Palatial Post for an Auto: But Is It Pop Art or Ad?

Another strange twist of fate last week befell the grand Marble Palace, one of the gems of St. Petersburg's magnificent architecture. Used for decades during the Soviet era as the Lenin Museum, it became a stronghold of the nation's "most progressive" ideology. Standing guard, most appropriately, was the famous Bronevik -- Lenin's armored car, with the militant Vrag kapitala (Enemy of Capital) name inscribed on its angular cubist body. After the formal collapse of Communist rule following the Aug. 1991 coup, the building was given to the Russian Museum and the weathered Bronevik exiled to the Museum of Artillery. Since then, the Russian Museum has been on a constant search for a new identity for the 18th-century palace. Its top floor galleries regularly hosted radical contemporary art exhibits, and its Marble Ballroom was rented out for high-class social gatherings. The granite pedestal in the courtyard remained bare, waiting for the vehicle's worthy replacement.Enter the elements of market economy, German "action" artist Ha Schult and the Ford Motor Company. A brand-new 1994 Ford Mondeo, painted with a marble effect, was installed on the unused pedestal and unveiled Tuesday in a ceremony featuring a military band and flowing champagne. The installation, titled "Marble Time in the Marble Palace," has been publicized by the museum as an art event of great significance. Indeed, the tangle of meanings behind the installment have made it a defiantly controversial work of art. According to Schult -- whose career seems to be permanently attached, artistically and financially, to Ford cars, 10 of which he has already installed in various parts of the world -- "This century belongs to the automobile, which has given us both freedom and lack of freedom."For the museum, the event is a breakthrough into the area of art and corporate sponsorship. Alexander Borovsky, the head of the contemporary art department and the original supporter of Schult's installment, introduced himself at the press conference as "an advocate of new art" and said it was his job to "cultivate the museum's international status." Vladimir Gusev, the museum's director, praised the project, saying, "We have to distance ourselves from the image of the ugly iron vehicle which was meant to kill people, the image which seemed to have been imprinted in our memories for ever." The event has been criticized as well, by everyone from die-hard Bolsheviks protesting sacrilege, to the museum's curator, Olesya Turkina, who has called the event "a purely political and economic gesture." Controversy as hot as this is a good sign that the installment hit home. However, the new Ford may prove too weighty for the fine line between art, politics and only slightly disguised advertising.