Paola Volkova lectures on art. “Who are we from the point of view of the spiritual source?”: lecture by Paola Volkova. Bridge over the abyss. In the space of Christian culture

Current page: 1 (total book has 3 pages) [available reading excerpt: 1 pages]

Lectures on art by Professor Paola Volkova
Book 1
Paola Dmitrievna Volkova

ISBN 978-5-4485-5250-2

Created with the intelligent publishing system Ridero

Foreword

You are holding in your hands the first book, which includes unique lectures by professor of art history Paola Dmitrievna Volkova, read by her at the Higher Courses for Directors and Screenwriters in the period 2011-2012.

Volkova Paola Dmitrievna

Those who were lucky enough to attend the lectures of this amazing woman will never forget them.

Paola Dmitrievna is a student of great people, among whom were Lev Gumilyov and Merab Mamardashvili. She not only taught at VGIK and at the Higher Courses for Directors and Screenwriters, but was also the world's leading specialist in Tarkovsky's work. Paola Volkova not only lectured, but also wrote scripts, articles, books, held exhibitions, reviewed, and hosted television programs on art.

This extraordinary woman was not only a brilliant teacher, but also a great storyteller. Through her books, lectures, and just conversations, she instilled in her students and listeners a sense of beauty.

Paola Dmitrievna was compared with Library of Alexandria, and her lectures became a revelation not only for ordinary people, but also for professionals.

In works of art, she knew how to see what is usually hidden from prying eyes, she knew the same secret language symbols and could most in simple words explain what this or that masterpiece is fraught with. She was a stalker, a guide-translator between eras.

Professor Volkova was not just a storehouse of knowledge, she was a mystical woman - a woman without age. Her stories about ancient Greece, the culture of Crete, the philosophy of China, the great masters, their creations and destinies, were so realistic and filled with the smallest details and details that they involuntarily suggested that she herself not only lived in those days, but also personally knew everyone about whom the story was told.

And now, after her departure, you have a great opportunity to plunge into that world of art, which, perhaps, you did not even suspect, and, like a thirsty wanderer, drink from the purest well of knowledge.

Lecture number 1. Florentine School - Titian - Piatigorsky - Byron - Shakespeare

Volkova: I look at the thinned ranks ...

Students: Nothing, but let's take the quality.

Volkova: Something to me. This is not what I need. This is what you need.

Students: We will tell them everything.

Volkova: So. We have very important topic we started last time. If you remember, we were talking about Titian. Listen, I want to ask you this: do you remember that Rafael was a student of the Florentine school?

Students: Yes!

Volkova: He was a genius and his genius was very curious. I have never seen a more perfect artist. He is the Absolute! When you look at his things, you begin to understand their purity, plasticity and color. Absolute fusion of Plato with Aristotle. In his paintings there is precisely the Aristotelian principle, Aristotelian intellectualism and Aristotelian conceptuality, which go along with the high Platonic principle, with such perfection of harmony. It is no coincidence that in The School of Athens, under the arch, he painted Plato and Aristotle walking side by side, because there is no internal gap in these people.

Athenian school

The Florentine school takes its origins in Giottian dramaturgy, where there is a search for a certain space and attitude towards philosophizing. I would even say poetic philosophizing. But the Venetians are a completely different school. Regarding this school, I took this thing by Giorgione "Madonna of Castelfranco", where St. George is more like Voltaire's Joan of Arc.

Take a look at her. The Florentines could not write the Madonna like that. Look, she's busy with herself. Such spiritual isolation. There are moments in this film that have certainly never been seen before. This is reflection. Things related to reflection. The artist gives some inner movement difficult moments but not psychological.

Madonna of Castelfranco

To summarize what we know about the Venetians and about Titian, we can say that in a world that captures Venice with its special life, with its complex social productivity and historical turbulence, you can both see and feel the internal charge of the system, which ready to be discharged. Look at this Titian portrait that hangs in the gallery of the Pitti Palace.

Portrait of an unknown person with gray eyes

But first, in our intimate company, I must confess that I was once in love with this comrade in the picture. In fact, I have twice been in love with paintings. The first time I fell in love was when I was a schoolgirl. At our house there was a pre-war album of the Hermitage and a portrait appeared in it young man in a robe, painted by Van Dyck. He painted the young Lord Philip Warren, who was about the same age as me. And I was so fascinated by my peer that, of course, I immediately imagined our wonderful friendship with him. And you know, he saved me from the boys in the yard - they were vulgar, pugnacious, and here such high relations.

But, unfortunately, I grew up, and he did not. It was the only reason we broke up (laugh). And my second love happened when I was a student of the 2nd year. I fell in love with a portrait of an unknown person with gray eyes. We were indifferent to each other for a long time. I hope you approve of my choice?

Students: Undoubtedly!

Volkova: In that case, we will move into an area that is very interesting for our relationship with art or works of art. Remember how we finished last lesson? I said that the pictorial surface of the picture itself becomes a value in itself. It in itself is already the content of the picture. And Titian has always had this absolutely pictorial value in itself. He was a genius! What will happen to his paintings if you remove the pictorial layer and leave only underpaintings? Nothing. His painting will remain a painting. It will still remain a painting. From within. At the intracellular level, the basis, this is what makes a painter a brilliant artist. And outwardly, it will turn into a painting by Kondinsky.

It is very difficult to compare Titian with someone else. He is progressive. See how, through the shadow that falls on the wall of silver tone, he picturesquely connects this portrait with the space in which this person lives. You have no idea how difficult it is to write. Such an amazing combination of light, silver-vibrating space, this fur coat that he is wearing, some kind of lace, reddish hair and very bright eyes. Gray-blue vibration of the atmosphere.

He has one picture that hangs ... I don’t remember where, either in London, or in the Louvre. No, definitely not in the Louvre, in the National Gallery in London. So, in this picture, a woman is sitting with a baby in her arms. And when you look at it, it seems to you that this picture came here by accident, because it is simply impossible to imagine that this is the work of Titian. It is written in a manner reminiscent of something between Claude Monet and Pissarro - in the technique of pointillism, which creates this very trembling of the entire space of the picture. You come closer and you can't believe your eyes. There you can no longer see either the heels or the muzzle of the baby, but only one thing is visible - he outdid Rembrandt in freedom. It is no coincidence that Vasily Kondinsky said: “There are only two artists in world art whom I can call abstract painters. Not non-objective - they are objective, but abstract. It's Titian and Rembrandt." And why? Because, if before them all painting behaved like painting, coloring the object, then Titian included the moment of coloring, the moment of painting, as a color that does not depend on the object. Like, for example, "St. Sebastian" in the Hermitage. When you get very close to it, you see nothing but picturesque chaos.

There is a painting that you, standing in front of a canvas, can look at endlessly. It is very difficult to convey in words, because there is a completely arbitrary impressionistic reading, reading of the characters or personalities that he writes. And it doesn't matter who you look at: Piero della Francesco or the Umbrian Duke Federico da Montefeltro.

Saint Sebastian

This is just an appearance of reading. There is something meaningful here, because it is not possible to unequivocally give complete description a person, because there is energy and what each of us exposes or hides in ourselves. It's all complex text. When Titian paints a male portrait, he highlights the face, gesture, hands. The rest is kind of hidden. Everything else is built on this dramaturgy.

But let's get back to the portrait of an unknown man with gray eyes. In fact, this is Ippolito Riminaldi. See how he holds the glove. Like a dagger. You are not confronted with a character, but with a very complex personality. Titian is very attentive to his contemporaries. He understands them, and when he creates their images, he makes them speak to us in a special Titian language. He creates in painting an extraordinary historical world and the portrait of Riminaldi is something incredible. After all, the power and enduring relevance of this historical canvas can only be compared with Shakespeare.

And look at the portrait of Paul III and his two nephews. I saw this picture in the original. This is an incredible sight! It is as if written in blood, only in different tones. It is also called red and it distorts the color scheme that Titian asked the picture. For the first time, the color from the definition of the form: cup, flower, hand, becomes the content of the form.

Paul III with nephews

Students: Paola Dmitrievna, what about the canvas itself?

Volkova: Now I'll tell you. There's a lot of distortion going on there. Do you see red as the dominant color? But you won't even see what colors the legs and the curtain are. You simply do not perceive this color, because density has been added to the “blood trough”. Bloody age, bloody deeds.

Students: Bloody hearts.

Volkova: Bloody hearts. And hard hearts. In general, the bloody connection of times. Let's take the same curtain. It seems that she was soaked in the blood of people, animals, someone else, and then raw and hung. When you watch the original, then, believe me, it becomes scary. Mentally hard. Papa has a shadow on his skirt. See? Come up and it feels like this material was grabbed with bloody hands. All shadows are red. And how weak and senile-rotten the cape looks ... There is such impotence in it. Background soaked in blood...

Students: And who is next to dad?

Volkova: The answer is in the title (laugh). Nephews. The one behind the Pope is Cardinal Arseniy, and the one on the right is Hippolytus. You know, very often the cardinals called their own children nephews. They took care of them, helped to make a career.

Look at what a cap Cardinal Arseny has on his head, what a pale face. Is this guy on the right? It is something! His face is red and his legs are purple! And the Pope sits as if in a mousetrap - he has nowhere to go. Behind him is Arseny, and on the side is a real Shakespearean Iago, as if creeping up with inaudible steps. And the Pope is afraid of him. See how he put his head on his shoulders. Titian painted a terrible picture. What dramaturgy! Real stage drama, and he acts here not as a playwright Titian, but as a storyteller, like Shakespeare. Because he is of the same level and the same intensity, and understands history not as the history of facts, but as the history of actions and deeds. And history is made on violence and blood. History is not family relations and, of course, this is the dominant of Shakespeare.

Students: Can i ask you? Did the Pope order just such a picture? Bloody?

Volkova: Yes, just imagine. And he wrote the Pope even more terrible. In Toledo, in Cathedral, there is a huge gallery and it contains such a terrible portrait of the Pope. It's just kind of horror-horror-horror. Sits "King-Koschey languishes over gold."

He has such thin fingers, dry hands, a depressed head, without a hat. It's something terrible. And just imagine, time passes, the picture is accepted and a wonderful event occurs. This Hippolyte drowns his brother-cardinal in the Tiber, the same one whom Titian painted with a pale face, like that of a great martyr. He killed him and threw him into the Tiber. Why? But because he stood in his way to cardinal promotion. After that, after some time, Hippolyte himself becomes a cardinal. And then he wanted to become Pope and he strangles Paul III with a silk cord. Titian's providence was simply amazing.

In general, it is impossible to show everything and his portraits are different, but the older Titian becomes, the more amazing they become in painting. Let's look at the portrait of Charles V, which hangs in Munich.

It is said that when Titian painted it, Charles gave him brushes and water. This is a huge and vertical portrait. Karl is sitting in an armchair, all in black, such a strong-willed face, a heavy jaw, a depressed head. But there is some strangeness: fragility in the pose and, in general, he is kind of flat, disappearing. In form, it seems to be drawn solemnly, but in essence it is very disturbing and very painful. This gray landscape: a road washed out by rain, gloomy trees, in the distance a small house, or a hut. An amazing landscape, visible in the opening of the column. An unexpected contrast between the solemnity of the portrait and the very strange, nervous state of Karl, which does not at all correspond to his position. And this, too, proved to be a prophetic moment. What's wrong here?

Basically, everything is written in one color, there is a red carpet or carpet - a combination of red and black. A tapestry, a column, but there it is not clear: a window is not a window, a gallery is not a gallery, and this blurry landscape. The hut is standing and everything is gray, dull, as in the later canvases of Levitan. Straight poor Russia. The same dirt, autumn, unwashed, unkempt, strange. But Charles V always said that the sun never sets in his country. He has Spain, Flanders in his pocket, he is the Emperor of the entire Western Roman Empire. All! Plus the colonies that worked and transported goods by steamboats. Huge pirate movement. And such gray colors in the portrait. How did he feel in this world? And what do you think? One fine day, Charles makes a will in which he divides his empire into two parts. One part, which includes Spain, the colonies and Flanders, he leaves to his son, Philip II, and he leaves the Western European part of the empire to his uncle, Maximilian. Nobody ever did that. He was the first and only one who unexpectedly abdicated. Why is he behaving like this? So that after his death there would be no civil strife. He was afraid of a war between uncle and son, because he knew both one and the other very well. What's next? And then he arranges his own funeral and, standing at the window, watches how he is buried. Having made sure that the funeral was carried out according to the highest standard, after that he immediately goes to the monastery and takes the tonsure. There he still lives and works for some time.

Students: Did the Pope give his consent to this?

Volkova: And he didn't ask him. He died for everyone. He wouldn't even dare to yell.

Students: And what did he do in the monastery?

Volkova: He grew flowers and gardened. Became a gardener. We will return to it again when we talk about the Netherlands. It is not clear whether Titian's landscape had such an effect on him, or whether Titian, being a man of genius, saw in the window something that no one else had seen, even Karl himself. A window is always a window into the future. Don't know.

The work of Titian must be seen. A reproduction is very different from the original, because the latter is the most refined and complex painting that can be in the world. From the point of view of art or the burden that art can take on or the information that a painter can give us. He, like Velasquis, is the number one artist. A man in the full alphabet of his time describes this time. How else can a person living inside time describe it from the outside? He is prosperous, he is treated kindly, he is the first man of Venice, equal to the Pope, equal to Charles, and the people who lived next to him knew this, because he gave them immortality with his brushes. Well, who needs Carl to be talked about every day?! So they say, because he gave brushes to the artist. How many excursions they lead, so much they talk about it. As Bulgakov wrote in The Master and Margarita: "You will be remembered and I will also be remembered." And who else needs Pontius Pilate? And so, in the final, they walk side by side along the lunar path. Therefore, Akhmatova said: "The poet is always right." This phrase belongs to her.

And the artist is always right. And in those distant times, the Medici understood who Michelangelo was. And Julius II understood this. And Karl understood who Titian was. The writer needs a reader, the theater needs an audience, and the artist needs character and appreciation. Only then everything works out. And you can write Charles V just like that, and not otherwise. Or Pope Paul III and he will accept it. And if there is no reader and viewer, if there is only Glazunov, in front of whom Brezhnev is sitting, then there will be nothing. As the Brechtian hero who taught Arthur acting skills said: “I can make you any Bismarck! Just tell me which Bismarck you want." And they always want this and that. Apparently they are idiots. And you ask if he accepted. And that's why I accepted it. The scale is certain, like the era. There is no Titian in the void. There is no Shakespeare in the void. Everything should be on the level. There must be an environment of personality. historical time, charged with some certain level of characters and manifestations. History and creations. They themselves were creators. And although a lot of components work here, no one has ever been able to write like Titian. Simply by understanding form and speech, in this case with Titian, for the first time color is not a construction, as in Raphael, but color becomes a psychological and dramatic form. Here's what interesting thing. That is, painting becomes content.

Take the same "Equestrian Portrait" of Charles V in the Prado, which is very interestingly hung. When you stand in front of the stairs leading to the second floor, it hangs right in front of you. What words can describe this shock? The image is incredible! But I know this picture very well. The man who is inside the story. Two points intersect in it: inside and outside. Titian, a contemporary living at that time, described this commander with his visionary intuition as the Horseman of Death. And nothing more. great commander, great king, a black horse, again this red color, the scarlet color of the blood of a bloody history: on a spear, on a face, on armor, on these dyed ostrich feathers that came into fashion at that time. Sunset, ashes and blood. Not sunrise, but sunset. He writes against the backdrop of an ash-red sunset. The whole sky is ashes and blood. Here you are standing in front of the picture and understand that before you is not only a portrait of a person, but some kind of global understanding, to which Picasso will rise only in the twentieth century. And, of course, a lot of things come to painting with him, including from Giorgione. This is a whole trend in art, a whole genre, a new one - the genre of the naked body, in which a lot of things are combined. And I repeat that anyway you will never be able to see and understand everything completely ... What is this, what is it? What kind of young lady is this?

"Equestrian portrait" of Charles V

Students: It's Mane! Olympia!

Volkova: Well, of course. Of course. What do you say about it? Does this have anything to do with Titian?

"Olympia" by Edouard Manet - the beginning of European painting. Not fine art, but painting. On it, he portrayed a feminist - a real, new woman of that time, who could pose naked in front of the artist - Duchess Isabella Testa. It was a time when courtesans ruled the world. And she is the Duchess of Urbino, as if telling us: "I am not only a very modern woman, but it is a great honor for me to be a courtesan."

Olympia - Manet

The courtesans of that time were not women from dirty suburbs. Not! They were getters: smart, educated, able to present themselves, giving impetus to society. Supreme Impulse! They had their own clubs or salons where they received their guests.

Quiz Meran was the most famous courtesan and lover of Manet.

He often painted this uninhibited woman, and she was paralleled by the wonderful novels of Zola, Balzac, George Sand, and what they described were not just morals, not just history in literature, but high, very sensitive instruments of the time. Go back to go forward! Manet said absolutely lamentably: “I’m going there to get out there. I'm going back to throw art forward!" Manet follows Titian. Why is he following him? Because this is the point from which trains leave. He returns to this point to go forward. As the wonderful Khlebnikov said: "In order to go forward to the headwaters, we must rise to the mouth." That is, to the source from where the river flows.

Quiz Meran

I think you understand everything.

Nobody knew Titian's secrets. That is, they knew what he was writing, but they could not understand what was the matter. And his shadows are real mystery. The canvas is primed with a certain color, which is already translucent. And it's extraordinary magic. With age, Titian wrote better and better. When I first saw St. Sebastian”, I must say honestly, I could not understand how it was written and no one has understood it until now.

When you stand at a certain distance from the picture, you understand what is drawn, but when you get close, you can’t see anything - it’s a mess. Just a picturesque mess. He kneaded the paint with his hand, traces of his fingers are visible on it. And this Sebastian is very different from everything that was written before. Here the world plunges into chaos and the paint with which he writes is of the same color.

You see an abstract painting because the color of the painting does not stand out. It is content in and of itself. It's an amazing cry and it's a cry of the void, but don't think it's all accidental. The second half of the 16th century, the end of the 16th century - it was a special time. On the one hand, this was the greatest point in the development of the humanism of art and European genius and science, because there were Galileo and Bruno. You can't even imagine who Giordano Bruno was! And he was the first who was engaged in Greenland and its research, who said what science is only now approaching. He was very cheeky. On the other hand, Puritanism, the Inquisition, the Order of the Issuites - all this was already working within that intense and complex creative state. The international community is crystallizing. And I would say: a community of left-wing intellectuals. Interestingly, almost all of them were in opposition to the reformation. Can you imagine? They were all against Martin Luther. Shakespeare was unquestionably a Catholic and a supporter of the Stuart party. This is beyond any doubt. Not even an Anglican, but a supporter of the Stuart party and a Catholic.

Dürer, who came from the first Protestant and completely philistine city of Nuremberg, was the most ardent opponent of Martin Luther, and when he died, Willy Byte, Prince Geimer (?), who corresponded with his very great friend the geometer Chertogom, wrote: “Martin Luther was killed his own wife. He did not die of his own death – they are responsible for his death.”

The same goes for Michelangelo. You do not think that they lived without knowing anything about each other. They were part of a very interesting community, led by Jan van Achen, and whom we know as Hieronymus Bosch. And he was the head of this circle of people who called themselves Adamites and were apocalyptic. They did not advertise themselves and we learned about them relatively recently, but Bulgakov knew about them. When I read Bosch, and he did not write anything other than The Apocalypse and The Old Judgment, I will read Bulgakov to you. He has a lot of quotes from Bosch. And it is on the Adamic theory that "Heart of a Dog" is written, and I will literally prove it. The picture of art and life is complex enough.

Do you know that at the end of Michelangelo's life in the same Sextine Chapel, where he painted the ceiling, he wrote "The Last Judgment" on the wall? And they all began to write The Last Judgment. They began to write the tragic ending, the apocalypse. Not the Adoration of the Magi, but the apocalypse. They were aware of it. They put a date on when it started. It was a certain group of people. But what are the names? Durer, Leonardo - everything. The center of this community was in the Netherlands. They wrote letters to the popes. It is we who live in ignorance and do not know what has been done in the world, because the history we read is written either ignorantly or ideologically. When I got access to real literature, I was amazed at the extent to which, on the one hand, in our view, history is linear, and on the other, flattened. But she's not like that. Any point in history is spherical and the 16th century is a crystal with a huge number of facets. There are many trends there. And for this, a special group of people, the Last Judgment has already come.

Why did they think so? They justified it for a reason. These people were united and knew about each other's moods. In the book of Vasarius about the biography of Italian artists, there is only one artist, not an Italian - this is Dürer, who lived permanently in Italy. Sometimes at home, but mostly in Italy, where he was happy. He went home on business, where he left travel diaries, notes, and so on, but he was deeply connected with society. In time they lived from each other with a slight gap, but in the order of ideas, way of life, very bitter observation and disappointment that passed through them, they are perceived as direct contemporaries.

I want to say that the time of Titian, like the time of Shakespeare, is a very strong characters and large forms. One had to be Titian or Shakespeare in order to reveal, express and leave all these forms to us.

Here is another work by Titian that hangs in the Louvre - "Three Ages". Who made a direct copy of it? Salvador Dali. Titian is concerned about the issues of time, and he shows it. Here stands a young man, and behind him is his end.

three ages

Students: Why are they drawn from right to left?

Volkova: What does right to left mean?

Students: Well, it seems to be accepted in Europe ...

Volkova: Oh, what kind of specialists we have (laugh)!

Students: That's why I'm asking.

Three Ages - Dali

Volkova: And I'm not an expert. Because he wrote it that way. From sunrise to sunset. The sun rises in the east and sets in the west. So, quite a surreal picture. What is interesting about her. Werewolves! Zoomorphic werewolf, which is very strong in Goya. But we don't live in the 19th century. But where did Titian get it from? He feels people and writes werewolves. Therefore, when he writes Aretino, he looks like a wolf, and Paul III looks like an old, shabby sloth. He paints people as if they are non-embodied creatures with predatory, hunting, merciless, immoral instincts. How do you think he sees this charming young man?

Students: Dog! wolf! Bear!

Volkova: Predator! Fangs, mustaches. You do not see that he is so charming and his face is bright. This is deceptive. A young, strong predator with fangs and a thirst for fight between predators! Its heyday is the lion that has reached its apogee. The old wolf is, of course, an unheard of thing. Not three hypostases of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, as in man. He deciphers on different facets of age, shows us the predatory beginnings. No wonder Dali made a copy. He, like Freud, dives into the chthonic beginning. And since a predatory beast sits in the depths of the chthonics, nothing can be done. Neither enlightenment, nor noble words, nor demonstrative deeds will do anything. Strength, desire for power, insatiability, repetition of the same without conclusions, without lessons! And when this one started amazing story church schism or the persecution of heretics in the Middle Ages, then people were not yet burned at the stake. They began to burn in the 16th century. Bruno was burned at the turn of the 16th and 17th centuries. In 1600. People were burned in the 17th century. But not in the 12th. There were epidemics, but they did not burn. Burned by the Inquisition. She was made to burn. Shakespeare, Titian, Bosch, Durer abandoned the counter-reformation, considering it evil and the beginning of the path to the apocalypse. They were terribly afraid of the Luther Bible - that now everyone will come and write whatever you want. One of Dürer's last works, The Four Apostles, which hangs in Munich near Charles V.

four apostles

And behind all these apostles, he wrote their sayings, and presented this picture to the city of Nuremberg: “To my citizens, my compatriots. Fear false prophets!” This did not mean that they were primitive in their religion. They were people of the new age. And Titian knew that not an angel lives inside a person, and that love cannot become an angelic transformation. He knew that a chthonic, merciless dream lived inside, predetermining the circle and its finale.

You know, I really love my profession and this is not a secret for you. I now think in a completely different way than I did 20 years ago, because I began to look at things differently. The most important thing is the flow of information. When I look at paintings, I not only enjoy them - every time I make a deep dive, which can lead to decompression sickness, but this state conveys a certain picture of the world, the content of which has yet to be understood and appreciated. Remember how the ancient Greeks judged their contemporaries? Through the competition. Everyone who did not take first place smashed their work into dust, because only one option has the right to exist - the best one. True. Around us great amount very bad artists. Maybe it's not so dramatic for culture, if there is a scale, but when the bar disappears at the level of Titian, Bosch, Durer, Shakespeare, or it is scanty, or distorted, then the end of the world comes. I, too, became an apocalyptic, no worse than Bosch. I do not live in a state of opinion, but I am very surprised at how they then knew everything so well. They knew about the nature of the apocalypse and what it comes from. And in the messages to the popes they listed everything. And they showed it in pictures.

Well, aren't you tired? I am terribly afraid that 4 hours may not be enough for me, and they will not be enough, so I want the Shakespeare theater to start reading to you right now. I took with me all sorts of pictures in which you will see his contemporaries. You know, there are artists who are very difficult to read. It's hard to read Titian. It doesn't fit into word order. He doesn't fit in with anyone. This is not in my own defense, but because, indeed, there are such artists or writers that it is easy to talk or write about, but there are those that are easier to climb into the noose. Because there is some mysterious thing - you get a huge sea of \u200b\u200binformation, but you can’t say anything. I really like one saying: "Not one of the most beautiful women in the world can give more than she has." It is the same here, when you are dealing with a brilliant person and, plunging into him more and more, in the end, you understand that everything! - the moment of decompression sickness has come, and there is zero information. And this is Rembrandt or Titian, whose information comes through the dramaturgy of color. The color code that goes through the composition.

Attention! This is an introductory section of the book.

If you liked the beginning of the book, then full version can be purchased from our partner - a distributor of legal content LLC "LitRes".

Bridge over the abyss. Commentary on Antiquity

"Bridge over the Abyss" is the first book by Paola Volkova, written by her on the basis of her own course of lectures. The image of the bridge, according to Paola Dmitrievna herself, was not chosen by chance - as a metaphor for the entire world culture, without which we would not have taken place. A brilliant teacher and storyteller, through her books, lectures, and just conversations, she instilled in her students and interlocutors a sense of beauty, trying to reach out to their souls and cleanse them of the accumulated dullness.

One of the most iconic books for anyone educated person, "Bridge over the Abyss" invites us on a journey through the ages.

The book traces new connections between distant forms that do not lie on the surface and before the eyes. From Stonehenge to the Globe Theatre, from Crete to the Spanish bullfight, from the European Mediterranean to 20th century conceptualism, they are all interconnected and can exist without each other.

Bridge over the abyss. In the space of Christian culture

The dominance of Christianity in the medieval world gave rise to the whole modern culture, in the space of which we exist from birth to death - this is exactly what Paola Dmitrievna Volkova talks about in her series of lectures on the late Middle Ages and the Proto-Renaissance.

It is impossible to consider this era as a conditional "Dark Age", as something mediocre - in itself, this period is no less significant than the Renaissance.

The geniuses of that time - St. Francis of Assisi and Bonaventure, Giotto di Bondone and Dante Alighieri, Andrei Rublev and Theophanes the Greek - are still in dialogue with us through the centuries. Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio, having become elected Pope, takes a name for himself in honor of the saint from Assisi, resurrecting Franciscan humility and inviting us to cross another bridge over the abyss of epochs.

Bridge over the abyss. Mystics and humanists

Not a single culture, not a single cultural stage has such a direct relationship to modernity as the Renaissance.

The Renaissance is the most progressive and revolutionary period in the history of mankind. Paola Dmitrievna Volkova talks about this in the next book of the cycle “Bridge over the Abyss”, taking the baton from the first art critic, Giorgio Vasari, a real man of his era - a writer, painter and architect.

Renaissance artists - Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Titian, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder - were never just artists. They were philosophers, they were charged with the main and basic problems of the time. The painters of the Renaissance, having returned to the ideals of Antiquity, created an integral concept of the world with internal unity, filled traditional religious plots with earthly content.

Bridge over the abyss. Grand Masters

What came first - the man or the mirror? This question is asked by Paola Dmitrievna Volkova in the fourth volume of the "Bridge over the Abyss" series. For the great masters, a portrait has always been not just an image of a person, but also a mirror that reflects not only external, but also internal beauty. A self-portrait is a question to oneself, reflection and the answer that follows. Diego Velasquez, Rembrandt, El Greco, Albrecht Dürer and all of them leave us a bitter confession of a lifetime in this genre.

At what mirrors did the beauties of the past preen? Venus, ascending from the waters, saw her reflection in them and was pleased with herself, while Narcissus froze forever, shocked by his own beauty. Cloths, reflecting during the Renaissance only the ideal image, and later - the personality of a person, became eternal mirrors for anyone who dares to look into them - as into the abyss - for real.

This publication is a revised cycle "Bridge over the Abyss" in the form in which it was conceived by Paola Dmitrievna herself - in historical and chronological order. It will also include unpublished lectures from the personal archive.

Bridge over the abyss. Impressionists and the 20th century

The history of impressionism, which once and for all influenced all subsequent art, covers only 12 years: from the first exhibition in 1874, where the famous “Impression” was presented, to the last, eighth, in 1886. Édouard Manet and Claude Monet, Edgar Degas and Auguste Renoir, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin – with whom this book begins – were among the first to oppose the conventions of the “classical” painting that had been formed by that time.

The history of this family, which Paola Volkova, the author of the famous cycle “Bridge over the Abyss”, told about in this book, is an example of the life of real Russian intellectuals, “a direct armorial of their family honor, a direct dictionary of their root connections.”

From Giotto to Titian. Titans of Rebirth

The Renaissance is the most progressive and revolutionary period in the history of mankind. Renaissance artists - Sandro Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Titian, Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Brueghel the Elder - were never just artists.

They were philosophers, they were charged with the main and basic problems of the time. Returning to the ideals of Antiquity, they created an integral concept of the world with internal unity, filled traditional religious plots with earthly content.

This illustrated edition contains lectures by Paola Dmitrievna Volkova, the author of the famous cycle "Bridge over the Abyss", dedicated to the true titans of the Renaissance, revised and supplemented for the convenience of the reader.

Who are we spiritually? How was our artistic consciousness, our mentality formed, and where can we find its roots? Paola Dmitrievna Volkova, an art critic, film critic, author and host of the documentary series on the history of world culture "Bridge over the Abyss", is convinced that we are all still the heirs of a unique Mediterranean civilization - a civilization created by the ancient Greeks.

“Wherever you sneeze, but every theater has its own Antigone everywhere.”

But what is its peculiarity and uniqueness? And how Ancient Greece, which is in a state of constant strife, does not have a single land space and a single political system, managed to create a culture that still serves the whole world? According to Paola Volkova, the secret of the Greek genius is that more than two and a half thousand years ago they managed to create four artificial regulators that determined the face of the world for many centuries to come. These are olympiads, gymnasiums, artistic unions and feasts as important components of the life of every citizen - ritual dialogues about the main thing. Thus, the Greeks - the creators of forms and ideas - are so strong and beautiful that our civilization still continues to move along the vectors set by the Hellenes. Here it is, the modest role of ancient culture in shaping the image of the modern world.

How did these four regulators work and what is special about them? You can learn about this from an hour and a half lecture given at the Skolkovo Center and opening a whole cycle conversations about art, in which Paola Volkova spoke about our spiritual roots in the Mediterranean culture, about how consciousness determined being in Ancient Greece, what Homer and Vysotsky had in common, how the Olympics united Greece and became a cementing system for the formation of a great Mediterranean culture, and how " Alexander Filippovich of Macedon "destroyed everything. Right in the middle of the lecture, Paola Dmitrievna feels the wrath of the gods, and at the end of her story she concludes that the Greeks are a Cheshire cat who managed to create a smile of the world:

“Greeks created ideas. They are basically a Cheshire cat. Do you know what a Cheshire cat is? This is when there is a smile, but there is no cat. They created a smile because there is very little authentic architecture, very little authentic sculpture, very few authentic manuscripts, but Greece exists, it serves everyone. They are the Cheshire cat. They created the smile of the world."

Lectures on art by Professor Paola Volkova

Paola Dmitrievna Volkova

ISBN 978-5-4485-5250-2

Created with the intelligent publishing system Ridero

Foreword

Volkova Paola Dmitrievna

Those who were lucky enough to attend the lectures of this amazing woman will never forget them.

Paola Dmitrievna was compared with the Library of Alexandria, and her lectures became a revelation not only for ordinary people, but also for professionals.

In works of art, she knew how to see what is usually hidden from prying eyes, she knew the very secret language of symbols and could explain in the simplest words what this or that masterpiece is fraught with. She was a stalker, a guide-translator between eras.

Lectures delivered at the Higher Courses for Directors and Screenwriters

Lecture number 1. Florentine School - Titian - Piatigorsky - Byron - Shakespeare

Volkova: I look at the thinned ranks ...

Students: Nothing, but let's take the quality.

Volkova: Something to me. This is not what I need. This is what you need.

Students: We will tell them everything.

Volkova: So. We have a very important topic that we started last time. If you remember, we were talking about Titian. Listen, I want to ask you this: do you remember that Rafael was a student of the Florentine school?

Students: Yes!

Athenian school

Take a look at her. The Florentines could not write the Madonna like that. Look, she's busy with herself. Such spiritual isolation. There are moments in this film that have certainly never been seen before. This is reflection. Things related to reflection. The artist gives some complex moments to the internal movement, but not a psychological direction.

Madonna of Castelfranco

Portrait of an unknown person with gray eyes

But first, in our intimate company, I must confess that I was once in love with this comrade in the picture. In fact, I have twice been in love with paintings. The first time I fell in love was when I was a schoolgirl. We had a pre-war album of the Hermitage in our house and it featured a portrait of a young man in a robe, painted by Van Dyck. He painted the young Lord Philip Warren, who was about the same age as me. And I was so fascinated by my peer that, of course, I immediately imagined our wonderful friendship with him. And you know, he saved me from the boys in the yard - they were vulgar, pugnacious, and here such high relations.

Students: Undoubtedly!