- 269
Alexander Kosolapov
Description
- Alexander Kosolapov
- Five prints from the series MOTHER RUSSIA, 1982
- one signed Alexander Kosolapov and dated 1982 (on the reverse), one numbered 1 and labeled 4. (on the reverse), the others numbered 2, 3, and 4, respectively (on the reverse)
gelatin-silver prints
- one: 9 by 6 1/2 in.; the others: 5 3/4 by 4 in.
- 23 by 16.5 cm; 14.5 by 10 cm
Literature
Margarita Tupitsyn, Sots Art: The Russian Deconstructive Force, New York: The New Museum of Contemporary Art, 1986, pp. 10-12, illustrated
Diane Neumaier, ed., Beyond Memory: Soviet Nonconformist Photography and Photo-Related Works of Art, New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press and the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, 2004, p. 138, fig. 113, another print from the same edition illustrated
Catalogue Note
Alexander Kosolapov cast himself as the star of an inventive series of still photographs that blend the arts of performance and photography. In the present lot, he takes on the role of St. Sebastian. One of the most popular subjects in Renaissance art, St. Sebastian is usually presented as a handsome, almost nude young man, his body tied to a tree or column and pierced with arrows. As in other of Kosolapov's works, the artist here frees the image of its usual associations by representing himself as the saint and positioning himself under the emblem of the Soviet state—the hammer and sickle.