Vitaly Komar is one-half of the duo Komar and Melamid, artists who founded the sots-art movement in the Soviet Union before emigrating to Israel in 1977 and then the United States in 1978. Their work, as a recent retrospective exhibit declared, "was born of a negation of the Soviet idiosyncrasies, senseless propaganda, and numbing rituals of the 1960s and 1970s but also of a collective trauma from Stalin's terror."
The art movement they established -- sots-art -- reacted to the ubiquitous propaganda and ideological slogans in the USSR. Inspired in part of the American pop art of Andy Warhol (when the duo moved to the United States, they officially purchased Warhol's soul), sots-art aimed to combine the two realities of life in the USSR, official and private.
Vitaly Komar will talk about his life and his art. The event takes its name from the recent retrospective held at the Zimmerli Art Museum. As Komar stated in response to his artwork engaging with history and historical figures such as Stalin: "History teaches us no aesthetic lessons. But maybe art can teach historical lessons.
Vitaly Komar was born in Moscow in 1943. He studied at the Moscow Art School and Stroganov Institute of Art and Design. He and his artistic partner Alexander Melamid created the "sots-art" movement in Moscow in the 1970s. Their tongue-in-cheek works that mocked Soviet propaganda landed them in trouble with Soviet authorities. After emigrating to the United States, the duo engaged in a series of art projects, including "We Buy and Sell Souls," "Nostalgic Socialist Realism," and "People's Choice."
An event from the Havighurst Center for East European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies.
