Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT

Moscow Journal

Russia's New Court Sculptor: Only the Colossal

See the article in its original context from
January 25, 1997, Section 1, Page 4Buy Reprints
TimesMachine is an exclusive benefit for home delivery and digital subscribers.

Zurab Tsereteli swept through his skylit studio as he proudly described how he is single-handedly transforming Moscow's cityscape.

It was Mr. Tsereteli who designed the sprawling war memorial in Poklonnaya Gora. And it is Mr. Tsereteli who is building the bronze doors for the Cathedral of Christ the Savior.

But it is his 15-story monument to Peter the Great jetting up from an island in the Moscow River that has this city abuzz. The ''Tseretelization'' of Moscow -- not crime, pollution or the mind-numbing traffic jams -- is the talk of the town.

The Mayor of Moscow, Yuri M. Luzhkov, has backed the monument as a bold effort to recover Russia's past glory.

But the writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn spoke for a growing chorus of critics when he derided Mr. Tsereteli's monuments as ''a case of Moscow being recklessly disfigured.''

The debate over Mr. Tsereteli's art has even spilled over to America, where Donald J. Trump has proposed building a 30-story Tsereteli monument to Christopher Columbus in his new project along the Hudson River. That plan has brought snickers from aides to Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani, who said they were determined to prevent the ''Tseretelization'' of New York.

The man at the heart of this growing contretemps over Moscow's search for un-Soviet symbols is a prolific artist, natural charmer and energetic entrepreneur who epitomizes all the contradictions of the new Russia.

Like the former Communist officials who now govern capitalist Russia, the Georgian-born Mr. Tsereteli is well connected and ideologically flexible. A recipient of the Lenin Prize who got his start designing state-owned resorts and hotels, Mr. Tsereteli now erects monuments to czars and decorates churches.

''I am an artist,'' he said defiantly. ''I do not care who will be President. I have never painted Lenin or members of the Politburo.''

His Moscow studio is filled with about a thousand of his colorful paintings, including a moody portrait of Liza Minnelli. (She asked for the painting, but Mr. Tsereteli decided to keep it.)

The studio itself -- the former West German Embassy compound on Bolshaya Gruzinskaya -- testifies to Mr. Tsereteli's status as a sort of court sculptor for Russia's elite.

Even Mr. Tsereteli's critics acknowledge that he has talents. The paradox of his career has been his determination to shift from the realm of sculpture and painting, where his work has often been well received, to the monumental, which appeals to the grandiose instincts of Russia's leaders but turns off the critics.

''He is a contradictory figure,'' said Andrei V. Ikonnikov, the vice president of the Russian Academy of Architecture. ''In the beginning he attracted attention with his abstract sculptures and bright, colorful mosaics. It was very fresh and unusual. But in the 80's, he adopted a symbolic style. It is kitsch.''

With the support of Mayor Luzhkov, Mr. Tsereteli has embraced the Soviet esthetic that big is beautiful.

His obelisk featuring the goddess Nike at Poklonnaya Gora, which commemorates the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany, has been likened to an insect stuck to a giant pin.

One of his less heroic and more moving monuments is the ''Tragedy of Peoples,'' a memorial to the victims of World War II. Depicting a row of gaunt bodies falling backward like toppled dominoes, it was moved to a less conspicuous location at Poklonnaya Gora after complaints that it was out of place with the nearby kiosks and amusements.

It is Peter the Great, however, that has set off the most searching questions about post-Soviet art.

Commissioned to commemorate the 300th anniversary of Russia's navy at a cost of millions of dollars, it depicts a Roman-clad czar at the helm of a ship, which is mounted on a huge pedestal. ''The design is that of a wave, and on this wave is the whole history of the Russian fleet,'' Mr. Tsereteli said.

Critics say the monument to a czar who so disliked Moscow that he moved the capital to St. Petersburg lacks harmony, dwarfs its environment and is a clear echo of an even larger monument of Columbus, which Mr. Tsereteli has sought for years to have erected in America.

That criticism is the harshest, as it implies that Mr. Tsereteli is not so much creating art as churning out memorials on an assembly line.

''The combination of its huge size and primitive approach makes Peter esthetic trouble for Moscow,'' the magazine Stolitsa said.

Launching an attack against the monument, the magazine even printed a form in its latest issue that its readers could fill out to demand that Peter the Great be dismantled.

Mr. Tsereteli dismisses these criticisms as politically motivated attacks on his patron, Mayor Luzhkov, by Communist sympathizers opposed to his effort to celebrate Russia's pre-revolutionary past. He makes no apology for the size of his work.

''The scale has been imposed by the space,'' he said. ''Why don't people ask why such a large Statue of Liberty was erected in America? Why don't they ask Eiffel about the Eiffel Tower?''

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section 1, Page 4 of the National edition with the headline: Russia's New Court Sculptor: Only the Colossal. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

Advertisement

SKIP ADVERTISEMENT