Decorator Andrei Dmitriev: "The most valuable thing a person has is time"

Passing the gallery

A photo: Peter Lebedev

Interview prepared: Julia Sakharova

Magazine: Decor N5 (83) 2004

Andrei Dmitriev lives in St. Petersburg, decorates public and private interiors in both capitals, and lectures in Europe. And he knows a way to "buy time" ... SALON: Photos posted on your website on the Internet, appeal to the aesthetics of poverty, vintage in the spirit of communal ... Why? “Poverty is a luxury for the rich, but poverty must be real to become a true luxury.” Here is a paradox. Today in our country there are practically no people who live in good interiors. The maximum that a rich person is doing today is a renovation. Very slowly, very gradually, people begin to understand what is different.S: What? - The most valuable thing a person has is time. It consists of life. Bringing in the interior of old things, you thereby buy time that you do not have. You extend at the expense of the life of things that other eras have seen ... Another life, according to my observations, is extended at the expense of speeds. For example, this is facilitated by frequent flights on the plane. I fly several times a month.S: In space, time flows even slower. It would seem that life on earth can be lengthened with the aesthetics of futurism ... - I work in different styles. In fact, there are many styles, but one taste. One can only regret that in our country good taste is the exception rather than the rule. I feel sorry for people who have spent a wild amount of money on repairs, but have not achieved results. Very rarely (in fact, almost never) among customers one can observe a decorator from birth, but many consider themselves as such. The craft of the decorator is akin to the art of a theatrical artist working on scenery: it is necessary to create an image by conventional means, which I do. In Russia, by definition, we cannot have such an interior as, for example, Thyssen-Bornemisza or Rothschild: the hereditary aristocracy, the Western bourgeois, have collected things for decades, for centuries, each item worth a fortune. Therefore, the role of the decorator, who creates an image with artistic means, is especially important here ... Customers began to appear, able to understand what is “beautiful”, who are not afraid of the evolution of their own views, and even agree to buy one or two more houses to arrange everything is different than before.S: Whose assessment is meaningful to you? - Evaluation of colleagues in the shop. In general, I am quite self-sufficient in the sense that I am ready to criticize myself. (Or, on the contrary, to understand that this work is good enough because I myself like it.)S: Which of the western decorators is the most interesting for you now? - how decorator Jacques Garcia works, especially his estate Cham de Bataille. Now interest in his person has increased, and I am sure that it is not accidental. So, recently I saw materials about him in three interior magazines, including SALON. Another Belgian Axel Ferford, Italian Alberto Pinto, Frenchman Jacques Grange.S: Garcia definitely has a "house spirit". - Yes, the "genius of the place"! He must be. Therefore, the environment is so important for me: where, in what house is the apartment, where is the house itself. And the real, real things, not substitutes for substitutes, which we now use. Real things are often cheaper than their substitutes. For example, furniture, picked up in the garbage. The real thing immediately goes into the category of luxury, since we live among the Ersatians.S: The French seem to especially love old things ... “The whole enlightened Europe loves them ... And believe me, in the garbage dumps of Moscow or St. Petersburg there are no less wonderful, luxurious things than in the flea markets of Paris or Brussels.S: Do we ourselves, unaware of it, live in some kind of anti-utopia, full of Erzatz, and only the elect use real things and live in the present tense?  - In fact, the way it is. I try to create real interiors, despite the fact that any decoration is a myth anyway. But it seems to me that my time has not come yet. What I really like, I did in my own apartments and do it in my office.