Review of the exhibition “Andy Warhol and Russian Art” at the Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center is hosting the exhibition “Tinkoff City: Andy Warhol and Russian Art” – the story of how the personality and creativity of the “King of Pop Art” haunts our artists, curators, as well as simple marketers who managed to do it in their own way brand even such a name. The joy of consumption, fame, success, money, death, immortality – Warhol’s lessons on these topics are more or less learned here, although sometimes on the ground his careless view receives a rather serious rebuke. Tells Igor Grebelnikov.

The current exhibition is an updated version of the one that was shown on a grand scale two years ago in the St. Petersburg exhibition space “Sevkabel Port”: there were more works by both Warhol and Russian artists. Here the changes are not only quantitative – taking into account the smaller exhibition area, but also qualitative – after all, the times are not the same. Something has been diminished – like, for example, a self-portrait of a naked Oleg Kulik, covered in mirrors like a disco ball. This work, among others, was responsible for the theme of personal self-glorification, turning oneself into a character, and one’s name into a brand, in which Warhol was tireless (however, few Russian artists learned this). And something has increased. For example, Victor Ponomarenko’s painting “Delicious, period” (2022), painted with acrylic on canvas in the photorealistic manner, depicts a familiar lunch of a burger, fries and a drink in a paper cup with a straw – an example of import substitution in art and, in general, a testament to the times, although Warhol would hardly have approved of fiddling with paints for such a result; he would rather have used a ready-made photograph. Or Daria Krotova’s series of collages “Pop-Russian Poor” (2023) – a series of opened tin cans, differing from each other only in the way craft paper and white Whatman paper are combined (either the images of the cans themselves or the background are made from them). Next to the wall of Warhol’s “Campbell Soup Cans,” bright, amusing, tempting the viewer, Krotova’s new series, on the contrary, seems to deafen with its silence, threatening with the sharp jagged edges of opened cans.

A witty response to Warhol’s cult of consumerism and bright packaging of goods is in the sculptural composition “Couriers” by Nadya Lihogrud (2021–2023). Multi-colored ceramic figurines of food couriers loaded with cooler backpacks could be paired with a painting of critical realism—quite an incarnation of the image of the “little man.” But here, too, these touching sculptures of disoriented people dressed in winter, looking for addresses in smartphones, are quite appropriate.

The attitude of Russian artists towards the icon of American art is something akin to “love-hate”. Just remember the campaign by Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid “The first duty-free trade between the USA and the USSR. We Sell and Buy Souls,” started in 1978, shortly after they emigrated to the States. The artists “bought” or “took on commission” the souls of Americans: for example, Warhol “gave” his soul to them for zero dollars, for which a certificate was issued. It seems that the idea of ​​the action was to expose the commercial essence of American art, where a work can cost millions, but the artist’s soul is worth nothing. There is a photograph taken during the “purchase of the soul”, in which a frightened Warhol sits in the company of two bearded emigrants. That is, on the one hand, endlessly superficial art, a beautiful life surrounded by celebrities, fame throughout the world, and on the other, some kind of intellectual special operation. Much more adequate to the figure of Warhol (and he appreciated it) was the act of perestroika times, when Timur Novikov and Oleg Kotelnikov handed over their collages to him through Joanna Stingray. Warhol was so moved that he sent Leningrad artists and musicians several cans of Campbell’s soup with his autograph and copies of the just published “The Philosophy of Andy Warhol (from A to B and Vice Versa).”

But already in 2005, Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe made a self-portrait in the image of Warhol, using his silk-screen printing in red tones as a model, but, in fact, crudely parodying his style. Following Warhol’s gallery of colorful silk-screened dollar signs, the curators placed works by Oleg Semenov on the theme of money (2021): this is the inscription “Money” and ruble signs made from the artist’s hair, which was cut “on an auspicious day according to the lunar calendar to attract money.” And opposite a whole wall of bright portraits of Marilyn Monroe (the most famous, made on the basis of a frame from the film “Niagara”, which enriched not only Warhol, but also several generations of art dealers selling these prints) flaunts a giant portrait by Mamyshev-Monroe, reincarnated as a film star from his series The Lives of the Remarkable Monroes (1996) is a work, given its location, far more daring than the pop pantheon on the opposite wall. But, alas, much less known on a global scale.

Finally, it is worth mentioning what a selection of Warhol’s works represents in terms of circulation and market value. He seemed to devalue the category of originality, reveling in the possibilities of silk-screen printing based on photographic images. However, the art market values ​​primarily works that Warhol himself had a hand in, even if it is a silk-screen print, because not all of them were widely replicated; some are even unique combinations of several prints – in this way the artist enhanced visual power of the stories. These works cost tens, or even more than hundreds of millions of dollars, but there are none at the exhibition. Here there are mostly large-circulation prints or those printed in unlimited editions; of course, their collection value is much lower. But in this case, apparently, there is no need to find fault with this – in itself, the display of an extensive selection of Warhol’s works in connection with contemporary Russian art now seems something bold.