A scandal has broken out at the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, as a group of Christian activists have lodged a suit with the Moscow Prosecutor's Office against the organizers of a display that allegedly incites religious hatred, a crime punishable under Article 282 of the Russian Penal Code.
According to the plaintiffs, the exhibits particularly offensive to the Christian faith include a video showing an effigy of Christ against a series of commercials and a performance involving the recital of sacrilegious poems, with a Crucifixion painting (The Sun of Truth, Love, and Grace) used as the backdrop.
When speaking to the press, Marat Gelman, an established Moscow gallery owner and the curator of the highly charged exhibition, denied any impropriety, describing the show as "absolutely tolerant." "There are no grounds whatsoever for opening a criminal case. But should such a case be initiated, I'm sure we'll win it in court," Gelman said.
With all the tension surrounding the conflict, the protesters should be given credit for their self-restraint.
Municipal authorities still have fresh memories of a much more violent protest against another allegedly blasphemous art display, Beware: Religion, at Moscow's Sakharov Public-Political Center. On that occasion, a group of religious activists of the For Homeland's Moral Revival committee, led by Rev. Alexander Shargunov, broke into the Sakharov Center's premises and poured paint onto the exhibits. Outraged at a picture showing Christ against a Coca-Cola ad, they left black stains on the surface, thus unwittingly contributing to the desecration.
The public outcry was vehemently supported by the press, leading to the launch of legal proceedings against the director of the Sakharov Center, Yury Samodurov. But the man charged with blasphemy and attempts to instigate religious strife has not been put on trial just yet, because the investigatorsare still struggling to identify criteria to distinguish sacrilege from art.
People in the arts believe that their creative endeavors should be judged by the public, and not by the courts. The faithful, for their part, hold that religion must not be used as an object of art house manipulation.
This conflict has deep historical roots.
Russian kitsch emerged with the collapse of the USSR in 1991 and abolishment of censorship, capitalizing on many of the social taboos from the communist dictatorship's legacy.
Artists breaking taboos hardly make any headlines in Paris or New York these days, whereas in Russia, any controversial arts event may create a scandal, bringing its organizer to the attention of the judiciary as well as the media.
In 1991, Russian designer Anatoly Osmolovsky and associates from the ETI group used their own bodies as letters to "write" an obscene word on Red Square, right across Lenin's Mausoleum.
Three years later, artist Alexander Brener staged an act of public defecation in front of a Van Gogh painting in Moscow's Pushkin Art Museum. He entitled his performance "Plagiarism."
In 1995, another Russian artist, Oleg Kulik, distinguished himself as a dog impersonator. Standing naked on all fours in an exhibition hall of Zurich's Kunsthaus, he attacked and bit onlookers.
That same year, a Moscow gallery, Regina, staged the public slaughter of a piglet. The poor animal was cut up, packaged, and distributed among the visitors. The act was called "A Piglet's Treats."
More controversial still was a performance in Moscow's Dar gallery, where visitors were offered to partake of a cake representing the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin. The life-size figure of Lenin was cut into slices, and the visitors ate it up before television cameras.
All those art events were far from low-key, but none proved scandalous enough to arouse public outrage their authors had wanted. The emerging post-Soviet society just did not know how to respond to such previously unheard-of violations of long-standing taboos.
The artists then embarked on a quest for more sensitive subject matter. Many found their inspiration for controversy in Christian imagery. Russia's leading exponent of the trend was Avdei Ter-Oganyan. At an Art Moscow show, he would provoke believers by making obscene inscriptions and drawings on Orthodox icons.
At one point, he took up an axe and began chopping the icons into pieces. Someone then called the police, and they came along to shut down the display and take the artist to a detention center. A criminal case was opened against him, but he fled the country to escape prosecution. He has been living in exile for seven years now, and is unlikely to venture back home any time soon.
Ter-Oganyan's fate replicates, in a grotesque way, that of Salman Rushdie, an Indian-born author damned by the Iranian spiritual leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini for his book The Satanic Verses, a satire on the Prophet Mohammed's family. Rushdie has been in hiding under police guard ever since Khomeini ordered his death in a 1989.
In the Russian Orthodox tradition, excommunication is viewed as a more severe punishment than death. This may be the reason why anti-Christian statements are much more widespread on the art scene than ones targeting Islam.
By the way, the iconoclastic emigre Ter-Oganyan has not been successful in his efforts to gain publicity in the West. "Provocation just doesn't work here," he lamented in a recent interview with the Russian magazine Dosug. "No action will be taken against you, however controversial your art may be."
This observation sheds some light on the origins of modern-day kitsch. It is an atmosphere of moral aggression in society, a system of official and unofficial bans that beget the phenomenon, which is probably why Moscow has become a breeding ground for kitsch artists.
As Andy Warhol once remarked, every person deserves his 15 minutes of fame. But this right is much easier to exercise in Russia now than in, say, Western Europe, where exposing your backside will not draw crowds.
There was a time Ter-Oganyan taught this and other publicity stunts to students of his Contemporary Art School, in Moscow. But the school is non-existent now...
