Of course, the most scandalous exhibits, the most discussed in the press and in society, are the “Carnival of Dead Mutts” and the “Dead Cats Protest” - a hall where, among bright garlands and tinsel, stuffed dogs and cats hang on hooks. To be honest, it looks a little scary, especially dogs. And it’s really interesting what’s in the spaces zoological museum hundreds of stuffed animals do not look disgusting and do not cause outrage in anyone. But as an art object (?) it’s already unnerving.

Some of the pieces are surprising, such as the works done with a blue BIC pen. The scale is amazing, but the meaning remains a mystery to me.

But do you know why I really wanted to go to this exhibition? Due to several works performed using unusual techniques. 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 was still the same Fabre, I definitely needed to see his work.

Inspection we with doctor_watson We started with the General Staff.
Italicized text from exhibition plaques.

In 1997, Jan Fabre and Ilya Kabakov staged the performance “Meeting”. Fabre created a beetle costume for himself, and a fly costume for Kabakov. These insects appeared as the creative alter egos of the masters. The choice was not accidental. For Kabakov, the fly was an important character, an annoying inhabitant of his communal spaces. Fabre was interested in insects from his youth (...). The artist was impressed that scarab beetles have a more advanced body structure than humans. The human skeleton is covered in soft and vulnerable flesh, while in beetles it is hidden under a hard shell. Fabre makes shell suits to perform metamorphosis - creating a superbeing 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 Dead Mutts” (2006) and “Protest of Dead Cats” (2007) can be correlated with the painting “Cook at the Game Table” by the 17th century Flemish masters Paul de Vos and Jacob Jordaens. The characters in the installations are deceased street animals. Fabre "brings" them back to life by including them in the macabre carnival in the tradition of medieval alchemy, the goal of which was always to bring about the rebirth of an animate or inanimate object.

The next room contains Fabre's early sculptures.
The artist pays tribute to his entomologist grandfather Jean-Henri Fabre by showing a figure working behind a microscope. In this work, he again talks about loneliness, isolation and detachment as necessary states for an 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 - blurriness, unclear outlines and shapes. The same hero, with his head down and wearing a bowler hat, hung limply above the ground in the work “The Hanged Man II” (1979-2003). Fascination with death permeates all of Fabre’s work.

Silk Curtain entitled "The Road from the Earth to the Stars is Not Paved" (1987), painted with a ballpoint pen, it seems to separate the real world from the mystical world of night visions.

Umbraculum 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 cyclical nature of life and death ceases, and as a world of mysterious spirituality, making one think about the vulnerability of human existence. This is also a tribute to modern philosophy, according to which a person is just an image created by knowledge, unstable and short-lived. Michel Foucault predicted that culture would be freed from this image as a result of a shift in the space of knowledge, and then “man will disappear, like a face drawn on coastal sand disappears.”
The details of the installation, created from bones, are just end-to-end shells that do not hide their emptiness. The new bone “skeleton”, brought outward, is analogous to the shell of a beetle, hiding a boneless body. Once again Fabre says that a person needs some kind of solid “shelter”. The image of the museum in some way can also be interpreted as an umbraculum. The Hermitage, created by Catherine, also “sheltered” a collection of works of art and has become a true haven of art these days.

The elytra are larger. All these crutches and strollers are essentially an exoskeleton, like the hard shells of beetles.

Now let's move to the main building of the Hermitage. In the courtyard, the “Man Who Measures the Clouds” raised his hands to the sky. Well, there will always be work for him in St. Petersburg.

The halls of the Hermitage are beautiful even without exhibits :)

The most popular work at the exhibition - this is a man who broke his nose on a painting. The 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 doubts: “I allow myself to bleed (dwarf).” The meaning of art is in art itself, its mystery is incomprehensible, no matter how hard you try.

Power.

Halls where the permanent exhibition is mixed with works by Fabre. The works are miniature, bright, and belong to several series. The red background makes it easy to notice “alien” works and at the same time focuses attention on the image.

There are also strange works. "Man with a stick covered in bird glue" (1990), BIC ballpoint pen. The man looking at the image thoughtfully said: “Where is the wand?..”

"The Appearance and Disappearance of Antwerp I". Still the same ballpoint pen + glossy photo paper. To view the image, you need to approach it under acute angle, then outlines appear from the blue darkness.

The owls, the heroes of the installation “Headless Messengers of Death” (2006), arranged like an altar, fixed their cold gaze on the viewer, with their silent and solemn presence recalling the borderline existence in the stage of posthumous existence, the transition from life to death. This message is reinforced by the winter landscapes of Geisbrecht Leuthens (1586-1656), from the Hermitage collection, which are placed on the sides of the composition.

Here it is, that same cold look!

And finally, the images I came here for.
The dog - a symbol of fidelity, sincerity and obedience - is present in many of the paintings in the permanent exhibition of the hall. Fabre's works presented here address this image. Eight green mosaics of dogs surrounded by vanitas (skulls, bones, clocks) are placed 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, and Mullet and Procris” by Theodore Romouths.
According to Fabre, their internal psychological balance is disturbed, leading to transgression, which the artist understands as a kind of act of excess, leading to the experience of sin, betrayal and deception. The related theme of vanitas reflects not only the imperfection of the world and its transience, but also the idea of ​​punishment associated with the feeling of guilt. Fabre's two sculptures, created especially for the exhibition, represent the decorated elytra of golden beetles and the skeletons of dogs with parrots in their mouths - a symbol of the "bite of death" that inevitably interrupts the fullness of life. (...) Green color, according to Fabre, is combined with the green tones of the landscapes in the paintings of the hall and symbolizes the loyalty inherent in a dog.

"Loyal sphinxes of metamorphosis and impermanence" (2016)

“Loyalty guards Time and Death” (2016) from the series “Vanity of Vanities, All is Vanity”

The hall was conceived by Nicholas I as the antechamber of the New Hermitage. It was designed to introduce visitors to the history of Russian art. A reminder of this are the relief profile portraits of famous Russian artists, who became Fabre’s source of inspiration for creating the new series “My Queens”. The heroines of the series are women of the 21st century, friends and patrons of Fabre's workshop, whom the artist perceives as muses. The majesty of the full-length portraits made of Carrara marble is offset by Fabre’s ironic trick - he puts jester caps on his models.

The Hall of Flemish Masters, where, in my opinion, Fabre’s works fit most organically. I would even leave this exhibition permanent. The installation clearly shows that the perception of the depicted dead nature and the actual dead nature differ significantly.

On the way to the Knights' Hall, the exhibition continues. How do you like this dress?

It causes some disgust for me: there is no longer a neat orderliness here, the bodies of the beetles are a jumble.

Jewelry precision again appears in the knight's hall.

It is interesting that the shells created for protection here adorn the weapons of attack. Although, maybe this is the point: to 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 “Maiden/Warrior,” in which two knights, clad in armor like beetles in shells, fought endless ritual battles inside a glass display case. “For me, being a knight is the most romantic thing I can imagine,” says Fabre. “There is hope in creativity. It is always faith in hope that the artist creates better world. When I can't improve the world around me or anyone else, I will stop being an artist."

Still from the performance film Knight of Despair/Warrior of Beauty. 2016/ jordan bosher; the deweer collection/jan fabre; Angelos bvba collection/jan fabre; afp/eastnewsh

Jan Fabre
Artist, sculptor, director, screenwriter

Born December 14 1958 year in Antwerp (Belgium). He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.
A universal artist, he works in different types of art and techniques, exploring three important topics: the life of insects, the human body and the phenomenon of war.
IN 1978 I painted with my own blood. With these works fame comes to him.
WITH 1980 year begins to stage plays. IN 1984- m wrote a play specifically for the Venice Biennale, which was a great success there.
In 1986 he founded his theater group Troubleyn. In the 1990s, he began creating works with a blue ballpoint pen, calling this series Bic-Art.

Shock is the main definition of what has been doing for almost 40 years Jan Fabre(b. 1958), artist, writer, director of drama, choreography and operas, performance artist, reflecting on the nature of cruelty, natural to the world of animals and plants, but not overcome by the so-called homo sapiens not with any social “progress”. The Hermitage project will also be a shock, but for a different reason. It does not have what makes theater critics noisily admire all types of obscenity in Fabre's 24-hour performance on ancient subjects Mount Olympus and argue until you are hoarse whether it is worthy of a theater stage to show the world championship in male and female masturbation in a play Orgy of tolerance, and Greek cultural officials to appoint and deny Fabre the position of artistic director international festival in Athens. For excessive, in their opinion, radicalism. In the Hermitage, Fabre will try to convince us that he is desperately fighting for Beauty. Perhaps this is an invented construction-hoax, but it naturally fits into the life strategy of one of the most famous figures of modern Western culture, which the Belgian Fabre truly is.

Rubens and insects

Two facts from Fabre's biography are important for understanding his art. He is the grandson of a famous entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre, author of the famous book Insect life about the most common and most ruthless living creatures towards each other. A female devouring a defenseless male immediately after he has fulfilled his marital duty is a common thing for them.

The second circumstance is mentioned less often, but it is more important. As a twelve-year-old boy, Ian visited the house Rubens in their native Antwerp and saw that the workshop of the most famous Fleming in the world was a serious enterprise, where hundreds of painters and engravers painted pictures and cut boards day and night. And I realized that an artist is also a diplomat, a courtier who determines the cultural policy of his country. It was then that Fabre chose the strategy of a multifunctional artist, creating paintings, drawings, performances and bodily performances. But for this he uses the model of a Renaissance artist, a connoisseur of sciences and arts - and this is Fabre’s uniqueness on the modern art scene.
Today there are many more professionals who are good at something in a narrow field. And even going “beyond the scope” is usually considered in the context of specialization. No matter what witty silk-screen printing with medicinal pills you make Damien Hirst, he is primarily the author of Formalin Cows and Sharks. No matter what brutal videos he shoots Ai Weiwei, he is perceived primarily as a “constructor” who comes up with huge objects. This was confirmed by the recent brilliant solo exhibition of the Chinese artist at the Helsinki Art Museum.

Fabr is another matter. He carefully, over decades, sculpts his image of the old master, who, by the will of fate, fate, prophet, and so on, lives today. That is why Fabre is absolutely harmonious with the Hermitage 20/21 project, which shows contemporary art in dialogue with the old. The artist has been on the must-see shortlist since the project began ten years ago. The first “chronicle mention” of Fabre dates back to 1978, when he held an exhibition My body, my blood, my landscape, where drawings in blood were shown - a firm conviction in its exclusive mission.

An installation commissioned by the Belgian ruling house brought worldwide fame to the artist. Heaven of admiration from one and a half million Thai beetles, which were used to decorate the ceiling and chandelier in the royal palace, and Pieta from Carrara marble. In the first case, Fabre refers to painting Sistine Chapel, in the second - to the sculpture of the same Michelangelo.

The installation can be seen as a crisis in the civilization of consumerism, and recognizing this fact, as admiration for the industriousness of ancient insects. More difficult with Pieta, made in life-size Michelangelo. A figure with a skull instead of a face holds the body of the artist, on whose face there is a butterfly perched, and in his hand he holds a human brain. We can talk about memento mori or about the fragility of existence, but for Fabre, death is not something fatal, retribution for sins and mistakes. Like insects, there is a working process of replacing one generation with another.

In 2009, at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the Fabre exhibition From head to toe The New Arsenal opened for art. In a giant installation Brain a figure similar to the author tried to literally climb into the gray matter with a shovel. Fabre contrasted the expansion of the physical space of the biennial with a search for a space of meaning.

Kneel

Fabre's first contacts with the Hermitage date back to 2006, when the museum organized a Art Paris discussion about contemporary art in the old museum. At this time, an exhibition of the artist was being prepared in the Louvre - the Rubens hall was filled with gravestones with life dates of European scientists renamed to various insects. And among the graves a worm with the head of Jan Fabre crawled and spat on everyone.

Then the Hermitage was impressed by what it saw. But the specific idea for the current exhibition has been maturing for several years. Project curator Dmitry Ozerkov formulated it this way: “This exhibition is different, it is not an invasion. Fabre, contemporary artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to bend the knee before the old masters, before beauty. This exhibition is not about Fabre, it is about the energies of the Hermitage in its four contexts: the painting of the old masters, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived. Fabre watches, listens and creates his own rhymes. Fabre is an active Flemish artist living in Flanders and continuing the tradition of Flemish art. Antwerp, made famous by Rubens and Van Dyck, is not just a part of history, but a living testimony to the beauty and greatness of Flanders. For Fabre, healthy nationalism is important - the continuation of tradition. Flemish collection, primarily Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordaens, - one of main stones Hermitage. For Fabre, the museum building has two wings - Rastrelli And Russia, is like a butterfly with two wings, filled with all the beauties of art, for the son of an entomologist. The butterfly is pinned by the Alexander Column to the body of St. Petersburg. The exhibition is housed in two wings and connects two museum buildings on Palace Square».

In the summer of 2016, kneeling happened literally. One Monday, when the museum was closed to the public, Fabre donned the armor of a knight, specially made for him in Belgium, and made a pilgrimage through the Hermitage halls. I didn't forget to look at Titan Cane Korean colleague Lee Ufana in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace. The hike became the basis for a video with the same name - Knight of Despair/Warrior of Beauty.

The new video will complement seven earlier ones. Place Staff occupied by Fabrov's sculpture Man measuring clouds. It obviously rhymes with Kabakov's staircases to heaven and his Antenna (Looking up, reading words), created for Munster in 1997.

The complex topography of the exhibition deliberately gives the viewer freedom of choice. The following route is considered the main route: first, in the buildings of the Winter Palace and the Small Hermitage, you must pass all the Flemings and Dutch from Apollo to the Knights' Hall; after looking at Fabre's self-portrait I let myself bleed And sacred dung beetle (Gold version), will stay longer at the installation Altar- a table covered with Flemish lace from Bruges, on which there are stuffed seven owls. The symbol of wisdom reminds us of Catherine II, who created the Hermitage, but the owl is a predator, feeding on mice and birds living in the Hanging Garden. In addition, the night bird is a symbol of evil wisdom, a reference to alchemy, magic, evil spirits, and the irrational quest of man. Fabre is ready for sacrifices: he draws the slogan “I will lay down my life for Jacob Jordaens,” but only if there is a ballpoint pen Bic for infinite Bic-Art. Popular Flemish vanitas Fabre materializes into two sculptures - skeletons of dogs with parrots in their mouths, decorated with the elytra of beetles. Appearance and Disappearance Bacchus reminds me of the show Mount Olympus: The actor contorts in unnatural poses borrowed from a theatrical marathon.

In the General Staff Building, the exhibition occupies its central spaces: three courtyards and two transformable halls between them. The main thing here is dialogue with Ilya Kabakov near Red carriage. In 1997, the artists held a performance Meeting, captured on video. Fabre made insect costumes for both. Naturally, flies and beetles. First they communicated in the basement, in the space of a beetle, then on the roof of a skyscraper, in the space of a fly, speaking Russian and Flemish, respectively. And they understood each other perfectly.

Dog skeletons, gutted stuffed birds, monstrous horned beetles suddenly appeared among the gilded chandeliers, paintings by great masters and the snow-white columns of the state halls of the Hermitage. In the hall of Flemish and Dutch paintings, for example, two natural dog skeletons are exhibited, holding brightly colored parrots in their teeth. Visitors cannot understand what this means and why these monsters appeared in the temple of classical art, which is rightfully considered the Hermitage. The sightseers are surprised, shake their heads, shrug, and take pictures.

Creepy monsters are placed in the museum without any explanatory signs, right among world-famous paintings and sculptures, puzzling and frightening those who saw them. But it turns out that all these, frankly speaking, frightening exhibits are not a set for the filming of a horror film, but... an “art exhibition” of the notorious Belgian artist Jan Fabre.

The exhibition of Fabre’s works is called “Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty.” One can still understand about despair - it covers everyone who came to the Hermitage to get acquainted with real art, and instead sees some terrible insects and gutted dogs.

In Europe he is considered a genius. Jan Fabre was born in Antwerp. His grandfather is the famous entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre, author of the book “The Life of Insects.” Hence, probably, the artist’s interest in winged creatures. He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and the Royal Academy of Fine Arts. In the West today he is famous not only as a sculptor and artist, but also as a writer and theater director. “The world of the insect, the human body and the strategy of war are the three central themes that he uses in his work,” Wikipedia writes about him.

The Art of Jean Fabray

Fabre has a reputation as a master of scandalous shocking. Some consider him a genius, others call him a clever swindler from art. To further shock the public, he wrote some of his drawings with his own blood. And shocking works.

Fabre made a considerable fortune from his worldwide monsters and theatrical horrors. He has two companies that make a lot of money from his exhibitions.

Of course, the maestro provides a philosophical basis for his work. The shells of fear-like beetles, according to Fabre, play the role of an external skeleton and should symbolize the future idea of ​​​​a person.

He created a whole collection of self-portraits - 36 scary busts using bronze casting, where he himself is depicted with horns and donkey ears.

CHAPTERS I - XVIII. Carefully and carefully, with great love and tenderness, Jan Fabre cast wax and bronze busts realistic to the smallest detail with his own portrait. Moreover, modified in the spirit of Mephistopheles and Lucifer, with all the corresponding attributes. An assortment of gorgeous horns, growing not only from the self-portrait’s forehead, but also from his nose and crown, gracefully complement and emphasize the maniacal grimaces and charming vampire, or perhaps demonic, fangs. Probably a tribute to the fashion for everything inexplicable, mystical and sinister, or maybe the author just likes to play with otherworldly forces, depicting them in satirical sculptures, to which he had previously given his own face.

Although long-time fans of Jan Fabre's shocking work are no strangers. Their favorite has long called himself a modern mystic, and therefore does not hesitate to combine images of saints with demonic creatures, and symbols Orthodox Church portray in a way that is unusual for them, and in some cases - incorrect. A revolutionary, rebellious spirit rages in the sculptor’s heart, which pushes him to defiant and eccentric actions that color his official biography with bright colors. So, he decorated his street with a sign that read “Jan Fabre lives and works here,” painted a whole series of paintings with his own blood, created an incredible installation of 1.5 million scarab beetles, and for another installation he built a giant worm, topped with a copy of his own head , who not only blinked and opened her mouth, but even spoke. So the strange horned sculptures from the CHAPTERS I - XVIII series, cast entirely from wax and bronze, are far from the limit of the author’s creative imagination and his unconventional ideas.

In addition to sculptures, paintings and installations, Jan Fabray is known as the author of music and dance performances and choreographic productions.

Here, for example, is the play "Orgy of Tolerance", shown at the last Avignon festival - a provocative, sharp stage passage, one of many criticizing European values, the ideals of globalism, pan-European integration and tolerance.

Looking at the masturbation scene that opens the play, at several men and women in white shorts and T-shirts, shuddering and groaning on the floor and on expensive leather chairs, encouraged by the shouts of the automatic trainers, someone began to laugh hysterically. On the whole, the audience who gathered for the “Orgy” greeted the moans of the masturbators with restraint, with some feeling of compassion. Apparently, expecting some more complex and intriguing stage composition.

A shocking scene from the masturbation championship, when business-like trainers with machine guns encourage them to continue their frantic work with cries (“For the Motherland,” “For the Government!”). Then two pregnant women riding supermarket trolleys and giving birth in them... chips, deodorant and packets of sausage. The horror of consumer society, presented with such literary, in this case literal, accuracy, does not seem to particularly touch the hearts of the “sleeping Russians” (“Russians, wake up! And finally learn English,” demands one of Jan Fabre’s characters).

And vigilant Europeans were no more impressed when three years ago they booed Fabre's program for the Avignon Festival and called their culture minister to account. He even came to Avignon to explain to them the meaning of “modern art.”

In the “Orgy of Tolerance,” this minister, and “modern art” itself, and Catholic celibacy, and Muslim fundamentalism, and gay festival directors and homophobes, and Barack Obama, and Jan Fabre, who is taking the play to the next festival, where he Once again I will be scolded by evil critics.

In his denunciations of consumer society, Fabre reaches the limits of sarcastic irony when he makes a luxurious leather sofa copulate with an equally luxurious handbag, and supermarket strollers dance a Strauss waltz.

This orgy of total criticism unleashed on modern Europe is celebrated everywhere today. Its traces are in the smart novels of Michel Houellebecq and Frederic Beigbeder, the films of Lars von Trier and Tarantino. But the primitiveness and literalism of Fabre’s pamphlet eat up the bitterness and salt of his revelations, deprive them of their fury and strength, and make them part of the very decay that he so jaundicedly diagnoses.

However, a logical question arises: in order to tell us about this and show us their monsters, this Belgian, who depicts himself with devil horns, was invited to the Hermitage? For this purpose, the most prestigious halls were allocated to his dead dogs and horned beetles as a form of special respect for this propagandist of “death and ugliness” not only in the General Staff Building, a branch of the Hermitage where contemporary art is exhibited, but even in the Winter Palace itself?

Is Fabre admired in the West? Considered a genius? But in the West today they admire a lot of things, even things that here in Russia, except for a handful of liberal aesthetes, no one likes. Lately we have had huge queues at exhibitions of the classics - Serov and Aivazovsky, and the halls where the handicrafts of figures like Fabre are displayed are empty. Why are they being imposed on us? Why are places allocated in the country's most important museum?

No one in St. Petersburg doubted that this exhibition would cause another scandal. “In the Department of Contemporary Art of the Hermitage,” writes a correspondent for the city’s most popular online newspaper “Fontanka,” “they are rubbing their hands in anticipation of a scandal: all over the world, exhibitions of this author are not without heated discussions.”

“Tell me, were the paintings from these places taken for restoration, or what is it?” - the man asks the museum attendant, pointing to the inky blue paintings by Fabre, hung interspersed with the main exhibition (by the way, for the sake of this exhibition, the permanent hanging was moved apart by several tens of centimeters). In response, the servant just shrugs her hands in bewilderment.

Even more scandalous Fabre exhibits await visitors in the museum’s branch - in the General Staff Building, located opposite the Hermitage, on the same Palace Square. There are piles of art objects in the form of wheelchairs, crutches and stuffed animals.

In order to ward off protests from indignant visitors in advance, the Hermitage emphasizes that they specifically clarified with the artist that he did not kill dogs, but collaborated with a service that collects the bodies of animals hit by cars on the roads.

Fabre himself confirmed that there would be a scandal. During a meeting with journalists, he put on medieval armor, and in this form, he walked around the former chambers of the Russian emperors at ease in front of the amazed sharks of the pen.

It turns out almost like Mayakovsky, who ridiculed Kerensky, who brazenly settled in Zimny:

The palace didn't think

about the fidgety shooter,

I didn't know what was in the bed,

entrusted to the queens,

some kind of

attorney at law...

Why did he do this? Portrayed himself as a “knight of goodness and a warrior of beauty”? Well, let him pretend, but what does the Hermitage, famous for the great traditions of world classical art, have to do with it? Is this a place for shocking and dubious experiments for foreign figures with a scandalous reputation?

Alas, scandals around what is going on these days in the main museum of the country have been breaking out constantly lately. Recently, due to numerous complaints from St. Petersburg residents, the prosecutor’s office had to check the scandalous exhibition of the English brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman, “The End of the Fun.” The central project consisted of 9 aquarium display cases containing small human figures made of plastic. Most of them were dressed in Nazi uniforms and engaged in phantasmagoric violence: they massacred each other.

In addition, the works of the Chapman brothers included Christian symbols, the crucified Ronald McDonald, and “Bosch” freaks. Under the pretext of showing the horrors of Nazism, swastikas, corpses, a bloody mess of plastic figures, and heroes of Western mass culture were presented. The Chapmans pinned teddy bears to Christian crosses, which caused a storm of protests from indignant believers. As Assistant Prosecutor of St. Petersburg Marina Nikolaeva told reporters at the time, 117 complaints were received from St. Petersburg residents.

However, the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, personally stood up for the Chapmenovs. He urgently convened a press conference, at which he energetically attacked St. Petersburg residents: “A stunning example of the cultural degradation of society and lofty discussions about the cross, behind which there is no religious essence,” the head of the museum angrily said. “Only idiots can think that the exhibition insults the cross.” We are talking about the Last Judgment in our time. What is art and what is not is determined only by the museum, and not by the street public,” said the director of the museum, not excluding that many letters to the Hermitage “ may have been written by mentally ill people".

That is, according to Piotrovsky, we have the right to buy tickets to the Hermitage (prices for which, by the way, have recently increased sharply), but we are not smart enough to evaluate the exhibition...

Indeed, no conclusions were drawn from the mass protests against the Chapmans’ blasphemy in the Hermitage. And now, in the state rooms of the Winter Palace, the terrible monstrosities of modern Western “urchins” in art are exhibited.

It would not be superfluous to recall another scandal, which has long shown that not all is well in the country’s main museum. We are talking about grandiose thefts of works of art discovered in 2006. As the Accounts Chamber, which inspected the Hermitage, revealed, museum valuables and funds were stolen. Of the 50 randomly selected storage units, 47 were missing, the state allegedly lost hundreds of millions of rubles from the Hermitage’s exhibition activities, about two hundred thousand exhibits were not assigned to financially responsible persons, hundreds were transferred to other institutions and were not returned.

As the Izvestia newspaper managed to find out, the auditors were missing several dozen icons in gilded and silver frames, lamps, bowls and other church utensils from the storerooms; cups, ladles, glasses, salt shakers, forks - all made of silver and mostly with enamel; watches, cigarette cases, brooches, photo frames - a total of 221 items. And everything happened very simply. The exhibits were stolen by the museum employees themselves and sold not as material assets - “gold, diamonds”, but as exhibits with a museum and scientific context.

Then Piotrovsky beautifully “turned the dial”: “This is an explosion, this is a disease of society,” he said about the thefts in the Hermitage. “I’m still in shock and can’t understand how this happened.”

The director of the Hermitage then escaped with reprimands from the then Minister of Culture Mikhail Shvydkoy for stealing exhibits from the museum worth about three billion rubles.

Watching who is exhibited today in the most prestigious halls of St. Petersburg, the question inevitably arises: why do we need this? “These artists are popular in the West!” – the organizers of their exhibitions will answer us with a contemptuous look on their faces, or even directly call those asking such questions “idiots”.

It’s true, they may indeed be popular there, because in the West today liberal globalists are imposing their values ​​on everyone: gay pride parades, same-sex “marriages”, arrogant contempt for morality and morality, which is presented as highest achievements“free society”, and “modern art” correspond to these “principles”.

But why bring all this garbage to us? Why give away monsters and strange, incomprehensible “performances” for exhibitions? best halls cities and countries?

Let's ask ourselves this question?

And the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation commented on the scandalous exhibition of Jan Fabre taking place in the Hermitage, while simultaneously noting that the museum’s management has the right to organize various projects without coordinating them with the ministry.

Indeed, the exhibition project “Jan Fabre. Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty”, presented in the State Hermitage, caused a wide resonance, contrasting with recognized masterpieces of world art. The State Hermitage Museum, like others Russian museums“, having fairly broad independence and freedom, independently determines the priorities of exhibition activities, their thematic focus, artistic solutions and design,” the ministry said in a statement, noting that such a trusting relationship has made it possible to implement many successful projects. However, the department clarifies, the Jan Fabre exhibition was an exception.

Exhibition “Jan Fabr. “The Knight of Despair is a Warrior of Beauty” is rather an exception, a confirmation that all forms of public presentation are not only a high mission, but also a certain area of ​​responsibility of the museum, for which one can and should be able to answer, reports the press service of the Ministry of Culture.

However, the example of Konstantin Raikin shows that all problems with responsibility can be solved by simply inserting a scary word into your speech - censorship!!

And all the words against are already lost somewhere...

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 as part 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 at the Hermitage: graphics, sculpture, installations, films. The exhibition caused a mixed reaction among museum visitors, which indicates the unconditional interest of the St. Petersburg audience in the creative statements of the author. The Hermitage receives letters from museum visitors criticizing Fabre's works and asking 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 are already accustomed to associating with contemporary art, but also in the Main Museum Complex?

Indeed, the works 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 adjacent to masterpieces Rubens. According to the curator of the project D. Ozerkov, “this is not an invasion. Fabre, a modern artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to bend the knee before the old masters, before beauty. This exhibition is not about Fabre, it is about the energies of the Hermitage in its four contexts: the painting of the old masters, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived” (The Art Newspaper Russia).

Photo by Alexander Lavrentyev

The Belgian’s shimmering green compositions, 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 tabletops, and of the decor of the Malachite Living Room of the Winter Palace.

Photo by Kirill Ikonnikov

His drawings with a "Bic" pen are close to the lapis lazuli of the Great Skylight vases of the New Hermitage.

Fabre’s laconic and austere reliefs with “queens” are adjacent to ceremonial portraits of the English nobility and court ladies by Anthony van Dyck.

Fabre’s juxtaposition with Snyders’s “Shops” is fortunate; the modern artist does not quote the Flemish master, but only carefully adds a skull motif – a meaning that is obvious to an art historian: the theme of vanity and the vanity of existence.

Photo by Valery Zubarov

Fabre himself, at a meeting with St. Petersburg residents in the Atrium of the General Staff Building, said that his works in the art halls of Flanders are designed to make viewers “stop, take time for art.” “Visitors walk past Rubens like they walk past the windows of a large store; they don’t look at the details,” says the artist.

– I appeal to all services of the State Hermitage! As an animal rights activist and volunteer, I consider it unacceptable for display to all age categories and destructive for the child’s psyche of a stuffed dog on hooks! The Jan Fabre exhibition is a lack of culture. This is especially immoral in light of the huge response to the cases of knackering in Khabarovsk. Please remove stuffed animals from the exhibition!

Jan Fabre has repeatedly told journalists that the dogs and cats that appear in his installations are stray animals that have died on the roads. Fabre tries to give them new life in art and thus conquer death. “Many of my works are dedicated 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 states: “The artist is a stray dog.”

Fabre calls for careful treatment of animals, which have accompanied humanity for many centuries, entering history and mythology. Today, people's attitude towards animals is consumerist. Cats are left at dachas. Old dogs are kicked out of the house. By emphasizing cats and dogs in old art, Fabre shows that in all their qualities they are similar to people, and therefore their love and joy, their illness and death, are vilely forced out of our consciousness.

By presenting stuffed pets, Fabre, together with animal rights activists around the world, opposes consumerism towards them.

Often we love not animals, but our love for them. Calling them our little brothers, we often do not realize how cruelly we treat them. We are ready to get rid of them at the first opportunity, should the animal get sick or grow old. Jan Fabre is against this. He transforms the bodies of animals hit by cars that he finds along highways from the waste of consumer society - into a reproach of human cruelty.

– Why couldn’t Fabre use artificial materials instead of stuffed animals? Modern technologies make it possible to make them completely indistinguishable from the real thing.

“Why marble and not plastic?” asks Fabre, 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 Russian formalists about the unity of form and content.

For Jan Fabre, the “erotic relationship with the material,” the sensual component, is very important. He recalls that Flemish artists were alchemists; they used 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.” When creating his monks for the installation “Umbraculum”, Fabre uses bones – the 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.

In the Knights' Hall of the New Hermitage, horses from the Tsarskoye Selo Arsenal of Nicholas I are presented (these are horse skins stretched over a wooden base). In the Winter Palace of Peter I (Peter the Great's Office) a stuffed dog is exhibited; this is an Italian greyhound, one of the emperor's favorites. Their presence in the Hermitage does not seem strange or provocative to visitors, and does not cause fear or indignation.

Photo by Valery Zubarov

The artist uses certain means based on the principle of internal necessity and his own ultimate goal. To perceive contemporary art, a cursory glance is not enough; it requires (from each of us) inner work and spiritual effort. This effort is associated with overcoming stereotypes, prejudices, fear, ideological and psychological clichés, and religious attitudes. It requires courage and patience, forcing us to expand the boundaries of our perception. Contemporary art is something for which one cannot be completely prepared. Fabre himself says that his work “is associated with the search for reconciliation and love. Love is the search for intense dialogue and civility.”

Photo by Valery Zubarov

Text: Tsibulya Alexandra, 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 - about the scandal surrounding stuffed animals at an exhibition in the Hermitage (Paper)

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 SECRETE 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 has created 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 situated 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 theater. 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 has 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 exhibition and enter into 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 métamorphose 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.