Abstract

The article analyzes archival, periodical and other printed material of the 1920s–1930s and demonstrates how the idea of accessibility of art (“art belongs to the people”) was realized and new “proletarian spectators”, visitors to art museums and exhibitions, were introduced to the culture. Particular attention is given to previously unexplored material (such as guest books of art museums and exhibitions, sociological studies conducted by museum employees, notes by tour guides). It gives the idea of audience reaction to “culturalization”, art in general and contemporary art in particular. As a rule, guest books escape the attention of art historians. The author thinks that these data allow developing a new approach to this significant topic. The artistic intelligentsia and museum staff were supposed to “accustom to art” workers and peasants who had been deprived of this experience before. For most visitors, their visits to the Tretyakov Gallery and the Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts were the first experience of getting acquainted with an art gallery and painting in general (“the impression is great”, the museum “is magnificent”, “made a great impression”, “I am overjoyed since everything is so unexpectedly beautiful”); the audience better understood the sculpture (“the only bad thing is that the figures are broken”), the visitors liked easel painting, but they needed explanation (“it’s extremely difficult without a guide”), classic and realistic art was preferred, the avant-garde (“a daub”) and contemporary painting were not liked (“I don’t want to look at and spend time on this”). The audience had no idea about the formal values of art and saw only the subject of the painting. The questionnaires of artists and art historians published in the weekly “Zhizn’ iskusstva” in 1929 revealed that many problems remained unresolved and art was still “alien and incomprehensible to the broad proletariat and peasant masses”.