Lilya Brik. Failed trip Automatic translate

The Moscow House of Photography Museum presents the exhibition Lily Brik. A failed trip ”, in which a series of photographs of the great photographer of the twentieth century, Alexander Rodchenko, will be presented.

Alexander Rodchenko. The failed trip, 1929. MAMM collection

At the beginning of the last century, the creative elite set current trends, trying to keep up with the times. Among other things, it was fashionable to travel by personal transport. The film director Lev Kuleshov drove a motorcycle, and then a car. His sports “Ford” was brought to Moscow with the active participation of Mayakovsky. Constructivist and film director Alexei Gan rode a motorcycle with a sidecar. Varvara Stepanova in the late 1920s regretted that she and Alexander Rodchenko had never bought at least a “motorcycle” when it was quite affordable. Lilya Brik, who had just successfully acted as the director of the film Glass Eye, also dreamed of her own car.

The Renault car, the protagonist of Rodchenko’s series of photographs of 1929, was brought by Mayakovsky from a trip to France. So Lilya Brik became one of the first motorists in Moscow. Vladimir Mayakovsky bought a car in the summer of 1928, when he was going to visit America and Japan. But, despite the information support of newspapers and magazines, which widely announced the rally, the trip did not take place. Mayakovsky bought the car for a fee for the play Klop, which he was writing at that time in Paris and was going to conclude an agreement with the publishing house Malik in Berlin, as well as for the script for the film Ideal and the Blanket for director Rene Claire. When the poet left for Berlin on October 8 (and then to Paris), among other wishes, Lily Brik wrote down the following instructions about the car: "Better closed - conduit interiere - with all spare parts, with two spare wheels, the back of a suitcase." Among the accessories were automobile gloves and “car clothes”. Next was a list of car accessories directly: an additional spotlight on the side, wipers, arrows showing where the car was turning, warm blanket so that the water would not freeze. Best Lily suited Buick or Renault. But the main thing is that it doesn’t look like a taxi, because since 1925 Renault taxis appeared in Moscow.

As a result, the Renault NN2 was purchased for 20 thousand francs. Mayakovsky himself packed and sent everything. The car arrived in Moscow in January 1929. It was a four-seater sedan, light gray below, the upper part and wings are black. Usually Mayakovsky drove this car with a driver A.K. Afanasyev or V.I. Gamazin (in the past - a taxi driver). Most likely, it was Afanasyev who went with Lily and Rodchenko to the rally towards Leningrad. In June 1929, Lilya Brik received a driver’s license.

“Lilya Yurievna was carried away by Renoshka with all the categorism inherent in her nature. She made a special dress and a suit for riding, wrote out a hat and gloves from Paris. ” From the memoirs of Lily Brik: “Rodchenko several times asked me to star in a new car, but somehow it didn’t work out. And then Volodya persuaded me to take some photos with the "Renoshka", I called Alexander Mikhailovich and said that I was going to Leningrad by car. He could not go to Leningrad with me, but he was glad about the opportunity to take pictures. We took pictures in Moscow, I was in one dress, then changed clothes, drove in to refuel gasoline to Zemlyanoy Val, he removed from the back seat, somehow else… We agreed that we would leave twenty miles, he would take it off, and then he would return home I’ll go further. But I didn’t go any further, it turned out that the road was terrible, and the car began to sneeze, and in general it was boring and dangerous to go so far alone. In one of the photos I’m sitting in thought on a bandwagon - should I go? And she decided to return. Volodya liked these prints, and he regretted that the trip did not take place, then there would be more photos. Then we called each other this series “Failed Trip”.

Although Lily Brik speaks of twenty versts - judging by some photographs, travelers reached Tver, and this is more than 150 versts.

Among the prints donated by Lilya Brik, there were no dramatic moments of balloon repair. There is also no episode when Rodchenko is actively involved in inflation. It is evident that he is dressed quite "in a car": trousers with leggings, a shirt with a knitted tie. Near on the grass there is a wardrobe trunk from the Leika camera. But in the pictures that Mayakovsky saw, there were a lot of other bright moments: refueling, pouring water into the radiator, Lily’s gloves on the steering wheel, a race with a horse on a deserted, gravel-strewn Leningrad highway. Lined up in a chain, these frames serve as a kind of photographic travel diary in which the moments of movement alternate with the moments of pauses, forced waiting, a picnic on the side of the road. Rodchenko photographed the life of a motorist in 1929.

The exhibition runs until January 29, 2017.