Art critic and president of the State Museum of Fine Arts. A.S. Pushkin Irina Antonova died at the age of 99. We remember her words of wisdom about joy and art.
Irina Antonova was born in 1922 in Moscow. To the State Museum of Fine Arts named after A.S. Pushkin, she came in 1945, in 1961 she became its director and led it until 2013, after which she continued to cooperate with the museum as its president.
Here is what Irina Alexandrovna said about the joy that art brought her, the preservation and study of which became her favorite thing, the business of her life.
“In my life I had to feel deeply unhappy. But there were also moments of piercing experience of beauty in different areas of art — such happiness is not momentary, it lives on later, when you remember it.
I remember how, even before the war, I was lucky to see Galina Ulanova for the first time: at the very beginning of the performance, she, Juliet, simply stood next to Romeo and Father Lorenzo and looked into the hall. It was a shock. Or again: many years ago in a small Italian church, I accidentally discovered a painting by Giorgione «Madonna and Child Surrounded by Saints.» I was seized with such a fit of joy and intoxication with this thing that tears dripped by themselves, although I am not at all tearful.
When you experience something like this, you always want to share it with someone. Happiness always arises in a dialogue: we give it to someone, or it is given to us by someone. My husband used to say: «You never smile so stupidly as it happens when the door opens and behind it you see your beloved cat.»
And it’s true: I didn’t even think that such huge reserves of love that Perseus discovered in me were preserved in me — it’s as if he switches me to another dimension.