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“Icon-caviar” by Alexander Kosolapov was removed from the exhibition “Russian pop art” at the State Tretyakov Gallery on Krymskiy Val Street by order of the Director of the Gallery (see “Kommersant” as of September 14). Comments by Irina Kulik. The exhibition was changed after the Director General of the State Tretyakov Gallery Valentin Rodionov received a letter from the churchgoers of St. Nikolai Cathedrial in Zayaitskoe District. “We hereby testify that this item incites social and religious hatred and enmity in the authors of this letter”. Mr. Kosolapov’s work is a collage of photographs: an empty icon frame on the field full of black caviar. The artist insists that his work is not antireligious at all. “This work is my comment on Andy Warhol’s words that both the president and the bum drinks “Coke” in America. Russian concept of consumption differs from the western one in its authoritarianism and hierarchical pattern. The president of this country eats caviar, but ordinary people don’t. This discourse is about post-socialist Russia, I don’t touch upon religion”. Being indignant at the removal of his work from the exhibition, Alexander Kosolapov sent an open letter to the Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery which contained the following: “Without going into details of discussing the motivation of the statement that my work incites “social and religious hatred”, I suppose that the decision to remove my work made under constraint of a group of citizens, is unprecedented for the world-known museum and offensive for me as an artist”. The curator of the “Russian pop art” exhibition and Head of the Recent Trends Department of the State Tretyakov Gallery Mr. Andrei Erofeev also considers the accusations against Mr. Kosolapov to be groundless. “Alexander Kosolapov is one of the leading Russian modern artists. When we made arrangements for the exhibition we discussed if his work was decent enough and how it would be accepted. And we agreed that this work didn’t have any religious meaning and didn’t contain any blasphemy because the author didn’t use an icon but an icon frame. The work was removed after the Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery received a letter from the archpriest Dmitry Smirnov who is at the same time a beneficiary of four Moscow churches, including St. Nikolai Cathedral in Zayaitskoye district. There were three pages of churchgoers’ signatures in the letter. I called all these churchgoers and found out that none of them had visited the exhibition and signed the letter because it had been blessed by the priest. The document implies that we violate Article 29 of the Constitution of the Russian Federation. After the Director received the letter, he ordered to remove this work without comments. He said that it was his personal choice, he didn’t back down Kosolapov, he didn’t refuse from the exhibition, but made concessions under constraint of the Orthodox believers. The whole situation is just another bite on the modern culture which expresses the aspiration of religious activists to gain the right to judge the cultural policy of the country”. Mr. Rodionov agreed to comment on the situation on the next day. The Press Service of the State Tretyakov Gallery confined itself to the following official statement: “The conflict developed around the work “Icon-caviar” by Alexander Kosolapov represented at the “Russian pop art” exhibition… Now the administration of the museum decided to remove his work from the exhibition. They made this decision in order to prevent possible escalation of the dispute between the museum and the authors of the letter. We hope that Mass Media representatives will understand the delicacy of this subject and situation and will realize that the Tretyakov Gallery is a public institution which doesn’t have a right to instigate any kind of conflicts in the society”. The archpriest Dmitry Smirnov, who had signed the letter to the Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, said to the “Kommersant” reporter that he hadn’t written the letter but just signed it. He saw just a photo of the work by Mr. Kosolapov, but he would be glad to destroy it as this work excites religious and ethnic discord in him. At the end of the phone conversation Mr. Smirnov asked again what newspaper the reporter represented and after some thought he said that he didn’t allow to cite his words. |
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