- 498
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid
Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 USD
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Description
- Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid
- Still Life with Marx and Engels, 1981-82
- signed Komar & Melamid and dated 1981-82 (lower right); also signed Komar & Melamid and dated 1981-1982 (on the reverse)
- oil on canvas
- 72 by 54 in.
- 182.9 by 137.2 cm
Exhibited
Edinburgh, Fruitmarket Gallery, August-September, 1985, illustrated
Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, October-December, 1985
Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, December-January,1986
Sidney, Artspace, July-August, 1987, illustrated
Oxford, Museum of Modern Art, October-December, 1985
Paris, Musee des Arts Decoratifs, December-January,1986
Sidney, Artspace, July-August, 1987, illustrated
Catalogue Note
Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid are most widely recognized as the originators of the Sots Art movement in the 1970s, in which they satirized Soviet culture by adapting the ideological style of Socialist Realism and parodying the heroicized figures of the Soviet state. Komar and Melamid created conceptual projects in various media, ranging from painting and performance to installation, public sculpture, photography, and poetry. They also collaborated with contemporary American artists, including Andy Warhol, Douglas Davis, and the Fluxus member Charlotte Moorman.
In 1973, Komar and Melamid were expelled from the youth section of the Union of Soviet Artists, having been charged by the Soviet authorities with "distortion of Soviet reality and deviation from the principles of Soviet Realism." In 1974, they were arrested during their performance in a private apartment in Moscow. Later that same year, works of Komar and Melamid, along with those of other nonconformist artists, were destroyed by Soviet officials at the open-air "Bulldozer Exhibition." The artists left the Soviet Union for Israel in 1977, and moved to New York in 1978. Their first exhibition in the West took place at the Feldman Gallery in New York in 1976. Since immigrating to the United States, Komar and Melamid shifted focus to such topics as the critique of commercialism and capitalism. In one of their major conceptual projects the artists also ironically explored the art preferences of average citizens in various countries. After immigration, they became the first Russian artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982) and to be invited to exhibit at Documenta 8 (Kassel, West Germany, 1987).
During the 1980s, Komar and Melamid started developing the Nostalgic Socialist Realism series. In this body of works, the pair redefined officially-approved fine art, particularly history painting, a genre that takes its subjects from either mythology or national history. By 1984, they had produced over two dozen paintings in this series, each a commentary on the myths of Stalin and Stalinism. In Still Life with Marx and Engels (1986-87), the fathers of the international Communist movement are depicted as triumphant and heroic-looking statues with an aura of divinity. These figures are standing in the niche of a building rendered in a typical Socialist Realist style featuring the emblem of the hammer and sickle enclosed in a cartouche. Mimicking the pompous style of Socialist Realism, the artists at the same time deconstruct the "sacred" figures of Marx and Engels, equating them with a still life at their feet, painted in an academic idiom. Thus, Still Life with Marx and Engels objectifies and reduces these figures to the signifiers of ideological commodity.
In 1973, Komar and Melamid were expelled from the youth section of the Union of Soviet Artists, having been charged by the Soviet authorities with "distortion of Soviet reality and deviation from the principles of Soviet Realism." In 1974, they were arrested during their performance in a private apartment in Moscow. Later that same year, works of Komar and Melamid, along with those of other nonconformist artists, were destroyed by Soviet officials at the open-air "Bulldozer Exhibition." The artists left the Soviet Union for Israel in 1977, and moved to New York in 1978. Their first exhibition in the West took place at the Feldman Gallery in New York in 1976. Since immigrating to the United States, Komar and Melamid shifted focus to such topics as the critique of commercialism and capitalism. In one of their major conceptual projects the artists also ironically explored the art preferences of average citizens in various countries. After immigration, they became the first Russian artists to receive a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (1982) and to be invited to exhibit at Documenta 8 (Kassel, West Germany, 1987).
During the 1980s, Komar and Melamid started developing the Nostalgic Socialist Realism series. In this body of works, the pair redefined officially-approved fine art, particularly history painting, a genre that takes its subjects from either mythology or national history. By 1984, they had produced over two dozen paintings in this series, each a commentary on the myths of Stalin and Stalinism. In Still Life with Marx and Engels (1986-87), the fathers of the international Communist movement are depicted as triumphant and heroic-looking statues with an aura of divinity. These figures are standing in the niche of a building rendered in a typical Socialist Realist style featuring the emblem of the hammer and sickle enclosed in a cartouche. Mimicking the pompous style of Socialist Realism, the artists at the same time deconstruct the "sacred" figures of Marx and Engels, equating them with a still life at their feet, painted in an academic idiom. Thus, Still Life with Marx and Engels objectifies and reduces these figures to the signifiers of ideological commodity.