Nothing new under the sun and if you don’t make a racehorse out of a donkey, it’s well known, from a Cheese fries you don’t make a democrat and Russia at your heels, alas, alas, alas, follows the same! Russian artists, the spiritual emergence of the country’s freedom of expression, are already paying a heavy price for the totalitarianism that springs from Kremlin policy. When vladimir threat, the courtesan cohort resumes in chorus and it is up to the one who will attack with the most reactionary spirit against ” the other“, that is to say the one who is different, who disputes and who opposes (in everyday French language we would say ” fascist“, but the meaning of the words is diluted in this perverse relativism that binds us).
Let’s recognize that if this is by no means a Russian characteristic (our art history is full of censorships, bans, intolerances, trials and convictions, let’s remember at least The evil flowers of Baudelaire or Olympia of Manet), the zeitgeist that currently reigns in Moscow is rather nauseating and conformism ” poutinian » (as one would say « Stalinist“) is appropriate. The trumpets of fame are well and truly sounded badly there, and it is up to the one in the circles of power, who will display the most intolerant spirit expressed in the most furious, narrow, even fanatical terms to please the doxa printed by Putin and his spokespersons on Russian society. Outside the Church, there is no salvation, and we all know what this reference carries within it. It is the same in the Muscovite Orient, one might say…
Before continuing on today’s Russia, let’s come back for a moment to Baudelaire, The Albatross specifically, in a very short text explanation.
Often, for fun, the crewmen
Take albatrosses, vast birds of the seas,
Who follow, indolent traveling companions,
The ship gliding over bitter chasms.
‘The bitter chasmsTo begin with, one could see in it a metaphor for society and whatever its national attachment.
And for the last stanza:
The Poet is like the prince of the clouds
Who haunts the storm and laughs at the archer;
Exiled on the ground amid boos,
His giant wings prevent him from walking.
Everything is said there and directly without precaution, poet, artist, whatever, the same domain of semantic function! Alas the bird in this case can also be the victim of the arrows of the archer and this is precisely what brings us back to what is happening in Russia today. As to ” giant wings“, we could very well imagine a sequence from an animated film where we would see a lean Putin, running and fleeing under the shadow of the wings of a bird which hangs over him. What if it was the dove of Liberty?
The Russia, poor country, poor people unaccustomed to freedom, a short break at the turn of the 20s (1920), a prolific time when creation unfolded and multiplied and when painters, poster artists, filmmakers, musicians, graphic designers seemed to hurry to deliver their imaginations. But Stalin is there and watches and soon the country will close in on itself and like Saturn will devour its own children. The beauties of communism, isn’t it, this infantile dream of proletarian revolution, emerged from its hell (crossbred with summary executions and relegations in camps), and brought up to date today in France by this delicious gentleman Melenchonbut let’s move on!
Thus in Moscow, creating, offering the world his vision, his perspective or his dreams is not easy for the artist. In this regard, certain artists are the target of the arrows of power. Aesthetics, morals and politics do not mix! In this regard, at the oh so famous Tretyakov Gallery ( Государственная Третьяковская галерея ) a retrospective devoted to the nonconformist artist Grisha Bruskin comes without any explanation to be closed and suspended sine die. You could see there Scene Changean installation once presented at the Venice Biennale in 2017, and which according to its creator illustrates the relationship between society and the authorities. Indiscretions reported by the online newspaper art guide suggest that the order was given directly by Olga Lyubimova (Ольга Борисовна Любимоваla ) Minister of Culture !
Another artist, and not the least west of the Urals, Oleg Kulik, is also threatened by poutinian pugs. The object of the offense is called Big Motherand was presented to Art Moscow Fair as they say even over there in the east Ярмарка современного искусства. The putative sons of Beria (“putative”, “putinian”, “decidedly it starts badly!) indeed consider that this work constitutes in itself a ” rehabilitation of Nazism“.
Could it be a sudden flash of literary inspiration that would have titillated and seized these censors considering this title and bringing it closer to that of Orwell’s book?
This is how Oleg Kulik was summoned by the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation ( Следственный комитет Российской Федерации) for deriding with his installation (according to the censors) the statuary group Lcall of the Motherland commemorating to Volgograd the Battle of Stalingrad. What do we see there: a female and central character advancing, a sword in her hand carried vertically. No more no less !
” Denazify » ( in Russian денацифицировать), this verb being really trendy today on the side of the Terems Palace or the Belvedere where our very dear Vladimir lives, such is indeed the leitmotif trumpeted to all the winds of holy Russia. Would it take a contemporary Brecht to ridicule this dangerous and above all absurd regime!
For the nationalist deputy Zakhar Prilepin ( Захар Прилепин ) and a few other emulators of an order with the boots of the Kremlin, this work is an apostasy, a scandal, a denial, a moral defilement, in a word a work of the devil, of satan, in short the fruit of the heirs of Hitler! We pinch ourselves, we think we are dreaming if it were not unfortunately true! It’s true that if Oleg Kulik is a Russian visual artist, he was born in kyiv and he kept and maintained very good contacts there…
For the artist, it’s a shock, a trauma, it took 3 years, no less to realize his work today target of the ultra nationalist and ideological alliance of the power in place. ” If I had never thought for a single moment, if only for 10%, of the interpretation which today is made of my work, not only would I not have presented it, but even less considered nor created he told the magazine. The Art Newspaper Russia. You should know that he risks 3 years in prison!
Photo Facebook
Other artists, when they are not imprisoned, have the courage to demonstrate, they are not the only ones moreover, some young people from the Millenium (which is very good because they have only known this political regime) relay the fight for freedom and also demonstrate before being beaten and arrested by the police.
The invasion of Ukraine on February 24, sorry, THE WAR conducted in Ukraine under the order of Putin, provoked consciences in Russia. Daria Apakhonchich knows something about it, she who had already been considered ” enemy of the state and arrested on January 31 when police henchmen at 5 a.m. knocked on her door and were about to break it down using an electric circular saw. She only had time to send via Facebook(click)an alert message.
and published on his Facebook account
What was he accused of then? For making contact with foreign journalists, for defending migrants and refugees, for raising awareness about environmental protection, for rebelling when ridiculous and iniquitous laws are passed and above all, for raise awareness with the relay of its FaceBook application. Have we ever in France heard our extreme lefts, they so quick to defend the widow and the orphan everywhere in the world, (names, names…!) vociferate (definition: to lash out in anger with a harangue) against political repression in Russia? You all know the answer: nay!
A leaden screed, freedom of expression prohibited, a monstrous tool of propaganda which perverts minds and consciences, a people subjected to the delusions of a paranoid head of state, and whatever people say about it in Europe, a perverse and underground influence in certain Western circles still imbued, and despite the collapse of the USSR and Stalinist communism, with an image made to measure for consciences in search of intellectual and political paternity! Comes to my mind and in another context, this famous sentence of Daladier returning from Munich…!
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Article originally published on 04/25/2022
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Lead screed, threats and repression against artists in Russia – Wukali