The Russian painter, who died a few days ago in Berlin, had said that the image with Brezhnev and Honecker reproduced on the remains of the Wall was born in his Moscow art workshop in the 1980s, at the time of the clandestine exhibitions of the authors of the samizdat. In 2014 he explained that it was not just a symbol of a world of the past; on the contrary, that world was returning and that is why the image was once again so topical.
Moscow () – On the night of August 15, due to complications from Covid, Russian painter Dmitry Vrubel died in Berlin at the age of 62. He is the author of the famous scene of the kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker reproduced on one of the walls that remained standing after the collapse of the Berlin Wall, a symbol of the end of an era but also a prophecy of new embraces between the powerful who seek to divide the world. The painting was titled “Lord, help me to survive in the midst of this deadly love!”.
The desire expressed by Vrubel reflected the will to free itself forever from the suffocating embrace of Soviet imperialism. And, with the reunification of the two Germanys, he pointed to the rediscovery of a people’s identity founded on the fraternity of a new Europe, made up of independent and sovereign nations united in the defense of rights and freedoms. That dream seemed to come true, until the kiss of the powerful once again threatened and destroyed what had been created in the last thirty years.
In 2014, 25 years after the fall of the Wall, Vrubel was invited to a reception in his honor, organized by the German embassy in Moscow. Subsequently, another project by the Russian painter was presented, together with his colleague and life partner, the artist Viktoria Timofeeva. After living for several years in Berlin, the two planned to transform the walls of the German capital into a series of grandiose symbolic paintings, bearing witness to the fragility of the contemporary world, always in constant change. The artist himself explained that he realized that the “Kiss” was not only the symbol of a past world, since it was recovering its present.
That year, a scandal broke out in Kazakhstan over an advertising campaign depicting a copy of Vrubel’s “Kiss”, embracing Russian President Putin and Kazakh composer Kurmangazy, a 19th-century musician who had been the symbol of the Asian uprisings against the occupations of Imperial Russia. The image was condemned at the time for “cynicism and pornography”, and those responsible for its dissemination had to pay a fine of one million dollars. But the reality is that the kisses of the powerful have multiplied in recent years, to the point of portraying Putin in an embrace with Trump, Xi Jinping or other allies and possible rivals.
The “deadly kiss” has become a universal symbol, an image of pop art to describe the difficulty involved in recomposing the destinies of peoples. And it turns out more shocking and evocative than ever in the year of the great conflict between the “brothers” of Russia and Ukraine, which affects the peoples of Europe and Asia. Both gay culture and its opponents appeal to this image, the veteran communist ideal and its ultraliberal antipodes, in an ambiguity worthy of a “Mona Lisa”, the contemporary Mona Lisa, as the author himself acknowledged, confessing on several occasions that he never imagined having created something so universal.
In a conversation he had with a friend of his, the writer Svetlana Konegen, Vrubel recounted that the “Kiss” was born in his “clandestine” art workshop in Moscow in the 1980s, at the time of the clandestine exhibitions of the authors of the samizdat in the Brezhnev era. The painter then moved to Berlin, taking only the original painting that portrayed the two dictators and, according to him, “all the naive hopes of young Muscovite artists, who dreamed of opening the borders, and we began to make them come true.” “. Another Russian émigré, the translator and art critic Aleksandr Brodovsky, then urged Vrubel to reproduce his Kiss on the Wall painting.
The Russian avant-gardes of the early 20th century – from Kandinsky and Malevich, who founded the Bauhaus in Berlin, to the Belarusian Chagall – inspired abstractionism in contemporary art. The Russian dissidents who emigrated to Germany, like Vrubel and his friends, have left us a symbolism of new fraternities to cultivate, or perhaps of new Walls to tear down, so as not to dissipate their heritage.
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