Exhibition of Jan Fabra in the Hermitage photography. Jan Fabre: An artist in society is like a street animal

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

Jan Fabre
Artist, sculptor, director, screenwriter

Born December 14 1958 years in Antwerp (Belgium). He studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels.
Universal artist, works in different types of art and techniques, exploring three important topics for himself: insect life, the human body and the phenomenon of war.
IN 1978 year he painted with his own blood. With these works, fame comes to him.
WITH 1980 starts staging performances. IN 1984- m wrote a play especially for the Venice Biennale, which was a great success there.
In 1986 he founded his own theater group Troublein. In the 1990s, he began to create 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 under any social "progress". The Hermitage project will also be a shock, but for a different reason. It does not have what makes theater critics rave about all kinds of lewdness in Fabre's 24-hour performance based on ancient subjects. Mount Olympus and argue to the point of hoarseness whether it is worthy of the theatrical stage to show the world championship in male and female masturbation in the play Orgy of tolerance, and Greek cultural officials - to appoint and refuse Fabre in the position of artistic director of the international festival in Athens. For excessive, in their opinion, radicalism. In the Hermitage, Fabre will try to convince us that he is fighting desperately for Beauty. Perhaps this is a hoax construction, but it naturally fits into the life strategy of one of the most famous figures of modern Western culture, which the Belgian Fabre really is.

Rubens and insects

Two facts of 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 to each other living beings. A female devouring a defenseless male immediately after he has fulfilled his conjugal 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, Yang 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 a hundred painters and engravers painted pictures and cut boards day and night. And I realized that the 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 the sciences and arts - and this is Fabre's uniqueness on the contemporary art scene.
Today there are many more professionals who are good at something in a narrow area. And even going “beyond” is usually seen in the context of specialization. No matter how witty silk-screen printing with medicinal pills he does Damien Hirst, he is primarily the author of formalin cows and sharks. No matter how brutal videos you shoot Ai Weiwei, he is perceived primarily as a "constructor", inventing huge objects. This was confirmed by the recent brilliant solo exhibition of the Chinese artist at the Helsinki Art Museum.

Another thing is Fabre. He carefully, for decades, sculpts his image of the old master, by the will of fate, fate, prophet, and so on, living today. That is why Fabre is absolutely in harmony 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 was launched ten years ago. The first "annalistic mention" of Fabre refers to 1978, when he held an exhibition My body, my blood, my landscape, where blood drawings were shown - a firm conviction in its exclusive mission.

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

The installation can be seen as a crisis of the consumerist civilization, and recognizing this fact, as admiration for the industriousness of ancient insects. Harder with Pieta life-size Michelangelo. The figure with a skull instead of a face holds the body of the artist, on whose face a butterfly has perched, and in his hand he has a human brain. You can talk about memento mori or about the fragility of being, but for Fabre, death is not something fatal, retribution for sins and mistakes. There is, like insects, the working process of changing one generation by another.

In 2009, at the 53rd Venice Biennale, the exhibition Fabra Head to toe The New Arsenal was opened for art. In a giant installation Brain a figure resembling the author was trying to literally crawl into the gray matter with a shovel. Fabre countered the expansion of the physical space of the biennale with the search for a space of meanings.

kneel

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

Then the Hermitage was impressed by what he saw. But the concrete idea of ​​the current exhibition has been maturing for several years. Project curator Dmitry Ozerkov formulated it as follows: “This exhibition is different, this is not an invasion. Fabre, a contemporary artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to kneel 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 paintings of the old masters, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived. Fabre looks, 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 of the beauty and grandeur of Flanders. For Fabr, healthy nationalism is important - the continuation of tradition. The Flemish collection, above all Rubens, Van Dyck, Jordans, - one of main stones Hermitage. For Fabre, the museum building, which has two wings - Rastrelli And Russia, is like a butterfly with two wings for the son of an entomologist, filled with all the beauties of art. The butterfly is pinned by the Alexander Column to the body of Petersburg. The exhibition is located in two wings and connects two museum buildings on Palace Square.

In the summer of 2016, kneeling happened literally. One Monday, when the museum is 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. Don't forget to look at Titan cane Korean colleague Lee Wufana in the Great Courtyard of the Winter Palace. The hike became the basis for a video with the same name - Despair Knight/Beauty Warrior.

The new video will complement seven earlier ones. Place staff occupied Fabrovskaya sculpture Man measuring clouds. It obviously rhymes with Kabakov's stairs to heaven and his Antenna (Looking up, reading the words) created for Münster in 1997.

The complex topography of the exhibition intentionally gives the viewer freedom of choice. The following route is considered to be the main one: first, in the buildings of the Winter Palace and the Small Hermitage, one must go through all the Flemings and Dutch from Apollon to the Knights' Hall; looking at Fabre's self-portrait I let myself expire And sacred dung beetle (Version in gold), stay longer at the installation Altar- a table covered with Flemish lace from Bruges, on which seven stuffed owls stand. The symbol of wisdom reminds 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 searches of man. Fabre is ready for sacrifice: he draws the slogan “I will lay my head for Jacob Jordaens”, but only if there is a ballpoint pen Bic for the endless Bic Art. Popular Flemish vanitas at Fabre materialize in two sculptures - the skeletons of dogs with parrots in their mouths, decorated with elytra of beetles. Appearance and disappearance bacchus reminiscent of the show Mount Olympus: the actor writhes in unnatural poses, borrowed from the theatrical marathon.

In the General Staff building, the exhibition occupies its central spaces: three courtyards and two transforming halls between them. The main thing here is the dialogue with Ilya Kabakov near red wagon. 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 in Russian and Flemish, respectively. And they understood each other perfectly.

Dog skeletons, disemboweled stuffed birds, monstrous horned beetles suddenly appeared among the gilded chandeliers, paintings by great masters and the snow-white columns of the Hermitage's ceremonial halls. In the hall of Flemish and Dutch painting, for example, two natural canine skeletons are exhibited, holding colorful parrots in their teeth. What this means, and why these monsters appeared in the temple of classical art, which the Hermitage is rightfully considered to be, visitors cannot understand. Tourists are surprised, shake their heads, make a helpless gesture, take pictures.

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

The exposition of works by Fabre is called “Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty”. As for despair, one can still understand - it covers everyone who came to the Hermitage to get acquainted with real art, but instead sees some kind of creepy 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 Life of Insects. Hence, probably, the artist's interest in winged creatures. He studied at the Municipal Institute of Decorative Arts and at 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 insect world, the human body and the strategy of war are the three central themes that he uses in his work," Wikipedia writes about him.

Art by Jean Fabre

Fabre has a reputation as a master of scandalous outrageousness. Some consider him a genius, others call him a clever swindler from art. Some of his drawings, in order to shock the public more, he wrote with his own blood. And outrageous works.

From his monsters, placed around the world, and theatrical horrors, Fabre made a considerable fortune. He has two firms that make big money at his exhibitions.

Of course, the maestro provides a philosophical basis for his work. The shells of fearsome 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 terrible busts in the technique of 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 from wax and bronze busts realistic to the smallest detail with his own portrait. And modified in the spirit of Mephistopheles and Lucifer, with all the relevant attributes. Assorted chic horns, growing not only from the forehead of the self-portrait, but also from his nose and crown, gracefully complement and emphasize demonic grimaces and charming vampire, or maybe 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 previously presented his own face.

Although the longtime admirers of the outrageous creativity of Jan Fabre are no strangers. Their favorite has long called himself a modern mystic, and therefore does not hesitate to combine the images of saints with demonic creatures, and depict the symbols of the Orthodox Church in an unusual, and in some cases, incorrect way. A revolutionary, rebellious spirit rages in the sculptor's heart, which pushes him to defiant and eccentric deeds that brightened his official biography with bright colors. So, he decorated his street with a sign saying "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, crowning it with a copy of his own head. , which not only blinked and opened its mouth, but even talked. So the strange horned sculptures from the CHAPTERS I - XVIII series, entirely cast in wax and bronze, are far from the limit of the author's creative imagination and his non-standard ideas.

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

For example, the performance "Orgy of Tolerance" shown at the last Avignon Festival is a provocative, sharp stage passage, one of many criticizing European values, the ideals of globalism, European integration and tolerance.

Looking at the scene of masturbation with which the play begins, at several men and women in white shorts and T-shirts, shuddering and groaning on the floor and on expensive leather chairs, cheered by the cries of automatic trainers, someone began to laugh hysterically. On the whole, the audience, gathered for the "Orgy", met the moans of the masturbators with restraint, with some sense of compassion. Apparently, expecting some more complex and intriguing stage composition.

The shocking scene of the masturbation championship, when businesslike trainers with machine guns urge to continue their frantic work with cries ("For the Motherland", "For the Government!"). Then two pregnant women riding carts from supermarkets and giving birth right in them ... chips, deodorants and packets of sausage. The horror of the consumer society, presented with such literary, in this case, literal accuracy, does not seem to particularly touch the hearts of "sleeping Russians" ("Russians, wake up! And finally learn English," demands one of the characters Jan Fabre).

Nor were vigilant Europeans any more impressed when they booed Fabre's program for the Avignon Festival three years ago and called their minister of culture 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 directors of festivals and homophobes, and Barack Obama, and Jan Fabre, who takes the performance to the next festival, where it once again 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 the Strauss waltz.

This orgy of total criticism, brought down on modern Europe, is celebrated everywhere today. Its traces are in the clever novels of Michel Houellebecq and Frederic Begbeder, the films of Lars von Trier and Tarantino. But the primitiveness and literalism of Fabrov's pamphlet eat up the bitterness and salt of his revelations, deprive them of fury and strength, make them part of the very disintegration that he so acrimoniously diagnoses.

However, a logical question arises: in order to tell us about this and show us his monsters, was this Belgian, who portrays himself with devilish horns, invited to the Hermitage? To do this, they took him to dead dogs and horned beetles as a special reverence for this propagandist of “death and ugliness” in the most prestigious halls 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 there is much to admire, even the fact that in Russia, apart from a handful of liberal aesthetes, no one likes it. We have lately had huge queues at the exhibitions of the classics - Serov and Aivazovsky, and the halls where handicrafts of figures like Fabre are exhibited are empty. Why are they being imposed on us? Why are places allocated in the most important museum in the country?

The fact that this exhibition will cause another scandal, no one in St. Petersburg doubted. “In the Department of Contemporary Art of the Hermitage,” writes a correspondent for Fontanka, the most popular Internet newspaper in the city, “they rub their hands in anticipation of a scandal: all over the world, the exhibitions of this author are not without heated discussions.”

“Tell me, were the paintings taken from these places for restoration, or what is it?” – the man asks the museum attendant, pointing to the blue ink 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 only spreads her hands in bewilderment.

Even more scandalous Fabre exhibits await visitors in the branch of the museum - in the General Staff Building, located opposite the Hermitage, on the same Palace Square. Art objects in the form of wheelchairs, crutches and stuffed animals are piled up there.

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

That there will be a scandal, Fabre himself has already confirmed. During a meeting with journalists, he put on medieval armor, and in this form he walked around in front of the astonished pen sharks in the former chambers of the Russian emperors.

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

The palace didn't think

about the whirling shot,

did not guess what was in bed,

entrusted to the queens,

some kind of

attorney at law...

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

Alas, the scandals around what is happening today in the main museum of the country have been constantly flaring up lately. Recently, in connection with numerous complaints from Petersburgers, the prosecutor's office had to check the scandalous exhibition of the English brothers Jake and Dinos Chapman "The End of Fun." The central project consisted of 9 showcases-aquaria, in which there were small human figures made of plastic. Most of them were dressed in Nazi uniforms and engaged in phantasmagoric violence: they massacred each other en masse.

In addition, in the works of the Chapman brothers there were Christian symbols, the crucified Ronald McDonald, "Bosch" freaks. Under the pretext of showing the horrors of Nazism, swastikas, corpses, a bloody mess of plastic figures, heroes of Western mass culture were presented. The Chapmans nailed teddy bears to Christian crosses, which caused a storm of protests from outraged believers. As Marina Nikolayeva, an assistant to the prosecutor of St. Petersburg, told journalists at the time, 117 complaints were received from St. Petersburg residents.

However, the director of the Hermitage, Mikhail Piotrovsky, personally stood up for the Chapmans. He urgently convened a press conference, at which he vigorously attacked Petersburgers: “A stunning example of the cultural degradation of society and lofty arguments about the cross, behind which there is no religious essence,” the head of the museum angrily declared. “Only idiots would think that the exhibition offends the cross. We are talking about a terrible judgment in our time. What is art and what is not, is determined only by the museum, and not by the street audience,” said the museum director, not ruling out that many letters to the Hermitage “ can be written by the mentally ill".

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

Indeed, no conclusions were drawn from the mass protests against the blasphemy of the Chapmans in the Hermitage. And now, even in the front halls of the Winter Palace, the terrible freaks of modern Western "shooters" in art are on display.

It would not be superfluous to recall another scandal, which has long shown that far from all is well in the main museum of the country. We are talking about the grand theft of works of art discovered in 2006. As the Accounts Chamber, which checked the Hermitage, revealed, museum valuables and funds were stolen. Of the 50 items chosen at random, 47 items were missing, the state allegedly lost hundreds of millions of rubles from the exhibition activities of the Hermitage, about 200,000 exhibits were not assigned to financially responsible persons, hundreds were transferred to other institutions and never returned.

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

Then Piotrovsky beautifully “turned the arrows”: “This is an explosion, this is a disease of society,” he said about the thefts in the Hermitage. “I am still in shock and cannot 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 in the amount of about three billion rubles.

Watching those who are exhibited today in the most prestigious halls of St. Petersburg, the question involuntarily arises, why do we need this? "These artists are popular in the West!" - with a contemptuous expression on their faces, the organizers of their expositions will throw us in response, or even directly call those who ask such questions “idiots”.

True, they are indeed, perhaps, popular there, because in the West, liberal globalists today impose their values ​​on everyone: gay parades, same-sex “marriages”, arrogant contempt for morality and morality, which is presented as the highest achievements of a “free society” ", and "contemporary art" to match these "principles".

But why bring all this rubbish to us? Why give away the best halls of the city and the country for exhibitions of monsters and strange, incomprehensible "performances"?

Shall we 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 in the following way, noting in parallel that the museum management has the right to organize various projects without coordinating them with the ministry.

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

Exhibition “Jan Fabre. The Knight of Despair – Warrior of Beauty” is rather an exception, a confirmation that all forms of public performance 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, - the press service of the Ministry of Culture reports.

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

And all the words against are already lost somewhere ..

Jan Fabre is a sleek, gray-haired Belgian with a noble oval face and a thoroughbred nose. The older generation of the outrageous European aristocracy, tanned white people, standing on the auteur cinema, on the one hand, and the deep enlightenment-narrative tradition, on the other. It took almost two years to figure out how to pack Fabre in the Hermitage, which only pretends to be the Louvre, but in fact remains a Byzantine palace. During this time, Fabre managed to do things in the world of performance and outrageousness, internal Russian cultural processes changed vector, and budgets - scope. It is precisely because of the contrast with the trends and because of the reputation of the Hermitage that Fabre looks juicy and fresh. The main museum of the country, due to its vastness and imperial ambitions, is largely old-fashioned, but it is he who can afford not to reckon with the prolific censors and "activists". Finally, Fabre is a Belgian, and a good half of the second floor of the Hermitage is occupied by his eminent countrymen. Here reigns the spirit of Dutch art, which gave rise to more than one term paper, van Dyck and Rubens, adored by art critics, occupy the best positions in terms of light and geometry of the halls, monumental still lifes carpet up to the ceiling.

However, it is better to start watching Fabre in the General Staff Building. Already rising from the wardrobes along the cozy stairs, where someone is photographed on each step, you see a video on the screen: Jan Fabre walks through the empty Zimny, clinking his armor and kissing the exhibits. Feel envy, because you also want to dress up like a knight like this and retire with Rembrandt, feel the old frames. But you are only a modest connoisseur, and not a shocking artist, your destiny is a queue, crowds of tourists, the wrath of caretakers, if you suddenly touch something.

State Hermitage

Fabre indeed notes in an interview that the Hermitage gave him much more freedom than the Louvre. It was the Paris exhibition that inspired the Hermitage functionaries to a similar event in Russia, and here, perhaps, there is some kind of competition. Move van Dyck? Sure, just tell me where. To turn the magnificent old-fashioned hall of Flemish painting into an illustration of absinthe madness? Great idea!

But back to the Headquarters. The exhibition begins with an absurd dialogue between the "beetle and the fly", that is, Jan Fabre with Ilya Kabakov. “Kindergarten, oh, well, here’s a kindergarten,” two ladies, who look like Fabre’s age, comment delicately clattering their heels and tongue. Actually - yes, kindergarten. Only an overpriced conceptualist and a degenerate European can afford to play some kind of larvae. And don't be jealous.

Before going to the exhibition, you are warned through all possible channels that the artist is a descendant of Jean-Henri Fabre, a major entomologist. Because the first impression of the exhibition still needs to be justified. It was like watching a special issue of "In the Animal World" from the life of insects (or rather, from death). Something between illustrations of Krylov's fables and Ant-Man Marvel. Even the influence of the book on diseases of the oral cavity on Francis Bacon was not so persistently remembered before the exhibition in the same Hermitage.

State Hermitage

The apotheosis of the exposition of the General Staff falls on "Umbraculum", "Carnival of dead mongrels" and a symmetrical exposition with dead cats. What an irony - while the whole country is discussing the Khabarovsk flayer girls, Fabre enthusiastically hangs stuffed animals under the high ceiling of the headquarters. Around - ribbons and confetti, restless mongrels dressed up in carnival hats. In this one can see a still-life perception combined with atheism and Flemish traditions, but for a mass audience without a sense of black humor, “Carnival” is just a strange perversion that someone let into the Hermitage. And "Umbraculum" does need to be deciphered for a long time and consistently. Some kind of ghosts in overalls made of lacy bone plates, flying miracles of orthopedics the color of spilled oil (the elytra of the borer seems to be a universal material). So we come to another "acute corner" of Fabre's work. Umbraculum in everyday meaning is a yellow-red umbrella made of silk. In the symbolic dimension, this is the designation of the basilica, and the basilica in Catholicism is the title of selected churches. Jan Fabre's mother was a zealous Catholic, he himself is "fortunately an atheist", which allows him to shamelessly juggle symbols. Stuffed animals, skulls, bones and other physical evidence of death are the best material for him. And the purpose of the exhibits is not at all “thinking about death”, but its statement in the understanding of an atheist, a kind of fatalism of an atheist.

State Hermitage

However, Fabre has another dimension, which the Hermitage exposition insists on. It is pathetically called "Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty"; It is on the romantic, courtly component that the exhibition in the historical halls is accentuated. In the knight's hall, beloved by children and impressionable adults, the artist was tempted to renew the exposition and placed the armor of a wasp and a beetle next to the horsemen. What is worth only another performance by Fabre: a gray-haired artist, dressed in armor over his naked body, tosses a sword back and forth. Or the sword turns him, it's hard to say. Again, you envy the Belgian and also want to dress up in armor. But the most intriguing game moment is to accidentally find Fabre in the shaded halls of the Hermitage. These can be huge bird heads or a stuffed rabbit (a nod to Dürer), a skull holding a paintbrush in its hands, and finally, a couple of Hermitage masterpieces drawn with a ballpoint pen. Rearrangements in the usual halls, global subordination of spaces to the modern artist - an injection of Botox into the Hermitage as a museum space, an invitation to our conservative audience to play a little. And in this sense, the main thing is not with what degree of enthusiasm the art community will react to the exhibition, but what thousands of viewers will decide when they stumble upon skulls and stuffed animals where they planned to show children, for example, van Dyck's puritanical baroque.

The exhibition of the Belgian artist Jan Fabre "The Knight of Despair - the Warrior of Beauty" opens in the Hermitage. Stuffed animals and skulls, a video with a living knight in the Knights' Hall and paintings drawn with a Bic pen - "Paper" tells what was brought to the Winter Palace and the General Staff, what is the carnival “in the style of Fabre”, which will be held in the museum in December, and what provocative works the Belgian became famous for.

The Hermitage exhibits an artist famous, among other things, for a performance with a “world championship” in male and female masturbation

The Flemish artist has been known for 40 years as a director of theatrical, opera and dance productions, a performance artist and a writer. The works of the grandson of the famous entomologist Jean-Henri Fabre (which is important for understanding the artist's work) often cause shock and controversy among the public and critics.

In 1978, at the exhibition My Body, My Blood, My Landscape, Fabre exhibited paintings painted in blood. Later, he thundered all over the world with the Sky of Admiration project: the artist decorated the ceiling and chandelier in the royal palace in Brussels with one and a half million Thai beetles.

Fabre was also the artistic director of the international festival in Athens, and staged provocative performances, such as The Orgy of Tolerance, which was even somehow brought to Moscow. The production begins with a "world championship" in male and female masturbation. There is also a scene in which, sitting on carts from supermarkets, pregnant women “give birth” to the assortment of a grocery store, and much more that an unprepared public might call indecency.

Fabre's first exhibition in Russia, much less provocative, which the Hermitage 20/21 project wanted to hold almost from the moment of its creation, addresses the other side of the artist's work. In the Hermitage exposition, Fabre acts as a “warrior of beauty”, and the works brought to St. Petersburg echo the masterpieces of world painting.

The artist himself claims that his interest in art awakened in him after a visit to Rubens' house in Antwerp at the age of 12. Actually, Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens are the main sources of his inspiration. It was in this direction that the artist and project curator Dmitry Ozerkov worked in the Hermitage.

Dmitry Ozerkov, exhibition curator:

This exhibition is different, it is not an invasion. Fabre, a contemporary artist, comes to our museum not to compete with him, but to kneel 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 paintings of the old masters, the history of buildings, the cradle of the revolution and the place where the tsars lived.

"Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty" - the largest solo exhibition of a contemporary artist in the Hermitage

More than 200 works by Fabre were brought to St. Petersburg. Some of them were made especially for the Hermitage. The exhibits are exhibited at once in the Winter Palace, the New Hermitage and the General Staff Building; you will have to look for them among the exhibits of the permanent collection, for example, in the halls of Snyders, Van Dyck and Rubens, in the Knights' Hall and the Great Courtyard. In the General Staff building, the works are presented in such a way that a dialogue can be traced with Ilya Kabakov’s “Red Carriage” exhibited here: in three courtyards and transformer halls between them.

Such a scale can perhaps be explained by the fact that Jan Fabre inherits the traditions of classical Flemish painting, which is so important for the main museum of the country and especially for the Hermitage 20/21 project. In addition, in the Hermitage, that an artist exhibiting in a museum necessarily makes an exhibit especially for them. Fabre just brought such works.

Fabre's works are exhibited as part of the main exhibition of the museum

The artist's inherent kinship with the masters of Flemish painting of the past became the reason for the non-standard hanging of Fabre's works. The paintings, installations and films of the Fleming are exhibited on equal terms with the permanent collection of the Hermitage and, according to the museum, “enter into a dialogue with recognized masterpieces of world art.” Fabre had already tested such exposure when he did an exhibition at the Louvre. Tombstones were placed in the Rubens Hall in Paris, and on them - the dates of the life of European scientists, renamed insects.

In addition, in the summer Fabre came to the Hermitage in order to walk through the halls of the museum in the armor of a knight specially created for him in Belgium for a performance, a recording of which is now on display here. In the museum you can also see Fabre's armor, which he wore together with Marina Abramovic. Virgin/Warrior performance, as well as beetle armor.

Despite the moderate level of provocation of the Hermitage exhibition, visitors have already commented negatively on Fabre's works.

Under a photograph of one of the works of Jan Fabre in the halls of the Hermitage - a stuffed rabbit in the teeth of a human skull - in the museum's official Instagram account flared up dispute about the appropriateness of such works in the museum.

elena0123450 This is what children see?!!!😳🙈 And after that you want a normal child's psyche?!

zheniya_ya Poor animal 😭 what kind of idiocy? Dry the author and replace the bunny 👊

ly_uda Ugh, what a disgrace????

mimo_prohodila What is this gesture? 😱

babavera823 Abomination!

The exhibition will be accompanied by a carnival "in the style of Fabre" and a 24-hour marathon at the General Staff Building

A serious educational program is dedicated to the project "Knight of Despair - Warrior of Beauty". In addition to the meeting with the artist, registration for which, unfortunately, is already closed, lectures, screenings, discussions and round tables with the participation of critics, art historians, theater figures, and musicians will be held at the General Staff Building. And young artists will create a theatrical performance-interpretation based on the work of Fabre.

As part of the annual New Year's program of the Youth Center, the General Staff Building will host a carnival "in the style of Fabre": a parade of masks and a defile of costumes created by students.

Closer to the end of the exhibition, on the night of March 31 to April 1, an intellectual marathon will be held in the same General Staff building: the performance of Jan Fabre's Mount Olympus will last 24 hours.

The exhibition will run until April 9, 2017. Entrance to the main building of the museum - 400 rubles, to the General Headquarters - 300 rubles, complex ticket - 600 rubles.