The editor-in-chief of our website, Mikhail Statsyuk, shortly before the opening of the exhibition “Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty” in the State Hermitage, visited its author Jan Fabre in his creative workshop Troubleyn in Antwerp and discussed what to expect from his exhibition in Russia.
The artist's office and at the same time his workshop with rehearsal rooms settled in the building of the former theater, which was abandoned after the fire. In front of the entrance there is a sign “Only art can break your heart. Only kitsch can make you rich.” In the lobby, I trip over a hatch, a work by Robert Wilson that kind of connects the Belgian workshop with his theater academy, the Watermill Center.
On the second floor, while we are waiting for Jan, for some reason the smells of a freshly cooked omelette or fried eggs are heard - behind the next wall is a kitchen, the wall of which was painted by Marina Abramovich with pig's blood.
Art is literally everywhere here - even the toilet is indicated by a hanging neon hand that blinks, showing either two fingers or one. This is the work of artist Mix Popes, in which the "V" or Peace gesture refers to the feminine, and the middle finger to the masculine.
When Fabre appears in the hall, lighting a Lucky Strike cigarette, a heart-rending childish cry is heard from somewhere below: “No, this is not a rehearsal of my new performance,” the artist jokes.
Tell us right away how you persuaded Mikhail Borisovich?
Didn't have to be persuaded! Six or seven years ago, Mikhail Borisovich Piotrovsky and Dmitry Ozerkov, head of the Hermitage 20/21 project, saw my exhibition at the Louvre, and I think they liked it. Three years later, we met with Mr. Piotrovsky, and he suggested that I make an exhibition in the Hermitage. I went to Russia and realized that for this I would need a lot of space. Barbara de Koninck and I ( Artistic director of the exhibition - Approx. ed.) immediately stopped at the hall with the Flemings - next to them I look like a gnome born in the country of giants. I grew up near Rubens' house in Antwerp. At the age of six he tried to copy his paintings. The Hermitage seemed to me the repository of the great Flemings, who fascinated me. I wanted to build a "dialogue" with the giants of Flanders' past.
With whom are you building a dialogue?
For the Van Dyck Room, I created a series of marble bas-reliefs "My Queens". This is a kind of allusion to his ceremonial portraits of important royals of that time. “My queens” are the patrons and patrons of my work, made of Caribbean marble. But I do it jokingly, because my friends are in clown caps.
A new series of drawings "Carnival" about the celebration of life and fun - exactly like the church rituals that my Catholic mother introduced me to as a child - a reference to the Hermitage paintings by Pieter Brueghel the Younger. The mixture of paganism with Christianity is an important element related to the traditions of the Belgian school, which are important to me. After all, we are a small country and have always been under someone's influence or possession - German, Spanish, French. These “features” are part of our personal history.
My "blue" canvases ( we are talking about "Bic-art" - a series of works "Blue Hour", made with a blue pen of the Bic brand - Approx. ed.), which are also presented in the Hermitage, are made in a very special technique. I photograph the painting, then use ink to add about seven layers of blue, a special chemical color that changes with light to make the painting work.
Separately, at the General Staff Building of the Hermitage, I present the video project “Love is a supreme power” (“Love is a power supreme”). Globally speaking, my entire exhibition was created in the shape of a butterfly: if the works in the Winter Palace are wings, then the video in the General Staff building is its body. Thanks to this, I want to combine the building of the "new" Hermitage, where the film will be shown, with the "old" one, where my paintings are exhibited. We plan to donate this film and several other works to the museum.
There is a lot of rubbish in contemporary art, but even in Rubens' time there was a lot of rubbish - where is the "garbage" now and where is Rubens?
"Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty" - is this about you?
The name of the exhibition has its own romantic idea, which consists precisely in protecting the sensitivity and sensitivity that beauty keeps in itself. On the other hand, it is also the image of a valiant knight who fights for good causes. But despair is more about me as an artist. Deep down, I always fear "defeat" or "failure."
My family was not very rich. For my birthday, my father gave me small castles and fortresses. From my mother, I received old lipsticks, which she no longer used, so that I could paint. It seems to me that my romantic soul and the desire to always create something of my own grew precisely from childhood. This is partly why the definition of me as a “knight” appeared. But I myself am an artist who believes in hope, no matter how it sounds.
What is your mission as a knight?
Promote classical art. It is the basis of everything, although sometimes it seems more restrained than modern. If we turn to history, classical art has always been under someone's supervision, whether it be the church or the monarchy. A paradox, but at the same time it - art - played with them, itself limited.
In general, there is only one art in the world - good. It doesn't matter if it's classic or modern, there are no boundaries between them. Therefore, it is important to teach people to recognize classical art so that they can better understand contemporary art. Of course, I do not deny that there is a lot of rubbish in the latter now, but, listen, there was a lot of rubbish in the time of Rubens - but where is this rubbish now and where is Rubens!?
Recommended for 16+. Jan Fabre is one of the most fertile and important artists of his generation. He has created a number of new works especially for this exhibition numbering more than 200 artworks.
The carnival giant in Brussels
Series
2016
20.3 x 16.8 cm
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
The Gilles of Binche in full regalia on Shrove Tuesday
FALSIFICATION DE LA FÊTE SECRÈTE IV Series
2016
20.3 x 16.8 cm
HB pencil, color pencil and crayons on chromo
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp I
2016
124 x 165.3 cm
Ballpoint (bic) on Poly G-flm (Bonjet High Gloss white flm 200gr), dibond
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
The Appearance and Disappearance of Christ I
2016
124 x 165.3 cm
Ballpoint (bic) on Poly G-film (Bonjet High Gloss white film 200gr), dibond
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
The loyal guide of vanity (II / III)
Series
2016
227 x 172 cm
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
The loyal ecstasy of death
Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitas Series
2016
227 x 172 cm
Jewel beetle wing-cases on wood
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
Els of Bruges
My queens Series
2016
White Carrara-marble
200 x 150 x 11.5 cm
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
Ivana of Zagreb
My queens Series
2016
White Carrara-marble
200 x 150 x 11.5 cm
© Angelos bvba/ Jan Fabre
Jan Fabre (Antwerp, 1958), a visual artist, theater artist and author, uses his works to speculate in a loud and tangible manner about life and death, physical and social transformations, as well as about the cruel and intelligent imagination which is present in both animals and humans.
For more than thirty-five years Jan Fabre has been one of the most innovative and important figures on the international contemporary art scene. As a visual artist, theater maker and author he hascreated a highly personal world with its own rules and laws, as well as its own characters, symbols, and recurring motifs. Influenced by research carried out by the entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre (1823-1915), he became fascinated by the world of insects and other creatures at a very young age. In the late seventies, while studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts and the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and Crafts in Antwerp, he explored ways of extending his research to the domain of the human body. His own performances and actions, from 1976 to the present, have been essential to his artistic journey. Jan Fabre's language involves a variety of materials and is located in a world of his own, populated by bodies in a balance between the opposites that define natural existence. Metamorphosis is a key concept in any approach to Jan Fabre’s body of thought, in which human and animal life are in constant interaction. He unfolds his universe through his author's texts and nocturnal notes, published in the volumes of his Night Diary. As a consilience artist, he has merged performance art and theatre. Jan Fabre has changed the idiom of the theater by bringing real time and real action to the stage. After his historic eight-hour production "This is theater like it was to be expected and foreseen" (1982) and four-hour production "The power of theatrical madness" (1984), he raised his work to a new level in the exceptional and monumental "Mount Olympus. To glorify the cult of tragedy, a 24-hour performance" (2015).
Jan Fabre earned the recognition of a worldwide audience with "Tivoli" castle (1990) and with permanent public works in sites of historical importance, such as "Heaven of Delight" (2002) at the Royal Palace in Brussels, "The Gaze Within ( The Hour Blue)" (2011 – 2013) in the Royal Staircase of the Museum of Fine Arts in Brussels and his latest installation in the Antwerp Cathedral of "The man who bears the cross" (2015).
He is known for solo exhibitions such as "Homo Faber" (KMSKA, Antwerp, 2006), "Hortus / Corpus" (Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, 2011) and "Stigmata. Actions and Performances", 1976–2013 (MAXXI, Rome, 2013; M HKA, Antwerp, 2015; MAC, Lyon, 2016). He was the first living artist to present a large-scale exhibition at the Louvre, Paris ("L'ange de la métamorphose", 2008). The well-known series "The Hour Blue" (1977 – 1992) was displayed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna (2011), in the Musée d'Art Moderne of Saint-Etienne (2012) and in the Busan Museum of Art (2013 ). His research on “the sexiest part of the body”, namely the brain, was presented in the solo shows "Anthropology of a planet" (Palazzo Benzon, Venice, 2007), "From the Cellar to the Attic, From the Feet to the Brain" (Kunsthaus Bregenz, 2008; Arsenale Novissimo, Venice, 2009), and "PIETAS" (Nuova Scuola Grande di Santa Maria della Misericordia, Venice, 2011; Parkloods Park Spoor Noord, Antwerp, 2012). The two series of mosaics made with the wing cases of the jewel scarab "Tribute to Hieronymus Bosch in Congo" (2011 – 2013) and "Tribute to Belgian Congo" (2010– 2013) were shown at the PinchukArtCentre in Kiev (2013) and the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Lille (2013) and will travel to 's-Hertogenbosch in 2016 for the 500th anniversary celebration of Hieronymus Bosch.
As emphasized by the artist and acknowledged by critics and researchers, his art goes back to the traditions of classic Flemish art, which he admires. Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens are important inspirations, and the visitors will (or won't) see it for themselves. For the exhibition period, Fabre's works will make part of the museum's permanent exposition and enter in a dialogue with the absolute international masterpieces. The idea of the exhibition appeared after Jan Fabre had a large scale solo exhibition Jan Fabre. L "ange de la metamorphose at the Flanders and the Netherlands Rooms at the Louvre in 2008.
At the Hermitage halls, this “sketch” will develop into a major art event that is sure to spark a great interest and many debates, which are to be held at another intellectual discussion marathon. The exhibition will come with a series of lectures, master classes and round-table discussions. The exposition will air eight films, including the performance film Love is the Power Supreme (2016) featuring the artist, which was filmed in the Winter Palace in June 2016. This work will remain in the collection of The State Hermitage Collection. As a grandson of a famous entomologist, Jan Fabre widely uses the wildlife aesthetics. He uses beetle shells, animal skeletons and horns, as well as stuffed animals and images of animals in various materials. The list of unusual materials goes beyond that and covers blood and BIC blue ink.
The exhibition has been organized by the Contemporary Art Department at the State Hermitage in a frame of the Hermitage 20/21 Project. It is under patronage of V St. Petersburg International Cultural Forum.
On October 21, the Hermitage opened the exhibition Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty, prepared by the Department of Contemporary Art of the State Hermitage within the framework of the Hermitage 20/21 project. One of the greatest masters of modern European art, the Belgian artist Jan Fabre presented two hundred and thirty works in the Hermitage: graphics, sculpture, installations and films. The exhibition caused an ambiguous reaction among museum visitors, which indicates the unconditional interest of the St. Petersburg audience in the author's creative statements. The Hermitage receives letters from museum visitors criticizing Fabre's works and asking them 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 have become accustomed to associate with contemporary art, but also in the Main Museum Complex?
Indeed, the work 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 side by side with masterpieces Rubens. According to the curator of the project D. Ozerkov, “this is not an invasion. Fabre, a contemporary artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to kneel before the old masters, before beauty. This exhibition is not about Fabre, it is about the energies of the Hermitage in its four contexts: old master paintings, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived” (The Art Newspaper Russia).
Photo by Alexander Lavrentiev
Shimmering green compositions by the Belgian, created in the genre of vanitas vanitatum (vanity of vanities) on the motif of memento mori (remember death), are being introduced into the walls of the New Hermitage (Hall of Flemish and Dutch Painting). Jan Fabre is a 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 countertops, and of the decor of the Malachite Drawing Room in the Winter Palace.
Photo by Kirill Ikonnikov
His drawings with the "Bic" pen are close to the lapis lazuli of the vases of the Great Clearances of the New Hermitage.
The laconic and austere reliefs of Fabre with the "queens" side by side with the ceremonial portraits of the English nobility and court ladies by Anthony van Dyck.
Fabre's neighborhood with Snyders' "Shops" is fortunate, the modern artist does not quote the Flemish master, but only carefully adds the skull motif - an obvious meaning for the art historian: the theme of vanity and vanity of being.
Photo by Valery Zubarov
Fabre himself, at a meeting with Petersburgers in the Atrium of the General Staff, said that his works in the art halls of Flanders are designed to make the audience "stop, give time to art." “Visitors walk past Rubens as if they were walking past the windows of a large store, they do not look at the details,” says the artist.
– I appeal to all the services of the State Hermitage! As an animal rights activist and volunteer, I consider a stuffed dog on hooks unacceptable for parading to all age categories and detrimental to the child's psyche! The exhibition of Jan Fabre is a lack of culture. This is especially immoral in the light of the huge response to the cases of animal husbandry in Khabarovsk. Please remove stuffed animals from the exhibition!
Jan Fabre has repeatedly told reporters that the dogs and cats that appear in his installations are homeless animals that died on the roads. Fabre tries to give them a new life in art and thus conquer death. “Many of my works are devoted 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 says: "The artist is a stray dog."
Fabre calls for a careful attitude towards animals, which have accompanied mankind for many centuries, entering history and mythology. Today, the attitude of man towards animals is consumerist. The cats are left in the dachas. Old dogs are kicked out of the house. Emphasizing cats and dogs in the old art, Fabre shows that in all their qualities they are similar to people, and therefore their love and joy, their sickness and death is mean to be forced out of our consciousness.
Presenting stuffed animals, Fabre, together with animal rights activists around the world, opposes the consumer attitude towards them.
Often we do not love animals, but our love for them. Calling them our little brothers, we often do not realize how cruel we are to them. We are ready to get rid of them as soon as possible, should the animal get sick or grow old. Jan Fabre opposes this. He turns the bodies of animals he found along the highways, which were hit by cars, from the waste products of a consumer society into a reproach to human cruelty.
- Why couldn't Fabre use artificial materials instead of stuffed animals? Modern technologies make them completely indistinguishable from the real ones.
“Why marble and not plastic?” Fabre asks, 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 the Russian Formalists about the unity of form and content.
For Jan Fabre, the “erotic relationship with the material”, the sensual component, are very important. He recalls that the Flemish artists were alchemists, using blood and crushed human bones to make paints. 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.” Creating his monks for the installation "Umbraculum", Fabre uses bones - 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.
The Knights' Hall of the New Hermitage presents horses from the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal of Nicholas I (these are horse skins stretched over a wooden base). In the Winter Palace of Peter I (Desk of Peter the Great) a stuffed dog is exhibited, this is a Italian greyhound, one of the favorites of the emperor. Their presence in the Hermitage does not seem strange or provocative to visitors, it does not cause fear and indignation.
Photo by Valery Zubarov
The artist uses certain means, based on the principle of internal necessity and his own super-task. For the perception of contemporary art, a cursory glance is not enough; it requires (from each of us) inner work and spiritual effort. This effort is sometimes associated with overcoming stereotypes, prejudices, fear, ideological and psychological clichés, and religious attitudes. It requires courage and patience, forces us to expand the boundaries of our perception. Contemporary art is something for which one cannot be fully prepared. Fabre himself says that his work “is connected with the search for reconciliation and love. Love is a search for intense dialogue and courtesy."
Photo by Valery Zubarov
Text: Alexandra Tsibulya, Dmitry Ozerkov
We also invite you to familiarize yourself with the following materials:
“Our goal has been achieved, people are talking about protecting animals”: Dmitry Ozerkov on the scandal around stuffed animals at an exhibition in the Hermitage (Paper)
Yesterday the Hermitage opened an exhibition "" by the most famous Belgian artist of contemporary art of our time, as well as a 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 Hermitage's historical and contemporary collections.
This summer, multi-ton gold 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 Fabre's high-profile theatrical premiere took place in Berlin, a 24-hour continuous marathon "Mount Olympus", which was attended all the leading representatives of the world theater. The exhibition "Jan Fabre: Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty" in the Hermitage entered the top five most significant events for Russia this autumn in the field of contemporary art.
“It was a very long project and a long conversation,” says the exhibition curator, head of the State Hermitage Museum's Department of Contemporary Art, Dmitry Ozerkov. “We understood from the beginning that the exhibition should be a dialogue between a Flemish artist and Flemish art. And at the same time talking about chivalry, about medieval culture. Therefore, in a natural way, the route 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 cannot remove any paintings from the permanent exhibition. Jan Fabre is embedded in the middle, in the piers - this is the condition of the game, the main difficulty and, it seems to me, the main success in the result.
Jan Fabre himself, drawing inspiration from the work of Peter Paul Rubens, as he repeatedly stated in interviews, says the following about this technical necessity: “I tried not only to exhibit my works, but also to shade Rubens.”
In a sense, you are the Napoleon of modern art and even more: not only France, Italy, but even Russia has submitted to you. What do you think about it?
I do not think that this is the terminology of art - resigned. I do not perceive art in the concept of conquest, rather, a vital necessity, pleasure, energy. I am happy to be in the Hermitage - a fantastic, great museum of 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 fond of Gogol, Dostoevsky. It is a great joy for me to be in Russia, in St. Petersburg. Rubens is a great artist, as a child I redrawed his paintings. In the halls of Van Dyck - a student of Rubens, who mainly painted members of the royal family and the nobility, I placed the series "My Queens". On the bas-reliefs of Carrara marble there are images of my assistants, princesses, my team. And in the center of the hall is a sculptural image of the current Princess of Belgium, Elizabeth. All this is my dedication to women, female 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 my new work - a sculpture with a swan. Snyders' paintings depict freshly killed animals, looking at which one feels as if one feels the warmth of a just-dead creature. My work is a continuation of his work, a dialogue.
In Flemish art, in addition to triumph and energy, there is aggression, violence: it is no coincidence that the image of dead animals. How is 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 rabbits are still eaten in Russia. And this is a normal process, it happens. Belgium has a special relationship with animals. We believe that they are the best philosophers in the world. And the best doctors. We, the people, should listen to them, and in some ways even learn.
- Who came up with such a poetic name for the exhibition: "The Knight of Despair - the Warrior of Beauty"? And what does it mean?
Photo: From the personal archive of Dmitry Ozerkov, Head of the Hermitage Department of Contemporary Art
Artist. Me. I am a knight of despair, so I feel like Lancelot, who accepts 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, because 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 guardian, but also a designation of something. There is such a twist here. For example, taxidermy dogs and cats, which you see at the exhibition, were killed, of course, not 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 true opinion, society throws us overboard.
- How do you come up with your creations? What comes first - structure or content?
Content. But then everything takes shape. For example, the exposition in the Hermitage: its drama was born from the form when I saw a 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 the Pillar of Alexandria reminded me of the needle on which it was pinned. Content is always expressed through form, and drama comes from content.
- What is the most controversial opinion about your exhibition?
I really love it when my exhibitions are visited by children - 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 creation and in general is very vulnerable. We all have to create some kind of protection for ourselves. Children react and explain everything better than any art critics. And most importantly, they look to the heart of the matter.
Olesya Pushkina, Fontanka.ru
The Afisha Plus project was implemented with a grant from St. Petersburg
For quite some time now, the Hermitage has been hosting an exhibition Yana Fabra. The way this exhibition is organized is new for me: in addition to the halls where only the works of the author are presented, Fabre's works are integrated into the permanent exhibitions of the main museum of St. Petersburg. Moreover, this is done in such a way that the permanent exhibition and the exhibits of the exhibition have something in common, complementing each other, and the artist created some of the works exclusively for the Hermitage.
Of course, the most scandalous exhibits, the most discussed in the press and in society - "Carnival of dead mongrels" and "Protest of dead cats" - a hall where stuffed dogs and cats hang on hooks among bright garlands and tinsel. To be honest, it looks a little scary, especially dogs. And it's really interesting that in the spaces of the zoological museum, hundreds of stuffed animals do not look repulsive, do not cause indignation in anyone. But as an art object (?), they are already unnerving.
Some of the works are surprising, such as the work done with the blue BIC pen. The scale is striking, but the meaning remained a mystery to me.
But do you know why I really wanted to go to this exhibition? Due to several works made in an unusual technique. A couple of years ago, I talked about what we learned about in Thailand. Several "paintings" by Fabre made from the same materials were exhibited in the Hermitage. And when I found out that the author of the green ceiling made of elytra in one of the halls of the Brussels Royal Palace is still the same Fabre, I definitely needed to see his work.
Inspection we doctor_watson
started with the headquarters.
Text in italics from accompanying plates of the exhibition.
In 1997 Jan Fabre and Ilya Kabakov staged the performance "Meeting". Fabre created a beetle costume for himself, and flies for Kabakov. These insects appeared as creative alter egos of masters. The choice was not accidental. For Kabakov, the fly was an important hero, an importunate inhabitant of his communal spaces. Fabre was interested in insects from his youth (...). The artist was impressed that scarab beetles have a more perfect body structure than humans. The human skeleton is dressed in soft and vulnerable flesh, while in beetles it is hidden under a hard shell. Fabre makes armor suits for metamorphosis - the creation of a super-being that combines the body of an insect and the mind of a person. Dressed in costumes, the artists talk about art and history.
The installations Carnival of the Dead Mongrels (2006) and Protest of the Dead Cats (2007) can be correlated with the 17th-century Flemish masters Paul de Vos and Jacob Jordaens' painting The Cook at the Game Table. The characters of the installations are dead street animals. Fabre "returns" them to life by including them in the Macabre carnival in the tradition of medieval alchemy, the purpose of which has always been to bring about the rebirth of an animate or inanimate object.
Fabre's early sculptures are collected in the next room.
The artist pays tribute to his entomologist grandfather Jean-Henri Fabre by showing a figure working behind a microscope. In this work, he again speaks of loneliness, isolation and detachment as necessary conditions for the artist. The entire surface of the sculpture is covered with nails. This technique, widespread in the sculptural and installation practice of the 1970s, creates an amazing effect - blurring, vague outlines and shapes. The same hero with a bowed head and in a bowler hung limply above the ground in the work "The Hanged Man II" (1979-2003). The fascination with death permeates all of Fabre's work.
Silk Curtain titled "The Road from the Earth to the Stars is Unpaved" (1987), painted with a ballpoint pen seems to separate the real world from the mystical world of night visions.
Umbrakulum is a yellow-red silk umbrella, in Catholicism symbolizing the Basilica Minor, but understood more broadly as a place where a person can hide from the material world, think and work away from everyday life. Jan Fabre fills this image with many meanings, presenting it both as a place outside of time, where the cycle of life and death stops, and as a world of mysterious spirituality that makes one think about the vulnerability of human existence. This is also a tribute to modern philosophy, according to which a person is only an image created by knowledge, unstable and short-lived. Michel Foucault predicted that culture would be liberated from this image as a result of a shift in the space of knowledge, and then "the person will disappear, as the face inscribed on the coastal sand disappears."
The details of the installation made of bones are only through shells that do not hide their emptiness. A new bone “skeleton” brought outside is an analogue of a beetle shell that hides a boneless body. Again, Fabre says that man needs some kind of solid "shelter". The image of the museum in some way can also be interpreted as an umbraculum. The Hermitage, founded by Catherine, also “hidden” a collection of works of art and has become today a true haven for art.
Covers are larger. All these crutches and wheelchairs are, in fact, an exoskeleton, like the hard shells of beetles.
Now let's move to the main building of the Hermitage. In the courtyard raised his hands to the sky "The man who measures the clouds." Well, in St. Petersburg there will always be work for him.
The halls of the Hermitage are beautiful even without exhibits :)
The most popular work in the exhibition is a man who smashed his nose on a painting. A mannequin stands in a pool of fake blood, leaning against Fabre's copy of the most beautiful, perfect male portrait of Rogier van der Weyden. If suddenly there is a viewer who doubts the meaning of the work, the title will dispel his doubt: "I allow myself to expire (dwarf)". The meaning of art is in art itself, its mystery is incomprehensible, no matter how you fight.
Power.
Halls where the permanent exhibition is mixed with the works of Fabre. The works are miniature, bright, belong to several series. The red background makes it easy to pick out "alien" work and at the same time focuses attention on the image.
There are some weird jobs too. "Man with stick smeared with bird glue" (1990), BIC ballpoint pen. The man who looked at the image thoughtfully said: "Where is the wand? .."
"The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp I". All the same ballpoint pen + glossy photo paper. To view the image, you need to approach it at an acute angle, then outlines appear from the blue darkness.
Owls - the heroes of the installation Headless Heralds of Death (2006), arranged like an altar - fixed their cold gaze on the viewer, with their silent and solemn presence reminding of the borderline existence in the stage of posthumous existence, of the transition from life to death. This message is reinforced by the winter landscapes of Geisbrecht Leitens (1586-1656), from the collection of the Hermitage, which are placed on the sides of the composition.
Here it is, that cold look!
And finally, the images for which I came here.
The dog - a symbol of fidelity, sincerity and obedience - is present on many canvases of the permanent exhibition of the hall. Fabre's works presented here address this image. Eight green mosaics depicting dogs surrounded by vanitas (skulls, bones, clocks) are among four paintings selected by Fabre from the museum's collection: Adam and Eve by Hendrik Goltzius, The Bean King and Cleopatra's Feast by Jacob Jordens, Mullet and Procris” by Theodor Romauts.
According to Fabre, they violate the internal psychological balance, leading to transgression, which the artist understands as a kind of act of excess, leading to the experience of sin, betrayal and deceit. The theme of vanitas associated with it reflects not only the imperfection of the world and its transience, but also the idea of punishment associated with guilt. Two sculptures by Fabre, created especially for the exhibition, are decorated elytra of borers and skeletons of dogs with parrots in their mouths - a symbol of the "bite of death" that inevitably interrupts the fullness of life. (...) The green color, according to Fabre, is combined with the green tones of the landscapes in the paintings of the hall and symbolizes the fidelity inherent in the dog.
"The devoted sphinxes of metamorphosis and impermanence" (2016)
"Devotion guards Time and Death" (2016) from the series "Vanity of vanities, all is vanity"
The hall was conceived by Nicholas I as an entrance hall of the New Hermitage. It was designed to acquaint visitors with the history of Russian art. Relief profile portraits of famous domestic artists serve as a reminder of this, which became Fabre's source of inspiration for the creation of the new series "My Queens". The heroines of the series are women of the 21st century, friends and patrons of the Fabre workshop, whom the artist perceives as muses. The majesty of the bust portraits made of Carrara marble is leveled by Fabre's ironic trick - he puts jester's caps on his models.
The Hall of the Flemish Masters, where, in my opinion, the works of Fabre fit in most organically. I would even leave this exposure permanent. The installation clearly shows that the perception of the depicted dead nature and the dead nature itself differ significantly.
On the way to the Knights' Hall, the exhibition continues. How do you like this dress?
It causes some rejection in me: there is no longer a neat orderliness, the bodies of the beetles are a hodgepodge.
Jewelery precision reappears in the knight's hall.
It is interesting that the shells, created for defense, adorn the weapons of attack here. Although, maybe that makes sense: use weapons only for protection?
On both sides of the knights, new inhabitants of the hall appeared:
In this armor, Fabre, together with Marina Abramovich, staged a performance called "Virgin / Warrior", in which two knights, clad in armor like beetles in shells, fought endless ritual battles inside a glass showcase. “For me, being a knight is the most romantic thing I can imagine,” says Fabre. “There is hope in art. It is always a belief in the hope that the artist creates a better world. When I cannot improve the world around me or whom Someday, I'll stop being an artist"
