How to view Komar & Melamid exhibition. Art curator tells about the Museum of Modern Art's new project

A large-scale exhibition of Sots Art founders Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, the artists who endeavored to alter the course of art history in the 1970s, bought Andy Warhol's soul and inspired Dmitri Prigov, Oleg Kulik and many other Russian artists, has opened at the Moscow Museum of Modern Art.

The exhibition occupying 16 halls of the Museum's building at Petrovka St. has been divided into two sections. One section is about the period of the tandem's activity in the USSR, the other features their life abroad (since 1978, Komar and Melamid have been living and working in the United States). The TransState installation, 1977, provided by Pompidou Centre, serves as a transitional zone between them.

See mos.ru and the Mosgortur Agency's collaborative article for Komar & Melamid exhibition guide.

What is ‘Komar and Melamid’?

This is a collaborative character, created by two artists - Alexander Melamid and Vitaly Komar. One of them is a surrealist, the other one is an existentialist. They had given up on their manners, destinies, biographies, teamed up and created Komar and Melamid art movement, or Komar & Melamid Inc. This is a multi-authored collaboration, not just a tandem of two artists. There has always been someone else involved - the audience, friends, art curators, gallery owners, and even animals.

The duo emerged in the early 1960s at the Stroganov School both artists attended. In 1972, they developed a new style, Sots Art (socialist art), that combined USSR's predominating official style of socialist realism and American pop art ideas. They did not portray branded soup or soda cans like Andy Warhol did. Komar put it right, "Pop art is out of the question in a society suffering from all-encompassing commodity shortage."

They took the basic principle from pop art, that is free-for-all and mainstream preferred to the detriment of local, regional, elite, national. Throughout their life, Komar and Melamid have been creating parodies on avant-garde and modernism as a sectarian coded language, and promoted its alternative - political dictatorships and vulgar petit bourgeois kitsch style. "We have deconstructed socialist realism as an ideology and discovered it as an art," Melamid said.

Why this retrospective is so important

First, because the introduction to contemporary Russian art has finally passed into the stage of solo exhibitions. Previously, both public and museum workers preferred to dwell on general topics such as the meaning of contemporary art. But as the popularity of contemporary art had expanded, they proceeded with a detailed study and displaying artworks of individual artists.

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art was first to endeavour. It started with the most outstanding artists such as Eric Bulatov, Ilya Kabakov and other major non-conformists. Over the past decade, overviews of the key figures has been prepared, but, strange though it may seem, Komar and Melamid, who had altered the course of Russian Art, were overlooked.

In fact, they are the first world-class artists who emerged in the Moscow art underground of the 1970s. They were first to be globally recognized as the successors of the Russian historical avant-garde and colleagues of Western pop artists and conceptualists. And they brought the spirit of political parody, mockery, playing with art styles, visual languages of modernism, kitsch and totalitarianism into Russian culture.

Their method to speak on behalf of fictional characters was highly acclaimed. 'Man-dog' performance by Oleg Kulik and Dmitri Prigov’s 'Militsaner' ('Pliceman') poems were greatly influenced by Komar and Melamid.

What is Sots Art

Sots Art (socialist art) is an antidote, a deactivator of socialist realism and all the visual propaganda that infested every Soviet city. Komar and Melamid made ideologically sacred objects look ridiculous. They signed their names under Strive for Communism slogans. One couldn't help but laugh.

Sots Art is a school of disobedience, a school of impudent violation of social behaviour rules.  Regardless of the fact that artists do not mock a living person but his cult image, the reputation of a tyrant suffers from this innocent derision. In the wake of Sots Art, our country will never sink into totalitarianism, as the bacilli of this laughter have infected society for several generations to come.

Komar and Melamid’s Sots Art was conceived as a collaborative movement that united many artists. Its success exceeded expectations: Sots Art penetrated into almost all types and forms of culture, including its anonymous folklore layer — popular jokes.

Why Komar and Melamid are Russian artists

In 1977, after emigration to Israel and then to the United States, the artists received new passports, but their character Komar and Melamid, from the world cultural community’s perspective, remained a Russian phenomenon. They both consider it as a major failure of their career. In fact, that is why the duo's co-authorship ceased in 2003. Now each of them is an American.

Komar and Melamid teamed up to create more than just art. The goals were more ambitious - to change the consciousness of the audience, influence the art development, alter the history of culture. And they succeeded in many ways. Before them, the anti-modern alternative in the history of the 20th century art was hardly discussed. Everybody admired Picasso and criticized Gerasimov, Stalin's favourite artist.

Thanks to Komar and Melamid projects, socialist realism was introduced into culture, revitalized as a 'nostalgic' aestheticized phenomenon devoid of ideological bitterness and formalistic ugliness. This formula still works in our culture. But they have not fully got to the bottom of it in the West.

For the Western art, Komar and Melamid are too extreme. They expose the power and charms of art, but the Western world is not ready to accept this. Instead of sincere, honest, trusting appeal to the audience the art market, collectors, and any self-respecting audience require, Komar and Melamid offer eccentricity and giggling of some vague incomprehensible author. There is some discomforting aloofness about them that many people in America define as a Russian look.

What else to view now and later at the exhibition

In fact, each of the 16 exhibition halls represents some project. There is a special printed booklet guide for the visitors. Great Moscow philosophers Elena Petrovskaya, Oleg Aronson, expert in culture Yulia Liderman and yours truly comment on Komar and Melamid projects proceeding from hall to hall.

I would also like to mention the exhibition directors ― artist Irina Korina and architect Ilya Voznesensky. Korina, one of the best Russian artists of our time, has developed amazing backgrounds for Komar and Melamid artworks. These backgrounds are made up of typical Soviet-style patterns, familiar finishing materials used in different institutions and organizations (clinics, 'red corners', clothing markets and so on), which are assumed but not shown in the artworks.

Finally, two noteworthy events will take place at the exhibition. One is the Auction of Russian Spirituality, reflected by ideal white-coloured geometric bodies, such as circles, squares and triangles, from the perspective of Komar and Melamid.

The second event is your soul for rent. Under Komar and Melamid's  management and monitoring, everyone will have an opportunity to make a transaction on entrusting their souls to the long-term financially liable custody in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, personally to its Executive Director Vasily Tsereteli. Duly signed certificate of this transaction will be immediately exhibited, and upon its completion it will go to the Museum's depository to be kept there, as the certificate stipulates, "until the Almighty, fate or nature (underline as appropriate) claims the soul back."

Buy and Sell Souls was the first project implemented by Komar and Melamid after they came to the United States in 1978. About 1,000 American citizens sold their souls to Komar & Melamid Inc. Andy Warhol, one of the pop art key figures, was among them. He donated his soul to Komar and Melamid for free.