Mikhail Shemiakin: The One-Man Show

Some time in the late 1960s, during the period before the relative liberties of the thaw had still not melted away, a group of nonconformist artists dared to arrange an underground exhibition of their avant-garde works in the sanctuary of classical art -- the Hermitage museum. The exhibition was possible only because one of the artists -- Mikhail Shemiakin, 25 -- worked at the Hermitage as an electrician. The resulting scandal resulted in the resignation of the museum's director. Shemiakin got away with emigration -- one of the first cultural dissidents who were allowed (or forced?) to emigrate.


Today, 25 years later, the artist who was thrown out of his home city keeps coming back. Having gone through a quarter of a century abroad in Paris and New York -- the two capitals of Russian culture outside Russia -- and having earned an international recognition, he increasingly gravitates toward home.


Shemiakin never comes empty-handed. His first gift to the city -- a modernist sculpture of Peter the Great -- was installed in the courtyard of the Peter and Paul Fortress a few years ago and stirred a wave of controversy. Purists were annoyed by a distorted image. Shemiakin's monument to the victims of political repression on a Neva River embankment had to overcome resistance form the city bureaucracy before it could be unveiled last spring.


Through resistance like this, and despite envy from various quarters, Shemiakin persists.


Last week surpassed all the previous events and could easily go down as the week of Shemiakin. It started Tuesday with the opening of a monument to the first builders of St. Petersburg at the remote Sampsonian cemetery. The cemetery, hardly known to city residents and virtually unknown to tourists, is remarkable for the graves of the architects who created the glory of St. Petersburg: Domenico Trezini, Bartholomeo Rastrelli and others.


Events climaxed Thursday with two major exhibitions. Graphic works and jewelry were displayed in the elegant foyer of the Hermitage theater. The main event was held in the Manezh on St. Isaac's Square. The exhibition of paintings and sculpture encompassed all three periods of the artist's labors: St. Petersburg, Paris and New York. More than 30 years of work were compressed into a show which covered the floor and the walls of two stories of the huge exhibition space. The retrospective, called "From Image to Sign," is in fact Shemiakin's first one-man show in St. Petersburg.


Although Mikhail Shemiakin remains a New Yorker, his presence in St. Petersburg has become an enduring part of the cityscape. It has taken the confidence and persistence of a former dissident -- and the clout of international recognition -- to shape the modern image of this old city.