Nikolai Polissky. The Brave New World of Nicholas of Polis. Nikolai Polissky - about why to build a Maslenitsa sculpture the height of a ten-story building

The name of the artist Nikolai Polissky is inextricably linked with the phenomenon of Nikola-Lenivets, a Kaluga village on the Ugra River, which became the center of contemporary art thanks to the Archstoyanie festival held there annually since 2006. Actually, it was Nikolai Polissky who was the discoverer of this land: he also “discovered” to the Russian viewer the meaning of the mysterious phrase “land art”.

The artist was born in 1957 in Moscow. For three years he unsuccessfully entered Stroganovka, as a result he entered “Mukha”. In 1985 he joined the Mitki, becoming the first and only Moscow member of the group, from which, however, he soon left. Polissky began visiting Nikola-Lenivets in the late 80s, initially using its potential as a subject for landscape painting. At the end of the 1990s, the artist, under the influence of the same Nikolo-Lenivets impressions, stopped painting and moved on to creating landscape objects. Polissky's works - always large-scale, truly monumental, objects overwhelming in size - contain a certain mysterious, non-verbalizable “Russianness”. Their nationality, regardless of the techniques and materials used in this particular work, is undeniable and is not questioned. Perhaps this phenomenon is explained by the close interaction between Polissky and the indigenous population of Nikola-Lenivets: all objects are created by the hands of local residents. Of course, the concept is carefully developed by the artist, but one should not underestimate the results of Polissky’s crossing of folk craft practices with contemporary art.

Nikolai Polissky’s project “Borders of the Empire” presented in the Erarta Museum exhibition was first shown at the Archstoyanie festival in 2005. Previously exhibited on the endless banks of the Ugra, and now successfully integrated into the space of the museum hall, the objects resemble pillars-columns that were installed along the route of the triumphant Caesars, who annexed new territories to the Empire. Expanding the borders of the Empire is most often the purpose of its existence, which at the same time is the reason for its inevitable death. Border pillars mark the boundaries of the Empire, separating the appropriated territory from the foreign one, the one that has yet to be conquered.

Huge wooden sculptures also evoke ancient pagan idols. On the tops of the sculptures, some of which are frightening in their resemblance to gallows, rise hastily knocked together, rough two-headed birds, reminding the viewer of the proud symbol Russian statehood. Again, militant “Russianness” peeks through the current form. The memory of the Russian Empire that has gone into oblivion and the other one that came to replace it a few years later comes to mind. These formations that once existed, but have long since disappeared into history, left behind only fragments: they have lost their meaning mysterious artifacts. Having lost both meaning and purpose, they, nevertheless, do not disappear from the face of the earth, playing, perhaps, a much more significant role than we might assume. Despite the obvious loss of relevance of the imperial idea and its complete incompatibility with the propagated European culture openness of borders, the topic of border walls continues to be actively discussed: the United States promises to force Mexico to build such a wall, and Lithuania plans to “fence itself off” from the Kaliningrad region.

Nikolai Polissky is the only one in modern Russian art landscape artist. Since the early 2000s, he has created most of his works in the village of Nikola-Lenivets in the Kaluga region - a four-hour drive from Moscow, from scrap materials and in collaboration with the original inhabitants of the village. His art can be seen with good reason call it a utopia - both socially and, in fact, artistically.

Moreover, it is a realized utopia. In the social dimension, Polissky managed, with the help of art, to revive a half-abandoned village, turning it into a real Cultural Center(since 2003 it has been held here international festival landscape architecture "ArchStoyanie") and making its residents full participants creative process. As for the art project Nikolai Polissky, then it represents a kind of cultivation on Russian soil of iconic forms of world architecture - from antiquity to modernism: a Roman aqueduct made of snow, a Babylonian ziggurat made of bundles of hay, the likeness of Vladimir Shukhov’s constructivist radio tower or the skyscraper-arch Defense built from branches. Reproduced from local materials using techniques that refer to traditional village crafts or pastimes, they acquire the universality and naturalness of not only archetypal buildings characteristic of all cultures, but also certain natural phenomena like bird's nests or beaver dams.

“Large Hadron Collider” is a work related to a new project invented by Nikolai Polissky. Now the unclouded mirror of the people's consciousness should no longer reflect the classical heritage of world architecture, but the latest achievements of science. As a matter of fact, Polissky already had one work of this kind - this was “Baikonur” created in 2005: a huge installation consisting of conventional similarities of rockets and launch complexes, woven like baskets from wicker. First shown in the yard Tretyakov Gallery During the First Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, this installation was then transported to Nikola-Lenivets, where it was burned during the traditional Maslenitsa festival. Even then, science was read through the prism of ritual and magic. The link between space rockets and their wicker likenesses became flames. And the exit to extraterrestrial space turned into burning, reminiscent of funeral pyres, providing the deceased with a transition to another world.

Universal Mind

Sennaya Tower

Borders of the Empire

Drovnik

Likhobor Gate

Firebird

Beaubourg

Image caption The “Universal Mind” project is the artist’s largest work

Artist and sculptor, land art guru Nikolai Polissky, after 12 years of “cultural resuscitation” of the Russian village, admits that the problem cannot be solved without the help of patrons, and laments the lack of demand for culture in a country that greets contemporary art with indifference, and sometimes even prison, as in the case of the girls from the punk group Pussy Riot. Polissky calls them his favorite contemporary artists.

Polissky has lived for almost 20 years in the village of Nikola-Lenivets, 200 kilometers from Moscow near Kaluga. The former "Mitek" first moved from St. Petersburg to Moscow, but eventually escaped from there too, because he "always loved the countryside." His eternally unfinished house with a noisy workshop for a peasant artel is furnished modestly, but from the windows there is a view of the meadow, an abandoned church and forests to the horizon beyond the graceful bend of the Ugra River.

Polissky devoted his first ten years in the village to painting, and at the turn of the century he started something that made him famous throughout the world. He took peasants as co-authors, turned to natural materials and took up contemporary art, which led him to the Venice Biennale and made Nikola-Lenivets the cultural capital of the Russian hinterland - largely thanks to the Archstoyanie festival.

“I am an artist of the 21st century. It all started for me in February 2000,” says Polissky about his first experience of working with villagers - then they brought an army of 200 snowmen to the banks of the Ugra.

Polissky remembers the first generation of “professional alcoholics” fondly, and says that now they drink “not so selflessly.”

Nikolay Polissky

Finding himself in an abandoned village on the banks of the Ugra, I first painted pictures, then I felt the need to work with space and the surrounding material. His first work - "Snowmen" - appeared in Nikola-Lenivets in 2000, and represented an army of 220 snowmen standing on the banks of the Ugra River. Local village men made snowmen for 10 rubles apiece. This was followed by other large objects from natural materials(hay, wood, vines) – “Hay Tower”, “Drovnik”, “Media Tower”, “Lighthouse” and others. Almost all projects, as is customary in land art, dissolved into nature over time - the snow melted, the hay was used to feed livestock, and the home was heated with firewood.

He created “Nikola-Lenivets Crafts” in the Kaluga village of Nikola-Lenivets, which now employs about 20 people from neighboring villages.

In 2006, he invented and organized the Archstoyanie festival, where participants created works from natural materials in the open air.

In 2008, together with the artel, he participated in the Venice Architecture Biennale. He took part in exhibitions in Madrid and Barcelona.

He made several land art projects in France, participated in the opening day at the Museum of Modern Art in Luxembourg with the Large Hadron Collider project.

“The old ones were phenomenal! Not subjects, but objects of art. These were Soviet peasants. What fates!” - says Polissky.

The project has turned from a purely artistic one into a social one. After 12 years, the artel constantly employs about 20 people. Together with his “co-authors,” Polissky travels to exhibitions in Italy, Spain and Luxembourg, and builds facilities in France. Looking back, the artist admits that he created more of a cultural reservation, and without cash injections it will not be possible to radically change the lives of the peasants.

“This story can develop. But - with the participation of business only. If there is a millionaire collective farm. As in the Soviet Union, collective farms are those that were subsidized while the rest lay idle. For now - this is the only way.”

“Reanimation of a place - this is important to me as an example. I do not force all peasants to engage in art. But one village in the whole world can exist with a certain protectionism. Normal, human,” Polissky does not give up.

Polissky admits that his peasant co-authors are unlikely to be able to exist as creators on their own, much less support themselves, because even he has not yet been able to turn his name into a profitable brand.

“An artist is, first of all, motivation, and an understanding of why. Without me, of course, they don’t have this motivation. For them, I am such an artistic institution.”

Polissky cannot give up everything and abandon the idea; he feels responsible for his own:

“And I can’t live without them anymore. And they’re used to it, they can’t live without trips to Barcelona and Venice. I’ll be here with my last strength to snatch something for them. Because, in general, in the vastness of the blessed homeland, this - a story taken out of context."

Last for 200 years

Art - it exists in spite of everything, like a tumor. Art will glow Nikolay Polissky

Polissky, as he himself admits, was lucky: when he arrived in Nikola-Lenivets, the land did not belong to anyone, but now an owner has emerged, with whom he has to reckon and negotiate. This is a turning point, says the artist, and he still hopes to convince the new owner of the place he promoted to support those who did it - him and the peasants - and develop a cultural project.

“My Lopakhin is the best of all the Lopakhins in the world. Well, in Russia - for sure. It depends who will convince him better,” admits Polissky. “I somehow have to increase the prestige of the profession of a peasant artist. How to do this - I’m not quite sure yet.” I know. But business people who have money don’t understand such things.”

Polissky attributes the misunderstanding to a tectonic shift in the scale of values ​​of the Russian elite.

“Art exists only in the environment, in the broth. There is no broth. There is no demand for art in Russia,” he laments.

“There was a class - bourgeois, before it - aristocratic. They left behind great monuments. But these don’t need anything. Because they are temporary workers. In Russia, all these Morozovs, Shchukins, Tretyakovs needed artists, because they gave them eternal glory. What do they need? And they need a corporate party. “You arrange it for us, we’ll drink here, and you’ll dance for us.” Well, what can I answer? "Well, goodbye."

In the absence of demand for art among people with money, the artist can only rely on the state, but here Polissky, who nostalgically recalls the hothouse conditions of the Moscow Union of Artists during the Soviet era, has no illusions.

Land art

What Polissky is doing in the forests near Nikola-Lenivets is called Land Art - landscape art, landscape architecture. Polissky himself considers himself more of a sculptor than an architect: “I am a sculptor. I am not an architect. An architect is a function.”

The trend originated in the USA in the late 1960s. In England, about 30 British artists have worked in Grizzdale Forest since 1977. IN different time they showed more than 60 works. All land art objects should live their lives and die a natural death in nature, as Polissky says, “ruin” by themselves.

“A person will always draw on paper, and in the same way a person will always put something in nature. For Russia, land art is relevant - it’s a huge territory,” says Polissky.

“They simply don’t accept artists. They still understand, there’s football, cinema. They only have Grand Theatre, and there is nothing else. They are absolute cynics. They know everything, they talk to you - they don’t need to explain anything, they understand everything, they only need money,” Polissky seethes.

“They don’t need anything! They don’t need it! They just got out, jumped from the trees, their consciousness is appropriate, as far as art is concerned. This is our level of civilization. We still need to last a couple of centuries.”

The result is a sparse artistic landscape that frames rare but vibrant acts of contemporary art. And the predictable reaction of society to them.

"It is clear that my favorite artists are this moment– this is Pussy Riot. But society does not accept them. They did such a thing!” Polissky says with inspiration about three girls who want to be tried for an anti-Putin prayer service in the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

“I have a lot of respect for the “pussies”. I believe that these are heroic youth. They want to accomplish a feat, spiritual feat– so we need to talk about it! That this is a spiritual feat, that they are artists. And don’t mumble that they are hooligans and that they need to be released because they have served their time. That's the meanness of it!"

For Polissky, the contemporary aspect of art is determined by the result, and Pussy Riot hit the nail on the head.

"They did all this social situation pulled out. And that’s all - they shit themselves. The whole society is in shit. And this art will exist, an art that will incredibly fix this society and pull out this disease. They're all sick!"

Polissky calls himself “grandfather” and, as an artist, still prefers to speak to the viewer in Aesopian language: “It’s more interesting, why am I going to yell at rallies? Let Navalny yell.”

Festival "Archstoyanie"

During his 20 years in the village, Polissky never mutated from a metropolitan artist into a village recluse. The sounds of an electric saw and the hiss of welding under his open window village house The calls of two telephones are periodically interrupted, in the yard the interview for the BBC is waiting for the end film crew American documentarians, the table is littered with invitations to social events.

“You have to hang around Europe and hang out in Moscow,” Polissky pulls himself out of the idyllic landscape, changing into a bright red T-shirt for a photo shoot.

Since 2006, the Archstoyanie festival has been held in Nikola-Lenivets, conceived as creative laboratory outdoors for artists, sculptors, architects. The festival, which firmly took its place in the capital’s poster of the main cultural events of the summer, revived Polissky’s domain, but also destroyed his monopoly on the idea, which noticeably worries the artist.

“The archstoyanie exists, but I want to repurpose it, transform it. So that there is not a lot of nonsense, but solid things. Without garbage that appears because someone just wants to do something. They do a big thing - we show it. She doesn’t need 15 other things. There’s not enough space.”

“The task here is that you walk, walk, and suddenly in the middle of nature you come across something no less important. I thought that there would be such residences here. You walk through the forest - and suddenly in a clearing there is some work with the deep philosophy of an artist or architect His inner space: everything that a person accumulated, he handed over here to his small museum. And not just any statues! No need for statues! Do something important, one thing,” Polissky describes the principle of land art and shows what he means.

In a nearby field, he created and this coming weekend will show the public his most ambitious project, “The Universal Mind,” with which he wanted to demonstrate “every degree of quality.”

An unknown sanctuary, in the center of which a tangle of wooden convolutions of a giant brain bristles in a field with four rows of scaly columns, and the rear, facing the forest, is strengthened by a group of mysterious mechanisms that refer to the aesthetics of Leonardo da Vinci.

Polissky has staked out a place for his art, has dug in and is not going to give up.

"I am an optimist. And I will die like that."

“Art - it exists in spite of everything, like a tumor. Art will simmer. There will be about two hundred crazy people in the whole country,” he says. “In the end, if they get me, I will ask for a reservation here. For myself and my “Indians.”

Which of the contemporary (in the sense of those adjacent to the camp of contemporary art) Russian artists can be classified as monumentalists? It seems to us that only Nikolai Polissky is a populist of the 21st century, who introduced the peasants of the village of Nikola-Lenivets located on the banks of the Ugra River to the creation of art (and thereby pulled several peasant families out of post-Soviet poverty) and combined folk craft traditions with the practices and strategies of modern art (from installations to interaction art). Polissky's works have the amazing ability to appeal to everyone - from a conservative pensioner to an intellectual, from a non-reflective party girl to an official. We cannot resist quoting a few lines from an essay written in 2008 (that year the artist represented Russia at the XI Architecture Biennale in Venice), the author of which was the then First Deputy Head of the Presidential Administration Russian Federation Vladislav Surkov. “...Very national products,” Surkov wrote about Polissky’s works, “and nothing like fences, outhouses and log cabins not built in our own way.” ethnographic museums. The work is very simple, no fuss, but not rough. Big, but not heavy, and just like that, with a grin. It’s as if you were present at the creation of the Russian world. Hastily, out of anything, under a quick hand, something is molded to the sky, so you can get out of the cold, boredom, and need. And now Russia is already visible - a scattering of Ryazan huts, growing into a sprawling bast empire. A cyclopean structure made of wood, straw, and icicles. This quick and shaky greatness takes your breath away...” In general, everyone loves Polissky, but in different ways. Some people like it for its “Russianness” without nationalism, some for its scale, some for its irony, while others welcome the social pathos of its references to populist utopias XIX century works by “Uncle Kolya,” as the artist is called in his village, where for 15 years a successful experiment has been taking place to transform a single geographical location into a museum of modern art and architecture under open air. On the eve of the 10th anniversary festival "Archstoyanie", which starts on August 1, 2015, "Artguide" asked Nikolai Polissky to talk about how his main works were created and to show a new one - "General Store".

Nikolai Polissky. Photo: Yuri Palmin. Courtesy Archstoyanie

It all started in 2000, when I suddenly realized what incredible resources they are - snow and empty, useless land: wherever I want, I’ll go there, whatever I want, I’ll do... And I also realized that I need to come up with something... something connected with this place - with the village of Nikola-Lenivets and with these resources. Impossible spaces, incredible potential of this material, human resource: people who easily agreed to take part in such a strange at first glance task as the construction of an entire army of snowmen worked cheerfully and well. All my friends said that snowmen were my swan song, that everything would end there, but it turned out to be exactly the opposite.

Nikolai Polissky, together with Konstantin Batynkov and Sergei Lobanov. Snowmen. 2000. Snow. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

I worked with snow again in 2002. I have always had a dream to build the Manilovsky Bridge across the river, and for merchants to sit on it and trade. And then winter came, cool, 35 degrees below zero, and we decided to build. They started shoveling snow on the river and making ice, but didn’t take into account the scale. The ice should be wide, but we made it quite narrow, and the bridge began to fall under the water. Then we dragged it to the ground and decided that it would be a Roman aqueduct made of snow! In the village it is easy to get bogged down in tradition, but by that time I had already fully matured the idea that we in Nikola-Lenivets were privatizing historical architectural forms, making them in our own village from scrap materials, and so it happened later.

Nikolai Polissky. Aqueduct. 2002. Snow. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2001, the idea came to my mind to make something out of hay. Of course, you can only make a haystack from hay - the material itself dictates the shape - but I wanted to make not just a huge haystack, but something sacred and pathetic: this is how the shape of the ziggurat appeared. In addition, the technology itself suggested that it should be a ziggurat, that is, a ramp along which you climb, adding more and more hay. Almost 100 people took part in this project - everyone who brought even a blade of grass became my co-authors. First, free fellow alcoholics came up and began to mow down, and the whole village followed them. It didn’t look like art at all, and no one perceived this object as art, except for the peasants who made it, who, having climbed to the very top of the ziggurat tower, suddenly realized that they were not doing this for agricultural needs, not for the sake of making hay, not for cow feed...

Nikolai Polissky. Sennaya Tower. 2001. Hay. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

I remember how intellectuals laughed at me and my tower, said that I was crazy and, instead of painting pictures that sold well, I went to mow the grass. But it was this project that confirmed me that I was right: we were noticed, Western curators invited me to hold an exhibition in the French Quimper, and in general, after the “Hay Tower” everything somehow started to move more actively.

Nikolai Polissky. Column made of grape wood. 2002. Vine. City of Die, Drôme department, France. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2002, we were invited to the town of Die in the south of France, to the Est-Ouest festival (“East-West.” - Art Guide). At this time, we just became interested in willow weaving, and at a meeting with French curators, through an interpreter, I said that in France we were ready to weave something. But the translator translated the word “willow” as “vine”... And so I’m going to Quimper for my exhibition and on the way I turn south, where they show me the vine “ordered by me.” I look at this immeasurable beauty torn out of the ground, dumped in heaps, and I am overwhelmed with the happiness of finding unique material. The column also looked like a tree trunk and, as one French journalist told me, at the same time it gave rise to associations with illustrations from Dante’s Inferno: the vines of a grape tree resembled people who were trying to climb a pyramid of human bodies get out of hell. A year later, the column was dismantled, and now there is a children's carousel in this place.

Nikolai Polissky. Media tower. 2003. Willow tree. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

After the snow aqueduct and the hay ziggurat, I decided to continue the project of appropriating historical architectural forms and making a series of towers. We started with the media tower - something in between the Eiffel, Ostankino and Shukhov towers. In addition, the Shukhov Tower, which is essentially a basket, gave us the idea to use willow, from which these same baskets are most often woven. The tower turned out to be healthy, 26 meters, at the top we installed an antenna made from bicycle rims, the kind you can often see in peasant houses. The tower received the signal, and on its seventh floor, as expected, there was the “Seventh Heaven” restaurant (the name of the legendary restaurant opened in 1967, located in the building of the Ostankino TV tower at an altitude of 328-334 m. - Artguide). In addition, the tower was the first piece that I decided to turn into a transformer. Then we were just invited to take part in the ARTKlyazma festival on the Klyazma reservoir. The critic Sasha Panov and I came up with the project “Troekurovskaya Village” (aka “Art Bazaar.” - Artguide) - a village made of willow trees, in which our Nikola-Lenivetsky “art product” would be sold: food and moonshine. Panov came up with the name, because I always felt more like Dubrovsky than some gentleman Troekurov, I dreamed of taking money from the rich with the help of my peasants and art and giving it to the poor. We grew vegetables on the sides of the media tower, harvested the crops, and took them to ARTKlyazma in the tents we made. It must be said that the peasants were very afraid to go, after all, even in Russia, even in France, they are cautious everywhere, but as a result it was a success, moreover, they all left Klyazma in new cars. The business turned out well.

Nikolai Polissky. Lighthouse. 2004. Elm. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

The lighthouse was built in 2004 on the site where the army of snowmen and the hay tower stood, after the formation of national park"Ugra". At first, the park management really didn’t like us, they swore, and then they came to me, and even with a sponsor - the mouse Wimm-Bill-Dann - with a request to build something. We cut down dead elms, large trees that had been eaten by beetles and stood bare, and made a lighthouse from their branches. Why a lighthouse? Because it stands on the bank of the river, however, it also works as an antenna, receiving cosmic energies.

Nikolai Polissky. Likhobor Gate. 2005. Tree. Altufevskoe highway, Moscow. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2005, architect Galya Likhterova invited us to do something in Moscow and showed us an absolutely terrible place - the valley of the Likhoborka River, which had been turned into a garbage dump. Just at this time, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov decided to make a park in this place, clean up the river, make banks, turn the garbage dump into a place for walking. Having looked at all this, we decided to build a gate through which people would enter the natural environment, lost World. The problem was that it was difficult to find an organic form for this landscape, to compete with the huge geometric Soviet block horrors of the residential area located here. Then I imagined myself as an urban crow, making a nest for myself, the shapes of which were inspired by modern urban architecture. The result is a geometry out of chaos.

Nikolai Polissky. Perm Gate. 2011. Floating logs. Permian. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2011, Marat Gelman, who at that time was the director of the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art, persuaded me to make another gate - in Perm. And if in Moscow I made gates from thick rods, then in Perm I used alloy logs, which I randomly stuck into the U-shaped structure. And I chose this material because, multiplied by the local context, it gives rise to many different associations: someone, like Boris Nemtsov, saw a monument to logging at the gate, someone remembered timber rafting along the Kama, and I all this was reminiscent of dynamite blowing up the logs that had clogged the mouth of the river and were obstructing the flow of water. Naturally, some people thought it was strange and unconventional, but I never do anything that could be associated with Russian wooden architecture. I don't stack logs like I once did, because contemporary artist clearly cannot do anything better than Kizhi, and you have to be an idiot to imitate an ancient log, which no one knows how to do today.

Nikolai Polissky. Borders of the empire. 2005. Tree. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

Ancient totem art emerging from the earth, something left over from an unknown empire, will always attract attention. I have always liked all these stone women, stonehenges, the remains of Roman buildings in northern Africa, that is, everything that is not clear when it appeared, it is not clear what it symbolizes and it is not clear who it threatens. When you start to understand these symbols, you immediately get the feeling that this is all bullshit and there is nothing interesting. But if you don’t try to understand it, but just look at these remnants of something significant, then it’s simply fascinating. Of course, in my “Borders of the Empire” there is a little mockery about our two-headed state birds. But this is a very slight irony. Also, I noticed that no one actually notices that birds are two-headed.

Nikolai Polissky together with Vladimir Streban. Firebird. 2008. Metal. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

I made “The Firebird” for Maslenitsa 2008, but I came up with this project much earlier, in 2001. It seemed to me that it would be nice to put such a thing on the island so that it would be reflected in the water or cast reflexes on the surface of the ice. But only an enthusiast and a “left-hander” could make such a form outside the factory. And this one appeared. Vladimir Streban is my co-author on this project, an engineer, a person who masters all working professions, without him this thing would exist only in theory.

Nikolai Polissky. The Large Hadron Collider. 2009. Tree. Luxembourg Museum of Contemporary Art MUDAM, Luxembourg. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2009, the Luxembourg Museum of Contemporary Art MUDAM invited us to do something at their place. The architect who built the museum, Yu Ming Pei, won’t even let you hammer a nail into the wall, so it’s impossible to put or hang anything there. Seeing all this, and especially the huge showroom, we, as working people, peasants, realized that we had to do something equally healthy here. Moreover, healthy is also socially important topic. Actually, this is where the idea came from to make a collider, which everyone was talking about then, but only a wooden one. Every day I watched discussions on TV in which this topic was discussed and the fact that scientists were not succeeding, they wanted to make a god, but what they got was the devil. In general, we assembled the collider here, in Nikola-Lenivets, and then transported it on two huge trucks to Luxembourg. Then, during the exhibition, ten children from the village in white coats and glasses served our collider. It was all elegant and beautiful; Grand Duke Jean came to our opening in a shabby Porsche. The guys were a little surprised, they thought that the Duke should ride in a carriage.

Nikolai Polissky. Hunting trophies. 2010. Tree. Hotel Le Royal Monceau, Paris. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

Several years ago, designer Philippe Starck approached me with a proposal to make wooden stuffed animals for the decoration of the Le Royal Monceau hotel in Paris. The construction of the hotel was financed by a Qatari sheikh, so the designers played it safe, turned on self-censorship and asked not to bring pigs, wild boars, dogs and other “unclean” animals. Well, don’t bring or bring: we replaced pigs with goats and rams. If someone offered a Russian millionaire a goat, he would be offended...

Nikolai Polissky. Universal mind. 2012. Wood, metal. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

In 2012, in Nikola-Lenivets, we built a huge wooden computer, an artificial intelligence, the architecture of which was at the same time stylized as a temple space with columns and a dome. Any temple space always evokes thoughts of something significant, good, right and spiritual. And now our temple of reason stands in the middle of a field, overgrown with foliage, just like some Buddhist temple in the jungle. Its brilliant beauty should fade and merge into the landscape.

Nikolai Polissky. Beaubourg. 2013. Willow tree. The village of Nikola-Lenivets, Kaluga region. Photo: Nikolay Polissky

When building Nikola-Lenivets with my objects, I have long been trying to think like an urban planner, capturing space, installing unique features in it. reference points. We already have a lighthouse, now we have a museum. Why “Bobur” (Bobur is the second name National Museum contemporary art - the Center Georges Pompidou, located in the Beaubourg quarter. - Artguide)? When I come to Paris and see a building that is completely foreign to this city, I get the feeling that I really like it. I like the Eiffel Tower less than Beaubourg - an absolutely amazing thing for which they destroyed part of Paris, angered a bunch of Parisians, but at the same time turned a hot spot of a former fish market into a place of culture. I really like the bells of the ventilation pipes of Beaubourg, so I borrowed them, although using their outlines as the basis for a completely different architectural form.

On the main square of the village of Zvizzhi, where my co-authors, artists, who are also peasants, live, there is the ruin of a former general store, which ceased to perform its direct functions 20 years ago and has only been destroyed since then. I walked past it for many years and thought that in front of me was not just some ordinary ruin, but something very important, undeservedly abandoned. I've been wanting to breathe for a long time new life into this ruin and thereby, perhaps, change life in this village, and finally got around to it. I turned to the local population and those who come to our festival, and offered to contribute, because there is no money, to turn the general store into a new sculpture. In general, I am close to the idea of ​​cooperation, the fact that you can combine the efforts of many people and do a good job. First we used waste from our wood production. We fixed the roof. We cleaned up the walls with the resources we have. It was a ruin, but it became a sculpture rich in texture. What does it look like now? Well, we do not suffer from excessive religiosity, but in principle, this is a temple, and the temple is not associated with any specific religion.

After graduating from school, for three years in a row I tried to enter the Moscow Higher Art and Industrial School (formerly Stroganov), “but getting into Stroganov in those days was unrealistic,” so in 1977 I entered the Leningrad Higher Art and Industrial School named after V. I. Mukhina ("Mukhu")

I was the head of the Moscow faction. You know - Minin, Pozharsky, Polissky, Batynkov... When we Muscovites appeared, the St. Petersburg Mitki decided that we needed to take up defense. They had big plans for establishing their own greatness. The Mitki, of course, did not intend to conquer the whole world, but they really hoped that this would happen. Therefore, they needed to be in Moscow all the time. We, in turn, tried to organize a revolution, turn Mitka [Shagin] into the Queen of England and seize power.

Polissky completely moved away from Mitki, continuing to study after that landscape painting, and a few years later gave Mitka an unflattering assessment:

Do they really remember about Mitka? Mitki is a fun, drunken youth, I don’t regret it. But, of course, now we can only talk about Mitka in historical context. <…>I am happy that Mitya [Shagin] did not succumb to my claims to rule Mitka like an eminence gray. He did not agree to the role of the English queen. I am very grateful to him that he took up his own life. And Mitka is now the only professional pensioner of the Mitkov movement who enjoys the benefits of Mitkovism. Mitki are impersonal - only Shagin and Shinkarev are famous. What is left of the Mitki? Some graphics by Golubev yes literary works Volodya Shinkarev. The legend remains. But there is no material confirmation. The Mitkas did not create art.<…>Who is Mityok? Stupid idiot. Mityok is a hero of the 1980s-1990s. Volodya Shinkarev said it all: “We will respond to the Red Terror with delirium tremens.”

The drastic change in life activity had a family and social aspect:

At first, at home, women cried, children cried: “Dad has gone crazy!” After all, I left the prestigious occupation of painting and took up something very strange, which no one here did...

The success of Polissky the land art artist, as a rule, makes one think about what Polissky the painter was like before 2000 - especially since Polissky himself does not like to remember this. A typical passage from an ordinary journalist from a corporate magazine, quite disposed towards Polissky, looks like this:

Until recently, Nikolai Polissky was an ordinary artist. Not very successful, one must assume.

Polissky and local residents

Already at the very beginning of his land art projects, Polissky began collaborating with local residents. The sheer scale of these works (hundreds of snowmen, tons of hay, tens of cubic meters of firewood), unlike traditional painting, did not allow working alone. It was natural to work with residents of the surrounding villages, rather than attract guest workers.