MAJOR RUSSIAN ART PRIZE NIXES NOMINATION OF JAILED ARTIST PYOTR PAVLENSKY
Controversial performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky’s nomination for Russia’s Innovation prize—a major state prize awarded to contemporary artists sometimes called Russia’s Turner Prize—has been rejected, the Art Newspaper Russia reports.
Art critic and committee member Anna Tolstova nominated the thirty-one-year-old artist’s destructive performance work, titled Threat, 2015, for the work of visual art category. It is hard to say whether the state or the artist views the other as the bigger threat.
For Pavlensky, the threat is the FSB security service—the successor of the Soviet Union’s feared KGB. The performance was a statement of protest against the organization’s authority. Known for his politically charged, headline-grabbing, often cringe-inducing performances, Pavlensky set the wooden doors of Moscow’s Lubyanka headquarters ablaze. In a video capturing the event, he stands silently in front of the fiery doors until his subsequent arrest. In January the artist was moved to a psychiatric hospital for evaluation as previously reported by artforum.com.
General director Mikhail Mindlin of the National Center for Contemporary Arts, which organizes the prize, cites criminality as the reason Pavlensky’s performance was rejected. The creation of the work involved “breaches of the law and caused material damage.”
The decision to reject the work was met with outrage. Several participants on the prize’s expert committee and jury left their positions in protest, including Tolstova and Dmitry Ozerkov, the head of contemporary art at the Hermitage museum. However, the Art Newspaper Russia states that some members have returned to vote on other nominations.
In a surprising move, the Innovation prize has canceled the work of visual art category this year. Ironically, since the prize was established in 2005 it has supported politically motivated and controversial art. The radical art collective called Voina previously won the prize for painting an over 200-foot-phallus on a drawbridge that was located opposite the FSB headquarters in Saint Petersburg.
In response, Pavlensky’s partner, Oksana Shalygina, posted on Facebook: “Pavlensky has triumphed and forced the state machine to creak and collapse. The only way is ahead!”
