Vrubel's death and his 'brotherly kiss' of the powerful
The Russian painter who died this week in Berlin had spoken of how the image with Brezhnev and Honecker reproduced on the remains of the Wall was born in his Moscow art workshop in the 1980s, at the time of clandestine exhibitions of samizdat authors. And back in 2014, he explained that it was not only a symbol of a bygone world, but was coming back into sharp focus.
Moscow (AsiaNews) - Russian painter Dmitry Vrubel, author of the world-famous scene of the kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker reproduced on one of the walls left over from the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the end of an era but also a prophecy of new embraces between the powerful who intend to divide the world, died in Berlin on the evening of Aug. 15 from Covid-related complications. The painting was titled "Lord, help me survive in the midst of this deadly love!"
Vrubel's expressed wish indicated a desire to break free forever from the suffocating embrace of Soviet imperialism, finding in the reunification of the two Germanies the rediscovery of a people's identity in the fraternity of a new Europe, made up of independent and sovereign nations united in the defense of rights and freedoms. That dream had seemed to come true, until the kissing of the powerful began again to threaten and destroy what had been created over the past 30 years.
In 2014, 25 years after the collapse of the Wall, Vrubel had been invited by the German Embassy in Moscow, which hosted a reception in his honor. Another project by the Russian painter was then presented, together with his art and life partner Viktoria Timofeeva. Having lived in Berlin for a number of years, the two envisioned transforming the walls of the German capital into a series of grandiose symbolic paintings that would testify to the ever-changing fragility of the contemporary world. The artist himself explained that he understood that the "Kiss" was not only a symbol of a bygone world, but was again a very topical subject.
There was a scandal in Kazakhstan that year over an advertising campaign depicting a cast of Vrubel's "Kiss," in which Russian President Putin and the Kazakh composer Kurmangazy, a 19th-century musician who had been a symbol of the Asian uprisings against the occupations of imperial Russia, were clutching each other. The image was condemned at the time for "cynicism and pornography," and those responsible for its dissemination had to pay a million-dollar fine, but the kisses of the powerful have actually multiplied in recent years, even to the point of filming Putin again in his embrace with Trump, Xi Jinping or other allies and possible competitors.
The "lethal kiss" has become a universal symbol, a pop-art image to describe the difficulty of recomposing the destinies of peoples, as striking and evocative as ever in the year of the great conflict between the "brothers" of Russia and Ukraine, involving the peoples of Europe and Asia. Both gay culture and its opponents, the veteran-communist ideal and its ultraliberal antipodes, appeal to it in ambiguity worthy of a contemporary "Mona Lisa," as the author himself acknowledged, confessing on several occasions that he never imagined he had created something so universal.
In a conversation with writer and friend Svetlana Konegen, Vrubel had recounted that the "Kiss" was born in his "underground" art workshop in Moscow in the 1980s, at the time of clandestine exhibitions of samizdat authors in the Brezhnev era. The painter had then moved to Berlin, taking with him only the original painting with the two dictators and, as he recounts, "all the naive hopes of young Moscow artists, who dreamed of open borders, and we began to realize them." Another Russian émigré, translator and art critic Aleksandr Brodovsky, later prompted Vrubel to reproduce his painting of the Kiss on the Wall.
The Russian avant-gardes of the early twentieth century, from Kandinsky and Malevich, who founded the Bauhaus in Berlin, to Belarusian Chagall, inspired the abstractionism of contemporary art. Russian dissidents who emigrated to Germany like Vrubel and his friends left us a symbolism of new fraternities to be cultivated, or perhaps new Walls to be torn down, lest their legacy be dispersed.
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