Наследие Андрея Благова

Museum preserves the traces of the life-path of a person
who has left a name in art
but a NAME is a lottery, a paradox, a product of circumstances
much more important is the effort made by millions along the way

is it not better, then,
to turn all those attempts and travails into museum

to join the flow of existence and the trace of a nameless effort
instead of the gathering of personality marks
to create a repository of anonymous touches

the Museum conserves what is gone
but could it be the same as what never was?

The NAME that never materialised is a silence buried in noise
A suddenly found pause
The issue of the artist remains open: Who is he?
Creator? Servant? Victim?


МУЗЕЙ НЕИЗВЕСТНОГО ХУДОЖНИКА
ПЕРВАЯ КОЛЛЕКЦИЯ
НАСЛЕДИЕ АНДРЕЯ БЛАГОВА

СООБЩЕНИЕ МЕЖДУНАРОДНОЙ КОМИССИИ ПО НАСЛЕДИЮ АНДРЕЯ БЛАГОВА
перевод с английского М..П.
Мы не знаем о его жизни и творчестве ничего, за исключением того факта, что он был сценографом спектакля "Мона Ванна" в Челябинском Театре Юного Зрителя.
Работа была начата Мариной Перчихиной*, но не окончена. Андрей Благов был найден режиссером спектакля Феликсом Берманом. Прошло много лет. Марина Перчихина посетила Челябинск и театральный реквизитор поведала ей историю о работах Андрея Благова.
По сообщению реквизитора М.Н. Благов не только странно появился в театре, но и не менее странно исчез в день премьеры, после нескольких слов, сказанных режиссером. "Благов попросил меня сохранить его работы" - сказала М.Н. передавая Марине несколько полуосыпавшихся холстов с просьбой разыскать их автора.
Никто не помнит, были ли эти холсты привезены им с собой или же созданы в период его работы над спектаклем.

Все попытки разыскать Благова потерпели фиаско. Таким образом и возникла первая значительная коллекция нашего Музея.
Мы пришли к выводу, что первые три работы ив полученных нами относятся примерно к 1973 - 74 годам. Это "Старик в Саду", «Молодая Женщина» и «Старая Женщина».
Три другие работы, возможно наиболее значительные в творчес­тве автора, относятся вероятно к 1975 - 1976 годам. Это "Обнаженная", "Женщина у Зеленой Реки" и "Старик с Крестом". Атрибуция двух последних работ весьма затруднена.
Часть из нас считает, что они находятся в столь плохом состо­янии, что атрибутировать и реставрировать их не представляем­ся возможным. Но другие члены нашей Комиссии считают, что автор уничтожил их сам, и даже утверждают, что это было кон­цептуальной акцией художника.
Все наши попытки разыскать следы Андрея Благова и другие его работы потерпели провал. И мы были потрясены, когда пришед­ший к нам маляр Василий К. принес несколько странных вещей, которые он назвал работами Андрея. Приводим полностью сооб­щение Василия К.:
"Мы красили большую квартиру. Однажды договорились работать посменно, но я выпил несколько сильно и пришел только дня через два. Андрей меня не дождался, закончил всю работу и оставил письмо:
«Это все. Храни мои работы.»
Я огляделся и увидел, что вся его одежда разрезана на куски и разложена на больших черных квадратах11. Василий не мог нам сообщить ничего большего, но в дальнейшем мы обрели очень интересный документ:
Из протокола допроса свидетеля /подозреваемого/ Василия К. по делу об исчезновении Благова Андрея, без определенных занятий, называвшего себя художником, работавшего в качестве маляра-ремонтника по частным соглашениям /уклонение от нало­гов/
... По сообщению Василия К. Благов ушел «нагишом» так как все, бывшее при нем и на нем из одежды осталось в порезанном виде разложенным на больших черных кусках бумаги в странном порядке.
В записке, приложенной отдельно к рубашке, наклеенной на три куска картона, набитого на деревянные рамы / картон имел о изнанки подпись "ДП - 5401», что после длительной экспертизы было определено как повторение номера метки, имевшейся на лицевой стороне рубашки/ значилось: "Сохрани вое мои работы и наклей все так, как я разложил...
Когда Василий предоставил нам новую часть коллекции (раздел "Новые поступления»,) большинство из нас в конечном итоге решило, что Благов действительно разрушил свои ранние работы сам, избирая путь авангарда, и в конечном итоге мы пришли к заключению, что «ДП - 5401» является высшим достижением его творческой жизни.
Комиссия по Наследию Андрея Благова при Музее Неизвестного Художника 1990г.








The life of the artist Andrey Blagov began and ended in 1981. We do not know anything about his life and creativity, except that he was the stage designer for the production of Maeterlink's play "Nona Vanna" at Chelyabinsk's Young Spectators' Theatre. He got this job in a very interesting way: it was started by Marina Perchikhina, but when she had some disagreement with the director of the production, he destroyed a considerable part of the decor. She stopped working and requested urgently to remove her name from the playbill. After this incident, she left Chelyabinsk to return to Moscow.
Andrey Blagov was found by Berman, the director of the production, who invited him to finish the unfinished work. Blagov came to the theatre, created the entire decoration from scratch in an absolutely new way -and disappeared. All this happened within a week.
Many years passed. And this story about Blagov's work in the theatre was related by the theatre property-master to Marina Perchikhina, who came to Chelyabinsk to visit her friends. The property-master said that Blagov not only had, in a way, a strange appearance, but moreover made a strange disappearance. He vanished after some words expressed by Berman after the first night. (It is difficult to repeat these words in English, so it is in Russian). According to the property-master, Blagov left some paintings in the theatre, but nobody could remember .. .whether he had brought the paintings with him or whether he had accomplished them during his stay at the theatre.
"When these words had been pronounced by Berman, Blagov asked me to keep his works and left the theatre. Ã hoped to keep the paintings safely, but some of them are now in a very bad con­dition because we have no room where the rain does not pour through or where there are no insects.", said the property-master.
After this speech the property-master showed Marina some paintings which had been left by Blagov were kept by the property-master
all the time. These works were given to Marina with the request to find their author.
All attempts to do this failed, and Marina brought Andrey Blagov's works to our museum. It is the first significant collection of our museum, We came to the conclusion that all paintings were created during different periods of Blagov's life.
We can refer the three works of the first exhibition wall to the earlier period of his creativity; they were done around 1973-74: "An Old Woman", A Young Woman", An Old Man in the Garden".
Another three works can be considered to belong to the period 1975-76: "A Nude", A Woman near a Green River", "An Old Man with the Cross". They may be the most important pictures in his creative life.
The next two works, we attribute to the last part of his artistic life. We have different opinions about them. Some of us consider, that they are in such a bad condition that we cannot say anything about them. But another part of our committee thinks that Blagov destroyed them himself because he was not satisfied with them, or because he chose the path of avant-garde art. There are even some among us, who consider this destruction a conceptual act on the part of the artist.
Some of the latter are of the opinion that the three works of his first period and the three works of the middle period were also destroyed by the artist and symbolise the artist's protest against the system of artistic education in the USSR.
Only one member of our committee, now living in Paris, took the stance that the protest was not only directed at the educational system, but at the social system in general.
When we had finished our study of the collection of Blagov's oil paintings, we began to look for the author himself in order to
collect more of his works if he were still amongst the living, Such a long time had passed that we had little hope to find him. All our attempts failed, until we received a strange phone call by somebody who called himself Vasya K., a decorator, who came to us and brought along some strange things which he labelled as art works of Andrey Blagov, He told us that he had worked with Blagov as a decorator in a private apartment in 1987, and that he had thought Blagov was telling a lie when pretending to be a painter,
We did not know whether this was true or not, but took Vasya's story for granted:
"Vie were painting a large flat. One day, we decided to work in shifts, and I had drunk too much and appeared at work only after two or three days. Andryusha had not waited for me, but he had finished all of our work and left a letter for me:
" THAT IS ALL. KEEP MY WORKS."
I looked around and saw that all the clothes that I recognised as his working overalls had been cut into pieces and had been put on a large black rectangle of paper."
Vasya could not tell us anything else, but we already had got the key to a new way of research.
We had found a very interesting document and will reprint it now:

From the Protocol of the Interrogation of Witness (suspect) Vassili K. In the case of the disappearance of Blagov, Andrei, address unknown, employed as privately contracted house painter (re tax evasion):
As reported by Vassili K., Andrei Blagov went naked, because on him and with him were left, cut to pieces and strewn in the room, on large sheets of black paper in a strange order.»
The note, appended separately to the shirt glued to three pieces of cardboard nailed to wooden frames (the cardboard had an inscription on the back, «DP-5401»,which, after prolonged expert analysis, was identified as repeating the number on the laundry label on the shirt’s front), said: «Save my works and glue everything in the same order as I arranged.»

When Vasya brought us the new part of the collection, some of us decided that our member, now living in Paris, was right: Blagov chose the avant-garde path,but another group of our members was convinced that the most impor­tant of Blagov's works was "The Woman near the Green River",
However, the works in the collection that were discovered by Vasya are not significant and could be attributed to Vasya himself, But there" are not many members of our committee who believe in this. Most of us, at last, decided that "DP=5401 " is the most important work in Blagov's creative life. All other works are only stations on the way to this his highest achievement.
There is only one of Blagov's works which needs special discussion, and we invited an outstanding young expert of Russian stage design, Victoria Lazikova, who said:
"There is no doubt that this work is a project for set design. (Post grand style)."

COMMITTEE OF ANDREY BLAGOV'S COLLECTION OF THE UNKNOWN ARTIST MUSEUM