Irina Tarkhanova: “I am interested in island life, parallel to the mainstream. About the device of the book

IRINA TARKHANOVA, working on the book “From revolution to war. Russian family portrait. 1917-1941”, shares with COLTA.RU photos from family albums and family stories behind them

Until August 12, COLTA.RU is on a short summer vacation. But, so that you would not be completely bored without us, we have collected for this time a small collection of all sorts of oddities and rarities, mostly of the past years, which, we hope, you will be curious to look at.

The collection of family photographs, which now numbers several hundred photographs, was started in the process of preparing the second volume of Russia in Photographs, dedicated to the period between the two wars. Family photos were supposed to be a natural addition to journalistic photographs and historical chronicles. The basis of this collection is family albums from social networks, where I found interesting old photos, established correspondence with people and then wrote down their family stories. These photographs were not included in the series of books “Russia in photography. XX century”, because I plan to release them in the publishing house “Barberry” as a separate album “From revolution to war. Russian family portrait. 1917-1941”, dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. It seems to me that this will be a real portrait of the time.

I want to show all kinds of people - from party bosses to beggars. Why did I choose this particular period of history? Until 1940, the situation was very hermetic - this is the time of group, staged and official photographs. They were not allowed to take pictures on the streets, people burned their family archives, even at home they took little pictures. Apparently, people had an inner fear. There are very few living, family cards, and therefore they are precious. The real faces of that Russia are faces from family albums.

Irina Tarkhanova

The Notick family

Rosa and Zhenya Notik. June 1934

In this photo, not boys, but Soviet girls. Sisters Rosa (12 years old) and Zhenya (9 years old). In the summer of 1934, secretly from their parents, they fled from Kharkov to Moscow to meet the Chelyuskinites, rescued in the Arctic by Soviet pilots. Without money, without tickets, without the exact address of Moscow relatives. Brave children traveled to Moscow for a day, changing from one train to another and hiding from the controllers. On the way, they were fed by kind fellow travelers. In Moscow, it was difficult to find an aunt. She gave a telegram to her mother, who had suddenly lost two girls and was terribly worried. And for those, the holiday began! The first time in the capital, the meeting of the Chelyuskinites, Park them. Gorky, ice cream and other joys of life. At home, of course, they got a big beating. The eldest, Rosa, started the escape. She has always been distinguished by her recklessness and active citizenship. She then literally fled to the front, quite sincerely believing that the USSR would not win the war without her.

Rosa Notic. December 30, 1938 On the back of the photo: Kharkov Palace of Pioneers and October. New Year's masquerade ball December 30, 1938. Costume "Day of the Stalinist Constitution". Uch. 79 sc. Rose Notic

Photo from one of the first Christmas trees in the Soviet Union. Until the end of 1935, Christmas holidays and related Christmas trees were banned, and the first New Year tree was held in Kharkov, in the Palace of Pioneers and October in 1936 at the initiative of P.P. Postyshev (1887-1939), then secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party (b) of Ukraine. The end of the “leftist excesses” was unexpectedly put on December 28, 1935. On this day, a small note appeared in the newspaper Pravda, signed by P.P. Postyshev. It began like this: “In pre-revolutionary times, the bourgeoisie and bourgeois officials always arranged a Christmas tree for children on New Year's Eve. The workers' children looked enviously through the window at the Christmas tree sparkling with multi-colored lights and the rich children having fun around it. Why do our schools, orphanages, nurseries, children's clubs, palaces of pioneers deprive the children of the working people of the Soviet country of this wonderful pleasure? Some nothing but left-wing oppressors denounced this children's entertainment as a bourgeois undertaking. The author urged Komsomol and pioneer leaders to urgently arrange collective Christmas trees for children on New Year's Eve. This proposal was accepted with lightning speed. Christmas tree festivities were organized throughout the country, and "extended assortments of Christmas tree decorations" appeared in stores. Thus, the proposal (not even a decree) of the party leadership was accepted and fully implemented nationwide in just four days, including the date of publication itself. Such efficiency remained an unattainable record in the history of the USSR. Postyshev was shot in 1939.

Rosa Notik with her friends on the beach

The Notik family met the war in Kharkov. They managed to evacuate miraculously, on the last day before the Germans entered the city. They made it to the last echelon with practically no things, including warm clothes, which they regretted more than once in the Urals. But for some reason they took an album with photographs with them. In 1943, Rosa literally fled to the front, because. she was not taken for health reasons, along with the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps. Escaping from a military factory is desertion, a tribunal. She was saved by General Rodin, who then said the historical phrase: "There are no deserters at the front." She served in the medical battalion, and in between battles she sang in an amateur front-line jazz band. She reached Berlin, on May 9, 1945 she met in Prague.

Roza Notik's mother (second from right) at the funeral of a revolutionary comrade. Presumably the beginning 1920s

A very typical photo of the time. Tragic and pretentious funeral of the hero of the revolution, comrade-in-arms, fighter for the just cause of the proletariat. Since the 1917 revolution, turning a red funeral into a big dramatic show and photographing against the backdrop of heroic coffins, flags, posters and revolutionary symbols has become a tradition. Mass solemn funerals were equal in importance to socialist holidays. (Publisher's note.)

Rosa Notic with a black knife on the front. 1943

During the formation of the Ural Volunteer Tank Corps in 1943, each fighter and commander received a black knife as a gift from the Zlatoust gunsmiths. German intelligence immediately drew attention to this feature in the equipment of the Ural tankers, which gave the corps its name "Schwarzmesser Panzerdivision" - the Black Knife Panzer Division.

“The fascists whisper in fear to each other,
Hiding in the depths of dugouts:
Tankers appeared from the Urals,
Division of Black Knives.
Selfless squads of fighters,
Their courage is unrelenting.
Oh, they don't like fascist bastards
Our Ural steel black knife…”

(from a song of that time)

Shibaev family

Tatyana Fedorovna and Fedor Ivanovich Shibaev with children. Nakladets village, Novgorod region Photo 1935

From the correspondence of the publisher with the granddaughter of Tatyana Fedorovna

The Germans came to the village in the autumn, as elsewhere, established their own rules, appointed a local headman, who, in order to curry favor, immediately told the new owners about the food supplies of the peasants. Stocks consisted of potatoes, which were buried in the ground, in the so-called piles, disguised with turf. Late in the evening, it gets dark early in autumn, we sat with a torch. Grandmother and children lived in a bathhouse, next to the headquarters of the Germans, everything is in plain sight. One of the German soldiers was not afraid to come to them and in broken Russian said that he himself was a father, he did not want to fight, and tomorrow the Germans would go to dig up and seize potatoes. Grandmother wanted to hide all the piles, he didn’t let him, saying that no one would believe, one pile was left untouched, and the rest were hidden, he himself took an active part, they dragged bags all night, it rained well and no one saw what these people were doing there. Russians. After all, he risked a lot, but he helped! Then he came, Dunechka and Vanya brought sweets and all the time played sad melodies on the harmonica. I told my grandmother that her master would return, and he would return to his people in Berlin. When the Germans retreated, he was still alive.

Oddly enough, the Germans did not commit atrocities in the village, they, consider, were standing in the rear of their troops, there were fierce battles, this is the “Demyansky Cauldron”, so they came to their senses, healed their wounds. The headman simply functioned, they didn’t shoot him when our people arrived, but he didn’t know anything about the German. Grandmother was at the logging site during the war, the so-called labor service. Women felled timber and floated it down the river, waist-deep in icy water, pushing logs into the water with hooks. After all, Russian women are tenacious, as my grandmother said, and they survived it. In general, she always said: there is bread and pasta and there is no war - and thank God! She had such a hint. They were not affected by repression, no one was arrested and convicted. But she always cried when she told us war stories, because she buried two children, only two daughters survived.

Kabanov family

Children of Norilsk. Photo 1937

From a letter from Olya Kabanova to the publisher

The boy in the top row is my dad, Igor Sergeevich Kabanov. Here he is six or seven years old, which means they were filmed in 1936 or 1937, in Norilsk. Dad's stepfather was almost the head of Norilskstroy, so in the picture the children are not prisoners, but free employees. Grandmother recalled how she lived in harmony with the prisoners, how she passed on their love notes.

Petrov family

Grandparents in their youth. Ivan Petrovich Petrov and Elizaveta Alexandrovna Petrova. Wedding photography, Okulovka, Novgorod region 1937

From a letter to the publisher

My grandmother never spoke about her family. She was very literate, knew the German language perfectly. In the family we had Germans on my grandmother's line, so she was silent.

The Kobyakov family

Kobyakov Ignat Semenovich with the family of his daughter Aksinya. 1935

Kobyakov Ignat Semenovich with his wife and seven children during the period of the Stolypin reform moved from the Klin district of the Bryansk region to the Ufa province and was one of the founders of the village of Slobodka. Despite the unsightly growth, he had an enviable health. In his youth, on a timber rafting along the Sozh River, a twelve-inch log rolled over him. But he stayed alive. The Sloboda residents considered Ignat to be rich. He had an apiary and good agricultural equipment. Together, his family owned over 300 hectares of land. On the inheritance left from his father, he helped all his sons to build solid, iron-roofed houses. Together with his sons, he uprooted cuts for arable land. Fresh stumps held firmly in the ground, and from the tool - an ax and a vaga. They worked from dawn to dusk. Come, eat and sleep. And in the morning he wakes up - his palms do not unbend. “Put” his hands on the ax and let's uproot again ... His wife Natalya in her youth was a stately beauty, kind and sensitive. They lived together, in love and harmony. In her mature years, Natalya treated with herbs and helped women in childbirth. Ignat outlived his wife by almost 20 years. Lived 104 years.

The Kobyakov family

Kotov family

From a series of photographs taken in Ashgabat at a family home. 1931

From correspondence with the publisher

My great-grandfather, Grigoriev Anton Lukich, was born in Taganrog on March 08, 1871. Father, Luca Miceli (1850, Messina, Sicily - 1943, Malta), according to information from one source, was an Italian shipowner, according to another - he came to Taganrog develop their own business - the construction of roads. He could not recognize his son as a legitimate child - there was a family in Italy. But he kept in touch with him until the 30s of the XX century, while it was safe. In 1911, Anton Lukich and his family visited his father in Italy. Despite family ties with a far from poor person, great-grandfather made his way through life, relying only on his own strength.

As his daughter, my grandmother, told me, he learned to read from A.P. Chekhov, with whom they were on friendly terms. For many years, the family kept a photo of the writer with a dedicatory inscription. Anton Lukich was constantly engaged in self-education - he independently mastered the Italian language, later received the specialty of a paramedic.

Anton Lukich worked as a paramedic for a long time, served in the front-line medical unit during the First World War. Years of study and hard work allowed my great-grandfather to achieve a lot: to provide his family with a decent standard of living, and in the period of post-revolutionary anarchy in Ashgabat to become People's Commissar of Health.

In Ashgabat, the family had their own house with 12 rooms. Anton Lukich personally participated in its construction.

For the summer, the family went to the dacha in Firyuza, a suburb of Ashgabat on the border with Persia (Iran). By the end of the 1920s, it became unsafe to stay in Ashgabat. A high position could turn against the family. In 1931, the house was hastily sold. With a minimum of necessary things and funds, the family moves to Moscow. On Petrovsky Boulevard (house number 19), a gateway was bought, which was fenced on both sides and made suitable for living. There wasn't enough money for more. Anton Lukich worked as a sanitary doctor. And, as I was told, he checked the quality of the wines. The wife ran the household. Daughters Zhenya and Muza went to school, took piano lessons, and studied vocals with Zhenya. Grandfather was very strict. I loved order in everything. He often received guests. Elena Nikolaevna cooked - there were no servants. The table was served according to all the rules: silver rings for linen napkins, silver cutlery and coasters for them. Porcelain tureens and plates of various sizes. As a child, I really loved listening to stories told by my grandmother, Evgenia Antonovna, about life in Ashgabat. She represented every detail: a spacious house, caravans from Persia laden with watermelons and silks, the beloved gardener Mamed, bunches of grapes hanging out the window, fragrant peaches. The way they escaped the unbearable heat of the night by wrapping themselves in wet sheets. And how one night thieves climbed into the house, jumping over a high fence with the help of springs attached to the boots. And then she talked about Moscow life on Petrovsky Boulevard.

Daughters of People's Commissar Grigoriev, 1938-1939

Poster by Maria Permyakova:

Poster by Ksenia Protsenko:

Poster by Maria Kosareva:

Design space Tarkhanova-Yakubson

Sergey Serov

The plastic basis of graphic design works is the interaction of black and white, form and counterform, figure and background. Everyone sees one of these components, because the idea is usually conveyed with the help of black, “figure”. Everyone can see it, read the content of the message. Another component - a white background - is usually seen only by charts. Only a professional can accurately put a “figure” on a white sheet, turn a sign, letter, line into a work of graphic design. And this accuracy of seeing the invisible, working with “air” is the most intimate part of the profession.

For the general public, graphic design is a kind of graphics, fine art. For professionals, this art is not visual, but expressive, architectonic. white space architecture.

The genre composition of graphic design is extremely wide: fonts and signs, corporate identity and packaging, outdoor and urban advertising ... Recently, television and computer graphics, multimedia and web design have been added to them ... But the paradigmatic core of the profession is still typography - the queen of graphic design. And typography works essentially with a single ink – white. In the end, a designer can get a sign, a font, an ornament, an illustration drawn by another artist, and a photograph taken by a photographer ... But there will still be a need for a specialist who can expressively place it in the empty space of a white sheet.

The typology of the types and forms of typographic space is limitless: it is inside and between letters, between lines and illustrations, inside and around the typesetting strip... As Jan Tschichold, a classic of book design of the 20th century, said, typographic art "contains mostly in the choice of gaps."

They say that in the languages of the northern peoples there is no word for "snow". On the other hand, there are several dozen special words for “melting snow”, “sparkling in the sun”, or “sled suitable for sliding”. This is always the case with the most important concepts. So in graphic design, there are many terms for designating emptiness: “leading”, “clearance”, “space”, “tracking”, “kerning”, “apros”, “spacing”, “veneer”, “corridor”, “hole ”, “paragraph”, “indent”, “indent”, “descent”, “beat”, “blind line”, “margins”, “modular grid”, “axis” ... It's all about him - about the secret space professionals.

Are there many people working in graphic design today who feel this space? Those who understand and love typography? Those who are able to elevate the "art of gaps" to the level of modern visual culture?

Alas, their circle is narrow. And they are terribly far away ... The wild market brought down the criteria for professionalism. And the level of craftsmanship is maintained today only thanks to the dedicated efforts of enthusiasts.

Irina Tarkhanova-Yakubson is one of those who, despite everything, continues to defend the honor and dignity of graphic design as a high art.

I first heard this name in the late 80s, when we were in the magazine “Reklama. Theory, Practice” organized an all-Union font competition. Her project "Foreshortening" received an award there. It was her first work in type. Since then, I have been closely following her work.

She is successful in book design, magazine design, everything that a modern graphic designer does. Her particular passion is conceptual author's calendars, built entirely on the basis of typographic imagery. She brought such a precise sense of rhythm and proportions to work with the printing space of a book, magazine, calendar that her name became one of the most prominent in Russian graphic design.

And here we are sitting in the cozy editorial office of the Pinakothek art magazine on Patriarch's Ponds, talking about her creative path. What interests me the most is the origins of her talent, so rare today, and the enthusiasm that sustains her active artistic activity. Her teachers, friends, cultural environment...

– In 1982 I graduated from MAArhI. From the very beginning I wanted to write a book. But it seemed to me that the Architectural Institute would provide a broader art education. In fact, I was not mistaken, although I finally realized this later. I did not immediately understand that the book page is a space, and not a place that is filled with pictures. And then I suddenly saw that this is the same room, the same house that needs to be filled with small stools or large cabinets, to feel what height, width, depth it is ... I felt the empty space of a book sheet like the air we breathe .

An architectural education gives unique things to an artistic person - a sense of space, scale, rhythm.

As a student, she began to collaborate with publishing houses, draw illustrations...

- At the Moscow Architectural Institute, the drawing is very constructive ...

Yes, constructive. True, I was lucky with Sergei Vasilyevich Tikhonov. It was an unsurpassed luminary of the drawing. He wove the air with lines. When he drew, it seemed that he did not touch the paper. He only thinks deeply, and this philosophy magically manifests itself on paper, as in a decal. Watching him draw was a joy...

At the same time, I realized that constructive drawing is a very special kind of drawing, that it is not enough, you need to improve somehow.

And so, in my third year, I came to Viktor Isaevich Tauber, a wonderful book illustrator. All the children had his books "White and Rose", "Puss in Boots" ...

Viktor Isaevich had a Yuon school, where the main thing was air, modeling from light and shadow. And of course, Tauber was a fantastically educated person. He was well versed in classical music, he had a huge library, a collection of reproductions, which he had been collecting since the thirties. His company from the time of his youth - the poets Arseniy Tarkovsky, Willy Levik, Arkady Steinberg. They were friends all their lives. Well, I got a little carried away.

- So it was at the same time personal growth?

- Undoubtedly. Viktor Isaevich influenced me a lot. We listened to classical music. He talked about Akhmatova, Chukovsky, Marshak, Favorsky, Yudina, Fainberg, with whom he personally spoke. He told me what to read, what to see in museums. Then I learned about samizdat for the first time.

Then it all moved on with Evgeny Aleksandrovich Gannushkin, whom I met in 1982. He was also a music lover, they also read, watched, and talked together. From the first day he warned that we would not talk about the font, about the letters. Over a cup of tea - about the shape of the doorknob, about Chaliapin's dog ... But I came to the workshop and saw how brushes, feathers, pencils lay, how he sharpens them. He said: "Irisha, there is only one thing that does not take any time - discipline." It all worked fantastically. I breathed and drank this air.

As for professional work, I laid out a huge number of sketches on the floor. Yevgeny Alexandrovich looked thoughtfully, chose a small squiggle and said sympathetically: “Save. You have to grow out of it." Then I figured it out myself.

He always said: "If Ivan Fedorovich Rerberg were alive, I would still go to him." That's how I am. I would still be learning.

- Come to us in VASHGD, now to teach his grandson, he is in our third year.

– Yes, Misha Gannushkin... Good. I myself was already going. But I don’t have a rigid methodology, a teaching concept. My books are made differently each time. There is no one line. Factory studies I can't teach. Meanwhile, I can do what I love with students. I have already figured out how to carry my thoughts through paper, so that they design, analyze, cut, glue, delving into various styles, textures, compositions. Provoking them to action, forgetting about fear. After all, students are very afraid to invent, indulge in various tricks, tricks ... And here it seems that there is no need to invent, repeat to yourself the work of the great maestro in paper technology ... That is, move through paper, through needlework, through the eyes. And through the ears, if you like... After all, paper rustles, breaks, creaks...

– The fact that paper gives tactile-visual sensations is well known. But that it really sounds different, rustles, rustles - few people pay attention to this ...

–Paperwork is a big deal. At the Moscow Architectural Institute, I loved gluing and cutting models, doing decoupage, and clausura tasks. And Yevgeny Aleksandrovich was very sensitive to paper. Once he gave me a sheet of cast torchon so that I could make a composition. I didn't succeed. He saw and shouted: “I was afraid, I was afraid! Oh oh oh! I was afraid of papers! The work was sluggish. Fear of royal paper won. But Yevgeny Alexandrovich was very kind to my hobby and in general glorified architectural education in every possible way, considering it the best. Apparently, this was due to the fact that his teacher, Ivan Fedorovich Rerberg, was an architect by education, he designed the best Soviet academic publications on architecture.

Then, a little later, the late Yuri Kurbatov, the chief artist of the Decorative Art magazine, helped me a lot. Very powerful and talented artist. He taught how to build spreads, taught how to work with illustrations in a magazine, freedom within technological limits, conciseness, and unpredictable moves. I also consider him my teacher.

- When it was?

– In "DI"? In 1986 Then there was Rakurs, a magazine within a magazine. The first magazine on non-conformist art that we did with Lesha Tarkhanov. Then I cut out a display font from an eraser, which I called “Foreshortening”.

- But Kurbatov is the Anikst-Troyanker line ...

Yes, they were two different lines. Gannushkin grew out of a drawing, academic direction. And "Misha with Arkasha," as he called them, had a rigid, minimalist, Bauhaus design. The classics believed that it was necessary to preserve a hand-made book. And their direction was developing constructive phototypesetting fonts and actually moving towards the computer.

But what can I say for sure - I recognize Gannushkin's spine from thousands of books on the shelf, but Anikst is not.

Now I understand that both directions were very important. We must preserve our own, unique, alive - and move to the West, to a technical, modern book.

- Which leaven is stronger for you?

– Of course, Gannushkinskaya. In 1987, at the Moscow exhibition, I exhibited a type calligraphic composition. I made the book "Tales of Uncle Remus" in a fully drawn design. I still try to write, draw, do something with my hands.

- But your books and calendars are not Gannushkin. It's a computer, architecture, right?

Yes, computer. But I try to go to the lively and warm in computer graphics, to return to needlework. For twenty years now there has been a model of a book-toy, a spatially fundamentally new model. While there is neither the strength nor the time to do it.

- It is necessary together with the students ...

– Just through this I hope to return to spatial modeling at a new level, having understood a lot about the book.

- We talked about teachers, now let's talk about those who are nearby ...

- In the early 90s, I met the late Shura Belosludtsev. At that time, I made calligraphic compositions from my rubber stamps, which I cut out for Rakurs. These were both free compositions and strict type ones... The IMA-press publishing house then released my calendar with rubber prints. Shura was the art director of a publishing house, and I met his circle of friends - Sasha Gelman, Andrey Logvin, Yuri Surkov, Lyosha Veselovsky.

Of course, we all then breathed the same air. Of course, we looked towards the active West. After all, in Russia almost everything is secondary. Everything is destructured. There is no design environment as such, and there cannot be. This country doesn't need it yet. I think a bunch of designers need it. And the rest - all the same. So we get stuck in the swamp. We pull out one leg - the other falls through.

In general, it is very difficult, especially with books. Since books require calm historical layers, gentle, not rough environment... The book is generally a mystical product. Such a fungus that grows out of cultural mold, out of wise paper nature... Therefore, we can groan about Dutch books for as long as we like, but this is unattainable. In Frankfurt, I was not too lazy, I went through all the stands with books on art ... The best was a tiny Dutch stand with volumes created literally by angels. It is hard to explain. The book is a multi-layered cross-cultural and very democratic product. She must be mysteriously free.

In Russia, you can be a demiurge in some strictly limited field of your own... Here is calligraphy, here are calendars, corporate identity or even a television studio, if the customer is intimidated, in the designer's stomach. Therefore, there are Chaika, Surik, Huron, Logvin, Erken Kagarov, Elena Kitaeva, Yuri Gulitov. But such situations are rare. I consider this group, which formed in the early 90s, to be my own. You can add a dozen more names. But this is very little! New names appear, young ones, but they are immediately swallowed up by the toothy mouth of the advertising business. They begin to earn money, and very decent ones, without understanding anything yet. I simply expelled my son to study in Holland, because here he already began to earn big money here, having not yet received a proper education.

I miss the design guild that organizes conferences, international round tables. After all, there are so many interesting problems ... I want live communication, professional heat transfer, blood flow. Well, the young would look closely, stretched. After all, not only money ... Authorities, design academics who staked out spontaneously, even during the life of the supermagazine "Greatis”, at the dawn of Russian romantic capitalism, should now be “legalized”. It is necessary to actively develop creative stimuli in the professional community, to live in it, argue, swear, discuss exhibitions, books, magazines.

Design in Russia is a field covered with rose petals, and under them a swamp. Nobody wants anything. What you are doing, Sergey, no one else in the country is doing except you. No one is structuring Russian design...

– So what did you want to say about Dutch books?

– Well, this is at the level of the highest yoga school. Meditation plus breathing. Higher Typographic School of Breathing. Supercultural layer. People have been working with concentration for centuries, systematically, calmly. They didn't shoot at each other for a long time. Only and everything. And they achieved this impeccable transparency, clarity, laconism. A tram ticket in the tiny city of Utrecht is a work of design. What can you say? There is a total ubiquitous design. What is subject, what is graphic. Easy, comfortable, harmonious. All design students - to drive to Holland. Just as Russian painters used to be sent to Italy for an internship, now Russian designers are sent to Holland. Without this, education does not count.

– Country – Holland. And what is your favorite city?

- Jerusalem! At first it seemed to me that the city was turned inside out. Some kind of antiarchitecture. Window embrasures turned on you. Cave style. And then I realized what treasures were hidden in these caves.

Different Jews bring their culture from all parts of the globe. Ethiopian Jews, Moroccan, Argentinean, French, Chinese, Russian... Each brings their own, the most essential, bright.

Then different religions and religious denominations, each with its own layers, traditions, foundations. A very lively city, young and ancient at the same time.

- And Moscow and St. Petersburg? You now live and work between the two cities…

- Moscow, of course, is also a living city. Babylon. Only nomadic, not settled. All in suitcases. Either he's on his way, or he's already arrived. Today these suitcases were stuffed with something. Thrown out tomorrow. Then they decided to burn the tents as well. Then they found old suitcases, began to stuff them again, no matter what. And they built an ugly wagon, covered it with beautiful carpets. And so endlessly. And it's all so vehemently, selflessly ... Eyes hurt from ugliness.

And in St. Petersburg I think well, breathe well as an artist, as an architect. I rest my eye in St. Petersburg. Still, so much luxurious, very high-quality architecture has been built in just two hundred years! So I go and stare at all this beauty. I rejoice and enjoy.

- What are your favorite fonts?

- I work with what I have. Baskerville proven, Franklin, Officina, Universe, Metanova, sometimes Caslon, Dido... I would only work with Pragmatika if it had 12 fats. This would be my headset.

- Do you have a feeling of a historical milestone, the end of the book?

– World design is definitely moving in the direction of the computer, the creation of a parallel space, a giant virtual fairy tale, penetration into the next dimension... But I think there will be other times and other books. For example, in the same Israel, plastic books are very popular now, which children bathe in the bathroom. Surely there will be books with touch pages or just simulacra - you can fantasize ad infinitum.

After all, the book appeared with people who truly realized themselves on Mount Sinai, and will disappear if a person refuses to do so. For me, a book is the most mysterious object of the objective world.

All the same, books are published in gigantic editions. See what's happening in Frankfurt at the book fair! Every day there is a demonstration, shoulder to shoulder, gigantic crowds. There is no sunset in sight. A powerful industry and a lot of small stands with hand-made books, artist's books, lithographic, silkscreen, etching, simply drawn... The book will be developed in different materials. It depends on the imagination of the people who will work on it.

For example, I'm interested in animating a computer. This is an unexplored field at all - a sensitive neutrino world. He is alive. I feel it all the time. He helps, grumbles, resists ...

- If you look back at the creative path, what can you say: “This is mine”?

First of all, calendars. There I feel myself in proud loneliness. I feel good there and not cramped. Now I am preparing another calendar exhibition in Italy. The Italians are very accepting of my work. They don't need to explain that my calendars are architecture. They do not ask where is Monday, where is Saturday. I found my architectonics in the calendars. I found my rhythms and my space. At some point, I realized that the calendar is horizontally and vertically developing structures. Horizontal repeats rhythmically: Monday, Monday, January, January, midnight, midnight. At the same time, there is a vertical, modular divisions: day, week, month, year. And from a shapeless heap of numbers, I invent and build my own architectons.

As for books, the situation is more complicated here, since I make books with authors. In book design, I consider myself a medium, not a demiurge at all. All my books are portraits of the authors. So it turns out. Mystical story. I often sign designs together with the authors. I consider only the primer to be copyrighted. It seems to me that in it I managed to say something fundamentally new. But this was originally a brilliant philological project by Masha Golovanivskaya.

Magazines, magazine design - a little bit different. This is a collective portrait of the editorial board. I know how to accurately identify editorial illnesses by looking at the pages of magazines to a ridiculous extent. Like a palmist.

- What do you consider the most important thing in your life?

- Incredible luck in meetings, communication, friendship with people of art. With people who are able to powerfully express their thoughts, feelings, emotions. With top-class specialists in various fields of culture. They taught me to understand cinema, literature, ballet, music, photography, architecture. This is my home, my environment, my air. I feel like a part of this artistic community.

If I were the head of education, I would ban many subjects in schools, and introduce the most important one - “General Rhythm”. To teach immediately - poetics, solfeggio, calligraphy... The basics of classical dance and the basics of film editing... Drawing and choral singing... Because everything is saturated with everything. Resting only in one area of knowledge, skills, we run the risk of becoming artisans, but not artists. And we just run fast like ostriches, but we don’t fly. But they must feel the single rhythm that permeates everything in the world, notice it, see it, understand the joy of creation, hearing, sounding...

Well, bring something of your own. Be generous...

Irina Tarkhanova. Photo: Alexander Lepeshkin

The mini-festival "Russian theme" of the publishing house "Barberry" has started in the gallery "Rose of Azora". "Barberry" evenings - from 18:00 until the last visitor - will be held until August 26, they are dedicated to the latest novelties of the publishing house, specially created for the release of books by artists.

The founder of the publishing house, Irina Tarkhanova, and her eminent guests will present "Poor Books" by Irina Zatulovskaya (August 25) and "Across Russia with Sirovsky", the third volume of Valery Sirovsky's travel diaries (August 26), as well as a collection of letters from Vladimir Sterligov "White Thunder of Winter" ( August 23) and "Idle speculation" by Konstantin Pobedin (August 24).

Before this cascade of presentations, we talked with Irina Tarkhanova about where she came up with the emblem of her publishing house, why books written on the “islands” are so dear to her, and how publishing museum catalogs differs from publishing archival rarities.

Which of the published books is the most important for you?

All of them are my children, all of them have their own characters, they are all dear to me in different ways, as they are different discoveries of my life. Real mothers should know their children better than others and lovingly lead them through life, along with all the shortcomings. But, of course, the youngest is the most beloved: new children are always better than old ones.

- this is "White Thunder of Winter", love correspondence and poems by the artist Vladimir Sterligov of the first years of World War II.

Sterligov immediately captivated me with his literary gift. The rhythmic prose he wrote is from my youth. Passion for Andrey Bely left from my ex-husband Lesha Tarkhanov. In my library there are lifetime editions of "Silver Dove", "Moscow" and "Petersburg". Sterligov lay down perfectly on this ground. With his ocean of feelings after Karlag (Karaganda labor camp. - TANR), when, it would seem, only scorched earth should have remained in the soul. At the university, we went through Zabolotsky's post-camp edifying poetry. It was horror, although his "Columns" is still one of his favorites. After all, I somehow especially love Leonid Aronzon for this: he wrote a diploma about Zabolotsky. So everything went in a loop in this edition, especially since Sterligov's personality stunned me.

He wanted to be a writer in the early 1920s, but became interested in Malevich and became his student. Of his paintings, little has survived. In 1939, Sterligov returned from Karlag, completely reset to zero. Friends gave him a drape coat. This was all his possessions.

He was in Leningrad illegally: he had “minus six cities” in his passport. But he was reborn when he fell in love. I felt alive again. It's such a miracle! The book was compiled by letters to his beloved Irina Potapova. Sterligov's wife went missing in the camp, as did Potapova's husband... The threat of a new arrest constantly hangs over the artist and his muse - and here is this love that gave them the opportunity to escape.

How did you get his letters?

From Irina Sterligova. Back in the 1990s, she accidentally discovered them in the Roman archives of Andrey Shishkin, professor at the University of Solerno and director of the Rome Center Vyacheslav Ivanov. In a shoe box on the shelf of his house. Ira Sterligova is the main specialist in applied art of the Middle Ages and Byzantine art in Russia and, as it happens, Sterligov's heiress (her husband was the artist's nephew). That is why Andrei Shishkin became the compiler of this poignant book.

You published Sterligov, since letters, diaries, memoirs and biographical papers are the specialty of Barberry, did I define it correctly?

Diaries, letters and documentation related to the life of artists, because "Barberry" is a publishing house created by an artist and, above all, about artists.

Liza Plavinskaya (artist, art critic and gallery owner; Liza is a universal artistic personality and a great friend of Barberry; now we are doing one important project with her) and I once formulated this and even wanted to create a publishing company intended only for artists. These are not "artists' books" but publishing houses created by artists. Feel the difference. This is completely different. So far, we are firmly committed to this idea, and only one book (The Cursed Tuscans by Curzio Malaparte) is an exception. But Malaparte was also translated from the Italian by the artist Valery Sirovsky. And this is of particular interest to me.

Tell us how Sirovsky came to you. For me, his books are a biographical story and have become the most iconic books of Barberry.

At first, his calligraphy to the memoirs “Thanks to Comrade Stalin...” did not make much of an impression on me. Valery was then just looking for a book designer to publish his notebooks and notebooks.

There are artists who work out their philosophy and place within the art market, and there are those who draw as they breathe, simply record life as they sing. They rejoice in their discoveries without thinking about anything. They have a different field of action - the field of the so-called "naive art". But it is naive only from the point of view of the seller, curator, manager, art historian.

The question sounds like this: who is more important for us - a zemstvo doctor or a luminary of medical science?

Zemstvo doctors are much more interesting to me. And I also wonder when the luminaries pretend to be zemstvo doctors. It's even more interesting, and that's exactly what Sirovsky is. It is important for me when I don’t understand how it’s done, from what, why…

Irina, if these are books by artists, what is more important in them - the text or the visual component? After all, you make piece releases, each time changing the technology in order to convey the features of fragile genres as authentically as possible.

These are not just books about artists. These are the thoughts of an artist who publishes books, you understand? Studying this material, I realized that it was with such marginal characters, with their islands living in parallel, that I should work. This is my path and my niche.

Here is the poet Tatyana Shcherbina writing down her poems, stories and essays in calligraphy. Here the artist Vladimir Sterligov wrote letters in rhythmic prose. Here the translator made ingenious architectural sketches, and the artist Alisa Poret came up with absurdist jokes with pictures.

I'm concerned about recoding, the field of the unforeseen. I am interested in island life, parallel to the mainstream, when streams, millions of views, millions of hits and superheroes are not important. For me, Sterligov is a superhero. A little-known beggar artist who wrote brilliant letters to the Beautiful Lady. In turn, this Lady wrote poignant memoirs of the blockade, outstanding in their own way.

Why is it now important to look away from the mainstream?

We are surrounded by stamps. In the era of instantaneous dissemination of information, they are multiplying at breakneck speed. I really don't want to be a part of all this.

Who is your reader?

People who can think. Stop and think, notice the movement of a cloud, a change in the wind, the look of a child who, in fact, has long been much more mature than this adult. People capable of wonder. They eat and write letters of thanks. When they write: “I read, laughed and cried!” - I don't need more. This is the main award. How many can cry over the pages of books?

The readers of the catalogs and luxury books I design never thank me. Because there I am in the general flow. And here we are all together resisting this flow, you understand?

And how! On the one hand, you publish piece, almost handwritten books, on the other hand, as a designer, you make monumental catalogs of the most prestigious exhibitions. For example, paintings from the Vatican Pinacothek in the State Tretyakov Gallery or "Palladio in Russia" for the Correr Museum in Venice. Tell us about this side of your work. What is the most important thing in the museum catalog?

The museum catalog is always the result of the work of a large team. And that's interesting too. The designer works here as a mediator: he must catch the museum flow, let it pass through him and not die.

The designer of museum publications has completely different tasks. The catalog is a conductor of history, museum work, ambitions, fashion and style settings. The designer here is no longer a demiurge - but I love working with authors! In this business, I am a midwife, helping to give birth to what many wonderful, smart, talented people have endured. I don't consider myself making brilliant catalogs, but I try to combine the work of many others. Difficult task, because everyone must be satisfied. I can’t be a bastard, push through my ideas, make a fuss, see only my own. On the catalogs I am not approved as an artist.

What are the circulations in Barberry?

From 50 to 1 thousand copies. That's a lot for my books. Our champion is "One Hundred Poems" by Leonid Aronzon, the universally recognized genius of the 20th century. Its circulation has long exceeded 1,000 copies.

Alisa Poret is another one of my extravagant and impeccable favorites. So Sterligov, I am sure, will be loved by many. As an artist, very little is known about him. Especially as a writer and poet. And, for example, Daniil Kharms valued him very highly.

Why all the same "Barberry"?

For me, this plant is a symbol of freedom. In 1989 I went on my first European tour. Czech Republic. There, in the Tatras, strewn with snow, against the background of delicious smells from coffee houses and cozy shops, red barberry berries lay scattered everywhere. Then, in November 1989, there was terrible devastation, dirt and darkness in Moscow. I'm not even talking about smells. Everything is bad. And in the Czech Republic - blue skies, pure snow, aromas of well-being, half-timbered cozy houses, and these red berries of freedom.

Barberry is beautiful, strong and extremely cute. It grows between the garden and the forest, but at the same time it is undeservedly little involved in naming. Although many people love this name because of the sweets.