Komar and Melamid
Encyclopedia
Komar and Melamid is an artistic team made up of Russia
Russia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

n-born American graphic artists Vitaly Komar
Vitaly Komar
Vitaly Komar is a Russian painter and performance artist who was born in Moscow in 1943. He attended an art school in Moscow from 1958 to 1960, after which he studied and graduated from the Moscow High School of Industry. He began cooperating with Alexander Melamid in 1973 and collaborated with him...

 (born 1943) and Alexander Melamid
Alexander Melamid
Alexander Melamid is a Russian painter and performance artist who emigrated to New York City from the Soviet Union in 1977 with Vitaly Komar. He was born in Moscow and attended the Stroganov Art Institute, where he collaborated with Komar in the Russian SOTS ART movement...

 (born 1945). In an artists’ statement they said that “Even if only one of us creates some of the projects and works, we usually sign them together. We are not just an artist, we are a movement.” Both artists were born in Moscow
Moscow
Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

, but emigrated to Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

 in 1977 and subsequently to New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

 in 1978.

Education

Komar and Melamid attended the Moscow Art School from 1958 to 1960, followed by the Stroganov Institute of Art and Design, graduating in 1967. They began working together shortly thereafter. After 36 years they separated in 2003.

History

Komar & Melamid’s first joint exhibition, Retrospectivism, was held at the Blue Bird Cafe in Moscow, 1967. The following year, they joined the youth section of the Moscow Union of Artists and began teaching art. In 1972, Komar & Melamid founded a movement they called Sots Art
Sots Art
Often referred to as “Soviet Pop Art”, Sots Art originated in the Soviet Union in the early 1970s as a reaction against the official aesthetic doctrine of the state—"Socialist Realism"...

,
a unique version of Soviet Pop
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

 and Conceptual Art
Conceptual art
Conceptual art is art in which the concept or idea involved in the work take precedence over traditional aesthetic and material concerns. Many of the works, sometimes called installations, of the artist Sol LeWitt may be constructed by anyone simply by following a set of written instructions...

 that combines the principles of Dada
Dada
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich, Switzerland, during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement primarily involved visual arts, literature—poetry, art manifestoes, art theory—theatre, and graphic design, and concentrated its anti-war politics through a...

ism and Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

. In 1973, they were expelled from the Artists’ Union for “distortion of Soviet reality.” In 1974, they were arrested during a performance (in a Moscow apartment) of Art Belongs to the People. Later that year, their Double Self-Portrait (similar to dual portraits of Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 and Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

) was destroyed by the Soviet
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....

 government, along with works by other nonconformist artists, at what became known as the Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition
Bulldozer Exhibition was an unofficial art exhibition on a vacant lot in the Belyayevo urban forest by Moscow avant-garde artists on September 15, 1974...

(because bulldozers were used to destroy the artwork, which had been displayed in an open-air setting).

In 1976, Komar & Melamid’s work became more widely known. Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, hosted their first international exhibition, but Soviet authorities denied them permission to attend. In 1976, they also made their first attempt at emigrating, but permission was denied. In response, they created their own country, “Trans-State,” complete with passport
Passport
A passport is a document, issued by a national government, which certifies, for the purpose of international travel, the identity and nationality of its holder. The elements of identity are name, date of birth, sex, and place of birth....

s and a constitution
Constitution
A constitution is a set of fundamental principles or established precedents according to which a state or other organization is governed. These rules together make up, i.e. constitute, what the entity is...

. In 1977, they received permission to join relatives in Israel
Israel
The State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...

. In 1978, they moved to New York; in the same month, their first museum exhibition opened at the Wadsworth Atheneum
Wadsworth Atheneum
The Wadsworth Atheneum is the oldest public art museum in the United States, with significant holdings of French and American Impressionist paintings, Hudson River School landscapes, modernist masterpieces and contemporary works, as well as extensive holdings in early American furniture and...

 in Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford, Connecticut
Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut. The seat of Hartford County until Connecticut disbanded county government in 1960, it is the second most populous city on New England's largest river, the Connecticut River. As of the 2010 Census, Hartford's population was 124,775, making...

.

Throughout the 1970s, Komar & Melamid also worked in a style they called “Post-Art,” pioneering the use of multi-stylistic images, prefiguring the eclectic combination of styles in post-modernism, which became popular in the 1980s. They collaborated on various conceptual projects, ranging from painting
Painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

 and performance
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 to installation
Installation art
Installation art describes an artistic genre of three-dimensional works that are often site-specific and designed to transform the perception of a space. Generally, the term is applied to interior spaces, whereas exterior interventions are often called Land art; however, the boundaries between...

, public sculpture, photography
Photography
Photography is the art, science and practice of creating durable images by recording light or other electromagnetic radiation, either electronically by means of an image sensor or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film...

, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, and poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...

. In one such performance, they established a corporation, Komar & Melamid, Inc., that had as its purpose “the buying and selling of human souls.” They bought several hundred souls, including Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...

’s (who sold it to them for free), which was smuggled into Russia and then sold for 30 rubles
Soviet ruble
The Soviet ruble or rouble was the currency of the Soviet Union. One ruble is divided into 100 kopeks, ....

.

Melamid moved to New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...

 in 1980. He continued to work with Komar in New York. In 1981, their Portrait of Hitler was slashed by an ex-Trotskyite disc jockey
Disc jockey
A disc jockey, also known as DJ, is a person who selects and plays recorded music for an audience. Originally, "disc" referred to phonograph records, not the later Compact Discs. Today, the term includes all forms of music playback, no matter the medium.There are several types of disc jockeys...

 in Brooklyn
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

. They did not repair the work, considering the attacker a co-author.

Ronald Feldman hosted the exhibition Sots Art in 1982, which was a commercial and critical success. In 1983, the Museum of Modern Art
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art is an art museum in Midtown Manhattan in New York City, on 53rd Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It has been important in developing and collecting modernist art, and is often identified as the most influential museum of modern art in the world...

 and the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...

 purchased paintings. From 1981-1983, they continued to develop Sots Art in the series Nostalgic Socialist Realism, and from 1984-1990 they further developed Post-Art in the Diary Series, Anarchistic Synthesis Series, and Bayonne, N.J. Series.

Throughout the 1980s, many prominent writers and critics discussed their work, and they were invited to participate in numerous exhibitions. They were the first Russian artists to receive funding from the National Endowment for the Arts
National Endowment for the Arts
The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. Its current...

. They were also the first Russian artists to be invited to Documenta
Documenta
documenta is an exhibition of modern and contemporary art which takes place every five years in Kassel, Germany. It was founded by artist, teacher and curator Arnold Bode in 1955 as part of the Bundesgartenschau which took place in Kassel at that time...

 (Kassel
Kassel
Kassel is a town located on the Fulda River in northern Hesse, Germany. It is the administrative seat of the Kassel Regierungsbezirk and the Kreis of the same name and has approximately 195,000 inhabitants.- History :...

, then in West
West Germany
West Germany is the common English, but not official, name for the Federal Republic of Germany or FRG in the period between its creation in May 1949 to German reunification on 3 October 1990....

 Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, 1987).

Komar & Melamid created their first public art
Public art
The term public art properly refers to works of art in any media that have been planned and executed with the specific intention of being sited or staged in the physical public domain, usually outside and accessible to all...

 sculpture in 1986, a bronze bust
Bust (sculpture)
A bust is a sculpted or cast representation of the upper part of the human figure, depicting a person's head and neck, as well as a variable portion of the chest and shoulders. The piece is normally supported by a plinth. These forms recreate the likeness of an individual...

 of Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...

, which was installed in the red light district
Red Light District
Red Light District may refer to:* Red-light district - a neighborhood where prostitution is common* The Red Light District - the title of the 2004 album by rapper Ludacris* Red Light District Video - a pornography studio based in Los Angeles, California...

 of The Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. In 1988, they became US citizens. In 1989, a monograph
Monograph
A monograph is a work of writing upon a single subject, usually by a single author.It is often a scholarly essay or learned treatise, and may be released in the manner of a book or journal article. It is by definition a single document that forms a complete text in itself...

 about them, written by Carter Ratcliff, was published by Abbeville Press.

In the early 1990s, Komar & Melamid created two icon
Icon
An icon is a religious work of art, most commonly a painting, from Eastern Christianity and in certain Eastern Catholic churches...

s for the Holy Rosary Church
Holy Rosary Church
Holy Rosary Church or Holy Rosary Catholic Church may refer to:*Holy Rosary Church *Holy Rosary Church , near Springfield, Kentucky*Holy Rosary Church *Holy Rosary Church, Quetta, Pakistan...

 in Jersey City
Jersey City, New Jersey
Jersey City is the seat of Hudson County, New Jersey, United States.Part of the New York metropolitan area, Jersey City lies between the Hudson River and Upper New York Bay across from Lower Manhattan and the Hackensack River and Newark Bay...

. In 1992, they began the series Monumental Propaganda, in response to the destruction of Socialist Realist monuments in Russia. At Komar & Melamid’s invitation, more than 200 Russian and Western artists created projects for the preservation of monuments. Prolific press coverage of the project forestalled destruction of monuments in Russia.

From 1994-1997, the artists worked on the series People’s Choice, whereby they created the “most wanted” and “least wanted” paintings of various countries based on the results of surveys conducted by professional polling companies. The book, Painting by Numbers: Komar & Melamid’s Scientific Guide to Art, published in 1997, explains the statistical underpinnings of the polling process and provides the results of each country’s preferences. Komar & Melamid used the same process in 1996-1997 in a collaboration with composer Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier is an American composer and performer residing in New York.- Musical works :Some of his work is based on unusual collaborations. In the Thai Elephant Orchestra he built giant musical instruments on which he trained a group of elephants to improvise...

 to create The People's Choice Music, consisting of "The Most Wanted Song" (a love song with low male and female vocals, of moderate duration, pitch, and tempo) and "The Most Unwanted Song
The Most Unwanted Song
"The Most Unwanted Song" is a song created by artists Komar and Melamid and composer Dave Soldier in 1997. The song was designed to incorporate lyrical and musical elements that were annoying to most people...

" (in part: an operatic soprano raps over cowboy music featuring least-wanted instruments bagpipes and tuba while children sing about holidays and advertise for Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. , branded as Walmart since 2008 and Wal-Mart before then, is an American public multinational corporation that runs chains of large discount department stores and warehouse stores. The company is the world's 18th largest public corporation, according to the Forbes Global 2000...

).

In 1998, Naked Revolution, an opera about George Washington
George Washington
George Washington was the dominant military and political leader of the new United States of America from 1775 to 1799. He led the American victory over Great Britain in the American Revolutionary War as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army from 1775 to 1783, and presided over the writing of...

, Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Lenin
Vladimir Ilyich Lenin was a Russian Marxist revolutionary and communist politician who led the October Revolution of 1917. As leader of the Bolsheviks, he headed the Soviet state during its initial years , as it fought to establish control of Russia in the Russian Civil War and worked to create a...

 and Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Duchamp was a French artist whose work is most often associated with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. Considered by some to be one of the most important artists of the 20th century, Duchamp's output influenced the development of post-World War I Western art...

, was created by Komar & Melamid with Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier
Dave Soldier is an American composer and performer residing in New York.- Musical works :Some of his work is based on unusual collaborations. In the Thai Elephant Orchestra he built giant musical instruments on which he trained a group of elephants to improvise...

 and performed at the Walker Art Center
Walker Art Center
The Walker Art Center is a contemporary art center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States. The Walker is considered one of the nation's "big five" museums for modern art along with the Museum of Modern Art, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim Museum and the Hirshhorn...

, Minneapolis, and the Kitchen
The Kitchen
The Kitchen is a non-profit, multi-disciplinary art and performance space located at at 512 West 19th Street, between Tenth and Eleventh Avenues in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City...

, New York. It became part of the exhibition American Dreams, along with a series of eight paintings, forty collages, and the artists’ collection of George Washington memorabilia.

In 1998, the artists also went to Thailand
Thailand
Thailand , officially the Kingdom of Thailand , formerly known as Siam , is a country located at the centre of the Indochina peninsula and Southeast Asia. It is bordered to the north by Burma and Laos, to the east by Laos and Cambodia, to the south by the Gulf of Thailand and Malaysia, and to the...

 to teach elephants to paint, resulting in the book, When Elephants Paint: The Quest of Two Russian Artists to Save the Elephants of Thailand. In 2000, Christie's
Christie's
Christie's is an art business and a fine arts auction house.- History :The official company literature states that founder James Christie conducted the first sale in London, England, on 5 December 1766, and the earliest auction catalogue the company retains is from December 1766...

 auction house held the first-ever auction of elephant paintings. The revenue generated supported the elephants and their keepers.

In 2001, Komar & Melamid began work on their last major project together, Symbols of the Big Bang, first exhibited at the Yeshiva University Museum
Yeshiva University Museum
The Yeshiva University Museum is a teaching museum and the cultural arm of Yeshiva University. Along with the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Foundation, the Leo Baeck Institute, and the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, it is a member organization of the Center for...

, Center for Jewish History
Center for Jewish History
The Center for Jewish History is a partnership, or consortium, of five Jewish organizations based in Manhattan. It is a partnership of five organizations of Jewish history, scholarship, and art: the American Jewish Historical Society, the American Sephardi Federation, the Leo Baeck Institute, the...

, New York. Using abstract symbols, the artists explored their spirituality and the connection between mysticism
Mysticism
Mysticism is the knowledge of, and especially the personal experience of, states of consciousness, i.e. levels of being, beyond normal human perception, including experience and even communion with a supreme being.-Classical origins:...

 and science
Science
Science is a systematic enterprise that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe...

. In 2003, they began to turn some of the symbols into stained glass
Stained glass
The term stained glass can refer to coloured glass as a material or to works produced from it. Throughout its thousand-year history, the term has been applied almost exclusively to the windows of churches and other significant buildings...

, which Russian authorities refused to exhibit during the Moscow portion of the exhibition, Berlin-Moscow/Moscow-Berlin (2004). Komar & Melamid ceased collaborating in 2003.

Style

They are perhaps best known as the founders of SotsArt (СоцАрт), a form of Soviet Nonconformist Art
Soviet Nonconformist Art
The term Soviet Nonconformist Art refers to art produced in the former Soviet Union from 1953-1986 outside of the rubric of Socialist Realism...

 that combined elements of Socialist Realism
Socialist realism
Socialist realism is a style of realistic art which was developed in the Soviet Union and became a dominant style in other communist countries. Socialist realism is a teleologically-oriented style having its purpose the furtherance of the goals of socialism and communism...

 and Western Pop Art
Pop art
Pop art is an art movement that emerged in the mid 1950s in Britain and in the late 1950s in the United States. Pop art challenged tradition by asserting that an artist's use of the mass-produced visual commodities of popular culture is contiguous with the perspective of fine art...

in a conceptual framework that also references Dadaism. Komar and Melamid often create many works within a common theme. Their prolific collaboration precludes from mentioning all of their projects, however, some of their best known series and projects are: Sots Art series (1972–1973), Post-Art series (1973), Ancestral Portraits series (1980), Nostalgic Socialist Realism series (1982–1983), Diary series (1984–1986), Anarchistic Synthesism series (1985–1986), Most-Wanted series (1993–1997), Monumental Propaganda (1994), Elephant Project (1995–2000), American Dreams (1994–1999).

People's Choice

Komar and Melamid's People's Choice series, 1994–1997, consisted of the "most wanted" and "most unwanted" paintings of 11 countries. The artists commissioned polling companies in the 11 countries—including the United States, Russia, China, France, and Kenya—to conduct scientific polls to discover what they want to see in art. The use of polls was meant to mimic the American democratic process. Komar said, "Our interpretation of polls is our collaboration with various people of the world. It is a collaboration with [sic] new dictator--Majority." The process was also meant to change the artists role as a leader. Komar and Melamid believe that the broad public is an adequate judge of art, contrary to the historical precedence, much in the same way that the broad public in America is entrusted with electing the President. It is a new type of leader, one that asks questions, instead of a dictator. Melamid said, "Picasso mimicked Stalin, so we try to mimic Clinton."

Komar has said he isn't so concerned that people actually enjoy the work, so long as it provokes thoughts of free will versus predetermination. To tie that concept into their earlier work, Komar said, "In our early work, we arrived at [the] definition of freedom that entailed being free from individual cliches, being free to change intonations and styles. Individuality lost its stability and its uniqueness. Now we are searching for a new freedom. We have been traveling to different countries, engaging in dull negotiations with representatives of polling companies, raising money for further polls, receiving more of less [the] same results, and painting more or less [the] same blue landscapes. Looking for freedom, we found slavery."

External links

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