The Power of the Paintbrush: How Revolutionary Art Manifests Through Reproduction
Mauricio Lozano
03 May 2019
HUM 104
Dr. Denham
pledged.
Lozano 1
“Brotherly Kiss” Painting, Tretyakov Gallery - Moscow, Russia
While on a trip to Russia with my Humanities class at Davidson College, I found myself in Moscow at the Tretyakov Gallery. As I rounded a corner in one of the exhibits, I was taken back by the painting pictured above. Upon my arrival in Russia, I had a very interesting conversation with one of my professors where I learned that Russia has a rather complicated relationship with homosexuality, typically discouraging its openness in the public sphere. Yet,
Lozano 2 here I was staring at the largest mural of two men kissing I had ever seen. I struggled to understand the meaning behind this piece in the context of its exhibit and its place in the museum as a whole. As my speculation and questioning continued, I looked closer and noticed that the painting was titled, Brotherly Kiss. In what seemed to be an image of homoeroticism, depicting two lovers engaged in a passionate kiss, there persisted a title that suggested otherwise. I initially mistook the painting as a commentary on the view of homosexuality in contemporary Russia.
However, upon further research, I found that this work is a symbol of the communist regime and the connection between Socialist states. This painting is a copy of a mural by artist Dmitri
Vrubel, which he painted on the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall after its collapse. The painting depicts a Socialist fraternal kiss between former Soviet Union General Secretary,
Leonid Brezhnev and former Socialist Unity Party General Secretary, Erich Honecker.
The Socialist Fraternal Kiss is a special form of greeting between the statesmen of
Communist countries.1 The practice is meant to demonstrate the closeness and good relations between Socialist states.2 This embrace grew in popularity throughout the Cold War, especially among Communist leaders in Eastern Europe because they felt that it conveyed the exclusive nature of the connection they shared under the communist regime. The practice found its origin in the Easter Kiss, characteristic to the Eastern Orthodox Church.3 The kiss became a prominent ritual among the leaders of communist countries, standing as a symbol of equality, fraternity, and solidarity.4 The Socialist Fraternal Kiss was introduced into popular culture when a photograph
1 Belton, Pádraig, and Lana Citron. "The Politics of the Kiss." America's Current Affairs & Politics Magazine. February 11, 2016. Accessed April 26, 2019. 2 Belton, Pádraig, and Lana Citron. 3 Belton, Pádraig, and Lana Citron. 4 Belton, Pádraig, and Lana Citron.
Lozano 3 was taken, capturing the aforementioned image of Erich Honecker and Leonid Brezhnev locking lips at the 30th anniversary of the German Democratic Republic in East Berlin in 1979. It was said photo that inspired Dmitri Vrubel’s Berlin Wall mural entitled, My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.
The Berlin Wall was erected in Berlin, Germany, on August 13, 1961, effectively splitting the city into two halves: the Communist East and the Democratic West. This political tension and divisiveness sparked immense dissatisfaction in the public sphere and epitomized the conflict of the Cold War. Opposition and protest to the wall manifested itself in varying ways, but the most notable came from the graffiti and street art which was explicitly plastered onto the wall itself. Dmitri Vrubel was most incessant on creating a piece that displayed complete love on a medium that stood for divisiveness and hate—a playing of opposites characteristic of political satire. When asked about the mural’s location on the Berlin Wall, Vrubel Remarked, “In this painting, there's one German and one Russian, and the Berlin Wall is about the same thing but in reverse: here [in the painting], there's total love, while the Berlin Wall separates two worlds — it was a perfect fit.”5Although Dmitri Vrubel claims that the painting is about love and not politics6
(perhaps tongue in cheek) it is clear to see how the painting acted as a symbol of communism’s corruption and ultimate failure. The piece provided a medium for social dialogue on one of the most controversial landmarks in all of history. But, what led a piece of this nature to be reproduced and thrown up in a museum in Moscow, Russia? Furthermore, How does this displacement manifest in the piece and affect its overall meaning? In this essay, I will use Dmitri
5 Borzenko, Andrey. “Brotherly Love: 25 Years on, the Artist behind the Iconic Berlin Wall Mural Tells His Story.” The Calvert Journal. 6 Paterson, Tony. 2014. “The Stolen Kiss: The Berlin Wall Mural Is Erased.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media. April 3, 2014.
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Vrubel’s revolutionary mural, My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love to argue that the commodification and reproduction of art misconstrue the original nature of a piece and reduces it to a form of ubiquity that would not occur otherwise.
We currently live in what some have called “the age of digital reproduction.”7 Along with the exponential growth of technology and ease of access to art mediums, there has come a decreased value for the craftsmanship and originality that comes along with artistic expression.
The desire for increased output in the art industry has resulted in both digital and manmade copies of art to be passed off as equal or representative of their original counterparts. These forgeries are nothing more than “fraudulent imitations”8 that fail to capture the entire essence of a piece of art. It is simply impossible to convey the same character of a piece outside of the circumstances that prompted the artist to create it in the first place. Walter Benjamin referenced this exact shortcoming in his famous essay, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, when he argued, “Even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space—its unique existence at the place where it happens to be.”9 This detriment is emphasized in the replicative efforts of Berlin Wall art, especially in
Dmitri Vrubel’s My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love. The mural, which had been displayed in the East Side Gallery of the Berlin Wall, was eventually erased and Vrubel was commissioned to repaint his iconic work. In regards to this restorative effort, Vrubel himself remarked, “I suddenly realised that in the collective memory
7 Charney, Noah. "Has the Incredible Accuracy of Art Reproduction Ruined the Way We Experience Masterpieces?" Smithsonian.com. August 23, 2016. 8 Charney, Noah. 9 Benjamin, Walter, and James Amery. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, 220.
Lozano 5 my painting had been preserved in its original state, but I myself didn't remember how I had painted it...it’s hard to repeat something like that”10 Works such as Vrubel’s created at the prospect of such controversy and political turmoil demonstrate the extent to which an artist’s raw passion and human experience can bleed into and fuel the artwork. This is something that Vrubel himself had trouble replicating the second time around. The Berlin Wall was notorious for hosting these thought-provoking, politically-charged pieces of street art aimed at social mobilization and spurring opposition to the communist regime. These works meshed together the public and political sphere to craft a commentary on the human experience under an oppressive government system that would eventually split a country in two. In her essay, The Politics of Humor: The Berlin Wall in Jokes and graffiti, Mary Beth Stein professed, “The Berlin Wall was key in proving the relationship between political structure, social experience, and folkloric expression.”11 The protest art movement which began on the Berlin wall proved that graffiti and street art can act as a trigger of public discourse and democratic interaction to discuss the power structures which control and subjugate a common people.12 The street art served as a mouthpiece for public opinion that often times would not be communicated otherwise. It is for this reason that it is commonly held as “the voice of the oppressed.”13 Yet, when the voice that speaks life into the piece is removed, we are left with a repeated, ubiquitous thing. I refer of course, to the
10 Borzenko, Andrey. “Brotherly Love: 25 Years on, the Artist behind the Iconic Berlin Wall Mural Tells His Story.” The Calvert Journal. Accessed March 28, 2019. 11 Stein, Mary Beth. “The Politics of Humor: The Berlin Wall in Jokes and Graffiti.” Western Folklore 48, no. 2 (April 1989): 85. 12 Heinsohn, Bastian. "Critical Voices from the Underground: Street Art and Urban Transformation in Berlin." In Envisioning Social Justice in Contemporary German Culture, edited by Twark Jill E. and Hildebrandt Axel, Boydell and Brewer, 2015 119. 13 Heinsohn, 119.
Lozano 6 commodification of these street art masterpieces, especially My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love.
Beyond the replica that I viewed in the Tretyakov Gallery, Dmitri Vrubel’s iconic mural has been commodified and reinvented for all intents and purposes—especially as a piece of iconography for magnets, mugs, shirts, handbags, etc.
Bruderkuss Coffee Mug14 Bruderkuss Tote Bag15
Beyond this, the ambiguity of this piece has been exploited to craft satirical works in today’s society in which other individuals than Honecker and Brezhnev are depicted. Most recently, the mural format has been copied to parallel Cold War totalitarian leaders to current
14 Zazzle. "Bruderkuss Coffee Mug." Advertisement. Accessed May 02, 2019. https://www.zazzle.com/bruderkuss_coffee_mug-168367723187414838. 15 Zazzle. "Bruderkuss Tote Bag." Advertisement. Accessed May 2, 2019. https://www.zazzle.com/bruderkuss_tote_bag-256641174692801341.
Lozano 7 corrupt power structures. Below is a mural that parodies My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love, displaying Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin locking lips as a commentary on the subversive nature of US-Russian relations.16
Lithuania-US-Mural-Trump-Putin17
When a protest piece such as this is commercialized in this manner for aesthetic purposes, the image becomes normalized and it loses its shock value—especially since it is no longer being viewed upon the wall which it was criticizing. However, I argue that the greater danger occurs when a revolutionary work such as this is totally stripped of its revolutionary nature and
16 Taylor, Adam. 2016. “The Putin-Trump Kiss Being Shared around the World.” The Independent. Independent Digital News and Media. May 14, 2016. 17 Malukas, Petras. Lithuania-US-Mural-Trump-Putin. AFP. In Getty Images. May 13, 2016. Accessed May 2, 2019. https://www.gettyimages.com/photos/petras-malukas-afp-trump?mediatype=photography&phras e=petras malukas afp trump&recency=anydate&sort=mostpopular&license=rf,rm&page=1&suppressfamilycorrection =true.
Lozano 8 repurposed as a symbol for the institution it was criticizing. What once was a satire and shot at the corrupt nature of communism became a positive symbol of communism and an iconic image symbolizing socialist unity. There is no traceable record or explanation behind the mural’s appearance in the Tretyakov Gallery, but this is all I can hypothesize for its place in the museum due to the framing of the piece. For one, it has been retitled Brotherly Kiss, which inherently carries more positive connotations than the original title, My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love. Secondly, the mural was displayed alongside esteemed Russian figures such as Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. Vrubel’s piece is present solely for its face value in the socialist symbol it depicts, rather than the actual critical purpose the work originally stood for.
When I speak of Vrubel’s mural as revolutionary, I refer to the nature of the piece in its advocation against the communist regime which overtook Russia. I define revolution in this sense as a drastic change of attitude or convention which ushers in an era of notable change and deviation from what is perceived as a faulted precedent. This piece was just one portion of a greater movement to expose the hypocrisy and restrictive nature of communism. Revolution takes place on a supply and demand basis either out of the desire to fulfill a need of a constituency that is not being fulfilled or out of a desire to oust a restricting entity of a constituency. In this case, Vrubel’s work did the latter; spurring dialogue and conversation to speak out against an oppressive power over the common people. However, the frequent reproduction and parodying of My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love has caused its revolutionary quality to be covered up, misconstrued, and lost in a blur of ubiquity. So much so that an art museum in a pro-communist country can house a replica of it without anyone batting an eye.
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My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love is a prime example of the soul and aura18 being sucked out of a piece of art for the purpose of reproduction. This is a detriment that many of the pieces of the Berlin Wall protest artworks have fallen victim to. Along with the recreation of these pieces comes the reassignation of their principles and character since they are displaced from the environment and situation which informed the original intent of the work. In recent history, we have seen a reevaluation of street art inspired by the cultural art movement surrounding the Berlin Wall. Natalia Samutina and Oksana Zaporozhets reported in their social research review, Berlin, the City of Saturated Walls, that “The Berlin Wall was a canvas for ever-changing images and as a vanished artifact that continues living in urban memory and keeps being reproduced in a multitude of ephemeral forms.”19 While the reproduction of these art forms does translate into greater exposure, we must ask ourselves, at what cost? My God, Help Me to Survive This Deadly Love has been so far displaced from its original meaning that it has lost its initial effect of spurring public discourse on the Berlin Wall and the corrupt powers that instituted it. Its usage as a poster boy icon heiling back to the communist forefathers of yesteryear in the gallery epitomizes this phenomenon. After learning the history behind this mural, seeing it displayed as it is in the Tretyakov gallery affirms that the commodification and reproduction of this protest art piece have severed the artist’s influence from it and caused it to lose its revolutionary fervor.
18 Benjamin, Walter, and James Amery. Underwood. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. 19 Samutina, Natalia, and Oksana Zaporozhets. 2015. “Berlin, the City of Saturated Walls”. Laboratorium: Russian Review of Social Research 7 (2), 37.
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