Komar and Melamid

Collection of the artists
Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
Acquired by the present owners in 1976

New York, Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, Color is a Mighty Power, 7 February - 20 March 1976
New York, Neuberger Museum et al., Independent Curators International (North America touring exhibition), Team Spirit, 14 October 1990 - 24 October 1992
Berlin, Martin-Gropius-Bau; Moscow, The State Tretyakov Gallery, Berlin–Moscow / Moscow–Berlin 1950–2000, 25 September 2003 - 15 June 2004

Newsweek, 16 February 1976, p.89 illustrated 
M.B. Nathanson (ed.), Komar / Melamid, Two Soviet Dissident Artists, Southern Illinois University Press, 1979, illustrated front cover and p.6
C.Ratcliff, Komar & Melamid, New York: Abbeville Press, 1989, p.64 illustrated
Team Spirit, New York: Independent Curators Incorporated, 1990, p.83 listed
A.Erjavec and B.Groys, Postmodernism and the Postsocialist Condition: Politicized Art Under Late Socialism, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003, p.61, fig.9 illustrated
Berlin–Moscow / Moscow–Berlin 1950–2000, Berlin: Nikolai-Verlag, 2003, p.133 illustrated
L.Siegel, Falling Upwards, Essays in Defense of the Imagination, New York: BasicBooks, 2009, p.89 illustrated
V.Tupitsyn, The Museological Unconscious: Communal (Post) Modernism in Russia, Cambridge: MIT Press, 2009, p.132 illustrated 
M.J. Jackson, The Experimental Group: Ilya Kabakov, Moscow Conceptualism, Soviet Avant-garde, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010, p.128 illustrated

Structural Condition The artist's canvas is securely attached with staples to the reverse of the original board support. The board support is slightly bowed. There is a secondary wooden strainer attached to the reverse of the board which is delaminating in places. The reverse of the board is inscribed by the artist. There are several undulations and minor linear deformations to the canvas, most notably running diagonally through the lower left part of the composition. These are entirely stable. Paint Surface The paint surface has the artist's original unvarnished appearance. There are small scattered areas of slightly raised lines of craquelure with associated minor paint losses around the lettering at the edge of the painting. There are also two small paint losses on the hair and face of the head on the left. Inspection under ultra-violet light shows very small spots and lines of retouching within the red background, most notably in the upper left and lower right quadrants of the composition. These retouchings are visible in natural light and could be improved with more careful inpainting. Summary The painting would therefore appear to be in good condition and would benefit from the the removal and replacement of any previous restoration work, and from the infilling and retouching of any minor paint losses.
"This lot is offered for sale subject to Sotheby's Conditions of Business, which are available on request and printed in Sotheby's sale catalogues. The independent reports contained in this document are provided for prospective bidders' information only and without warranty by Sotheby's or the Seller."

Double Self-Portrait is a rare, iconic and genre-defining work of early Sots Art, produced in 1972. Sots Art – or Soviet Pop Art – which flourished throughout the 70s and 80s in Russia, was an art form which playfully subverted official Socialist Realism. The best examples of the genre employed the iconography of state mass propaganda, drawing parallels with Pop Art’s use of advertising imagery in the West. In this work the use of the colour red and text around the border of the work, as well as the flat mosaic-like depiction of the artist profiles are taken directly from State propaganda images of Lenin and Stalin.

The artists created two similar versions of this self-portrait in 1972: the offered lot, and another with the artists looking in profile to the left, which was destroyed in the Bulldozer Exhibition in 1974. Showing the importance of this work in their oeuvre, they later painted a third version in 1984 for the 10^th Anniversary of the Bulldozer show.