Art v. Politics

Soviet artists have long chafed under ideological commands that they stick to the rigid canons of socialist realism, and have flirted with such decadent Western forms as abstract expressionism and even pop art. Works in these styles obviously cannot be sold openly in Russia, but there is a well-established private market for them among discreet collectors, including many senior officials in the Foreign Ministry, scientific institutes and universities. Many of the painters would like to make that market public. Last week 20 Moscow artists tried to bring abstract art out of the ideological closet by mounting an open-air exhibit in Moscow's Smenovskoye suburb. The result was a violent confrontation between art and politics in which art literally took a beating.

Accompanied by 200 friends and sympathizers, the painters arrived about noon to set up their exhibit in a vacant lot surrounded by bleak new apartment towers. As they began putting canvases on improvised wooden stands, a man who called himself Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov (the Russian equivalent of John Doe) announced that he was leading a group of volunteer workers to turn the site into a "park of culture." At a signal from Ivan, the burly "volunteers" began grabbing paintings, ripping canvas and splintering frames. At another signal, several handy bulldozers and dump trucks roared to the site and began churning the art works into the mud.

One truck backed into the crowd of about 500 onlookers and dumped a load of mud, half burying a six-year-old child who was pulled out scared but unhurt. A bulldozer started the crowd scattering by rolling a massive pile of steel sewer pipes at it. While water wagons high-arched jets of cold water at the crowd, other trucks careened along sidewalks and up grass embankments in pursuit of fleeing people.

Roughnecks. The "volunteers" also menaced foreign correspondents and diplomats who had turned out for the show. Christopher Wren of the New York Times had his camera shoved into his face, painfully chipping a tooth; then two roughnecks held his arms while an other punched him in the stomach. Other reporters, including Lynne Olson of the Associated Press and Michael Parks of the Baltimore Sun, got similar treatment when they came to Wren's aid. While all this was going on, uniformed militiamen and KGB (secret police) agents stood by or took pictures. When the hour-long fracas was over, some "volunteers" were observed changing into militia uniforms at a nearby police station.

"A mini-Czechoslovakia," said one disconsolate painter as he walked away with a ripped canvas. "Now you know what they mean by socialist realism in art," said another. Five painters were arrested and charged with "petty hooliganism" for trying to resist the bulldozers. By week's end all had been released.

But effects of the incident continued to be felt. The police action had converted a minor act of dissent into an embarrassing political incident that was headlined next day in newspapers across the world. Soviet authorities indeed seemed to react to the unfavorable publicity. Though there had been no official word from the government, at week's end one of the artists told foreign newsmen that permission had been granted to hold another exhibit at a different site this week.

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