Журнал Andy Warhol's Interview Россия Interview № 2 | Page 176

174/ ENGLISH SUMMARY
And it’s not me. Earlier such small things could not
infuriate me. Afterwards I think: If Yana had been
there, she would have slapped him in the face! Be-
cause you cannot be so stupid... And in the end I just
burst into tears. But then I understand that this is
not worth my hatred.
SHNUROV: This is an absolutely viral story.
Such is present-day Russia—just one person in
a hundred is enough. The level of rudeness grows
with every day. It’s impossible not to notice. It was
the same during the fall of the Roman Empire, due
to the wild barbarians (a stupid word, but there isn’t
another one) who were more passionate than the
most civilized Romans. What better example.
17 years. Zoschenko described these “passionates” in
some detail: both the language and world view. Do
you remember?
MIKHALKOVA: Yes. And I also read the mem-
oirs of Anna Vyrubova’s lady-in-waiting—she was in
some things very simple and sincerely devoted to the
tsar’s family. She writes how in 1917 she was sitting
looking out the window (the tsar had already re-
turned from headquarters, and they had already
been taken under guard) and she saw how the tsar
wanted to clean away snow, and a soldier came up
and shoved him. It was at that moment when any
sense of distance disappeared. The soldier didn’t
think that you could never shove the tsar. He
thought, “And why not?” It triggered instantly—you
are right—like an infection, which spread in five min-
utes. Now you can do it, and you, and you.
SHNUROV: The most surprising thing is that all
of this occurred literally in three years. In 1914
when Nikolay read from the balcony that Russia was
going to war, the people fell to their knees, cried,
shouted, crossed themselves and rejoiced. Three
years! Now everything has become faster and sim-
pler: there is the Internet, public opinion surveys,
political statements and monitoring. The reaction is
visible immediately. So, now, today, it could happen
in a second.
MIKHALKOVA: I don’t know, it seems that we
are, nevertheless, in a vacuum. I think when they
hissed at Vladimir Vladimirovich (Putin), he was re-
ally shocked. He could not even imagine that every-
thing was so bad that they would boo him. And
these were his people—fighters, people in the stadi-
um, and so on. I’m sure that up till then he thought
that they were not whistling at him. Medvedev is
at least on the Internet, but Putin is not at all
about that.
SHNUROV: Well, somebody probably wrote
something, reported to him?
MIKHALKOVA: This is all a myth. It seems to
me that he has been looking at a sterilized picture
instead of reality for a long time. He’s probably in-
credibly surprised that everyone turned against him
“suddenly”.
SHNUROV: The most monstrous problem of our
time is really the complete lack of some kind of Rus-
sian heroes. There are not even negative examples.
Putin stands out a bit. He was chosen through ten-
der—casting. Some guys came through, stand-turn,
but fuck, they don’t fit. Then Putin came along and
said, I know how to whack people. And everyone got
excited. My deep belief is, although I don’t profess
any kind of theories about a shadow government,
that all these people who are on television can’t do
that and simultaneously rule the country. They don’t
have enough time. These are absolutely different
people. Do you agree?
MIKHALKOVA: Yes, at one time I also thought
that adults should surely be smart. Only because
they are adults, had finished studying, and conse-
quently had grown wiser. I believed that for a long
time. It was a big eye-opener when it turned out
that there are so many clueless people! My second
disappointment: I was certain that the people run-
ning the country knew what was going on, because
they were in charge. And then I got acquainted with
some much better, and became terrified. If you be-
lieve that these people were someone’s protege, then
those who put them there have a wonderful sense
of humor.
DUSTIN
YELLIN
p. 158
by LIV TYLER
American artist Dustin Yellin invents unbeliev-
able three-dimensional works up to 5 meters in
length, weighing up to 12 tons and priced in the
hundreds of thousands of dollars.
While Liv Tyler—the rock heiress, star of the films
“Stealing Beauty”, “Armageddon” and “The Lord of
the Rings” trilogy—was preparing to interview artist
Dustin Yellin, the owner of the coolest studio in New
York, she tried to remember how long they’ve been
acquainted. For 14, 15, maybe, 20 years? Reminisc-
ing made their interview a bit longer, and its con-
tents somewhat mysterious.
LIV: I like your new work in glass, but I like your
early work in resin more.
DUSTIN: Glass is more expensive and difficult
to produce, but it allows me to at least somehow con-
trol the process. The only minus is that these pieces
are now terribly heavy.
LIV: Yes, they are huge! And this one piece...
DUSTIN: Triptych?
LIV: Yes, how much does it weigh?
DUSTIN: These three panels, on a concrete
base of five and a half meters, more than two meters
high—weighs 12 tons.
LIV: Wow!
DUSTIN: It is my largest work. It is double-sid-
ed, 60 cm thick. Inside of the glass boxes is a collage
of small objects forming one figure—as if coming
from the sea, her arms are like scales, it is spitting
what looks like oil or black bile, and from her right
arm swirls ghostly fog. Her body goes under the sea
and then from the other side becomes a tail. It goes in
waves through an analog underworld of three panels
and terminates at another head made out of cards
with images of terrorists from 1986. These cards are
like our ordinary baseball cards, only with terrorists
instead of baseball players. The pupils of the second
head also spew ghostly fog into the atmosphere. The
overall effect is that the figure has one head at the
end of the tail that spits out black bile, and another
facing the underworld that also spits out black fog.
LIV: When you look at the work from a distance,
you think, “Oh, that is a woman.” And if you come
right up close, then every fragment disintegrates into
a thousand tiny collages, right?
DUSTIN: Something like that.
LIV: I really like to examine these fragments.
I don’t even know how you do it. It is incredible! So
beautiful.
DUSTIN: That is the idea with this piece. From
12 meters away you see a huge landscape, spitting
fire, spitting oil and spitting everywhere. Then you
circle around and think that it could be a woman.
Next you go along the panel and discover that she is
really a five-meter snake. Come closer and...
LIV: ...and you are in a whole other world. Where
do all these ideas come from? Do they appear when
you sleep, make coffee or are in the shower? Do you
write them down?
DUSTIN: I love to make all kinds of notes. Cre-
ating such work is like building a mountain.
LIV: I grew up around musicians, so I always re-
member hearing the universal language of creative
people. I remember how Keith Richards explained
to me that the best ideas come to him out of nowhere
in the middle of the night, and it is tricky to catch
them before they leave you. But these ideas always
hover around him, and if he’s lucky, he can catch one
or two. That’s when the magic happens.
DUSTIN: Exactly, it’s like catching a butterfly!
They flutter around, and you need to pin them to
the wall.
LIV: And when you wake up in the middle of the
night because an idea has come into your head—do
you remember it or write it down?
DUSTIN: Everything I’m now doing takes loads
of time, so I give myself a list. From it I choose
points and make a collage of 50 centimeters. After
that I make it a bit bigger—around a meter. Then
into life size. I just continue creating these pieces,
laying a path from the old version to the new. But
I cannot understand how, for example, Triptych
would look or even its fragment—the snake’s tail.
I had no overall plan. I just decide that I want a fig-
ure coming out of the sea. Then I wanted to make
it from three panels, got stuck on these two parts,
and I thought of a tail to connect them. I arrived
at a very allegorical thing. Most new ideas are just
responses to what comes before. You make yourself
notes—and suddenly it dawns upon you. That’s the
real buzz.
Generally any art project can be done in two
ways. The first is when you know what you want,
and you repeat it again and again in your work for
your whole life. Pollock and Rothko immediately
come to mind—they created many similar paintings.
It’s very hard indeed to find your “own” thing. How-
ever, if you manage to find it, you begin refining the
process. There is something very lovely about that.
But I have different way—I don’t understand what
the result will be. What will happen if I try this?
And what if I try that? So I just toss black ink on the
surface and see how it will go with the other details
here and there.
LIV: Just like some kind of scientific experiment!
DUSTIN: You could say that. Although actually
I always keep in mind that all this will disappear
sometime. Or change. It’s like with my collages—
I am taking something ordinary and making it ex-
traordinary, somehow changing the lenses of per-
ception with which we view something. I am always
trying to change things and create relationships be-
tween different things.
LIV: Through the collages?
DUSTIN: Through them I am revealing the po-
etry of everyday life—it’s all around us, and we pass
by. I really don’t understand how someone could be
bored, when there is so much infinite detail around
us...in the cracks of the sidewalk or in the texture of
bricks, in the light. Everything!