A lexander Brener, a 39 yeal old Russian performance artist (who first came to the attention of the art world after damaging a painting by Chinese artist Gu Wenda ), sprayed a green dollar sign over fellow Russian Kazimir Malevich's Suprematisme 1920-1927
On Saturday morning January 4th 1997, after supposedly travelling to Amsterdam for the express purpose of damaging the painting, Brener sprayed a green dollar sign on the work. The oil on canvas painting depicts a white cross on a light grey background and Brener said he intended the dollar sign to appear nailed to the cross.
Brener surrended himself to museum security and in a statement made later to police demanded his work be viewed as a protest against "corruption and commercialism in the art world"[1] and as such - performance art.
The Amsterdam Criminal Court felt otherwise, and sentenced Brener to ten months imprisonment and two year's probation during which time he was prohibited from entering the Stedelijk Museum. Five months were suspended (with the time spent in pre-trial detention subtracted) but during his prison term, Brener supposedly engaged in a hunger strike as a protest against the harsh penalty imposed on him.
In court Brener is recorded as saying 'The cross is a symbol of suffering, the $ a symbol of trade and merchandise. On humanitarian grounds are the ideas of Jesus christ of higher significance than those of the money. What I did WAS NOT against the painting, I view my act as a dialogue with Malewitz'[2]
The website Youth Against Internet contains further documentation and quotes from the court case. It lists his motive as follows "The art organsations are doubtful, they form an elite that takes care of its own means, and also ensures that success is written in their name (..) Anyone passing by could have done this, it is a representation of an attitude towards/opinion about the closed world of art (..) Presently the paradox is: Malewitz wanted to change the world by his art, nowadays his statue is measured in $'s ".[3]
In A Letter of Support for Alexander Brener, February 11th 1997 the writers document Brener's history of provocative 'performance art' or protest. One of the more entertaining instances (hilarious -actually), occured in 1994 at the Fine Art Museum in Moscow where he shat in his pants while standing infront of a Van Gough painting and repeating the mantra "Vincent, Vincent."[4]
He is quoted describing this action as 'a dialogue with the beginnings of modernism, where "excrement in pants" had a double meaning--both of great pleasure caused by the work of art and the notion of excrement as a symbolic materialization of the monolithic ideology that Van Gogh was placed in as its founder.'[5]
During a reading by avant-garde artist Dimitry Prigow, Brener jumped on stage shouting 'It's burning! It's burning!' while grabbing his arse in response to "Prigow's belief, that his poetry is a cold analysis".[6] Prigow subsequently accused him of being a Fascist. Ever the critic, Brener is also recorded as interrupting a reading by another Russian poet Jevgenij Jevtusenko where he stood up and repeated the phrase: 'Silence, my mother wants to sleep.'
Perhaps more controversial is his public masturbation on the diving platform of a swimming pool built during socialism on the site of a destroyed Orthodox church, an act which quite unsuprisinignly saw Brener arrested.
During the Russian war campaign in Chechniya, Brener is recorded going to Red Square in boxing get up and shouting in the direction of the Kremlin: 'Yeltsin, come out!'
It seems increasingly his performaces became more aggressive to property when for example in Ljubijana during October 1995, he performed three actions, the most controversial of which saw him smashing a baroque window in the Opera house. During the following year (1996) he damaged an installation by Gu Wenda in Stockholm and the year after brought the attack against the Malevich.
The letter writers state "he doesn't believe in a political democracy, but he does believe in a democratic art - that is, an art of individuality fighting for mental and spiritual freedom and moral progress. Political democracy is impossible because it demands total responsibility of every member of the society. Therefore, art is a good tool, which should be used for democratic self-development."[7]
1.Stedelijk visitor defaces Malevich painting"
Jacqueline Hagman
Hagman gives a more detailed account of the restoration process and an overview of the crime.
2.ALEXANDER BRENER'S $UPREMATISMUS
found on the Youth Against Internet website offers a brief account of the crime and a first hand report ( in poorly translated English) of the courst case.
3. Ibid
4. Letter of Support for Alexander Brener
Eda Cufer, Goran Dordevic;February 11.1997
Is a group signed letter of support from people with previous dealings with Brener
CONTROVERSIAL PAINTING VANDALIZED
Dalya Alberge, The London Times, September 19, 1997
Child killer painting back on display in Britain
Storey about the vandalism.
ROYAL ACADEMY EXHIBITION UNDER FIRE
THE ART BRIEF Number 52, September 17, 1997
A prescient title for a preview article dealing with the first waves of controversy over the Sensation show which would become one of the most conested and talked about shows of recent times.
Shock for shock's sake?
Steven Henry Madoff, October 4, 1999
An overview of the exhibition in New York.
Young artists making a 'Sensation' in London
CNN.com, October 26, 1997
S E N S A T I O N Young British Artists from the Saatchi Collection
Art/Not Art July 20th, 2000
