Trips and Tales (Part 39)
Ekaterinburg’s Beaten Track (Continued Further)
Monuments To Whom?
Whilst cruising around the web, gathering information on Ekaterinburg, it became apparent that a whimsical, playful side to the city exists, in the form of street sculpture contained (largely) in and around the centre. There seems to be an unwritten code: a plinth = “serious” and “State”; no plinth = “a bit of a laugh”, or perhaps “informal” may be a better way to put it…
I’ve long admired the quality and style of Russia’s modern, monumental art from the Soviet era and beyond. Those dynamic, assertive and progressive forms add voice to a dream of “going somewhere”. They speak of progress and the adventure of a new era – which is all at odds with the impoverished, paranoid reality of a nation living under Stalin’s “Terror”, of course… Ah, but the official artwork is always about the dream and the ideal, after all. Those clean monochrome lines are never duplicated in dirty, fallible flesh with all its shades of grey.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the legacy of controlled form and its maintained level of quality live on; but in the more modern work, humour, alongside poignant admissions of frailty and fallibility, are all at last permitted. As Westerners, we may be missing the frame of reference that would allow us to “get” where the artists are coming from, or to understand what the work is alluding to – the “point”, if one exists. But what is lost in meaning is made up for in warm surreality and abstract charm. And in the sheer quality of execution: fantastic.
So, notwithstanding the Boris Yeltsin monument and statues of Pushkin and Sverdlov, and the moving, tragic figure on the “Black Tulip” monument, you can also find a friendly perfume vendor, standing by you as a ghost in bronze from another era, offering his tray of wares… Here’s a freeze frame of a family launching from standstill into a rush to catch their departing train, in a sudden realisation of time, escaping… Outside the Old Station, two track workers, Laurel and Hardy, almost cartoons, laugh, or argue, or just chat, whilst a busy provodnitsa (carriage attendant) scuttles in with mugs of tea for her Trans-Siberian charges. The Station Master sounds his bell: it’s time for departure… A burly woman, a comrade also, strides in on the scene resplendent in heavy work clothes and gloves, hair tied back in a scarf and a pickaxe slung over her shoulder… On a nearby wall plaque, a figure of myth: a glorious Mercury, or even Ariel, points the way, to a future that never came…
Elsewhere, in a static instruction on politeness (featuring a banker and chauffeur), the pilot of a newfangled automobile pauses, and with the sweeping hand of a welcoming maitre d’, defers to the well dressed gent, offering safe passage across an invisible road. Here the past meets the future, to exchange pleasantries. Even if he doesn’t know it yet, the well-heeled pedestrian is heading there too. See the sculpted Futurist angles that have begun to creep into his garments. It’s only a matter of time.
I don’t know the love-bird couple who sit barefoot in Ulitsa Vaynera, a main shopping street in central Ekaterinburg, and I feel there’s a story to tell – perhaps that’s the point. But as for the guitarist serenading his relaxed but attentive partner outside Antey skyscraper: well, that’s a monument to troubled Russian Chanson artist, actor and poet, Vladimir Vysotsky, and his French-actress wife and guardian angel, Marina Vlady.
Still more mud clears: On Vainera Street, the gaunt, gangly character waving regally as he passes by on his pseudo penny-farthing is Artamonov, a local craftsman who created the first bicycle in the Urals, riding (legendarily) to St.Petersburg and back for his Tsar’s coronation. That would’ve been no mean feat… Most familiar of all, of course, is the Qwerty monument: yes, a giant keyboard layout on the eastern bank of the Iset river – close to the Beatles monument, in fact. Again: yes, you read me right. That’s there too. The band were pretty big in the East, after all. Maybe worth is all in the beholder’s eye… But there’s still no denying the historical power of Qwerty, or the popularity of the Beatles.
Heading deeper into the whimsical, there’s also the beaming “plumber”, popping head and shoulders out of a manhole, arms folded and resting on the pavement… And the monument to the Invisible Man: two naked footprints set in an inscribed 1-metre-square metal plate. How droll…
But I’m vexed again, by a curious group of three characters located back on Vainera Street: A bearded man with a bowl hat and leather apron carries a bag and stick whilst offering an empty hand to a horse, snaking its head and neck out of the adjacent wall. Meanwhile, the man’s obedient dog looks on. All three are stylised and unexplained… A joke that “you had to be there” for, no doubt.
Next time: Trips and Tales (Part 40) The Military Museum and “Black Tulip” War Memorial in Ekaterinburg.
[Photo by ingalatvia]