‘The Collection Is My Family’

On September 29, Pierre-Christian Brochet, publisher, collector of contemporary art, curator of the Contemporary Art track at the HSE Art and Design School, and curator of the HSE Museum Laboratory, turned 65. In an interview with the HSE News Service, he spoke about responsibility towards the future, Stendhal, Dumas, the Komi Biennale, and why his grandmother was right after all.

There is an expression, ‘it runs like a golden thread.’ When I look at my life now, I do not see a golden thread but a golden net. Each intersection in it is an unexpected meeting. Under ordinary circumstances, the chances of such a meeting are zero, but suddenly it happens, and this person becomes your friend, your inspiration, influences you. I have had many such encounters in my life. Sometimes people ask me: ‘Pierre-Christian, when will you write your memoirs? You know everyone in the world.’ Of course, not everyone, but many. And if I ever set out to write my autobiography, I would do so by telling the stories of the people who influenced me.

The Fortress Opposite

I was born in France, in the small town of Châtellerault, where René Descartes once lived. Soon afterwards, my family moved to Poitiers. In 732, Charles Martel stopped the advance of the Arabs and Saracens northwards there. My grandmother had a little house opposite a miniature château-fortress that once belonged to my great-grandmother, but in the 1950s it was sold. At the age of five, I met the new owner of the château, a German artist named Paul Loskill. We became friends, but later, when I was 17 or 18, he began to introduce me to art. My parents did not own a single serious painting. At one grandmother’s house there were a few works by the local head of the art school. But all of them were mediocre. There was a depiction of that family fortress, in which one could make out my great-grandfather (I inherited it), and a portrait of my father at the age of fifteen. It was my maternal grandmother who initiated me into collecting. She was not wealthy at all, but for some reason she believed that being a collector was a very good thing, because collectors are respected. At her suggestion, I began to collect stamps, and I assembled quite a large collection.

Paris—Oxford—Düsseldorf—Berlin—Paris

By the time I finished school, I did not know what I wanted to be, but I knew for certain that I did not want to be a chemist or a physicist. Looking at my father, a scientist, I did not want to tie my future to science. I began to study philosophy in Paris, thanks to which I met Jean-François Lyotard. At the same time, I entered the École des Affaires de Paris (today ESCP Europe). I liked it because in the first year you study in Paris, in the second in Oxford, and in the third in Düsseldorf. I thought it was wonderful—to study in different countries, and for language practice too. By then I already knew English, spoke Russian quite well (my father had worked at Akademgorodok in Novosibirsk and kept in touch with colleagues from the USSR all his life), but I knew no German at all. This school had a major internship every year: January, February, and March. Three months during term time is quite a long period. I was interested in art books and albums. That is why I wanted to do my placements in publishing houses—at Le Livre de Poche in Paris, at Phaidon Press in Oxford. While studying in Düsseldorf, I lived with my mentor and childhood friend Paul Loskill, who had by then moved to Germany, but I wanted to do my internship in Berlin. It was still West Berlin—an island of freedom. At the time, all of Germany’s active youth lived there. One day I was taken to Künstlerhaus Bethanien. It was a huge building housing artists’ studios, including those of Wolf Vostell, Serge Spitzer, Edward Kienholz. In fact, in 1981 absolutely all members of Fluxus, one of the most powerful artistic movements in Germany since the 1960s, were working there. At Künstlerhaus Bethanien I met Emmett Williams, Geoffrey Hendricks, and other remarkable artists. We talked, had fun, spent time together. At the request of Künstlerhaus, I created a budgeting model for exhibitions—essentially the same work I do now. But above all, from that moment I began to understand and take a serious interest in contemporary art.

When I returned to Paris, I spent a year in the army. As it happened, the brother of a friend of mine had just finished his service, and I took over his position as driver to the director of the Military Centre of Photography and Cinematography in Paris. The people serving there were all journalists, photographers, video directors, and cameramen. That is why I never fired a gun or marched. Instead, every day by 8 am I had to read Le Monde, Libération, and Le Figaro and, during the 15 minutes it took me to drive my boss to the ministry, recount to him everything that had happened in the world. After that, I had plenty of free time. I sat in the archive, where photographs from the First World War were stored, and I watched the lads draw comics and edit films for the army.

Fashion and Beyond

My publishing career began at a small company called Somogy. It specialised in art and fashion albums. The staff consisted of the owner (who was in his eighties), his secretary, and me. One day we read in the newspapers that a fashion museum was opening in Paris. I suggested that we publish a book on the history of 20th-century fashion to mark the occasion. My boss agreed, and I spent a whole year working on it. Two authors collaborated with me—the museum’s founder, Yvonne Deslandres, and her deputy, Florence Müller, who was my contemporary. Later, in 2011, Florence curated the Dior exhibition at the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow. Today, she is the number one curator in the fashion world. Yvonne Deslandres was gravely ill. I would sit for hours in her bedroom with a tape recorder, interviewing her about each period, and then type up the transcripts on a typewriter. There were no computers yet. At the same time, we were photographing clothing in beautiful settings and praying for Yvonne’s health. We decided to hold the presentation at her home. That party was attended by Paco Rabanne, Azzedine Alaïa, Jean-Paul Gaultier, Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, Claude Montana, André Courrèges, and other stars of the fashion world. I was only 25 at the time!

In 1987, I changed publishing houses and moved to Switzerland for a year. I was living in Lausanne when I received a call inviting me to a meeting at Flammarion, one of France’s largest publishing groups. I went to Paris and met the company’s president, the grandson of Camille Flammarion, who had published the 19th-century non-fiction bestseller Popular Astronomy. That book had been reissued many times, including in Russian. By then I already understood how the publishing business worked. They printed an album in France and then sold the rights to America, Britain, Italy, and other countries, where each publisher released it in their own language. I proposed printing the albums simultaneously in several languages. They appreciated my idea and offered me the position of Director of International Development at the publishing house. In 1989, I came to Moscow to open a joint venture with the Krasny Proletary printing house and the Soviet Artist publishing house. At the same time, I was opening Flammarion Inc. in New York and Flammarion Ltd. in London. For a year and a half, I lived between Paris, Moscow, New York, and London, before deciding that I would move to Russia. It was here that I found life most interesting.

My Creativity Is My Collection

I was lucky. When I was seven, I got a zero in drawing. I remember asking if I could stop drawing altogether. After all, what can you get if you multiply by zero? My creativity is my collection. A collector is an artist too, only he does not work with paint and brush, but by bringing together finished works into a living organism that becomes a collection. The collection is my family. If someone asks me to show any of the 800 works, I can say exactly where it is and tell the story of how it came to me. I have never truly wanted to be an artist. My function is different. I enjoy meeting people, I enjoy discovering new names.

In 1991, I came to Moscow, intending to stay for good. It was August. The coup. In France, people asked me if I was sure of my decision. I believed that everything would be all right. From my earliest visits to Russia, I had already known many Russian artists of that time. In 1989, I bought my first work by a Russian artist—Gia Abramishvili’s Products (‘Продукты’). It shows sticks with the word ‘products’ written on them, because at that time there were no products in the shops. It struck me as a good and very clear story. Soon, thanks to my future wife—an artist—I met artists who were working in a squat on Chistye Prudy. Everyone was there: Konstantin Zvezdochetov, the World Champions group, Sergey Mironenko, Georgy Litichevsky, and many others.

I was still working for Flammarion, earning money and spending my entire salary on art. By the late 1990s, I had a fairly large collection. But it was never the case that I suddenly thought—bang!—'now I’m a collector,’ or declared myself one. To be recognised as a collector, you need to be acknowledged by artists, gallerists, and other collectors. Respect founded on social, financial, and cultural capital—that is the beginning of everything, and at the same time it is confirmation of my responsibility towards the future.

I cannot buy everything, but I buy certain works from certain artists, and in this way, I create my own history of art. In Russia today, there are just over 50 serious collectors. Each collector supports particular artists. Out of 200 names in my collection, I have works by around 50 artists. And these 50—they are already part of art history. For all our collections will sooner or later end up in some museum, and through them the next generations will form their picture of us, of our time, and of the art of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Any museum is 95% made up of acquisitions from collectors. Museum staff then rearrange them in their own way: by schools, by artists, by periods. Art historians use this as the basis for their histories of art, but they all forget that first there was the passion of the collector—something you can feel in an exhibition of a collection, but not in a museum. As part of the Curatorship and Art Management track, I give a course on this subject and am preparing a book on the history of collecting from the 15th century to the present day. I hope to publish it next year.

As My Grandmother Said

From the early 2000s until the 2009 crisis there was a moment when everyone began to buy art because they realised it was an investment. Not only a financial investment, but also an investment in image. At all times kings and princes bought art for their glory. To affirm his status, King Francis I invited Leonardo da Vinci to France. Because if you are a collector, people respect you—as my grandmother used to say. And here it works the same as everywhere else in the world.

In 2007, the first major exhibition of my collection was held at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMOMA), in Yermolayevskiy Pereulok in Moscow. After that I was invited to organise a mega-exhibition across Russia. Then, in 2008, with the support of [the telecom company] MegaFon, we launched a large-scale project called ‘The Future Depends on You. New Rules.’ We went to Vladivostok, Khabarovsk, Krasnoyarsk, Novosibirsk, Yekaterinburg, Samara, and Krasnodar. We considered taking the project to Kazan and other cities, but then came the crisis. It was a hard time. My publishing business suffered first and foremost. In bookshops selling our travel guides (we had published more than 40 guides to the regions of Russia and over 100 to countries around the world), we were told: ‘Sorry, we have no money.’ Then, unexpectedly, I was invited to the Russian TV channel Kultura, initially as a representative of French culture. The conversation was about Stendhal—the author of The Red and the Black, Stendhal the art critic, Stendhal syndrome, and all that. Just in case, I had brought along a couple of dozen travel guides, the pride of my publishing work, and at the end of the interview I showed them. Half an hour after I left the office of the channel’s editor-in-chief, they rang me back and offered me the role of presenter of the programme My Love is Russia! (‘Моя любовь — Россия!’), though at the time it was called Russia, My Love! (‘Россия, моя любовь!’). For thirteen years I hosted more than 250 episodes, and I still travel around Russia with great pleasure.

In 2015, Olga Sviblova suggested I hold another exhibition. It happened like this: she came to my birthday party and forgot her present. Seeing part of my collection on the walls of my flat, she decided she would give me an exhibition. We opened it on December 15, taking up three floors of MAMM (the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow). Until then, no one had ever organised such a large-scale exhibition of a private contemporary art collection: from December 15 to January 20 it was visited by more than 50,000 people.

After that, I decided to make films: I had a dream—to create a film about Alexandre Dumas’s journey through Russia, and for that film to be directed by Peter Greenaway. It is astonishing that Europe today still views Russia through the prism that Dumas created in 1858. Greenaway agreed, came to Russia, and we travelled from Moscow to Samara, and then, together with his wife, to Astrakhan. They wrote a script, but the film was never made (for a number of reasons).

And then the pandemic happened. My whole family stayed at our dacha. Suddenly, in May, I received a call: ‘Would you like to become President of the National Gallery of the Komi Republic? It will be the republic’s centenary. Come.’ By then it was the end of the pandemic. I went to Syktyvkar and stayed there for a year. During that year, we completely transformed the museum’s permanent exhibition. Moreover, taking as our starting point my favourite Wassily Kandinsky, who visited in 1889 and wrote in his memoirs that it was precisely there, through his encounter with the culture of the Komi-Zyrians, that he formed the concept of abstraction, we held the Komi Biennale in Syktyvkar. That was where I first encountered HSE. We created an art residency. I was asked whether students from the HSE Art and Design School could come there in the summer. I said: ‘Of course. I will organise everything.’ And when my time in Komi came to an end, I was invited to the school as a curator.

Either You Are on the Inside, or You Are Not

I am not a teacher. But gradually I began to develop ideas for a course aimed at future gallery and museum workers. We secured programme accreditation, and this year our fourth cohort has already begun. Yet even more important, in my view, is building a professional community. In the arts, you are either on the inside or you are not. Again, it comes back to the idea that in order to sell successfully, you need to be known and respected. At present, the creative industries school format for schoolchildren exists in 83 cities across various Russian regions. But what are these schoolchildren going to do next? At the HSE Art and Design School there is a certain number of students studying offline, but I am convinced that this initiative can be developed further, both in the regions and online. At the school, we have created a platform for study and meetings, where students can communicate with tutors, hold exhibitions, and create multimedia projects: when an idea arises in Novosibirsk, the sound is recorded in Vladivostok, and the poster is designed by someone in Samara, for example.

And to start with, I suggested organising exhibitions in the regions, where the works of the school’s best students would be displayed alongside resonant pieces from local museums. Not only art museums, but also ethnographic museums, space museums, film museums, transport museums… any kind. Large-scale regional exhibitions are a wonderful opportunity to make yourself known and to present HSE as an educational partner, to hold lectures, discussions, and round tables under the auspices of our university. We have already staged one such exhibition in the Kazan Kremlin. I reached an agreement with the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan that they would lend several works from their collection. They gave me Serov, Kuindzhi, Vereshchagin, and Polenov, and I added works from my own collection and from HSE Art and Design School students. We called the project ‘Heirs: From 19th-century Classics to 21st-century Classics.’ Now five cities want to host such an exhibition. And that is simply marvellous!

This Is about Communication

At the exhibition currently running in the HSE ART GALLERY at the Winzavod Centre of Contemporary Art, which features more than 70 works from my collection, there is a handwritten Japanese notebook. When I first saw it, I was sure it was a book of poems. But it turned out to be an inventory of offerings to a temple—a purely accounting document. I placed it at the end of the exhibition as a message: if you want to understand what is written here, learn Japanese. And more broadly: if you want to understand what is exhibited here, you need to learn the contemporary visual language. This is about communication. About the HSE Art and Design School and my role in it. I am not an art historian. I am merely a collector and great lover of art, who plays the role of mediator between our students and the public. On the one hand, we welcome the ordinary visitor; on the other, an active public, collectors. I often give them guided tours myself, because one of my functions is to build a bridge between the creators and those who are passionate about art.

September 29