Warhol Tribute: A Few Cans Short of an Exhibit

Andy Warhol never was in St. Petersburg, nor, to the best of my knowledge, even in Russia. In the prudish Soviet years, the iconoclastic American artist was labeled as a fraud, a charlatan and one of the most "degrading elements of decadent bourgeois culture."


Warhol died nine years ago in the heyday of the glasnost era. Since then, most if not all of the formerly taboo names have been rehabilitated, and in this or that form introduced -- or reintroduced -- to Russian audiences. Warhol until recently remained one of the few major contemporary artists whose work was never exhibited in Russia.


The ice was broken last week at the small Gallery 21. A stronghold of modern art in spite of the hard St. Petersburg winter, Gallery 21 clings to survival in a structure with no heating and little electricity. For the opening, a bit of electricity was found, but still the few dozen devotees who came had to remain in their overcoats.


In his opening remarks the show's curator, artist Timur Novikov, compared the exhibition to the world famous premiere of Shostakovich's "Seventh Symphony" in the besieged Leningrad of 1942. With all due respect to the enthusiasm and dedication of the organizers, it is only with a slight exaggeration that this event can be called an exhibition.


Even the small room of Gallery 21 could not be filled with art objects. There were a few silk screen prints with the ubiquitous Marilyn Monroe, a few photographs and books but mostly a lot of autographed Campbell soup cans. The history of the show dates back to the early 1980s when Joanna Stingray, an American rock singer in love with the burgeoning Russian rock and art scene, used her family connections to meet the artist in his New York studio.


Proud of her new Russian friends, Stingray showed Warhol some of their works. Impressed with a spirit which he felt was not far from his own, Warhol sent autographed souvenirs back to St. Petersburg as gifts to the then virtually unknown Boris Grebenshchikov, Viktor Tsoi, Sergei Kuryokhin, Sergei "Africa" Bugayev, Timur Novikov and others.


If for Warhol and his fellow Americans, Campbell soup was the plainest commodity he tried to elevate to the level of objet d'art, for us in those pre-free-market days, Campbell soup cans were associated with Andy Warhol, not with soup. In those days I was close to many of these artists and remember how, in spite of all the reverence to the giver and his gift, a few cans were opened in curious childlike desire to verify that they indeed contained what they said they did. The soup was immediately consumed, thus reducing the number of objects in today's show.


Despite the event's modesty, Novikov and Gallery 21, in the true provocative spirit of their protagonist, can now claim priority: They had the first Warhol exhibition in Russia.