Long ago, once upon a time, when I had just returned after graduating from the institute, weekly meetings were held at the Union of Artists. I think it was on Thursdays. I remember very well one meeting of the graphic section, where two venerable and well-known artists brought their new works for discussion. It did not come to hand-to-hand combat, but the discussion was harsh. Those were interesting times: people gathered, discussed, prepared, showed things.
The city involved monumental artists. Network advertising — and non-network advertising too — as today’s supposed substitute for artistic work in the urban environment is not the same at all. Not the same size, not the same format, and certainly not the same scope.
The city began to live its own parallel life. Artists separately, the city separately — like “flies and cutlets.” It is amusing that since a landscape-design faculty appeared in our parts, the design of our landscape has been reduced to laying paving tiles under the proud name of “Park.”
So those designers live separately too.
We do have architects, but the architectural decisions of past years, when the architect’s intention was understandable not only to the architect himself but could be read in the city, have long since been destroyed by infill construction. Residential buildings appear here and there, but the city has no architectural dominants. Near the bridge over the Tsaritsa (?) a monster has appeared, blocking the view of the Volga and, frankly, doing nothing to adorn the city. What will be there? Why is it there?
From the bridge there opens a sad view of a squat architectural hangar, reminiscent of chain stores that differ only in the color of their advertising boards and are usually placed beyond city limits. Next to it is a bright children’s playground, also standard, like those in some courtyards and on other tiled spaces of the “fairy-tale” type: a slide, little swings. It is wonderful when children have a place to play — who would argue? That is not what I mean. I mean scale, again.
In the past they built the Planetarium and the Panorama; now — look down from the bridge. “You will understand everything, you will see everything yourself” (c).
A parallel life of specialists, of whom the city is full, and of the city itself.
In the past, roads were laid; now they are patched. Parks were created; now they are cut back, supposedly “rejuvenated.”
You remember how Professor Preobrazhensky’s rejuvenation experiments ended? With the creation of a “new man.”
Somehow we live only for the moment. We live as we live. Most people live their own, parallel, lives.
Like a city that has exchanged a park mass, neglected perhaps but still a park, for strange illuminated arches and a bridge lit with New Year lights, the second half of which is marked by supports oddly suspended in the hopelessness — the roadlessness — of incompletion.
“Listen, Bazin, do you have a dream?”
“What dream?”
“Well, what do you dream of in life?”
“My dream is to buy a coat.”
“What kind of dream is that...”
“Winter is almost here, and I have nothing to wear. I spent last winter in a jacket and was sick all the time.”
“Can’t your parents buy you a coat?”
“Sure, they will. My father pays alimony, my mother doesn’t give me a kopeck. She thinks I don’t need money. She is a sick person. There is no doubt about it. What can you do?”
“Stand up.”
“What for?”
“Stand up, I said. Here, wear it in good health.”
“Are you crazy? What about you?”
“I’m going into the army soon anyway. Wear it, and dream of something great.”
(c) Courier
