moscow art critic andrey kovalev
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Andrei Kovalev. The Whole World of Violence. Applied Victimology of Russian Art

Any one, who is engaged in research or observation of bodily practices, should realise, that voluntarily or involuntarily he comes to figure in these practices. The borders and properties of the body may be comprehended only in result of experimental measurement. That is why marquis de Sades was finally accomplished as a literary project only in most subtle and sophisticated essays from Bataille to Barthes. The pair Executioner/Victim is not self-sufficient without observer-protagonist. The same may be said of the totalitarian discourses of the 20 century. There are whole libraries of books, dedicated to denunciation and research of crimes of the red empire. It turned out, however, that the body of communism, unthinkably disgusting in terms of ethics, is simultaneously very attractive in terms of aesthetics. The unexpectedly expired monster turned out to be quite handsome, and the research of its build has left the domain of the intelligence services to get into tenacious hands of the aesthetes. Supressed and passionate necrophily betrays itself, despite the outwardly calmness and objectivity. "Violence is silent, whereas mind is given the power of speech". (Georges Bataille).

The grandeur of Alexander Solzhenitsin's aesthetic feat is not in that he denounced the Soviet system, it is rather in that he made utterly aesthetical the abysse of torture and violence that he had seen. And if in the horrors of Aushwits the element of direct sadism is quite apparent, the executioners from Lubianka preserved their perfect innocence and puritanically masqued the delight they took from what they believed to be their job. The nazi terror pursued disgusting, but quite conceivable goals: the purity of the race, the expansion of life space. But the red terror was the incarnation of the absolute Evil, causless and perfectly unjustified. Such inner fullness and perfection account for the attractiveness of the body's surface, hiding the silence of the executioner and the innocence of the Evil Empire.

This inevitable attractiveness becomes specifically conspicuous on the level of pure visual image. Recent exhibitions of Socialist Realism in Germany, Austria and the US showed too well all the vicious attractiveness of violence and power. The accompanying texts incorporate a multitude of references to millions of unlucky victims behind festive scenes, parades and grand architectural projects. On the level of curatorial design, such strategy should incorporate archive materials on the hunger in the Ukraine, Moscow trials and so on. Such structural model would become suspiciously close to the stern logic of "sociological" expositions of 1930s, when, for instance, the exposition of the magnificent palace of count Sheremetiev was opened with a dummy of a female serf, being executed for unnown faults on a heap of dung. All such visual justifications disguised aestheic admiration at the alien art of the persished social class. Exactly such is the source of the carefully consealed eliminations, underlying the interest toward totalitarian art and architecture.

Extremely remarkable in this respect is the case of the exhibition "Agitation for Happiness". In the space of Kassel Documenta, where this exhibition of "stalinist art" was first shown, it was perceived, perhaps as a curiosity In the Russian museum os St. petersburgh, where it was brought later, it aquired an absolutely opposite connotation. The curators' abstracted irony was, in fact, totally aanihilated by a mass of enraptured and happy elderly visitors. These ladies and gentlemen, who oopenly shown their chlidish delight, were not, for the most part, actual stalinists. they simply and ingeneously missed their youthfully years. Fro the last thirty years the ileologically most active art of the stalinist period was safely kept in museums' storages, with no less care, than the avent-guard. and when eventually it was shown, it turned out, that in the minds of people there has occured remarkable inversion.

Real-life recollections of the real-life sufferings and victims were subjected to inner censorship. What has surfaced in the mind (skull) were programmed pictures of exiliration(?), achievements, worship and ovations. But the well-knoen (popular, frequently occurred) self-descriptions of post-trauma sindrome for the most part are no more than a pure literary form.It safely blocks the reminiscences of the secret union (allience) of executor and victim. simone de Bovoire writes in the essay "Is there a need for Auto da fe?": "But if the victim doesn't understand the sense of what is going of, is it worth sufferings./.../ The executor wants from the victim just one thing: that, choosing between protest and obedience, rebellion andhumility, the victim realise in any case, theat its destiny is the freedom of the tyrant."

What it meant ot be an artist in the time when dionisian physicality ran rampant? the most natural way was to merge with the raving (?) ones crowd, to offer one's own body as an object and subject of violence. It seems, that it was the dangerous and impeccable (perfect) libertinage of the stalinist system that was so attractive for western leftists of 1930 -40s. Another way os to masque, distort, conseal one's own body. The best way ot avoid violence is to make oneself a msximaly unattractive appearance, to pretend to be disgusting and vile (?). The saying "it is better ot rich and healthy, than poor and sick" was inverted. A chance for survival could have only those, who could pretend poor and sick. Then the divine Violator(?) Rapist(?) Apollo, i.e. Power, will turn away from Satir Marsium and will not take off his skinn to punish him for his arrogant sounds, offending the ear.

The monumental figure of artisi-hero, which was put on a pedestal by the early Russian avant-guard, was carefully (thoroughly, deliberately)eliminated by the second avant-guard of the 1960-1980s. For Moscow and Leningrad artists, who were geographical heirs to Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko, precisely the will for power and violence was unacceptable for ethical reasons. The emphasis was made on the sacrificial and suffering character (modality) of the avant-guard, which had been defeated(?) by the bolshevist tyranny. however, the physiacl manifestations of the early avant-guard were a strickt taboo.

It is worth noting, that the policy of the body, the attitude towards physicality, as well as many important performances and happenings, done in 1910 - 1916, are still the problems waiting to be researched and reflected. Here one can recall Mikhail Larionov's painting of his body, wotty and shocking performances, which accompanyied almost all exhibitions of the russian futurists and so on. The most radical of the known episodes id the futuristic funeral of their own mother, which was organised by two sisters-futurist in Kharkov. In fact, the last performance was the funeral of Kasimir Malevich in a futurist coffin. By that time physicality had been entirely appropriated by the power, and the rejected (?) had to do with the domain of the spirit.

There is one substantial exeption in the ligic of terror. despite all the grievings (?) of the post-socialist intellegentsia, the artist and the poet were allowed musch more deviations and swerves(?). It is amazing, but the thick net of the Great Terror didnot catch(omitted, spared) all more or less distinuished writers and artists. (the only exeption is possibly, Osip Mandelstam, who begged for punishment as one beggs for mercy (charity)). and further, throughout the entire existence of the artistic underground, i.e. from the mis 1960-s, not a single artist or poet has been relly punished (prosecuted). Meanwhile, few of the political dissidents managed to avoid the camp or the mental institution. shadowing(surveilence), turning on by plain reports of clothed agents, perquisitions, summons to KGB, banned exhibitions, - all that was present in unlimited quantity. But in return, the activists of the aesthetic underground had almost unlimited possibilities of mixing (communicating0 with foreigners, bohemian way of life and other pleasant things, inaccessible for soviet sitizens.

Moreover, this game of "cats and mice"(?) with the power for some was a matter of genuine enthusiasm and zeal (/). Meanwhile the intrinsic awareness, that one is a victim of power and the champion of freedom of art acted as main creative impulse. Today, after the collision with the terror of the market, many artists with a great deal of nostalgia recall that almost impossible (unbelievable) freedom, which they had in the underground. It is hardly possible for an artist to soeak wiith an art-dealer or galery owner in the same utterly arrogant tone, which was practice on Nikita Khrushchev or simply, a KGB captain. Hence, the totalitarian system allowed of the absolute and unattainable freedom of creation. But the volume of that freedom was so infinite, that it just could not be exhausted (used in full).

Restrictions were imposed only on openly dionisian forms of art practice, that is on phisicality. Artistic underground was doomed to pure metaphysical production, continuous production of means of production. "Russain art, writes Moscow critic Ekaterina Diogot, either misses reality (doesn't reach), remaining in the safe plane of metaphors, or disintegrates (?) in the totality and banality of the daily routine." Kabakov's "little man"(?) is a result of a complot with power, which, in principle, was content with the scared and terrorised autist. Even sots-art, founded (discoverd) by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, was a specific form of escapism, which could easily be reduced to kitchen joking, a harmless joke. Sots-artists carefully avoided rough and dangerous physicality, piling up metaphors. I sots-art the spiritual prevailed over the material in the specific forn of the carnevalesque body in the sense of Mikhail Bakhtin. But that body, a priori collective and anonimous, was characterised by carefully masqued individuality and responsibility.

Sots-artists and conceptualists prop to the surface a certain character, on behalf of which all manifestation are made. In their early works Komar and Melamid pretend (feign) to be innocent and ingenuous artist-designer, who paints a portrait of his wife in the style of propagandistic art. Kabakov makes vocal (articulates)(voices) sufferings of the terrorised(scared by the bosses and tormented by the unbearable living conditions inhabitant og a communal apartment. On the one hand, these characters are connected with the existential truth of the artist's life. On the other, imagining himself free and reflective person, the author carefully distances from (detaches) from his character. In a similar way a child shifts the responsibility for breaking a cup to some bad boy. Finally, the "character" of Moscow conceptualists suspiciously resmbles the mask, which a masochist puts on to make his sensations sharper. But as regards the essence of violence and Power, this art remains as taciturn, as the Violence and Power themselves.

It should be mentioned, that only three artists wer subjected to punishment for their artistic activity: Vladimir Mirionenko, Sven Gundlach and Konstantin Zvezdochetov. They all belonged to the goup "Mukhomor", the younger generation of Moscow conceptualism. In the mid 1970 early 1980s this group practiced a rather brutal and existential type of art production. Thus, for example, on one of their actions Sven Gundlach was dug into a special dug out, where he tried to write a diary until he nearly suffocated due to the lack of air. Meanwhile participants of the action were trying to find that secret place where the artist was hiding. But punishment for such extraodinary attempts ot acquire phisicality turned out to be very curious (?) - the artists, who earlier had easily avoided the obligatory service in the soviet army, were promptly (urgently) summoned to join the army. The power as if helped the artists in their search, helping them ot get rid of the dissicating(?) and total spirituality and to legitimise the somatic. Although the power had every reason to summon them as pneumatics. For the fictitious (ostensible) excuse from the army service was precisely the phychical, mental diseases.

By the way, playing truant (truancy) from the army, which has become large scale, may be regarded as the apotheos of the practice of distortion, hiding the body. Although the mentioned artists almost completely lacked the mythology og the victim and the expectation of violence, so characteristic of the older generation. The last rulers of the evil empire were virtual bodies without organs, tied to cumbersome systems of supporting life, and lacking potents for blessing violence. This was the last phase, the phase of remission of ecstasies, which, as we saw, prove to be so viciously attractive. The bodies of Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, like president Sheder are bodies of sycophants, desructed (ruined) by ecstatic states. The bodies of Gorbachev, Eltsin and Valensa ans other heirs to the last empire are characterised by purely profane ecstatic or simply, abstinential tremour.

In general, democracies differ from tyrannies by pathological absence of texture. (?) Tyrants enter into die-hard competition with artists and, most often, win. pretensions (?)Claims for the art, which emerge inside democratic power clearly testify the growing totalitarism. "The congressional record" by Senator George Dondero titled "Communist maneuvre to control art in the United states" opened the age of MacCarthism. In the ontological sense, democratic power should have no body whatever. All functions of social sculpturing are vested in the artist- revolutionary and schizophreniac. Of course, in bourgeouis society the artist has many useful and important things to do: to decorate walls in the capitalists' and sitizens (denizen) houses, design of sosumerist streams. Moreover, even the possessed by the spirit of destruction, permanent revolution and anarchy artist is adapted into the "clinicist of civilization" (Deleuse)/

Andey Kovalev - [email protected], [email protected]