The Red Wagon: Artist Commentary |
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Entering the hall, where 'The Red Wagon' is exhibited, the spectator faces the stairs leading to the wagon's front door. It's only natural that he mounts the stairs to the door and tries to enter it - only to find out that the door is locked. This discovery makes the spectator suggest that it's not the interior of the wagon, but its exterior that is to be seen and explored. Thus the spectator descends the stairs and starts moving along the wagon's side. This is when he discovers the music playing inside the wagon. At this point he reconsiders his previous conclusion and starts thinking once again that the 'gist' of the installation is conceived in its inner part. By that time the spectator nears the rear side of the wagon, and finds another entrance, heaped with garbage, unlike the pompous front entrance. But the rear door is open. He enters - and is absorbed by the endearingly tender nostalgic atmosphere of the 1930's: sweet music, cute paintings, comfortable bench and beams of electric light shining on the pictures. That atmosphere produces a siren-like effect on the spectator: calmed and absorbed by the music and all related nostalgic meditational effects of the wagon, he has to make a serious effort to shuffle off these charms and leave the inside of the wagon. Stepping out of the wagon through heaps of garbage, piled at its rear side, the spectator understands that the central effect of the installation was reached by this transition from the repulsive exterior reality to the interior 'paradise' cosmos. If it hadn't been for the spectators' active participation, the calculated artistic effect would have been annihilated or at least severely altered, damaged and reduced. That is what one calls TOTAL installation, accounting for the spectator's active participation. All the said impressions and feelings, experienced by the spectator when he meets with 'The Red Wagon,' are based on the overall concept of the installation. Being a monument to the Soviet reality and ideology, the wagon serves to reflect duly the attitudes and shapes of that reality. One might say that the monument is built from the same components as the cosmos it portrays. The components are: a pompous and luxurious entrance, meticulously decorated and designed, to impress the beholder but fails to serve its integral and original purpose: to let anyone in,; ugly and dirty rear entrance, stuffed with heaps of rubbish, not too bright a scene to look at, but the only way to get inside the wagon; the inside itself: a completely self-sufficient space, a maternal and protective cosmos where one can lead an idyllic existence, sealed off from the exterior space with all its doubts, temptations and torrents. The interior, totally isolated from the course of the outer life, thus supplying the insiders with an option to consider that outer life is nonexistent, fictitious and a fruit of 'malignant foreign propaganda.' Intimate links between 'The Red Wagon' and Soviet reality under Communist rule make on state, that the installation tends to be strictly political. And that is how it had been received by the German critics when first shown in the Dusseldorf Kunsthalle. The very context of 'The Red Wagon,' its allusions and implications, make it look and sound political, actual, almost journalistic. If it hadn't been for the Soviet regime, one might note, the very installation would have been meaningless, it would have lost its message. But such an estimation tends to overlook the more deep and more artistic context in which 'The Red Wagon' was conceived. It seems an easy but not an altogether correct perspective to simplify the installation's message, sealing it in the merely political, news-style context. Although political connotations are too evident to be discarded, they may as well be regarded as a mere form, as a shaping touch of presentday reality - while the message itself should be looked for elsewhere, beyond the obvious and familiar reminiscences and allusions. In fact, a deeper look reveals 'The Red Wagon's' roots in Russian philosophic and artistic discourse of the 20th century, especially of the 1920's. By the way, the artists of that period were also greatly influenced, impressed and aroused by political concepts contemporary to them. Moreover, these artists were extremely engaged politically and strived to reach maximal actuality in their work, keeping pace with political developments of the period and actively participating in them. Still, no one today thinks of focussing on the political context of the 1920's while trying to absorb the artistic message of Kluzis, El Lissitzky, Rodchenko, the LEF group and others. From this viewpoint one should compare 'The Red Wagon' not to Stalin's, Brezhnev's and Andropov's political legacy, but to Tatlin's and Lissitzky's artistic ones. The discourse in 'The Red Wagon' is continued in their terms and remains highly relevant to those artists' symbols and teachings. Only 'The Red Wagon' reverts the symbols to their opposite: the stairs, originally intended to lead to heaven, eventually lead nowhere. The wagon, designed to rush forward at high speed, lacks even wheels and is eternally static. The propaganda inside the wagon arouses nostalgia and longing for reversing time, instead of calling the spectator to the luminous horizons of the glorious future. |