Leonid Sokov, b.1941

Related Literature:

Leonid Sokov Sculptures, Paintings, Objects, Installations, Documents, Articles. Moscow: The State Russian Museum, Palace Editions, 2000, Cat Nos. 84, 94, 95, 99 (illustrated)

O.Kholmogorova, Sots-Art, Moscow: Galart, 1994, plate 58

Leonid Sokov, b.1941

With the look of decorative souvenirs and hand-made toys, Leonid Sokov's work taps into the specifically Russian popular culture at the base of the Sots Art movement. The rough-hewn, innocent-looking exterior of his sculptures acts as a powerful alienation device, contrasting sharply with the often crude nature of their humour, which is aimed to appeal to the most basic human emotions.

As Ilya Kabakov once explained,

''[Sokov's] ability to elicit such primitive feelings from the informed viewer is a considerable talent too, because as a result, the viewer himself is inevitably folklorised.[...] One might say that the artist opens out eyes to our own selves, and we discover within us a folklore and carnival quality we never suspected before. In other words, the bodily element of Sokov's art is quite contagious''

Much of Sokov's oeuvre explores the idea that political imagery is created as easily as that of fairy-tales. Indeed, the impact of his art lies in the tension between the momentary topicality of politics and the timelessness of Russian folklore. His work suggests that fact can very soon become myth.

His grotesque and exaggerated imagery functions as a great leveller, stripping Soviet propaganda of its protective mantle of etiquette and respect. His mechanised sculptures complete this reversal as idols and slogans are turned into toys to be operated at the whim of the public for which they are intended.

Sokov created this series of four reliefs after a set of much larger wooden sculptures created in 1974, three of which are in the Norton Dodge collection of Nonconformist art at the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum. Several of the original sculptures where mechanised allowing, for example, the threatening finger to wag from side to side, and the eyes and tongue of Teaser to move around.

These sculptures were first brought to the attention of the West through Biennale del Dissenso held in Venice in 1977, an event dedicated solely to dissident art. In gratitude, Sokov produced two additional reliefs of Threatening finger in bronze, one dedicated to Carlo Ripa di Meana, president of the Biennale, and whose idea it had been to hold the exhibition, and another for Enrico Crispolti, co-curator and author of the accompanying catalogue, La Nuova Arte Sovietica.