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THEORY AND HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURE,RESTORATION

AND RECONSTRUCTION OF HISTORICAL

AND ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE

DOI 10.25987/VSTU.2018.41.1.010

UDC 7.036 : 747.012 : 72.036

L. V. Podolskaya1

“I’VE COME TO SAY THAT I HAVE THE RIGHTS”:

RUSSIAN MODERNISM IN ARCHITECTURE AND INTERIOR DESIGN ––

REEMERGENCE IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Moscow State Academy of Arts and Industry Named after S. G. Stroganov Architectural Bureau DE-CITY

Russia, Moscow, e-mail: ecodorvrn@mail.ru

1PhD student of the Dept. of Design and Textiles, Designer, Architect

Statement of the problem. The problem of the development of a new style in architecture and interior design based on the Russian modernism is discussed.

Results. The problem of search of a new style is dealt with as that of the identity of an emerging class of the Russian elite. Its foundation could be the Russian modernism acting as constituent of disrupted cultural communication. Modernism originating from shape but not images and symbols allows unique interiors to be designed that are reflective of their owners’ personality, lifestyle and values. As an example we look at the architecture and interior of two mansions designed by the plans by F. O. Shechtel, one of the founders and most prominent Russian modernists. Current trends in modernism in the interior are illustrated in the author’s papers.

Conclusions. The most important task currently facing architecture overall and interior art in particular is to design a volumetric and spatial style employing traditional sign systems as well as those developed in the process of design and implementation.

Keywords: Russian modern, interior design, architectural styles, modern architecture, coherence of a volumetric and spatial style.

“We get attached to the exterior of things without knowing what is inside” Plotinus

Introduction. At the turn of the centuries yet again a spiral of search of new images, styles and concepts is unfolding in interior art. Prevailing feeling of exhaustion with continuous repetitions of previous times, constant references to sign images and painstaking attempts to

© Podolskaya L. V., 2019

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acquire something fundamentally different are present in almost any print periodicals on architecture or interior, décor or lifestyle. Reincarnation of “the Russian Atlantis” was caused by new elites as well as the growing need for self-identification by means of art in general and details in private spaces [4]. Is it not essential for art to build up one’s private space based on one’s current values and beliefs and vision of the future? It is crucial indeed as genuine art is invariably reflective of the elite perspectives. From this standpoint, there has come a time of art nouveau, or the Russian modernism, not coming from the shape but image and symbols. According to Umberto Eco: “The simplest examination of our relationships with architecture proves that as we are engaged in it, we are thrown into an act of communication, which leaves room for functionality” [15].

What is there around us? In our houses? In our every morning, every evening or every night? A frozen image of the times gone which finds itself in pseudoclassic ledges, chandeliers, questionably classic style crystals with no indication of time at best.

What is classics? This “restoration period”, neoclassicism, baroque and probably the Roman Empire or Roman Republic? What do we see as classics when we are talking with our clients and do we speak about the same thing in the first place? What place do we have in mind as we are designing a blurred structure around us? Why on earth do we need all those canopies and copies of rare 17th century chest of drawers beneath ultra-modern QLED TVs? With this mish-mash in our houses, are we aware that by creating this “calm” interior in a “classical” colour scheme we are designing our own existence algorithm in an environment of long gone, irrelevant and capable of no development? At the same time Umberto Eco argues that “activities aimed at various social groups to meet their demands and convince them to live in a certain manner can be defined as mass communication” [15]. This is a type of communication that identifies an owner of a private space as belonging to a social group. Therefore a new group should have its own communicative field, i.e. its own style in interior.

Promotion of sign images has long obstructed the world of interior. It was around the 80s that continuous self-copying got underway with a lot of famous manufacturers producing replicas of the 20s, 30s, 50s, etc. models. This is also the case in so-called classic interior as well as modern one. This brings us back to the question what is so-called modern interior: plaster of Paris figured ceilings lamps in the “photographer corner” style? Rectangular furniture with aluminium “patches”? Parquet floors with a deck layout? Deep low sofas styled as “cats’ sleeping place” or a set of statically indefinite structures on a dragonfly’s legs? Is this a modern trend? Or how fast is this going to get a distinct smell of naphthalene?

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Feeling a rush of nostalgia at the height of your stardom when you finally become a proud owner of your first ever real king size bed? Getting astounded by the ecstasy of youth, adolescence, childhood – tick whichever describes you. All of this has a proper right to exist in economy class apartments, over the lifespan of one generation that treasures and cherishes it. Our children will not be able to comprehend this. They will not accept this. Of course, unless they themselves become one of those figures stricken with admiration by the first emergence of Baxter style sofas. Unless it signifies a new level.

1. Private interior: search of identity in space. It makes sense that the “unfinished” Russian modernism that was not inherently capable of fitting into the mass culture due to the Bolshevik revolt was turned to. The reason is that this style looks opulent, intricate and requires fine skills as well as individuals looking ahead into the future and searching for their identity in space. This style calls for stable social and economical relations. In the Western European art “new art” made way for art-deco that retained its tradition of fine detail and went on with function routinely dominating over aesthetics, beautification of a structure till it culminated into an outcry of in-your-face insides of hi-tech. And then there was no more material left. Glittering and long-forgotten fine detail reflecting the beauty and lifestyle through symbols and images coming from the depths of history and consciousness was rejected as it was no longer necessary. Why would you struggle over riddles, wrap yourself up in allusions and associations when you can just call bare facts art and make it so [6]? Let us remember Marcel Duchamp, toilets, moustache and his followers. All that the painter called art is art and if you do not want a million’s worth bucket from a corner store, it is your personal problem that you fail to grasp art. Never before had the spectator been so despised, thrown out of the concept of art just as it happened following the World War I. An identical situation occurred in living spaces. Interior as a reflection of views and design of a lifestyle of their owners lost its meaning. They became functional and stopped being “comprehensible” while taking on the air of universalism. In the USSR private interior was gone as art.

The fact that there was no private interior is the main reason why the industry of individual design and unified style from architecture to a door handle stopped developing. Russian modernism as a symbol of the dead Russian bourgeois is awaiting the second appearance in new living spaces of modern elites. New art cannot be formed by old elites as they no longer exist.

Search of identity, posing and opposition of artistic intelligence at the first enrichment stage led to stylistic inconsistency and self-identification with “a point of no return” to the lost so-

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cialistic epoch. This is in itself not bad, a growth ailment, as if trying on Mum’s shoes or Dad’s jackets. However, as the time passes, the heel of the shoes breaks down and the rasp- berry-coloured jacket is no longer pleasing to the eye. And here it was: we love loft (well, we don’t really know where exactly this nonsense comes from), we love mid-century (Mum’s armchairs from the 70s are particularly appealing). As a vintage element maintaining the connection of times, lending “depth to the shot” because why not, but those sugary shades and plastic chairs are already making us dizzy as we are struggling to understand what year it is and what kind of a time machine brought you here. Ah, yes, also timeless iron cubes of lamps and marvelous spider-lamps, lights from the Hollywood sets and other “novelties” have been pleasing the eye for 15 years already. We are not likely to see the end of it anytime soon.

In fact, this is understandable: how can you risk agreeing with something if you are not sure whether you will be here tomorrow. Why invest in something which is individual, even intimate, something that will not have any conventional investment value but will cost a fortune to implement? This is the idea that should underpin an individual style that can gradually move from plans into facades, from facades into landscapes, from inside outside, with elegant sloppiness placing decorative elements inside interiors and finding their way into living spaces while employing it for designing an aesthetic algorithm. From top to down moving gradually and almost intuitively (approximately) one can conceive a new life, revisit the idea of a new style. Verbal formation of an interior image followed by its mythologization by means of colour and sign symbolism allows the “muscles” to grow within a new structure and give it a décor “twist” [1]. Formation of a new type of interior space is in a way supported by a collection of memories of the “belle époque” in the context of an individual’s life. They are also the foundation for the fabric of life in a private home. Memories can be employed as an inexhaustible source. They are all unique and part of the same social group that has almost evolved of now. The algorithm of interior space unites two “flows”: functional dependence and personal associations embodied in symbols.

According to N. Mankovskaya in “Aesthetics of Postmodernism”: “A combination of nostalgic feelings with excessively technical pragmatism brought about that special air of “stoic optimism”, ironic jolliness which, being openly entertaining and engaging, along with postmodernist plots contributed to making them popular with general audience. Populist orientation denying any aesthetic taboos transformed the entire culture of the past including avant-garde both into a museum and shelter of postmodernist aesthetics” [9]. In order for it not to be “a museum and a shelter”, we should take a moment to look back and stop using the words such

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as “postmodernism” that we do not completely understand and see the aesthetics of space form through classic images, foundation and modernism and postmodernism.

2. Russian modernism in architecture and interiors. As examples we can use F. O. Schechtel’s own mansions in Yermolaevsky [13] and Sadoviy [7] Lane. We can learn “first-hand” from the master of architecture and interiors wizard. “Its uniqueness… is its yearning for construction. Dynamics and diversity of his creativity shows in how fast the setting changes. Schechtel’s life was truly what is called life in art and life with art. Each turning point in his career, ground-breaking ideas are tested or developed in his own houses. Having sold those old houses with the setting that matches a previous stage of style evolution and seems no longer bearable, Schechtel designs his own new projects to reflect current social and spiritual challenges” [8].

The mansion in Yermolaevsky Lane (Schechtel started designing it in 1896 while he was already very popular and accomplished architect) is in accordance with the image that we have in our head: a successful creative person who has just got to the height of his fame arranges his own house in a touchingly romantic manner as it is saturated with signs and history (Fig. 1). Pseudogothic motives add to new space solutions, life moves forward promising new achievements. “A theatre of transformations with its momentary change of pictures and ideas of coherence as a process of continuous change had an effect on the design of a peculiar cinematographic method by Schechtel as an architect, founder of pictorial dynamic composition” [8] (Fig. 2, 3).

Fig. 1. Mosaic fronton above the main entrance of F. O. Schechtel’s mansion in Yermolaevsky Lane [2]

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Fig. 2. Living-room in F. O. Schechtel’s house [2]

Fig. 3. Fantasy sketch of a lost living-room curtain of F. O. Schechtel’s house.

Designer L. V. Podolskaya, 2000. Photo Ye. Luchin

The mosaic in the fronton of the house is quite symbolic and in a way prophetic: three stages that a flower goes through its life cycle, i.e. a bud, blooming and fading (Fig. 4).

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Fig. 4. Mosaic fronton above the main entrance to F. O. Schechtel’s mansion in Yermolaevsky Lane [2]

The life cycle shown in the symbols has been around for over 100 years and it starts blooming as the sun goes up touching its golden background and fades as it sets. In the Japanese mythology an iris, a symbol of a warrior’s courage, which is an abbreviation of the first and family name, can be a direct hint – and even more than that – it is almost a promise to itself “I will never break”. A lot of décor, symbols, colour.

The complete opposite, a big mansion in Sadovoe Ring, built in 1910 is a prominent work by the architect and academic (Fig. 5). It is often called neoclassic. From the academic point of view, it might be true. This is a magnificent example of the renaissance of the style where nothing is impossible as it hides two reference points behind its exterior décor: absolute functionality and inexhaustible opportunities of the décor that “build up” on the first assumption.

Fig. 5. Main façade of F. O. Schechtel’s country estate in Bolshaya Sadovaya Street (photo by the unknown author)

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The house has an absolutely functional planning solution that is pronounced on the façade. Its functional consistence and opulence are evocative of cathedrals dating back to the Roman Republic: proportionally accurate and fit for a place of worship sending a message: “Come in and worship”.

To get inside, you need to go up a wide staircase to a hall with a typically Roman arch, i.e. a circular arch beneath which there is a fireplace on the wall looking like a victim to overly restrained, “non-chaotic” forms (Fig. 6). As little décor as possible and maximum expressiveness of volumes and sharp “conversational” skills, i.e. intricate spots and lines, volume and vacuum, graphics and pure flatness: it is not a house but a cathedral with yet a human image. Human perfected his craft and there is no need to prove anything to anyone. In his book “Flesh and Stone” Richard Sennett gives a precise description of a so-called Roman space: “Romans were striving for space where a person could move forward without getting distracted moving from side to side. Therefore the Roman space had a backbone” [11]. According to the building plan, it is seen that there is a combination of forward and spiral movement, i.e. in fact using a theatrical effect, the architect directs a spectator, i.e. a visitor, first along the straight line making them feel as if they were at a museum as according to R. Sennett: “this is how the first museum in the modern sense functioned” [11]. If one attempts to “read into” the system of signs in space, they found themselves in the architect’s museum.

Fig. 6. Stone hall and plan of the first floor in F. O. Schechtel’s country estate in Bolshaya Sadovaya Street [7]

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3. Russian modernism as a foundation of a new interior style. Using the example of these two representations of the Russian modernisms, we can see how living space literally “absorbs” those engrams [12] essential to human nature, uses them as a foundation for designing the following segment of their life cycle. Therefore it is necessary to come up with a new way of designing new interior styles here and now (Fig. 7).

Fig. 7. Private interior. Author of the project L. V. Podolskaya, 2005. Photo by Ye. Luchin

If there is conscious urge to create a coherent structure of a new living place based on verbal principles as those underpinning the postmodernism epoch. An art object as the quintessential of the main principles of housing, development and movement in space that is dictated by the structure as a verb and décor as a descriptive part, i.e. an adjective. This movement is only starting to gain momentum but it looks quite likely that it will come in flesh and blood as humans are not only social but also amazingly individual beings and the technological revolution is prioritizing the former and underplaying the latter.

Given the current economic and cultural landscape, we can assume that there is a sound foundation for a new style to emerge for the formed and established elite that do not have to stick to the protocol and international communication rules for economic interactions [3]. Due to an absolutely disrupted stylistic unity of the Western European art, its secondary role to its past, repetitions, self-repetitions and deconstruction, Russian art, art of architecture and design has a good chance of reestablishing the previously disrupted cultural communication based on the

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