![]() ![]() For Putin, his critics are insufficiently “Russian”. From its perspective, there is only a single, unified Russian identity, which absorbs not only Ukraine (which is simply a fiction for Putin) but also any hint of internal dissidence. Maintaining a single, top-down party line is precisely the intention behind the cultural and political assimilation that the Russian state demands. These are two cracks in the façade that those in power like Putin will do anything to prevent. So is Komar, whose painting The Bird and the Bear (2014-22) depicts a brutish Russian bear attacking a tiny bird representing Ukraine. We know this is not true the case of Tolokonnikova is a clear example. The implication is that there is no division between the actions of the state and the politics of its people-that all Russians, simply by virtue of ethnic identity or the happenstance of birthplace, believe the war in Ukraine is just. Embedded in the claim that no Russian art should be on view today anywhere is the suggestion that Russians everywhere are partners in Putin’s crimes. Yet there is another side to these issues that critics seem to miss. Continuing the show beyond its original closing date was our humble act of defiance. That’s why, at the outbreak of the war in February 2022, the Zimmerli Art Museum extended our exhibition Painting in Excess: Kyiv’s Art Revival, 1985-1993, a survey of Ukrainian art made in the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse. There is great power to the claim that venues that often present (or are even specifically dedicated to) Russian art should retool their programming to highlight Ukrainian artists as a stand against Putin’s invasion. Such arguments led to the last-minute postponement in January of an exhibition at New York’s Cooper Union on the early Soviet Vkhutemas school of design. They argue that such projects are insensitive at best, complicit at worst. Yet some critics have made the claim that any focus on Russian art or artists amid the war in Ukraine is a distraction from Putin’s crimes. Tolokonnikova’s lecture was organised as a testament not only to the legacy of Komar and Melamid’s anti-state art, which always targeted the Soviet Union, but also to suggest how dissidence lives on in the work of artists today who are in the direct crosshairs of Putin’s regime. ![]()
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