Until Jan. 29 at The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation, 21/5 Kuznetsky Most, entrance 8, (495) 621 5522, m. Kuznetsky Most, www.ekaterina-fondation.ru
Open Tue.-Sun. 11 am-8 pm, closed Mon.
Masterpieces get a makeover at The Ekaterina Cultural Foundation’s retrospective of the New Academy of Fine Arts, an underground art movement that flowered in St. Petersburg in the 1990s. In an unprecedented exhibition, the gallery is displaying 200 works by 14 of the group’s artists, who eschewed modern art for a new breed of classicism.
Leningrad art guru Timur Novikov founded the group in 1989, when perestroika was at its counter-cultural peak. Novikov, who died in 2002, was an avantgarde artist and theorist whose experiments included the rock group “New Composers,” for which he devised original musical instruments. Fearing modern art’s encroachment on artistic traditions, Novikov called for a return to ancient Greco-Roman ideals of beauty and harmony. But rather than simply reproducing classical motifs, Novikov, along with artists including Georgy Guryanov and Denis Yegelsky, adapted them to the 20th century with new media and irreverent interpretations.
The exhibition begins with Olga Tobreluts’s playful video “Manifesto of the New Academy,” which features animated versions of classical artworks and an appearance by Novikov dressed as Alexander Pushkin. Many exhibition pieces are large-scale paintings which flirt heavily with kitsch. A canvas from Oleg Maslov and Viktor Kuznetsov’s “New Satiricon” series shows the artists emerging naked from Botticelli’s “Birth of Venus” clam shell in white carnival masks and high-heeled boots. In a similar vein, Tobreluts’s “Sacred Figures” series inserts celebrities including Elvis and Leonardo Di Caprio into famous works such as Andrea Mantegna’s 15th century “St. Sebastian.”
Other works meditate on Soviet imagery, such as Georgy Guryanov’s “Aviator” and “Kronstadt.”
‘Societas terra et aquae’ by Oleg Maslov and Viktor Kuznetsov, 1996
Among the most interesting are Novikov’s fabric paintings, which place small pictures of classical symbols atop textiles adorned by paint and ribbon. Novikov’s “Apollo Trampling on the Red Square” offers a mischievous rejection of both Malevich’s modernist work and the Soviet state’s central symbol.
Before tapering off around the new millennium, the New Academy movement spread beyond Petersburg, gaining acolytes in Moscow and abroad. Curator Arkady Ippolitov’s decision to limit the current exhibition to Petersburg artists has proved contentious. At the opening press conference, Ippolitov remarked that he had to “chase Olga Tobreluts out of the hall” the day before so she would stop bothering him about his selections. Ippolitov’s comment prompted Tobreluts to deliver a speech declaring her regret that other artists weren’t included.
For his part, eternal trickster Oleg Maslov spent much of the press conference clapping, pretending to fall asleep or offering sardonic commentary on the proceedings.
But for all their archness, New Academy artists’ fidelity to their ideals is never doubt.
“What did Dostoevsky said before he died? Beauty saves the world,” Maslov told The Moscow News, describing why he was drawn to Neo- Academism.
On the other hand, “‘classical” doesn’t have to mean “serious.” What reaction would Maslov like to see out of viewers?
“I want everyone to lie down and have sex in every hall out of happiness,” he said.
Read other articles of the print issue "The Moscow News #88"
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