A well-known art critic, curator and expert on the latest trends in art, Andrei Erofeev, in an interview with DW, shared his vision of the future of Russian museums – after the change of leadership in the Tretyakov Gallery and a number of other institutions.
Deutsche Welle: Andrey, in your opinion, what is happening with the Tretyakov Gallery, including the scandal with the dismissal of Tregulova, is this a significant event?
Andrey Erofeev: I would not say that this is a scandal, because this is indeed a replacement of the director, most likely planned, but very symptomatic. Not only Tregulova has recently left her post, there has been a change of directors in a number of museums. And the general trend looks like this: hardware people come to the place of professional specialists. This is a Soviet trend: these people are again catapulted from the Ministry of Culture or from some other bureaucratic organizations. They are easily manipulated by the authorities, easily obey orders from above. This is the Russian Museum, and the Bakhrushinsky Museum. This even applies to the Minister of Culture himself. Lyubimova is a person who does not know where he came from. What makes her memorable in our museum environment? She said she didn’t like museums. Such a characteristic revelation. The fact is that now a layer of people has come to the surface, which is least of all connected with culture. These are some bottoms, such a bottom, aggressively reactionary and very ignorant. In principle, they do not need museums, artistic, cultural. They need military museums.
At the same time, they cannot close the Tretyakov Gallery. Although these plans were hatched: there was an idea under the guise of reconstructing the new building of the Tretyakov Gallery to close it for 10 years. It was planned to close the main museum of contemporary Russian art. These plans did not come true, but the arrival of bureaucrats to the chairs of directors will lead to the fact that museums will be neutralized. It is impossible to close them and disperse their teams. Collectives offer passive resistance. They do not accept the political orientation of the current regime. It is impossible to deal with them, which means they can simply be neutralized, reduced to a nondescript, inconspicuous form of existence. As in Soviet times, when they eked out some kind of miserable existence. No one went there, except for group tours of young pioneers. We are now witnessing a policy of neutralizing culture. At the museum level, this is clearly visible. Mrs. Pronicheva, who came to lead the Tretyakov Gallery, previously led the Polytechnic Museum. He opened with her – and closed for some reason.
– It turns out that the state is afraid of contemporary art?
– It’s not afraid. It despises us. They treat us like lice, and they don’t like lice. Therefore, they want to cover everything with dust so that the lice sit and do not crawl out. This happened in Soviet times, in non-aggressive Brezhnev times. And this is the best option for our museums. The worst is the Red Guards: an onslaught of reactionaries led by Prilepin, who advocates an extremely reactionary transformation of Russian culture.
– Will the visitor notice changes in the expositions?
– I think that there will be no resistance here. People will look for information elsewhere. There are also private museums and collections that do not have the status of a museum, but practically act as such. During the post-Soviet period, we have a huge number of private collections of contemporary art, not only Russian, but also Western. There is no such pressure on them yet.
– How will the policy of museums change from within?
– In post-Soviet times, museums are accustomed to following contemporary art, somehow acquiring it at the very least, mostly taking it as a gift, taking advantage of the generosity of our artists. Now this situation is actually blocked. I think there will be some kind of shadow collection of information, works in some kind of hidden storage – for the future. I hope that it will be that people will continue to engage in living culture, albeit in secret. At the official level, they will deal with the “Italian strike”: come to work, do something somehow. The halls will be empty again. I remember the Tretyakov Gallery of the early 2000s – empty halls where flies die. We will probably come back to this again.
– Is the future tragic?
– Museums largely depend on the intensity of artistic life. They reflect the energy that occurs in the creative centers. Now this energy is terribly weakened everywhere. Russian art as a phenomenon of some collective process has ceased, dried up. Someone left, someone fell silent, someone hid. The turning point was 2022, and the next stage will begin with something else – after the end of the war. I expect museum life in Russia to come to a standstill for a long time.
– What museums do Russia need now?
– The main museum beneficiaries of this time were military museums. A number of museums of military equipment, military uniforms appeared, a giant Patriot park appeared in the Moscow region. But this Patriot park has spread metastases throughout the country, similar educational and patriotic-educational things have also appeared in other cities. Then the Museum of the Great Patriotic War was created on Poklonnaya. It all started with him. It was the first such military museum: not a museum of mourning the victims and rethinking history, but “the thunder of victory, resound.” A military-historical society arose, not just historical, but precisely military-historical. It rewrites the history of Russia as the history of wars, makes reconstructions massive. The First and Second World Wars are staged.
Strange as it may seem, a museum of Russian civilization, that is, of this very Russian Orthodox, Byzantine, Old Russian civilization, was not built, where a gigantic collection of icons, frescoes, monuments of ancient Russian art could be shown. It’s not there, it’s amazing. They talk about the Russian world all the time, but there is no museum of the Russian world.
– It turns out that it is not the West that cancels Russian culture, but Russia itself does this by creating military-patriotic museums?
– Yes, there, of course, the flow of people was no less than Serov’s exhibitions in the Tretyakov Gallery. Interest in militarism is also encouraged at school. After all, they don’t study the history of art here, but the military come to schools and show machine guns.
– It turns out that any exhibitions, imported or your own, will be alien to society?
– We can’t talk about society, connecting it with the regime. These are different things. It is unlikely that Russian society was striving for what we have now arrived at in this confrontation with Ukraine. Just Russian society did not have such a militaristic streak. It was led to the temptations of a quiet peaceful life: the IKEA store, “European-quality renovation”. People weren’t ready to die. The theme of the army was not at all fashionable.
– At the same time, “we can repeat” is deeply embedded in our heads?
– I don’t really believe in it. All these “thanks to grandfather for the victory”, “we can repeat” were very few. These are such losers, some kind of losers. This is incomparable with the audience that enjoyed themselves in cafes and restaurants. In this IKEA, people choked, people greedily bought apartments, built country houses. Even now, many go to war because they want to get the necessary funds to cover the mortgage: consumer interest, in my opinion, is higher than the imperial one. Therefore, for me, this turn towards war is very unexpected. There was no cult of death, no feat associated with death. This consumer aspect seemed to guarantee the neutralization of war impulses. This was until February 24, 2022. There was a violent breakdown. The society was blown up. This is the tragedy of our society, which has become an obedient mass of murderers and rapists. It was dormant, of course. You can bring out the worst in a person.
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