Sovietness in the Art of Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe

Abstract

The article is devoted to the recycling of Soviet images in the works of Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe from 1987–2006. In his multidisciplinary work, Vladislav Mamyshev (1969–2013),an artist, writer, actor, professor of the original genre department of the New Academy of Fine Arts, repeatedly reproduced images from Soviet cinema and pop culture. In the make-up of Marilyn Monroe, he performed Soviet songs at concerts and in video clips. He portrayed Alla Pugacheva, Lenin and Krupskaya, an episode of Stierlitz meeting with his wife from the movie Seventeen Moments of Spring in performances and photo portraits. Mamyshev also wrote several philosophical treatises on the Russian and Soviet mentality and history. Mamyshev’s existential performance, associated with ancient practices of holy foolishness and parrhesia, is considered in the dynamics of post-Soviet history. In 1990, in remakes of Politburo portraits, he transformed the Soviet gerontocrats into the beauties of world cinema, “correcting the karma” of the Soviet regime. In a Pirate Television report on August 19, 1991, Mamyshev opposed the abolition of Gorbachev’s reforms. In the early 1990s, he put forward the idea of a fabulous folklore matrix of the Russian and Soviet unconscious and noted the beginning of the contamination of Russian and Soviet history in the post-Soviet consciousness. In the late 1990s, Mamyshev in the image of Lyubov Orlova explored the complex of Soviet ideas about perfection, which have both a mobilizing and deadening socio-cultural impact. Representing Soviet images, Mamyshev focuses on their totalitarian state message and at the same time their reflection in the individual consciousness, aimed at finding ideal love and happiness, showing the inevitable tragic break in the functional connection between Soviet ideology and Russian reality.