work, and the choice of material already depends on this feeling. Although, of course, I like to use the material that can be controlled, - says the sculptor.
At the exhibition you can see the already legendary compositions "Monastery" and "Absolutely omnivorous". The first was created in 1988 and is an amazing combination of the material and spiritual worlds: the spiers of the monastery building are made as if from huge parts of a disassembled aircraft. The second work is the jaw of a fossil. The idea came to Cragg when he worked in London, next to the Paleontological Museum - the sculptor often went there and studied the skeletons of ancient people and animals for a long time. He was especially struck by the fact that just one small tooth is enough for scientists to get a lot of information about its "owner" in the process of research. The jaw created by Cragg does not pretend to absolute accuracy, but it looks no less impressive than real museum exhibits.
There are works of the last time in the exhibition. For example, sculptures "Dimension of a couple" or "False idols". It's hard to say what it looks like. If very approximately: either flowing caramel from an advertisement for chocolate bars, or cave stalagmites. Although comparisons are meaningless here - even at the first stages of his work, Cragg stated that he was interested in creating objects that do not exist in the world. Although the master does not refuse similarities with natural phenomena, rather, on the contrary.
I try to make the sculpture contain an energetic complexity, similar to that which is characteristic of nature. After all, what a person creates is very, very simple: we make something smooth or voluminous, round or square ... But the best creator is nature, and when a sculpture begins to reflect the complexity of the world, it's amazing! Cragg says.
The exhibition in the Hermitage also presents his drawings. For the most part, these are graphic sketches of future works, their approximate vision. The sculptor himself does not take them too seriously: "I do them all the time, this is already an automatic thing." Nevertheless, it is very entertaining to trace how the idea developed and the appearance of a particular sculpture changed. Within the framework of the exhibition, which will last until May 7, an educational program has been prepared with lectures by Tony Cragg, master classes and round tables.
Now an Englishman Anthony Douglas Cragg(b. 1949) is one of the most popular sculptors in the world. His works are not only presented in leading museums, but also installed on the streets and squares in a dozen cities - from Salzburg to Houston. The German Wuppertal, where Cragg moved to permanent residence from London long ago, provided him with a whole park for artistic experiments in public space.
Cragg's exhibition at the Hermitage's General Staff Building, academic in design, turned out to be relevant in Russia, which is experiencing an epidemic of bronze idols and mass production of three-dimensional images of mythical characters "with a clear portrait resemblance".
In the summer of 2012, the Hermitage was already doing the first light "grafting" of Cragg, exhibiting his Luca established in 2008. When carefully examining the shadow cast by the bronze abstraction, one could find an angle that gave out the silhouette of a particular model. And even earlier, in the carefree summer of 2005, Cragg's rigging team unloaded 50 sculptures with a total weight of 20 tons in the courtyard of the Central House of Artists in Moscow, and the master opened the exhibition Heaviness and tenderness. There were no other such personal shows of living classics of contemporary art.
However, the curator of the current Hermitage exhibition Dmitry Ozerkov avoids obvious topicality. He is interested in the sculptor's work on the boundary of the realistic and the abstract thinned over the 20th century, Cragg's endless variability of forms, his search for a balance of both the physical and the metaphorical, existential. It is no coincidence that many of Cragg's works resemble rocks carefully crafted by thousands of years of sand and wind.
In addition, it is customary to look for historical rhymes in the Hermitage, but in the case of Cragg, the choice is not very rich. But the time range is huge - from stone Neolithic sculptures to the "selections" of Russian avant-garde artists. Gothic can be added to them, which was successfully tested last year, when the sculptures of the master were erected on the roof of the Milan Cathedral on the occasion of Expo 2015.
Many years ago, Cragg formulated a manifesto for his creativity: "The original interest that inspired me to create images and objects was - and still is - the creation of objects that do not exist in the natural or functional world, which can reflect and transmit information and sensations from the world and my own existence."
Especially for the Hermitage, the sculptor himself selected 55 of his works from different materials. Earliest - wall relief African cultural myth(1984) - assembled from plastic parts and completely different from the current Cragg. Monastery It is designed from round objects that have served their time - electric rotors and other metal parts of machines and mechanisms. Absolutely omnivorous in the form of huge "teeth" - made of white plastic, Concentration- Carbon Kevlar. Clear glass stack molded from glass vessels piled on top of each other and, it seems, will crumble from breathing. Another 11 glass sculptures were made last year at the Berengo Studio (Italy). And Cragg's 24 drawings in the exposition show how he seeks and finds on paper the future delicate balance in the solid material on which the world still rests.
