Sofia Bagdasarova is an art critic, journalist and popular blogger. This year, her art blog won the award for the best Longread LiveJournal. Today Sophia is ranked sixth in the ranking of LiveJournal users. In an interview with Kulturomania, she shares her thoughts on the phenomenon of the popularity of her blog, on how to write about art in an interesting way, and on cultural journalism in Russia today.
- Congratulations on receiving the award. Please tell us how your blog appeared and how it gained such popularity?
Indeed, my blog received the NeForum Award-2017, where one of the nominations was "Best Longread LiveJournal". It was in it that my "Blog of a naughty art historian" (shakko-kitsune.lj.ru) took first place. To be honest, I myself am surprised at how popular it has become: the number of its views is about 40-50 thousand per day (this is about the fifth or sixth place in the general LJ top). Probably the secret of success is that, first of all, I am, of course, not a “blogger”, but a professional journalist with an art history education. I have been writing about art for various publications for more than ten years. And my blog existed all this time in parallel with the main work, but it began to gain noticeable popularity in 2017. Previously, I used it more as an auxiliary platform: I posted notes and my old articles, I kept a professional archive on this platform, so to speak. When preparing materials, funny facts and pictures often come across, which I also added to my blog. After a while, these interesting little things and details began to attract more and more attention. Readers liked the personal attitude to art, emotionality. The fact is that when a journalist writes articles for a certain publication, he is restrained by the format, style, internal censorship - whether it is a story about the opening of an exhibition or about an artist. And in a personal blog there is space for expression, for individual and, of course, for humor.
- That is, the secret is in the presentation of the material?
Not only. I write about those topics in art that are rarely covered in serious publications. However, in the West they have long been in the scientific field (for example, you can recall the "History of Ugliness" by Umberto Eco), we are still poor with this. And people are interested in everything unusual! Thus, I came up with the Hateful Art Criticism column (named after Tarantino's The Hateful Eight). In it, I began to publish all sorts of shocking things, terrifying works of art - and not modern, but exclusively classics. The first major flow of readers, it seems to me, was attracted by these stories, and then they began to read other, more “calm” entries.
- It turns out that people are attracted, first of all, by something forbidden?
I would call these topics rather "marginal". They have always existed, take the same ancient myths. But basically, when studying the history of art, people are guided by the usual, traditional program. And that is why most viewers believe that the classics are boring and dull. But if you show art from a different, more sensual and human side, people become interested. It's not just about the "dark side" that is present in every person. Just an unexpected point of view, a look at the pictures with humor is a way to eliminate fatigue from the annoying “you need to be enlightened!”. Thus, by changing the format, I show the same art, but I do it in a non-boring way, with the help of a popular language. This is what shifts the perspective from the familiar to the exciting. For the same reason, my artistic riddles turned out to be in demand: I encrypt the names of paintings or the names of artists, and readers solve them with pleasure. Such materials are gaining three hundred to five hundred comments. This way they get to know works that they have never heard of. The game is fun and rewarding.
- What blog topics were the most popular? And how did they appear?
When I realized that I had a fairly large permanent audience that was not averse to learning about more serious things, I came up with the “Questions about Art” section. Readers who are not art professionals send questions for her, and the simpler and more unexpected they are, the more interesting it is to answer them. The very posing of the question makes it possible to answer in an unusual way. This is how the post-answer “Why is Shilov a bad artist, and Bryullov a good one, are they similar?” Today it is my most popular text, about 400 thousand views. Compared to You Tube records, of course, it’s a trifle, but for materials about painting, this is very cool. Or, “Tell me, what is 'contemporary art'? Just in a nutshell, please” and “Why is Repin cheaper than Malevich and Kandinsky?”. This, in theory, is impossible to answer seriously, but in the end some fundamental principles are revealed. In addition, I put my own feelings into the answers - thank God, the blog format is designed for this. And since I am an emotional person, this personal attitude of readers is also touching.
- And if the topic is serious? Is there a lowering of the bar here, because art history is a serious science?
This risk is always present. Therefore, I deliberately do not touch on things whose simplification could humiliate me or offend someone else. For example, I usually don't write about Christian art, because the reduction of style in a story about it can sometimes sound vulgar and even sacrilegious. But almost every masterpiece can be told in such a way that it will be remembered. My position is this: the world today is so immersed in a wide variety of information on all sorts of topics that it is necessary to seize the opportunity to talk about art, and not about social life or politics. And appreciate.
Where do you get those interesting facts from? After all, they do not lead to the "set" of academic education.
Basically, I use English-language books and articles, make extracts of memorable details, the names of artists, about which I need to dig deeper. And I use these working notes when I need to write a new post. It's a good habit not to throw gold into the dumps, but to put everything in a piggy bank so that you can use it later.
- Recently, popular science blogs and art portals have become very popular ...
Yes it's true. Perhaps this is a continuation of the same processes, the visible symptom of which was the already famous “Queue for Serov”. But although they say that this is due to the crisis and impoverishment, I would not associate this phenomenon with these factors. In my opinion, the fact is that there are so many options for entertainment, simpler needs have already been satisfied, so “elite” ways of spending time have become available and, most importantly, are of interest to more people. Today you can afford to download any movie or book. This means that you can afford a certain increase in self-education, something that will improve you. After all, thanks to the tradition laid down by education, we are used to the fact that teaching and culture are good. And when museums became more comfortable and open, the audience responded, especially in large cities.
- Are your readers really changing due to the information received in the blog?
I would like to think so, especially since I regularly receive thanks for this in the comments. And I have almost managed to convince the main body of readers that the avant-garde is good! The next goal is to explain contemporary art, but I'm afraid to take it. In a way, my writing has become, through regularity, an online art course. But it's hard when it comes to the beginning of the twentieth century. If in the West children are taught from an early age that expressionism and abstractionism are just as important creative trends as their predecessors, then our education is still “realistocentric”. This is not only the heritage of the curriculum, but also these are the features of the national character: we are rather closed and conservative, we are more pleasant and calmer to deal with understandable things. Therefore, I'm already tired of answering standard remarks like "My child will draw better than Malevich." But art cannot be bad, you just need to learn more and better about it.
What developments in cultural journalism in Russia could be called encouraging? If we pay attention to the comments of media readers, we see that performances and contemporary risks cause much more reader activity than vernissages.
It is true that people react more actively to newspaper articles about contemporary artists than about exhibitions of old masters. But this, as a rule, is just outrage, and not "reviews of a work of art." People are offended by these actions, artistic acts that affect the surrounding everyday life, which is why they talk about scandalous, outrageous actionism the most (well, that's how it was conceived). At the same time, if interest in news about culture (judging by the budgets allocated to editorial offices) is declining, then attention to the entertainment format, on the contrary, is growing. Getting information in the form of a game, video, infographics intrigues the modern reader. We see the same process in museums that offer entertainment, interactive programs, multimedia - and the number of visitors is increasing. Journalists have to write more and more exciting - what in other topics is called "adding yellowness." The format of a scientific article has become almost completely uninteresting to a wide audience, and if we do not want to lock ourselves in an ivory tower in order to look down from there, then we need to look for new formats. And although serious scientists condemn the popularizers of science, there is some kind of hoarding in this. After all, knowledge is a treasure, and when you share it, you yourself do not get poorer, but, on the contrary, you get richer.
Ekaterina Kim Photo: Dmitry Rozhkov / Wikipedia
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Bagdasarova S. Disgusting Art. Humor and horror masterpieces of painting. - M.: Eksmo, 2018. - 296 p. ISBN 978-5-04-088717-0.
Hateful Art is a new look at the classic world art that has conquered the whole world. Let's look at it from the perspective of the Criminal Code, shall we? Sofia Bagdasarova (Shakko) is a non-trivial character in the art world, as well as the winner of the "Best LiveJournal Blog" award in 2017. Famous plots of mythology, told in such detail that you involuntarily grab your heart and the Criminal Code all the time! Yes, in childhood we definitely didn’t read such things about heroes and gods ... Cannibals, sexual fetishists and murderers: it turns out that they are the characters of the masterpieces that fill the halls of museums around the world. After this book, you will begin to look at painting in a completely new way, seeing hidden stories and secret motives everywhere. And so that it is not so scary, all this is presented through the prism of humor. But do not worry, no kindling and insulting the feelings of believers - only aesthetic and moral.
Foreword
In many museums around the world you can find paintings by famous artists of the 15th-19th centuries, which amaze with their content. Something bad is clearly happening on them - murders or dismemberments, freaks or indecent, in our opinion, actions are depicted. To understand what exactly is happening on the canvas, you need to seriously delve into history or literature, remember long-forgotten mythical heroes.
Moreover, it turns out that many of these terrifying characters - criminals and victims, roam from picture to picture for centuries, from antiquity and the Renaissance to romanticism and modernity. For centuries, artists have retained an interest in these subjects, despite the huge number of other, much more “decent” and beautiful stories. Depending on the era, the reasons for this interest change, but their main source remains unchanged - the need to comprehend again and again what the most terrible thing can create for one person to another, the need to know the demons of one's own soul.
This book is dedicated to such cross-cutting characters with whom horrors are created in the paintings of both Rubens and the Pre-Raphaelites.
And since the topic is painfully tragic and cruel, and in some cases downright disgusting (for example, castration or cannibalism), a special style was chosen to present it, reducing pathos and contributing to “estrangement” - humor. This literary technique is well known to the Russian-speaking reader: with its help, such popular books as “The General History, Processed by the “Satyricon”” and “The Funny Bible” by Leo Taxil were created (and it goes back to the “Conversations of the Gods” by Lucian of the 2nd century BC .)
But humor is needed not only to distract from especially bloody scenes - thanks to the introduction of modern realities, it becomes easier for the reader to understand the background of many ancient stories and to feel that human nature, despite the change of clothes and religions, remains unchanged for centuries.
FRAGMENT
The Colchis princess Medea had a magical gift, an aquiline nose and a determined character. Any observant person would notice psychopathic inclinations in her immediately. When the Greek prince Jason came to her in the Caucasus, Medea fell in love with him and helped to rob her own father. They stole the Golden Fleece.
The father, King Aeacus, rushed in pursuit of the Argo ship, on which Jason, Medea and Fleece were sailing. Almost caught up. But Medea, who was very proud of her foresight, in addition to her cosmetic bag, jewelry box and passport, took with her her younger brother Apsirt. When her father's ship came close to the Argo and began to prepare for boarding, Medea brought her brother on deck and, making sure that her father could distinguish faces from her side, cut her brother's throat.
Then she, as the myths tell in detail, cut the body into pieces. And she began to throw these pieces overboard at intervals of 10-15 minutes, which, with a ship speed of 3 knots, gave them a sufficient head start. Because the poor father, of course, began to slow down in order to fish out pieces of his son's body from the sea.
A moment - and she thrusts her sword into the side of an innocent.
The body is torn apart, pieces of torn flesh
It hurries to scatter in the field, where it is not easy to find them.
And so that the father knows everything, he attaches to the top of the rock
His pale hands with a bleeding head -
So that this new grief delays the father, so that the remains
Looking for a son, he delayed the path full of sorrows.
By the apt definition of the Quantico FBI profilers, Medea is a classic organized non-social killer plus a highly organized psychopath. But Jason did not read the orientation they had compiled, deciding that such behavior on the part of a girl in love with him was completely normal. The dead boy was not his brother, but hers, so no one cares.
Then there was another alarming episode - Jason's uncle did not want to give him the throne, it was necessary to liquidate the old man. Medea cheated his daughters, showed them beautiful witchcraft - she cut an old ram into pieces and threw it into the cauldron. A young lamb jumped out of there. Most likely, it was even a banal sleight of hand a la Ostap Bender, and not magic.
Then he says to the girls - and let me rejuvenate your dad in the same way? Only it will be necessary to cut it into pieces for this. The girls believed. The poor old man was dismembered and thrown into a magic cauldron. Naturally, no handsome young man rose from there. The throne was vacant, Jason took it. Certainly, this woman had a morbid propensity for sawing human bodies into pieces.
So, not noticing anything, Jason and Medea got married. Time passed...
Sofia Bagdasarova. PUSHKIN'S MOST BEAUTIFUL BELOVED The great Russian poet lived in an era of extraordinary beauties - and was extremely amorous. Our list does not include his wife Natalya Goncharova (to add intrigue), Olenina and Volkonskaya (they were not famous for their beauty) - and even Kern (there is no reliable portrait). We have not yet begun to distinguish between those with whom he entered into a real love affair, and those for whom he simply sighed romantically (you will never establish the truth anyway). Ekaterina Bakunina Covered transparent waves Throw on her quivering chest, So that she could breathe under it, Wanted to breathe secretly. The elder sister of the lyceum comrade Pushkin. The young poet was smitten with her back at the Lyceum, chose her as his muse, devoted 23 poems and recalled in works until 1825. She became the maid of honor of Empress Elizabeth Alekseevna, was engaged in painting - in an amateur way, but she took lessons from Alexander Bryullov. She married late, at the age of 39, to her longtime admirer, cousin Anna Kern. She settled in the village with her husband, raised children, painted and was happy. Elizaveta Vorontsova It's all over: there is no connection between us. For the last time, embracing your knees, I uttered sorrowful songs. The wife of the Novorossiysk Governor-General M.S. Vorontsov, Pushkin's superior during his southern exile. Apparently, the poet's passion was one of the reasons for the hostility that Vorontsov felt for him, who eventually sent Pushkin out of sight from Odessa to Mikhailovskoye. Whether this passion was unrequited or not is unknown. In any case, a lot of Pushkin's manuscripts are depicted with the profile of the beautiful Elizabeth Ksaveryevna, and scientists associate a huge number of poems with her name. But, most likely, Vorontsova and her real lover, cousin Alexander Raevsky, used the poet to avert their eyes. Perhaps it was from this connection that her daughter Sophia was born. The Governor-General eventually found out about this and got rid of Raevsky. He was also expelled - for talking against the government. The husband, having eliminated the rival, was still crushed - however, this did not prevent him from having a long relationship with his wife's best friend Olga Naryshkina, the sister of the beautiful Sophia Kiseleva. Vera Vyazemskaya “So, goodbye. I am at your feet and I am shaking your hand in the English manner, because you would never want me to kiss it for you. The wife of one of Pushkin's best friends, Pyotr Vyazemsky. With her, he was sometimes more frank than with her husband and, according to the memoirs of contemporaries, he really loved her. Vyazemskaya called him her "adopted son" and helped in every possible way. After the fatal duel, she was almost incessantly at the poet's bedside. This girl of small stature with a fiery piercing look and a little indecent at that time “pure loud laughter” got married as follows: somehow a certain girl threw a shoe into the pond. All the gentlemen, including Prince Vyazemsky, rushed to pull him out. Vyazemsky fell ill and could not leave the estate, they looked after him - and Vera was the most zealous of all. To stop gossip, they were forced to get married, and Vyazemsky got married while sitting in an armchair. The marriage was amicable, they had eight children. Avdotya Golitsyna I almost hated my fatherland - But yesterday I saw Golitsyna And I am reconciled with my fatherland. The mistress of the salon, which Pushkin often visited in the first years after the Lyceum. Vyazemsky wrote that the poet "was a little bewitched by her", and Karamzin that Pushkin "fell mortally in love". Indeed, what young man could escape the charm of this graceful princess with a soft voice, whom her contemporaries called Princesse nocturne (“princess of the night”) and Princesse de minuit (“princess of midnight”), because during the day she slept and did not receive anyone before 10 pm . The beautiful black-browed and black-eyed princess lived separately from her husband. And although she was happy for many years in connection with M.P. Dolgoruky, they were hindered by the fact that her husband did not give her a divorce. Dolgoruky died in the war, and later Golitsyna, in turn, refused her husband when he wished to marry Alexandra Smirnova-Rosset. Natalya Golitsyna She alone would have understood My obscure verses; One would burn in the heart with the Lamp of pure love. Granddaughter and namesake of the famous "Queen of Spades", daughter of the Moscow Governor-General. A former maid of honor and the wife of a major general, she kept one of the most fashionable salons in St. Petersburg, where the whole world gathered. There is an assumption that in the 1820s Pushkin was fascinated by her. Later, Golitsyna stopped accepting the poet, considering him not entirely decent. In any case, it is known "about the gaiety and pranks of Pushkin in the maiden" of her house. He, in turn, called her fat and uncouth (however, in French, so it did not sound so rude). In later years, sharp-tongued Alexandra Smirnov-Rosset and Dolly Ficquelmont called her a pretentious and old coquette. However, others write that until the end of her 95-year-old life, this dense woman remained the owner of a cheerful sociable character and amazing kindness. Aglaya Davydova And you could believe me, How ingenuous Agnes? In what novel did you find that a rake died of love? Daughter of the French emigrant Duke de Grammont, wife of cousin Denis Davydov. The beauty was the subject of Pushkin's keen passion in 1820-1821, which later resulted in ruthless and indecent epigrams ("Another had my Aglaya ...", etc.). In addition, then the poet also became interested in her 12-year-old daughter Adele. This pretty, windy and coquettish lady, a real Frenchwoman, was looking for in the noise of entertainment means "not to die of boredom in barbaric Russia." Pushkin compared her husband to Shakespeare's Falstaff and called him "the majestic cuckold." After widowing, already middle-aged Aglaya married General Horace Sebastiani, Minister of Foreign Affairs of France. Elena Zavadovskaya Everything in her is harmony, everything is marvelous, Everything is higher than peace and passions; She rests bashfully In her solemn beauty. One of the most brilliant high-society beauties of her time, she, as even women admitted, "killed everyone with her regal, cold beauty." Most likely, it was Pushkin who described her as the brilliant Nina Voronskaya - “Cleopatra of the Neva”. Tall, stately, with regular features and dazzling skin, she resembled a marble statue. When General Yermolov described the appearance of Natalia Pushkina in the world and the effect of her beauty, he especially emphasized that "here, many find her incomparably better than even the beautiful Zavadovskaya." Over time, Zavadovskaya left her husband and shone at balls in Paris, and over the years, as her friends noted with surprise, she changed little. Agrafena Zakrevskaya She sometimes appears And past all the conditions of light Strives until she loses her strength, Like a lawless comet In the circle of calculated luminaries. For the beauty of her face and figure, she received the nickname "copper Venus". The kind, but capricious and spoiled granddaughter of a gold miner, Zakrevskaya had a windy character and was a laugher, however, prone to hysterical sobs. Pushkin became her close acquaintance in 1828 and dedicated several poems to her. She confided her heart secrets to him and, as he himself wrote to Vyazemsky, “initiated him into her pimps.” When her husband became the mayor of Moscow, the family moved to the old capital. Zakrevskaya also gathered young people around her, and the ladies of Moscow avoided her company, which did not upset her at all. She spent her old age with her husband in Italy. Sofya Kiseleva “I superstitiously translated the story of a young woman into verse: I adapted the sounds of her sweet and ingenuous lips to the gentle laws of verse.” Born Princess Pototskaya, she was the daughter of a Polish prince by a Greek adventurer. It is believed that it was Kiseleva who told the poet the story of the kidnapped Princess Pototskaya, which formed the basis of the Bakhchisarai Fountain. We will not find individual poems of the poet dedicated to Kiseleva: he did not waste his energy in vain. Not without reason, in a letter to her husband, she honestly wrote: “If you see Pushkin, tell him that I am learning the Russian language in order to read his poems.” This stately beauty eventually broke up with her husband and went abroad. But before that, the prudent husband arranged her affairs in such a way that “she could not go bankrupt, even if she wanted to.” Sophia shone in Parisian society, and in her old age her main passion was playing cards. She could no longer move on her own, and every day the servant took the old woman to the casino, where she spent the whole day.
