“Quotation” by Komar and Melamid (1972) and “Long live our glorious Motherland, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics!” by Viktorov (1948)

Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid’s “Quotation” (1972) seen in the top left hand corner, was inspired by the multitudes of communist propaganda leaflets and posters, similar to V. Viktorov’s poster “Long live our glorious Motherland, the Union of the Soviet Socialist Republics!" (1948) (Left), that were seen in the streets of Moscow. As explained by Victoria Bonnell in her book Iconography and Power, “through mass propaganda, the Bolsheviks sought to establish hegemony of their interpretation of the past, present, and future- their own master narrative- and to inculcate among the population new categories for interpreting the world around them,”1. However, instead of embracing this strategy and using hackneyed slogans like “Onward to the victory of communism,” “Glory to labor,” or “Long live our glorious motherland”, Komar and Melamid painted white quotations and small squares on a red canvas. The artists relied on the established visual language of communist propaganda to make a more profound statement concerning the entire practice of advertising. Their calculated omission of text not only mocks Soviet propaganda and slogans, but also points to the absence of meaning and the desensitization of the Russian people. Through their Sots art piece “Quotation” and references to Soviet advertisements, Komar and Melamid underscored the idea that communist goals and messages had become so internalized and so much a part of the Russian subconscious that there had been an evacuation of meaning and Soviet propaganda had become vacuous. Similarly, Allison Leigh-Pearlman, an art history PhD candidate at Rutgers University, writes, “Quotation not only recalls the constant barrage of political propaganda and satirizes the meaninglessness of such slogans by emptying them of actual text, but mimics the vagueness of memory itself. The distance from detail created by time leaves only an impression of the red banner with white letters. But the actual words and the meaning behind them are too distant to recall,”2. Rather than absorbing the true meaning of the propaganda, viewers were only left with a vague memory of the image. Additionally, just as “Quotation” highlights the inadequacies of propaganda, it also toys with the notion of text as disconnected from lived experience and reality. Where the typical communist advertisement had an inspirational slogan, “Quotation” merely has empty boxes that accentuate the insincerity and emptiness of communist messages. The piece leaves the viewer with unanswered questions and demonstrates that there is no clear solution to Russia’s dilemmas.

A later painting by Ilya Kabakov titled “Food Store” (1981) builds off of several of the themes Komar and Melamid grapple with in “Quotation”. “Food Store” lists the food contents of a market and simultaneously depicts the market as crowded and empty. Through this work Kabakov plays with verbal codes and expounds upon the disconnect between text and lived experience that is illustrated in “Quotation”. While the text of “Food Store” suggests that food supplies are plentiful, the actual image displays glum Soviet customers and empty food counters. This juxtaposition of abundance and scarcity illustrates the hollowness of text and communist promises for a bright future.

1. Bonell, Victoria. Iconography and Power. Chapter 2.
2. Leigh-Pearlman, Allison. Future ruins: time, memory, and history in the work of Komar and Melamid. Rutgers University.