Bulldozer exhibition 1974 as the participants were called. Bulldozer exhibition

There was exclusively socialist realism. The classification of an artist as a socialist realist coincided with official support for his activities.

Artists whose work went beyond the aesthetic program of socialist realism and were not recognized by the authorities as socialist realists often became the object of persecution by the authorities. For many years, “unofficial” artists were prohibited from exhibiting, and among them it was decided (Gleser / Rabin) that a general exhibition should be held, " because everyone misses exhibitions, because unofficial artists are not allowed to exhibit". This is how the exhibition took place on January 22, 1967, which was closed two hours later by employees of the KGB and the Moscow city party committee.

September 15, 1974

The exhibition was held on a site belonging to the Belyaev forest park. Those present included approximately 20 artists and a group of observers, which consisted of relatives and friends of the artists, as well as a sufficient number of journalists from Western news agencies and diplomats. The paintings were hung on improvised stands made from scrap wood.

Although the organizers went to the place by metro (it is easier to stop the car on the road), nevertheless, upon leaving it they were accused of “stealing a watch” - it was obvious that they wanted to detain them at any cost. But about 20 minutes later the police captain came and said that there had been a mistake. When they approached a vacant lot, they saw there cars with seedlings and some people dressed in work uniform people who started shouting that hooligans had come and were stopping them from planting trees. Moreover, they said that they were having a cleanup day, although it was Sunday.

According to various participants in the exhibition, they were joined on the spot by another group of painters who came to support their comrades. Some of them did not come empty-handed: L. Bazhanov, S. Boldyrev S. Bordachev, E. Zelenin, R. Zanevskaya, K. Nahapetyan, V. Pirogova, Tolstoy (V. Kotlyarov) A. Tyapushkin, O. Tripolsky, M. Fedorov-Roshal, T. Levitskaya, M. Odnoralov, A. Zhdanov, V. Tupitsyn and some others, whose names and numbers cannot be established (at present a significant number of artists are declaring their participation in this exhibition) .

Despite the small scale of the event, it was taken very seriously by the authorities. About half an hour after the start of the exhibition, a group was sent to the venue, including three bulldozers, water cannons, dump trucks and about a hundred plainclothes policemen, who began to crowd the artists and the assembled spectators; Some of the paintings were confiscated. Formally, everything looked like an angry spontaneous reaction of a group of workers for the improvement and development of the forest park. However, it was never denied that they received the work order from the KGB.

The attackers smashed paintings, beat and arrested artists, spectators and foreign journalists. Eyewitnesses recall how Oscar Rabin, hanging on the bucket of a bulldozer, was actually dragged through the entire exhibition. The artists were taken to the police station, where they were told: “We need to shoot you! I just feel sorry for the cartridges...”

Results

After this event, which caused a loud resonance in the foreign press, the Soviet authorities were forced to give in and officially allowed the holding of a similar exhibition in the open air in Izmailovo two weeks later, on September 29, 1974. The new exhibition presented the works of not 20, but more than 40 artists, lasted 4 hours and, according to various sources, attracted about one and a half thousand people. A participant in the exhibition, the famous graphic artist Boris Zhutovsky, noted that the quality of the paintings at the vernissage in Izmailovo was incomparably lower than at the first destroyed exhibition in Belyaev, due to the fact that only best works, many of which were destroyed. Subsequently, mainly in foreign media, four hours in Izmailovo were often remembered as “half a day of freedom.” The exhibition in Izmailovo, in turn, paved the way for other nonconformist exhibitions that were important in the history of Russian modern art.

The “Bulldozer Exhibition” became a notable event in unofficial artistic life after the exhibition in Manezh in 1962, which was dispersed personally by N. S. Khrushchev in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists.

The 20th anniversary of the bulldozer exhibition was celebrated in 1994 with a retrospective exhibition of its participants in the Belyaevo art gallery (exhibition organizer Alexander Glezer).

Exhibition organizer Oskar Rabin stated in an interview in London in 2010:

Also in interviews with Western journalists, he compared bulldozers with tanks in Prague, as a symbol of the repression of the regime, which frightened him. Rabin was arrested, sentenced to deportation from the USSR and was sent with his family to Paris.

See also

• The first “Exhibition-action” in the country (three weeks before Bulldozernaya)

Links

• About the location of the Bulldozer Exhibition on September 15, 1974 in Moscow
• A. Glezer. To the 35th anniversary of the “bulldozer” exhibition. Interview // “The Seagull” #19 (150), October 1, 2009
• ““Bulldozer exhibition”: the final touch to the thaw” // Ural.ru
• on peoples.ru
• “Evening Moscow”: “From bulldozers to lollipops”
• Roshal: Then it became not so scary // “Art” No. 4, 2004
• “30 years of the September movement” // Gazeta.ru
• 30 years ago, a “bulldozer” exhibition of nonconformist artists took place in Moscow (Radio Liberty broadcast)

Bulldozer exhibition (broadcast from the series “Alphabet of Dissent” on Radio Liberty)

Literature

• Glezer A. D. Art under a bulldozer. - London, 1977

Notes

Coordinates: 55°38′03.59″ n. w. 37°31′13.52″ E. d. /  55.634331° N. w. 37.520422° E. d.(G) (O)55.634331 , 37.520422

Categories:

• Exhibitions of unofficial art of the USSR
• The era of stagnation
• Events of September 15
• September 1974
• Censorship in the USSR
• 1974 in the USSR
• Second Russian avant-garde

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See what “Bulldozer exhibition” is in other dictionaries:

"Bulldozer Exhibition"- BULLDOZER EXHIBITION took place on September 15. 1974 on a vacant lot in the Belyaevo Bogorodskoye area (Moscow). Organized by painters, sculptors and graphic artists who were in opposition to the socialist lawsuit. realism. The initiators of the exhibition are artist Oscar Rabin, poet... ... Russian humanitarian encyclopedic dictionary

Khrushchev is shown the exposition Exhibition " New reality"An exhibition of Soviet avant-garde artists in the Moscow Manege, held on December 1, 1962. The exhibition “New Reality”, organized by Eliy Belyutin, was part of a large... ... Wikipedia

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This term has other meanings, see Bitsevsky Park (meanings). Bitsevsky forest ... Wikipedia

Eduard Arkadyevich Steinberg- Eduard Steinberg was born in Moscow on March 3, 1937. His father, poet, translator and artist Arkady Steinberg, was repressed in 1937 and finally released only in 1954. Since 1957, the family lived in Tarusa in the Kaluga region. After… … Encyclopedia of Newsmakers

On September 15, 1974, in a vacant lot in Belyaevo, an open-air display of paintings, not approved by the authorities, was dispersed using municipal special equipment and went down in history as the “Bulldozer Exhibition.”

On September 15, 1974, in a vacant lot in Belyaevo (at the intersection of Ostrovityanova and Profsoyuznaya streets), an open-air display of paintings, not approved by the authorities, took place. The action was dispersed using municipal special equipment and went down in history as the “Bulldozer Exhibition.” This event is considered the highest point of confrontation between unofficial art and the authorities. Its result was concessions from the state, manifested in the creation of a painting section at the city committee of graphic artists, which made it possible to work legally. After the bulldozer exhibition, some people from the unofficial art community made themselves badges with the inscription “September” - a sign of protest by creative people against censorship and ideological oppression.

In December 2009, I was able to ask one of the key participants in the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” the artist Vladimir Nemukhin, about the events of 40 years ago. The above text is a fragment of an interview five years ago. Please consider possible inaccuracies on my conscience - I wrote it down as I understood it. However, what is more important here is not the details, but the general meaning and living evidence that conveys the spirit of the times .

Vladimir Bogdanov: That same famous “Bulldozer” exhibition, and in fact the dispersal of the open-air exhibition in Belyaevo, became the highest point of confrontation between unofficial artists and the authorities. How and why did it come to this?

Vladimir Nemukhin: I had to be an unconditional witness and participant in this entire epic. The “bulldozers” themselves happened much later, in 1974. And to understand the origins of these events, it is necessary to turn to the historical background and remember what kind of atmosphere reigned in the 1960s and why, by the first half of the 1970s, big problems had arisen in relations between the authorities and artists. And the atmosphere in the 1960s was far from healthy. On the one hand, the Khrushchev thaw came quite recently, and on the other, 1963 is already the time of activation of the ideological commission. The authorities need to do something against the rampant intelligentsia, but it is unclear what measures to take. And here a breakdown occurred: they need to plant, but they cannot plant. If before 1966 we were “certain artists”, “so-called artists”, “dirty guys and mongrels”, then after the trial of Sinyavsky and Daniel the term “dissidents” will appear, we will become “dissidents”.

In the mid-1960s, the attitude of the authorities towards unofficial artists, not members of the Moscow Union of Artists, was already predictable. Apart from everyday quibbles, we were still not allowed to do exhibitions: they put up administrative obstacles and closed public access a couple of hours after the opening. This is how the now famous exhibition at the Druzhba club on the Enthusiast Highway was closed in 1967. At first we were allowed to open it, and then the authorities were at a loss - what to do? Again, the problem: a lot of foreigners came to the exhibition - how to send them away without causing a scandal? And they came up with it. More precisely, they made it up: they announced that, for technical reasons, a film would now be shown in the club’s cinema hall. They say that nothing can be moved - people already have tickets in their hands (they managed to hurry up - pick them up and distribute them). And the paintings were already hanging.

What should we, artists, do? Our good friends figured out how to take these tickets by hook or by crook and came to control the situation for a sudden “movie show”. As a result, it was not possible to hush up the exhibition and a major emergency resulted.

V.B.: What were the prerequisites for the “Bulldozer Exhibition”?

V.N.: In the seventies, the clouds around unofficial art thickened even more. In 1971, the opportunity to emigrate to Israel opened up. Attempts began to squeeze out unwanted figures in art from here. Some strange nagging arose through the police, which, of course, was inspired by other organizations. 1971 - Grobman was the first to leave, then Tselkov, then Masterkova. Rabin will be given the opportunity to travel by invitation, and will soon be deprived of citizenship - but this will be much later, already in 1978. However, Rabin was made to understand from the very beginning that his figure was not needed here.

V.B.: It’s not clear why the authorities needed all this? What real danger did the artists pose?

V.N.: My guess is that all this opposition was initiated not even by the special services, but by official artists. Academicians simply despised us: we are nobody. But at the same time, they were afraid of this “formal infection.” They felt that formalism was dangerous: it was interesting to young people, life was in full swing around it, the foreign press was interested in it, and foreigners did not go to buy from Nyssa, but to the basements, barracks and closets of the formalists. I think that the KGB men didn’t care much about art itself... Here at Rabin’s, a kettle is boiling in the snow. Well, it boils and boils, what do they care? The KGB will not see this as a formal move of expressionism, but academics will. I think that it was at the suggestion of academicians that various demonstration actions were carried out. For example, leaflets with reproductions of formalists, our and not our abstractions, were distributed at the factory, they organized a meeting and asked: “Well, comrades, do you like this, if I may say so, “art”? What will the workers say? Well, of course - what art this is! It's just dirty... Now look at Levitan, Repin - do you like it? Well of course! So, comrades, the formalists want a different art, what decision will we make? Down with? Well, of course, away!”

V.B.: This means that an atmosphere of intolerance was artificially created. Were there any arrests?

In addition to pressure with the ban on exhibitions and revealing “feuilletons” in the press, other measures of influence were applied to unofficial artists. To be honest, the authorities almost didn’t touch me with police methods: they didn’t arrest me, they didn’t call me for preventive conversations. But there were corresponding expectations and fears. After all, mocking pressure was exerted on his friends, on Oskar Rabin. Example. Rabin receives a summons to appear at the police station, to the chief. He comes - there is no boss. And then they give me a summons to appear tomorrow. Oscar arrives - again the boss is gone. It is clear that they are just “having fun” this way. The summons arrives again - Oscar is not coming. And then “good fellows” come to him: “We came to deliver you by force, since you are not on the agenda.” Oscar goes under the escort of these two to the department and there is the same story - there is no boss, he is busy and all that. This is such a sophisticated mockery. What was Oscar to do? All this was so noticeable: surveillance, wiretapping, secret filming. All these ladies with handbags under their arms. He presses down with his elbow, the bag “clicks”... Disgusting is not the right word.

The active oppression of my friend Rabin gradually turned him into an informal leader of unofficial art. But in his works there was no intentional sarcasm, there was no political protest, it was simply life itself that provided the basis for such a specific view - the barracks theme, such was his vision. I’ll even say this: no one fought openly with the authorities, neither me, nor Rabin, and almost none of the “Lianozovites”, or other unofficial artists. This doesn't mean we were happy with everything, but we were excited about new endeavors in our art. Romance is a form of creativity. What is Krasnopevtsev’s protest? The fact that he painted bones, shells, and flowers. There was such a representation of the metaphysical form of the world. It was not a political, but a poetic idea.

If Rabin had been involved in socialist realism, there would have been no problems. But all sorts of formalist-expressionists were not needed. The authorities decided to fight them. One option is to send him abroad. There were cases when the artist was called to the police: “Well, when are you going to leave? We are already tired of waiting. Oh, you don’t have a call? Yes, please." He takes out a piece of paper from the drawer: “When will you go, what date should you set?” It is important to note that neither Oscar nor I wanted to leave.

In short, a planned tactic of petty nagging and bullying was used. And then Oscar decided that enough was enough, something had to be done. And then, I remember, one fine day he said: “Volodya, come in. We will make an appeal to the world community in defense of artists.” In a sense, the time has come to react to our situation, to tell them that unofficial artists in the USSR do not have the opportunity to exhibit and experience persecution.

V.B.: What kind of letter? There was an exhibition.

V.N.: Nowadays this is rarely remembered, but instead of an open-air exhibition, at first the idea was to simply write a letter to the public and hand it over to foreign journalists. There was no talk about the exhibition then.

Contemplating an open letter, Oscar honestly warned: “Volodka, you understand what this threatens? Five years in prison and three years in exile or three years in prison and five years in exile.” Well, what to do, I agreed.

While they were deciding how best to deal with this letter, I went to the village. Oscar warned: “When you decide, give me the telegram, I’ll come back and sign.” And then a telegram comes - come. When I saw her, to be honest, I felt creepy. Our little daughter (Alevtina was born in 1971) will be imprisoned for no reason whatsoever. So I returned to Moscow with a heavy heart. And when I arrived, it turns out there was no need for letters anymore, Oscar came up with the idea of ​​​​making an exhibition in the open air. Why outdoors? Yes, because they wouldn’t let us in the room, don’t go to grandma’s. Rabin read in some Western magazine that before this, an open-air exhibition had been organized by the Poles. But not because they had nowhere to exhibit, but because they wanted innovation. But for us it was a gesture of hopelessness. I’ll also make a reservation that now you can read that the open-air exhibition was invented by Komar and Melamid. But nothing like that. They were there, they were invited, but Rabin came up with everything.

V.B.: Did the authorities know about the exhibition?

V.N.: So, for the “plein air” we chose a vacant lot in Belyaevo, so as not to disturb anyone - an open area, no construction sites. We tried to negotiate amicably with the authorities and get permission. Together with Rabin and Glezer we went to the Moscow Soviet with a statement. We artists did not hide anything, so our plans quickly became known. In response to our appeal to the Moscow City Council, red tape began. I was already furious, I warned - you will finally drive the artists to the brink. I promised that I would paint my old coat with my paintings, walk down the street and show my work in such an exotic way. They only grinned in response - you never know there are clowns walking down the street. Then hints appeared - we do not advise you. Next - let's first show your work to the Moscow Union of Artists. I'm still kicking myself that we agreed to this. Glezer took these works to the Moscow Union of Artists for a board meeting. There they did not give any written conclusion on our work, but they called back and verbally conveyed that our works do not represent cultural value. On the other hand, they did not give a direct ban either. Only one allegorical “we do not advise you.” As if provoked. Well, that’s what we thought: since it wasn’t banned, then it’s possible.

V.B.: What was the concept and general theme exhibitions?

V.N.: The paintings were not specially prepared for the exhibition in Belyaevo. What was in the workshops, they took with them. And let's go. We were first divided into two groups. The tactics were simple: if one is arrested, then at least the second one will arrive. In one - me, Lydia Masterkova, Yuri Zharkikh, Margarita and Victor Tupitsyn, Igor Kholin, Nadezhda Elskaya. In another group - Oscar Rabin, Evgeny Rukhin, Alexander Glezer, Sasha Rabin - Oscar's son. Valentin Vorobyov from our list came separately himself. And there was also the artist Sergei Bordachev, on his own initiative. It is also believed that Boruch Steinberg participated in the bulldozer exhibition, but he arrived later, when everyone had already dispersed.

To be honest, I was not internally eager to exhibit outdoors: it was unpleasant, after all, it was not cucumbers that I was going to show. But Rukhin and Oscar specified in advance that I should come, and they would deliver my work. I agreed, even though I didn't like it. We each took one of our works, plus I also carried a painting by Evgeniy Rukhin. My work for that exhibition, by the way, survived - I donated it, and it is now in Paris. The paintings from that exhibition generally survived for the most part; they were not destroyed, but only damaged, and then had to be restored.

V.N.: The night before we spent the night nearby, on Ostrovityanova Street, with the Tupitsins, some on chairs, some differently. On the morning of September 15, we left, we went to the intended place, and there, it felt like they were already waiting. Some pipes, cars with seedlings, bulldozers. It became somehow alarming. There are cars parked and someone is filming in the bushes.

We had not yet reached the place when the young men in civilian clothes already approached. Four people. -Where are you going? To the forest? You can't go there. - And we have permission. - What permission? - The Moscow Council said to do it? - No, you can’t do that. I tried to push them back with force, but in vain. The artist Yuri Zharkikh’s hands were immediately twisted so that he howled in pain. What are you doing? One of the guys says: “Now we’ll burn your pictures.” I told him: “Here you go, scoundrel, take the painting for kindling, do you have the courage? Go make a fire!” The commotion begins. And the main thing is that for some reason our friends, the second group - the group of Rabin, Rukhin and Glezer - are not there. We even somehow wavered, because we weren’t even allowed to reach the designated wasteland. And then Nadya Elskaya jumps onto the pipes lying nearby and begins chanting: “We will not leave here! Our friends are probably arrested, but we won’t leave here!” From these words we perked up and began to unfold again. And at this time Rabin, Glezer and Rukhin appear. Zhenya Rukhin is dressed in a bright blue suit, he came as if for a holiday. It’s pouring rain, but he’s all dressed up, without an umbrella. His mother also came, Evgenia Valeryanovna - after all, her son had an exhibition. A few minutes will pass, and Rukhin in this blue suit will be knocked down and dragged through the mud into a police car. Meanwhile, the turmoil continued and suddenly they started working crawler bulldozers. I see Oscar began to unwrap the work and a bulldozer moved towards him. On the bulldozers, two young men sat in the cab: a driver and an “escort” in civilian clothes. Now I think that it was more of an intimidation, it is unlikely that they would crush people in front of everyone. But at that moment it didn’t seem so to us. The situation was very nervous. There is a protruding metal beam above the bulldozer bucket. So Sasha, Oscar’s son, saw that the bulldozer was moving towards his father, jumped onto the bucket, grabbed the stick with his hands and hung. It looked scary, my legs were dragging, I couldn’t see what was down there. But the bulldozer stopped just a few centimeters away from Oscar. Later, many wrote that Oscar Rabin jumped on the bulldozer. They are confused. Sasha jumped onto the ladle.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the street there were many people standing. The public stood silently under umbrellas and watched the carnage. They sympathized, but were afraid.

V.B.: Only a few photographs remain from the “Bulldozer Exhibition”. Few and the same. Didn't anyone take pictures?

V.N.: Of course, foreign correspondents could not miss the “open air exhibition”; they were warned in advance. But they were already waiting for them too. The cameras were snatched, the film was “torn out”. Foreigners were foreigners, but they didn’t stand on ceremony with them either; someone’s face was even broken. That is why there are so few photographs of the bulldozer exhibition left. For themselves, the special services probably did operational filming and, I guess, these films are lying somewhere in the archives.

Finally, the police began to take away individual participants of our rally; the cars were already at the ready. To enhance the educational effect, watering tankers were introduced into the battle. It seems to me that they deliberately collected dirty water from some swamp and began to chase us with these streams.

V.B.: The most famous photo of the “Bulldozer Exhibition” is of paintings burning on a fire. Was there such a thing?

V.N.: Yes, then in the Western press, in my opinion, in an Italian magazine, a photo will appear of someone’s painting flying into a fire. With a hint that in Soviet Moscow in the seventies they burned paintings and dealt with “degenerate art”, as if in Nazi Berlin. To be honest, I personally did not see the fire. Perhaps it was lit later, but in the confusion I did not pay attention to it.

With or without a fire, the situation is clear - an emergency occurred. And even with an international resonance. And who would have believed that films were snatched from foreign correspondents by simple hooligans? Coincidentally or not, after this Podgorny’s visit to India was cancelled. And then there seemed to be a meeting of the political leadership, where an analysis of the event took place. I was told that Suslov allegedly proposed that the artists, as instigators, be “isolated” (that is, imprisoned). To which Brezhnev seemed to respond: “No need, I’ll go abroad soon.” Andropov was assigned to deal with the case. And since we were all in Moscow, Grishin was also entrusted with the task. It is not known for certain whether all these internal party discussions and proceedings actually took place. But the truth is that after the Belyaev emergency, by order of Grishin, a painting section was founded at the Moscow City Committee of Graphic Artists. And with this event, in my deep conviction, the phase of acute confrontation between artists and the authorities, that is, the history of “unofficial art,” ended.

How did the “bulldozers” end? The detainees Rukhin and Elskaya were released quite quickly, but Oscar was kept for a long time - almost a day. We have already prepared another appeal to the public on this matter. But then Oscar himself appears and says that there is no need to write anything, but we need to demand that we be given the right to hold the same exhibition in the open air. But without excesses. And we wrote a letter to the Moscow City Council, to the Moscow City Department of Culture, about providing us with such an opportunity. Everyone signed and began to wait for the authorities’ reaction.

V.B.: In the seventies, could an unofficial artist in the USSR support his family with art?

V.N.: What did you do for a living? I worked in the city committee of graphic designers and also in the magazine “Around the World”. The magazine gave me assignments to illustrate articles and stories. Moreover, the editor advised to do this under a pseudonym. It’s not that there was a direct ban on hiring me, but just to be on the safe side, just in case. So the artist Ivanov probably submitted the drawings to “Around the World” - I don’t remember. I had to look for different options for work. Oscar also later had to get a job at an art factory. These were usually temporary jobs. We worked at an agricultural exhibition. They earned money to go to the village in the summer. Pavilions were decorated. And in May - quickly and quickly go to the village to paint pictures.

At that time my paintings were already selling well, and I could finally afford to make a living from my art. So in 1974 I no longer worked: I took some work from the publishing house to get a certificate. When, after the “bulldozers,” the picturesque section of the city committee was formed, I no longer even needed to bring certificates. There were exhibitions in the city committee. And the exhibition is production activities and the basis for accruing experience. And the city committee gave us such an advantage, just like the Moscow Union of Artists.

V.B.: The creation of a painting section under the city committee of graphic artists, where unofficial artists could enter - is this actually a gain for the bulldozer exhibition, a concession from the authorities?

V.N.: Yes. In fact, with the “bulldozers” the active phase of the confrontation between unofficial art and the authorities ended. Most artists had the opportunity to be legalized through the city committee, through the painting section. So, ironically, the “bulldozers” were supposed to become an act of intimidation, but in fact they largely removed unofficial art from under attack. They wanted to intimidate, but it turned out that the authorities had to give an outlet, let off steam from the boiler.

V.B.: And soon a permitted open-air exhibition took place in Izmailovo?

V.N.: When, after the emergency in Belyaevo, we wrote a letter to the Moscow City Council, to the Department of Culture of the city of Moscow demanding permission to allow us an open-air exhibition, they unexpectedly met us halfway. The authorities decided to allocate a clearing for the artists in Izmailovsky Park, in a forest on the eastern outskirts of Moscow. Moreover, the bosses even suggested preparing the area for receiving visitors: setting up mobile toilets-buses, placing some kind of cafe-type tents to drink tea. But Oscar said categorically no: “We will choose the clearing ourselves. The one we like, not the authorities.” Fundamentally. I say: “Oscar, what’s the difference, let’s do it in the proposed clearing.” And he answered: “No, Volodya, we must do everything as we need. They thought they were cats and we were mice, but now we will be cats. This is the only way to act.” And he was right. After that, a man in civilian clothes “from there” came to Glezer and said that our intentions were already well known. And it is “not recommended” to do this again. In response, at the refusal clearing, our “opponents” promised to hold a press conference saying that what artists really need is not creative freedom, but their clearing. They wanted to show that artists are fighting for the clearing, and not for the freedom of art.

In the end, it still worked out our way. We went to choose a place for the exhibition together with the cultural department. And in the clearing we chose there was no tea and coffee, no buses or toilets. We made a beautiful ticket with a drawn diagram. Let's get ready. But our “opponents” did not hold their devastating press conference; they limited themselves to empty threats.

The exhibition in Izmailovo was a great success. September 29, 1974. Sunny day. Crowd of spectators. An unforgettable sight! The exhibition was open, and not according to lists, as before. Everyone who wanted to show their work came. The first free art event. Even though there were four cars of soldiers parked just in case. Everything went without incident. There were regulations, the exhibition was supposed to take place from 12 to 14-00. At two o'clock in the afternoon the artists collected their paintings and easels, dispersed, everything ended normally.

Fragment of an interview with Vladimir Nemukhin,
recorded in February 2009
V. Bogdanov,A.I.

Dispersal of the "Bulldozer Exhibition". Moscow, September 15, 1974. Photo: Vladimir Sychev. From the archive of Mikhail Abrosimov. Courtesy gallery "Belyaevo"

On September 15, 1974, in Moscow, in a vacant lot located at the intersection of Profsoyuznaya and Ostrovityanova streets, the “first autumn open-air viewing of paintings” took place - an unauthorized exhibition of works by unofficial Soviet artists, dispersed within a few minutes with the help of bulldozers and people in civilian clothes. Among those present at the exhibition were a large number of foreign journalists, for this reason its dispersal served as a reason for publications around the world, and the exhibition itself began to be considered a turning point in the history of Russian unofficial art: it was able to declare its existence and right to life. In memory of this event in front of the building State Center contemporary art in Moscow, a bulldozer knife is installed, and one of the chapters of the book Biennials and Beyond is Exhibitions That Made Art History. Volume II: 1962-2002, published by Phaidon and covering 25 of the most important exhibition projects over four decades, is also dedicated to the Bulldozer Exhibition. With the kind permission of RDI Culture, a division of the development company RDI, which implements projects at the intersection of contemporary art, architecture and construction initiatives, and the publishing house Ad Marginem Press, we are publishing the full text of Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn’s book “Bulldozer Exhibition”, in which he recalls the events those days.

“Bulldozer Exhibition”, or the struggle for power in the exposition field of culture (To the 40th anniversary of the “Bulldozer Exhibition”)

In the mid-1960s, I already knew about the existence of the artists of the “Lianozov group”; dissidents and human rights activists Andrei Amalrik and Alexander Ginzburg communicated with them, and the latter’s apartment was simply filled with modern art hanging everywhere - even on the ceiling. There I first saw the works of Rabin, Masterkova, Nemukhin, Vechtomov, Kropivnitsky - Evgeniy Leonidovich and his children, Lev and Valentina. Visitors like me gazed in awe at the paintings floating in the “clouds,” and it seemed to us that their authors were celestial beings. I wanted to believe that our artists are the most wonderful and that they deserve to hang in best museums peace... Many years later it became clear that this is not entirely true.

Communication with them began in 1973 - after meeting my future wife, Margarita Masterkova, as a result of which I began to communicate with her aunt and uncle, Lydia Masterkova and Vladimir Nemukhin, as well as with Oscar Rabin and all the other artists in their circle. Moreover, we even became friends and became quite close people. As for the “Bulldozer” and “Izmailovsky” exhibitions, I described them in detail in my books “Communal (Post)Modernism” (Ad Marginem, 1998) and The Museological Unconscious (MIT Press, 2009).

Let me start with the fact that, in contrast to the predominantly verbal confrontations of the Manege era, the display of works in an empty field in Belyaevo on September 15, 1974 turned into physical violence by the authorities against alternative art with the help of bulldozers, watering machines and police officers dressed in civilian clothes. Many of the exhibited paintings were destroyed, and their authors were beaten, arrested, or subjected to administrative sanctions (i.e., lost their jobs, underwent compulsory treatment, etc.).

Cover of the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

The bulldozer confrontation, fraught with violation of the Helsinki Accords on human rights, scandalized the already dubious reputation of the Soviet regime in the West. His desire to adjust his image in the eyes of the “world community” led to the organization of a second outdoor exhibition, held two weeks after the first in Izmailovsky Park in Moscow. And although this exhibition was, in essence, imposed on the artists by higher authorities, the negotiations and compromises associated with it - in their intensity - have no precedent in the chronicle of the relationship between nonconformism and officialdom. In the fourteen days after the “Bulldozer Exhibition” in Belyaevo, during which its participants were subjected to continuous pressure from the authorities, Rabin’s organizational talent emerged, demonstrating not only enviable composure, but also a thorough knowledge of the Soviet system. However, his authoritarian inclinations were no less evident. Once, when negotiations with the KGB reached a dead end, Rabin called on his like-minded people to go out to the same wasteland where the bulldozer massacre took place on September 15. Suppressing manifestations of indecisiveness among artists, he reminded them that such great people as Gumilyov, Tsvetaeva and Mandelstam were also sacrificed to the era. “Are we better?” - he asked his silent colleagues. That is, he seemed fixated on this idea. In cases where it was necessary to come to a decision, it was always articulated by Rabin.

However, not everything was clear to his comrades, especially when Izmailovo was planned. It seemed to many of us (including Volodya Nemukhin, as well as Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid) that Oscar was planning another outing on the wasteland and that he was not interested in a peaceful display of his works. While the artists and other participants in the events gathered at Rabin's were discussing various options, Oscar stubbornly pulled everyone to Calvary. We wanted to arrange a more or less authorized exhibition so that the public could see it. In short, a real struggle has unfolded around this situation. Oscar sent some signals upstairs, making it clear that a second “wasteland” was being prepared; dubious characters like Victor Louis talked to him; he received calls from the KGB or he himself called some bosses, but in any case he locked himself in the room and did not allow anyone to be present during these conversations. All this looked very strange, because if he wanted us to collectively sacrifice ourselves, then we had to be informed accordingly about what was happening. The above does not in any way detract from Rabin's merits. Like him, we are all a product of Soviet education in the sense that each of us is capable of manifesting himself either communally or authoritarianly. This binary is difficult to overcome even for those who, like the author of these lines, have lived abroad for many years.

Alexander Glezer, who was in constant contact with foreign journalists and diplomats, organized press conferences at his home. On one of them he said: “I have two heads on my shoulders: one is mine, the other is Rabin’s.” Another time, Glaser said that Oscar was “like a wife” to him, but - noticing the bewilderment of those present - he immediately corrected himself and added: “or mother.” During the inter-exhibition period, I remember him demoralized and filled with horror at the thought that if the negotiations failed, he would face prison. “You are artists, and they won’t do anything to you, but I’m a collector, they’ll put me in jail,” he repeated every now and then. However, Rabin’s strategy fully justified itself: the authorities made concessions, and the officially sanctioned “unofficial” exhibition took place on September 29 in Izmailovsky Park. No censorship was provided; no restrictions were imposed on the number or composition of participants. As for the audience, this four-hour exhibition broke all attendance records. “Soviet Woodstock”, as foreign media called the pandemonium in Izmailovo. It was a holiday, especially since the second “wasteland” still did not happen.

Invitation to the First autumn viewing of paintings in the open air on September 15, 1974. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

In 1978, when Rabin was deprived of Soviet citizenship, Valya (Valentina Kropivnitskaya) and I had lunch in Paris, where we had come from New York to visit Lida (Lidiya Masterkova). Returning to the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” I’ll add that the storage of the paintings before going out to the vacant lot took place in Margarita’s and my Moscow apartment. A month before this, Oscar, Lida, Volodya and Evgeny Rukhin came to us with this proposal precisely because the vacant lot they had chosen was located near our house in Belyaevo, on Ostrovityanova Street. To be on the safe side, we had to walk or drive to the vacant lot from two places, from us and from Rabin. The plan was that if one group was stopped, the second would have an equal chance of getting to the scene.

Thus, four artists slept on our floor before going out into the vacant lot, and the apartment was actually a warehouse for their works. And when we went outside on the morning of September 15, 1974, it was clear that the house was under surveillance. However, we still managed to get to the wasteland... I understood that Oscar wanted self-sacrifice, and this partly appealed to me, since I was then reading Sartre and mentally repeating his words: “No one has the right to take away his death from a person.” I made fun of Oscar by repeating this phrase, and he smiled indulgently. Let me remind you that during the events in the vacant lot I was severely beaten, and Oscar was kept in jail for several days (six or seven). Everyone suffered equally, and, based on previous experience, no one wanted to get into trouble. Another thing is to use the noise that has arisen to take our activities in a different direction. This is what happened in Izmailovo.

Soon after the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” a black Volga drove up to our house on Ostrovityanova Street and took Margarita and me to my work, where they showed a film about the exhibition. After watching it, I was asked to “write a refutation to the newspaper and say that all this disgrace was the work of hooligans and renegades, and that the authorities behaved correctly and tolerantly.” I replied that “I won’t do anything like that, sorry.” It was after this that we decided to emigrate.

The September events forced the party leadership to reconsider its relationship with the artistic intelligentsia. It was decided to put an end to the existence of “illegitimate” art, but by peaceful means, without bloodshed. For this purpose, artists began to be literally “pushed” into official creative associations, one of which turned out to be the well-known “Gorkom” or, which is the same thing, MOKKHG (Moscow Joint Committee of Graphic Artists). The trump card in the hands of the leaders of this organization was the law on “parasitism,” so few of the venerable nonconformists managed to avoid being recruited into the ICHAG. In general, the authorities’ strategy included not only the elimination of unofficial art as a social phenomenon, but also the establishment of control over alternative artists using the mechanism of the City Committee or other similar institutions.

Corner of Profsoyuznaya St. and st. Ostrovityanova in front of the Belyaevsky wasteland. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

In an interview with Georgy Kiesewalter, Margarita Masterkova-Tupitsyna expressed the opinion that “the authorities needed to abolish the unofficial art project, and they forced their opponents to come out of the dugout, so that later - after Belyaevo and Izmailovo - they could drive most of the unofficial artists into the City Committee of Graphic Artists and take control all those who have acquired official status. And tough measures will be taken against those who have not found it.” It is possible that the authorities (as well as the participants in exhibition events) were in the process of experimenting and did not always know what to do next. But over time, they figured out what Margarita was talking about. For them, having uncontrolled artists was worse than placing them in some accountable organization. Power is the Cyclops, who has learned the lesson of Polyphemus, who is deprived of sight (thanks to the “cunning” of Odysseus). This is probably why the decision was made to “keep everyone in sight.”

According to Margarita, “foreigners played a healing role in this whole story. Unofficial artists were so highlighted by the foreign press that the authorities could not simply spit on the uproar and say that the “victims” were psychos and alcoholics, and their pictures were unprofessional nonsense. In general, starting from the late 1950s, unofficial art was diligently supported by the diplomatic corps and Western correspondents. Their support forced the Soviet authorities to constantly respond to ongoing events without crossing boundaries. Without this support, it is difficult to imagine how our art would have developed in those years.” The idea that unofficial culture is a “Trojan horse” that facilitated the penetration of Western ideas is an artistic exaggeration. Ideas are most often learned where they are taboo.

Dispersal of the "Bulldozer Exhibition". Moscow, September 15, 1974. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

In the West, interest in unofficial artistic products (made in USSR) reached its apogee at the end of perestroika. And not only from journalists and diplomats who knew little about contemporary art (whether in Russia or in their own countries), but also from professional critics, collectors, curators and gallery owners. The authority of artists who began to exhibit and sell abroad has noticeably increased, although before this the Moscow Union of Artists did not notice them at best. After the first Sotheby's auction in Moscow and other high-profile sales, they overnight received a “safe conduct letter.”

Returning to the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” I will add that for the artists this was a cardinal event. On the one hand, trauma, on the other, transgression. If “Bulldozernaya” was, in fact, “shock therapy” with beatings, rudeness and other horrors, then the exhibition in Izmailovo (September 29, 1974) had the clear outlines of a cultural event. Almost everyone knew about it, and thousands of spectators came to Izmailovsky Park to look at the work. In a sense, the exhibition was a revelation for us. It turned out that people are quite friendly towards us and are quite open to getting to know experimental art. That is, we, as it turned out, underestimated our compatriots. I will not hide that the success of this event was possible thanks to the scandal that arose in the Western press in connection with the “bulldozer” epic. Authorities rarely compromise, believing that charity does not suit them.

Oscar Rabin. Village. 1974. Painting destroyed at the Bulldozer Exhibition. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

The next “permitted” exhibition - but under the auspices of the City Committee - took place at VDNKh in the Beekeeping pavilion (February, 1975). Twenty painters who had the closest connections with foreign diplomats and journalists took part in it. In September of the same year, 522 works by 145 authors were exhibited at the House of Culture at VDNKh. Other examples of the successful assimilation of unofficial art within official institutions include a group exhibition in the exhibition hall of the Moscow Union of Artists on Begovaya (August, 1976), where twelve artists participated. It should not be assumed, however, that the new cultural policy aimed at corrupting alternative art did not meet with any opposition. As Michel Foucault wrote, “there is no specific, fixed place that is the focus of all revolts, just as there is no single formula for revolutionism. There are different points where all this arises, and different types resistance."

Despite being well-read, we had little information in those days. This was especially true of philosophical literature of the post-war period, as well as journal information related to the problems of contemporary art in the West. I do not mean established authorities, but the radical aesthetic gestures of our peers in America and Europe. From time to time some separate magazines appeared. Komar and Melamid, for example, had access to the Avalanche magazine, where Western conceptualists were published.

In addition to Moscow, we communicated with St. Petersburg artists from the circle of Alexei Khvostenko, the author of wonderful poems and songs, who created a series of Dadaist collages and visual texts. Henri Volokhonsky, a wonderful poet, erudite, and expert in hermeneutics and old texts, also belonged to this circle. It must be said that in Russia the aesthetics of the conversational genre was a form of compensation for those who were not published, especially since some of them could be listened to for hours. What they said was magnificent speech essayism, possible only where it is not in demand. In the West, this genre has almost completely dried up; famous people studiously avoid any opportunity to say something colorful in private conversation, fearing that someone else might take their ideas and publish them before they do it themselves. There, conversations with philosophers, theorists or cultural experts, as a rule, are completely meaningless - their closed nature makes communication uninteresting.

When I returned to Moscow during perestroika and began recording conversations with artists, their ability to think outside the box was a revelation to me. I have found that many of them are excellent conversationalists and have a lot of original ideas. The non-obviousness of this circumstance is due to the constriction of the speech reflex in the sense that artists mainly work with visual material and their speech compensation is delayed indefinitely. When I talked to them, it was a pleasure for me to register the intensity of this “unspokenness” or “understatement.”

In the early 1970s, another worldview paradigm emerged - a new idea of ​​artistic values, which - in contrast to the art of the sixties - seemed to belong to a different context. The same thing happened in literature: no matter how good poets Kholin, early Sapgir or Vsevolod Nekrasov were, they remained heroes of their time and space. This applies equally to Leonid Gubanov and to the early poems and texts of Eduard Limonov, including his poem “I, National Hero”.

Vladimir Nemukhin. Evening. 1974. Painting shown at the Bulldozer Exhibition. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

Apparently, soon after the “Bulldozer” and “Izmailovskaya” exhibitions, some important shift occurred in the Moscow art world. Art has developed a “vertigonal” (from the word vertigo) projection. Not only Rubinstein and Monastyrsky, but also Prigov appeared in other poems. But I can’t say for sure who exactly was at the control panel. Most likely, no one, and the shortage of batons has nothing to do with it...

Margarita Masterkova-Tupitsyna has a special opinion on this matter: she believes that “the emergence of social art has become an alternative to the idealistic attitude towards art, with which the “studio” image of the artist is in harmony, sitting for hours at the canvas and looking at it like a mouse at a rump. .. No matter how much reverence we have for painting, the most ridiculous ritual that humanity has invented and which has been going on for many centuries is rituals around the canvas in an attempt to certainly do something with it... Socialist artists were the first to be able to leave the framework of the studio mentality rooted in the consciousness of their predecessors."

Sots art wanted to be different from Western art, and it succeeded. One may not like the Sots artists, but one cannot fail to recognize the importance of their relational gesture. The main thing is that because of the “Bulldozer Exhibition,” young people’s consciousness changed. After all, not everyone even went to Izmailovo, since many artists were called, intimidated, etc. Nevertheless, a shift occurred. It is also important that social art for the first time looked into the face of power, but did it like Perseus, who placed a mirror shield in front of the Gorgon Medusa so that she would petrify when she saw her reflection in it. All other movements simply refused to notice it.

Margarita believes that when we found ourselves in the West, “many sixties artists were offended because we did not promote them (or did not do it effectively enough). But they could not be propagated, and not in the West in general, but specifically in New York... When, after the exhibition of the Russian avant-garde at the Guggenheim Museum, Georgiy Dionisovich Costakis invited [her] to curate an exhibition of his collection of modern art at the Princeton University Museum, then, after seeing this collection and, in particular, the works of the sixties, the director of the museum said “no!” Whether he was right or wrong is another question, but that was the situation. Abstract art went out of fashion during that period. It seemed depreciated and was perceived as a purely commercial product. Rather, the rehabilitation of the art of the 1960s can happen now - because over the years, everything that has left the stage will sooner or later be subject to alignment and synchronization.” This takes years and even decades. An example is Latin American minimalism, which with great difficulty was attached to New York. The mainstream has moved in, but this required considerable effort and expense. One thing - works of art, who managed (in a timely manner) to gain a foothold in museums and became part of institutional history, from which - like from a song - “you can’t erase a word”; another thing - alternative history, the legitimation of which at the institutional level requires lobbying mechanisms and interest in “delayed” relevance.

Painting by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid (1973), confiscated at the Bulldozer Exhibition. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

Before the Bulldozer Exhibition, Nemukhin and Rabin met with colleagues from other alternative factions about their participation in the display of works or to secure their presence in the vacant lot as spectators. Zhenya Rukhin and Yuri Zharkikh came from Leningrad, Sasha Rabin (Oscar’s son), Igor Kholin (Lydia Masterkova’s son) and Nadya Elskaya (Oscar’s student) fit into the exhibition group quite organically, and Oleg Tripolsky, Rimma Zanevskaya and Borukh Steinberg - out of old friendship . The participation of Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid was announced in the invitation, and Sergey Bordachev joined the group already in the vacant lot.

Nemukhin, who accompanied Rabin during his contacts with artists, took me with him as a relative. The meetings were scheduled in the metro for reasons of secrecy. At one of these moments, a forty-year-old man (five years younger than Oscar and eight years younger than Nemukhin) came out of the pasture, got acquainted with the plan of action scheduled for September 15, and politely rejected our proposed “gambit.” It was Ilya Kabakov.

Events in the vacant lot unfolded as if in a theater of the absurd. Sprinklers, bulldozers and dump trucks with some kind of fake trees drove through the potholes. The extras who took part in this had a gloomy appearance and, despite their civilian clothes, gave themselves away with abrupt commands addressed to the drivers of the equipment, as well as threats against us. The public (including foreign correspondents) crowded on the side of the road along the perimeter of the vacant lot. Some daredevils managed to get closer to the center of events, but not for long and mainly to look at the works on display. As soon as the artists began to show their paintings, holding them in their hands, “art critics in civilian clothes”, responsible for the confiscation of illegitimate artistic values, immediately jumped up to them. The confiscated works were trampled under foot or taken away on trucks with earth and trees, intended, as it turned out, not for landscaping the territory, but for the fight against art. Shakespeare's words about Birnam Forest, which "will move across," turned out to be prophetic, although in Macbeth the trees were supposed to move to Dunsinane Hill. That is, when they got to the Belyaevsky wasteland, they seemed to have the wrong address.

Before my eyes, exhibitors were arrested. When Yuri Zharkikh was taken away, I picked up his painting and began showing it to the audience. Pressing her to my chest, I caught myself thinking that I was doing this out of solidarity, although aesthetically I had nothing in common with Zharkikh. Photographer Sychev, who captured the events in the vacant lot, drew my attention to Oscar, who jumped onto the “knife” of the bulldozer and balanced on it for several minutes - despite the fact that the driver was doing tricks that were dangerous for the “rider.” Soon he was overthrown from there and placed in a passenger car. They did the same with Rukhin, after which it was my turn. Sasha Rabin (Kropivnitsky) and Volodya Sychev were arrested a little later, but Volodya managed to transfer the negatives to one of his friends a few minutes before the arrest. For some reason, the women (Nadya, Lida, Rimma) were not touched, but the work was treated mercilessly. The paintings of Komar and Melamid suffered particular damage - they went missing.

Work by Lidia Masterkova, damaged at the Bulldozer Exhibition. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

Leaving the wasteland, I was amazed at the skill of my oppressors. Thin and short, they played me like badminton until they pushed me into a car - a Muscovite or a Zaporozhets, where there were two more employees. On the way to the police station, they laid me down between the front and back seats and began to beat me with some special passion. Since the car was small, my opponents mostly interfered with each other. The blows were delivered simultaneously, from all sides, and their effectiveness left much to be desired. At the police station, the participants and organizers of the exhibition were placed in a common room. They interrogated one at a time, but formally - date of birth, home address, place of work, etc. Each was fined for violating public order and released in the evening. Everyone except Oscar. He was kept there for about a week.

While he was in custody, his home on Preobrazhenskaya was crowded with people, including dissidents, friends of the artist and foreign correspondents. It was not easy to approach Oscar’s house - there were “amateur photographers” everywhere, who did not hide their intentions and were ready to photograph everyone who approached the entrance. What would we do without these nameless chroniclers and who, if not them, preserved us for history? Therefore, the KGB archives must be treated as a history of dissent, which the Soviet mainstream ignored or suppressed. The same is true of denunciations, which became the main literary genre of the era and, at the same time, the reason for mass arrests in the late 1930s. If you publish this remarkable literature, you can become familiar with what was happening on the back side of socialist realism under the guise of national holidays and physical education parades. “We were born to make Kafka come true,” said Vagrich Bakhchanyan.

In anticipation of Godot, that is, Oscar, Sasha Glezer held press conferences. At one of them, a French reporter asked what parts of my body they beat me on. “Everything,” I answered. “And on the genitals?” “Yes, they can’t do otherwise...” What was said made an impression on those present, among whom Komar and Melamid especially stood out, looking at my wife with condolences and undisguised interest.

As for Glezer, he showed himself most effectively in precisely such situations - he impatiently called (not knowing a single foreign language) Western diplomats and arranged meetings with journalists. Oscar was also nervous, turning for help either to an Orthodox priest, Father Dmitry Dudko, or to a psychiatrist named Marat (I don’t remember his last name), who supplied Rabin with stimulants. At the end of September 1974, when it became clear that our friend was not behaving quite adequately under stress, Nemukhin and I went to see Marat. He received us cordially. Oscar's paintings hung on the walls. Marat knew why we came and immediately stated that he supported his patient in everything. There was nothing to discuss. Before we left, Marat received a call from Glezer. He was hysterical. “Coward,” the owner of the house shouted into the phone.

Glaser knew how to win over people. Having emigrated in February 1975 (almost at the same time as us), he was able to smuggle through diplomatic channels a huge collection of works by unofficial artists, including those who participated in the events in the wasteland. In Vienna he was allowed to organize an exhibition in the premises of the artists' union. I came up with the name “Russian February in Vienna” and wrote an article in the catalogue. These events became regular and were held for several years in a row. At the end of February, we left for Rome, and Glezer went to Paris (Mongeron), from where, years later, he moved his collection to Jersey City (USA), where he founded the “Russian Museum in Exile.” Subsequently, a significant part of the works settled in the Norton Dodge collection, which found refuge in the Zimmerli Museum (Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum) at Rutgers University.

Oscar Rabin (center), Nadezhda Elskaya and Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn at the exhibition in Izmailovo. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

Despite my friendly relationship with Glaser, it always seemed to me that his organizational talent deserved better use. The exhibitions he organized were reminiscent of patchwork quilt. It was a “vinaigrette for the eyes”, similar to the exhibition in the premises of Igor Markin ART4.ru (Moscow), where the sixties were presented, all in one room - just like how they slept side by side in our house before the “Bulldozer Exhibition”. The denser, the more accurate - like in a hostel or in a communal apartment. Before moving on to the next topic, I note that the description of the September events of 1974 undertaken by the author of these lines is not a set of verdicts or assessments. Irony and negativity are just tools necessary for a detached analysis of historical facts, and if I disagree with the characters I write about in some way, this does not mean that they were guided by bad intentions. Criticism is a form of involvement, and only friends and like-minded people should be criticized. Reproaches to antagonists are a waste of time.

The vitality of alternative artists was fully manifested when, soon after the “Bulldozer” and “Izmailovskaya” exhibitions, aesthetic practices emerged, thanks to which a certain collective image of alternative art of the seventies emerged - a kind of “phenotext”, suitable for communication with an interested viewer. As examples, I will cite the events of Komar and Melamid for preparing cutlets from the newspaper “Pravda” (1975), their performance “Passport” (1976), the painting by Erik Bulatov “Glory to the CPSU” (1975), the happenings of the group “Nest” (1975-1979) and the first Collective Action (CA) actions, such as “Appearance” and “Lieblich” (1976), held in a field near Moscow, where Andrei Monastyrsky and Nikita Alekseev buried an electric bell under the snow. “Having turned it on,” recalls Monastyrsky, “we stood until the audience came to listen to how it sounded. We waited a bit and went our separate ways. This is the beginning of CD.”

In response to the partial triumph of “Bulldozernaya” and other exhibitions, there were apartment exhibitions and displays of works in workshops - by L. Kuznetsova, E. Renova, A. Khmeleva, M. Odnoralov, V. Naumts. Mikhail Chernyshev and his colleagues in the Zvezda group gathered in parks, where they tested the principles of planar geometry, which were later used in abstract paintings. In 1976, an exhibition took place in the studio of Leonid Sokov, where - along with himself - R. and V. Gerlovin, I. Chuikov, S. Shablavin, I. Shelkovsky, A. Yulikov participated. Although emigration from the USSR became a “commonplace”, the drama of separation was acutely felt by both those who left and those who remained. This is exactly what Igor Makarevich’s conceptual project “Mobile Gallery of Russian Artists” (1978) was dedicated to, where the author invited emigrating colleagues to leave fingerprints, which were then exhibited in an enlarged form, becoming a symbol of the lost sociocultural identity.

The “successor” of the “Bulldozer Exhibition” was apt art (a series of apartment exhibitions in Moscow in 1982-1983), which declared itself as the next (after social art and Moscow conceptualism) postmodernist revolution, which it makes sense to talk about in terms of “ movement." Although residential and studio showings of work had happened before, exhibiting under the auspices of Apt Art became a style, and not just a “perceived necessity” (as it was in the 1960s and 1970s). If we remember what Moscow art was like before the “Bulldozer Exhibition”, then the merit of “Mukhomor” and other young apt art artists is not only in easing the pressure coming from their predecessors (who were ready, as the poet Leonid Gubanov wrote, “to die from century to century on the blue hands of easels"), but also in the fact that thanks to them the opportunity emerged to answer the question “what is art?” in a new way. Another innovation brought by the apt artists to the Moscow art world was aesthetic mutual understanding, the presence of not only a moral (like the representatives of the “bulldozer” generation), but also a creative community.

Exhibition "Apt Art in the Plein Air". 1983. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

In the article “Reflections at the Front Entrance” (A-Z magazine, No. 6, 1984), I wrote that apt art can be compared with American new wave, in particular with what was exhibited at an exhibition called the Times Square Show (New York, 1980). The first exhibition of apt art was organized in Nikita Alekseev’s apartment in October 1982. It was attended by V. Zakharov and V. Skersis (group “SZ”), group “Mukhomor” (S. Gundlakh, S. and V. Mironenko, A. Kamensky and K. Zvezdochetov), ​​N. Abalakova and A. Zhigalov ( group "Tot-art"), N. Alekseev, S. Anufriev, M. Roshal and others. After the authorities imposed a ban on holding art events in Alekseev’s premises (1983), Apt artists staged two open-air exhibitions: “Apt Art in the Plein Air” (May, 1983) and “Apt Art Behind the Fence” (September, 1983).

The Death of Apt Art (1984) was violent. Several artists had to serve in the army, where they were taken for the purpose of “re-education”. This is probably why the apt art odyssey is (in a sense) a copy of the Bulldozer Exhibition, only with a less successful ending.

One of the axioms on which the theory of dynamic systems is based is that “first you have to create chaos, and then mixing will happen.” This mathematical principle best determines the nature of nonlinear (non-Euclidean, fractal, etc.) flows, allowing us to understand how trajectories released from close points will behave, and what is the influence of the chaotic component on the movement of the masses we observe and their accumulation in certain other regions. Such clusters are called “gravitational anomalies” or “attractors.” Unlike “attractors,” their negative counterparts, “repellers,” do not attract, but rather repel objects approaching them. Topological mixing occurs both in the center of the “attractor” and in the areas adjacent to it, not counting those cases when one configuration is superimposed on another and a “repeller” appears in the “attractor” zone. For some, this is a non-stop airfield; for others, it is an exclusive environment, transferred from phase space to social space. The analogy with a metropolis, in which the trajectories of migration flows converge, has the right to life, provided that the border between “attractor” and “repeller” runs through our consciousness.

Speaking about the consequences of the “Bulldozer Exhibition”, I will resort to the theory of “attractors” using the example of Ilya Kabakov and Erik Bulatov. Kabakov, who became the center of attraction for young artists, was in turn fueled by their energy and transgressive impulses, embodying the idea of ​​a “mobile attractor”, which - attracting many celestial bodies - itself moves in their direction. This analogy (borrowed from the theory of dynamical systems) also applies to Bulatov - with the only difference that he was and remains not a mobile, but a stationary “attractor”.

Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid. Don't talk. 1974. Illustration from the book “Bulldozer Exhibition” by Viktor Agamov-Tupitsyn, 2014

The USSR is an “attractor” that has acquired the features of a “repeller,” and as such it is alternately shrouded in either rosy memories or a miasma of fears associated with its re-transformation into an “attractor.” Unfortunately, the role exchange between the “attractor” and the “repeller” occurs not only at the level of countries or cities, but also in the plane human relations, taking into account their nonlinearity.

Each generation has its own “attractor” and its own “repeller”. During the Thaw, exposure of the cult of personality and Stalinist terror became an “attractor” for the intelligentsia. That is, not an improvement in living conditions and not the acquisition of democratic freedoms, but only the possibility of identifying a “repeller”. Such an “attractor” can be called partial. The combination of partiality (“attractors”) and totality (“repellers”) is one of the fundamental problems fraught with (a) depression, (b) mass psychoses and (c) gravitational anomalies in the social cosmos.

A reminder of the Stalinist repressions condemned by Khrushchev during his reign can be considered the exhibition in Manege (1962), which played the role of a “repeller” for everyone who suffered from it, and for all those whose hopes for de-repellization collapsed overnight. With regard to the “Bulldozer Exhibition”, I will add that in its appearance, over time, it is possible to discover attractive, that is, attractive, features. It seems that the line between “repeller” and “attractor” really lies in our minds.

“Bulldomzer Exhibition” is one of the most famous public events of unofficial art in the USSR; an outdoor exhibition of paintings organized by Moscow avant-garde artists on September 15, 1974 on the outskirts of the city in the Belyaevo forest park, at the intersection of Profsoyuznaya Street and Ostrovityanova Street. Was brutally suppressed by the authorities with the involvement large quantity police, as well as with the participation of watering machines and bulldozers, which is why it got its name.

From the 30s to the end of the 80s of the 20th century, the officially supported art direction in the Soviet Union was exclusively socialist realism. The classification of an artist as a socialist realist coincided with official support for his activities. Artists whose work went beyond the aesthetic program of socialist realism and were not recognized by the authorities as socialist realists often became the object of persecution by the authorities. One of the attempts of these artists to break out of the underground and into wider view was the exhibition in Belyaevo.

A group of artists who were not members of official Soviet artistic unions and organizations agreed to show their works to everyone on the edge of the Bitsevsky forest park.

The initiators of the show were: collector A. Glezer and 13 artists (O. Rabin - the main leader of nonconformism, V. Vorobyov, Y. Zharkikh, V. Komar, A. Melamid, L. Masterkova, V. Nemukhin, E. Rukhin, Rabin A. (son of Rabin O.), V. Sitnikov, I. Kholin, B. Steinberg, N. Elskaya).

According to various participants in the exhibition, they were joined on site by another group of painters who came to support their comrades. Some of them did not come empty-handed: L. Bazhanov, S. Bordachev, E. Zelenin, R. Zanevskaya, K. Nagapetyan, V. Pirogova, A. Tyapushkin, O. Tripolsky, M. Fedorov-Roshal, T Levitskaya, M. Odnoralov, A. Zhdanov, V. Tupitsyn and some others, whose names and numbers cannot be established. Currently, a significant number of artists are announcing their participation in this exhibition.

The exhibition was held on a site belonging to the Belyaevo forest park. Those present included approximately 20 artists and a group of observers, which consisted of relatives and friends of the artists, as well as journalists from Western news agencies. The paintings were hung on improvised stands made from scrap wood.

However, despite the small scale of the event, it was taken very seriously by the authorities. About half an hour after the start of the exhibition, a group was sent to the venue, including three bulldozers, water cannons, dump trucks and about a hundred plainclothes policemen, who began to crowd the artists and the assembled spectators; Some of the paintings were confiscated. Formally, everything looked like an angry spontaneous reaction of a group of workers for the improvement and development of the forest park. However, it was never denied that they received the work order from the KGB.

The attackers smashed paintings, beat and arrested artists, spectators and foreign journalists. Eyewitnesses recall how Oscar Rabin was actually dragged through the entire exhibition, hanging on the blade of a bulldozer bucket. The artists were taken to the police station, where they said: “We must shoot you! I just feel sorry for the cartridges...”

After this event, which caused a loud resonance in the foreign press, the Soviet authorities were forced to give in and officially allowed the holding of a similar exhibition in the open air in Izmailovo two weeks later, on September 29, 1974. The new exhibition presented the works of not 20, but more than 40 artists, lasted 4 hours and, according to various sources, attracted about one and a half thousand people.

A participant in the exhibition, the famous graphic artist Boris Zhutovsky, noted that the quality of the paintings at the vernissage in Izmailovo was incomparably lower than at the first destroyed exhibition in Belyaevo, due to the fact that only the best works were exhibited there, many of which were destroyed. Subsequently, mainly in foreign media, four hours in Izmailovo were often remembered as “half a day of freedom.” The exhibition in Izmailovo, in turn, paved the way for other nonconformist exhibitions that were important in the history of Russian modern art.

The “Bulldozer Exhibition” became the most notable event in artistic life after it was dispersed personally by N.S. Khrushchev exhibitions in Manege 1962, in honor of the 30th anniversary of the Moscow Union of Artists.

The 20th anniversary of the exhibition was celebrated in 1994 with a retrospective exhibition of its participants in the Belyaevo art gallery (exhibition organizer Alexander Glezer).

Thus, the bulldozer exhibition revealed Soviet unofficial art to the world and became part of not only, and perhaps not so much, the history of art, but the history of Russia in general. And those whom the Soviet government considered charlatans are today included in the classics of twentieth-century art.

During the Soviet stage of centralized public administration and financing exhibition activities trading at exhibitions was strictly prohibited. Their main task was to educate the population and disseminate experience. .

And finally, exhibition activities in the conditions of market formation, when from strict government regulation this work moved to complete commercial freedom and objectively put on the agenda the question of the need for its regulation and coordination. Lack of weighted legislative framework, federal strategy and targeted financial support government agencies management has given rise to many problems in exhibition activities. On Russian market foreign firms belonging to the elite of the world exhibition movement came, firmly conquering certain segments of it.

The revival of exhibition activities in Russia can be noted since 1991. In 1993, the All-Russian joint stock company“Nizhny Novgorod Fair” was awarded the high award in Madrid “Arch of Europe Gold Star”, which was previously awarded to only four companies on the planet: Germany, Japan, Mexico and Spain.