Anti-War Art in Russia Increasingly Anonymous and Influential, Arkhangelsky Says

Paul Goble
    Staunton, Feb. 14 – Anti-war art in Russia is increasingly anonymous lest the artists producing it be harassed or arrested by the powers that be, critic Andrey Arkhangelsky says; but at the same time, it is increasingly directed not just at the elites as art had been for the last generation but at the mass population, a shift that has made it more influential.
    That pattern is true in the case of graffiti, popular music, poetry and films, the critic says; but it has attracted less attention from the intelligentsia and media precisely because it is anonymous but more from the population because it is directed at them (theins.ru/opinions/andrej-arhangelskij/278795).
    In a new essay, Arkhangelsky suggests that there are now several basic forms of this new form of artistic protest including the placement of stickers on products in stores, the use of *** in some words the officials don’t want said or printed, and writing words in reverse or using other forms of coded language that only those who know the code will understand.
    According to the critic, “the main trend in contemporary anti-war art over the past three years is not so much to stand out as to ‘merge with the landscape’ and dissolve into the every day. Now, art strives to be noticed by the most ordinary people, and this can be interpreted as a kind of repentance and moral compensation” for what Russian art has been for the last 30 years.
    Indeed, Arkhangelsky says, “the most important task of present-day anti-war art in Russia today is the search for a new ‘black square of the 21st century,’ a kind of maximally accessible, minimalist and clear artistic statement that can become a graphic symbol of changes in the future.”