Art and the censor

Russia! magazine cover of kissing cosmonauts

Censorship tends to generate stacks of publicity, as the Poles are discovering over their Tellytubby scare, and having your work attacked is just the thing for an up-and-coming artist.

Now, there’s a pastiche of ‘An Era of Mercy’ in Russia!, a US magazine . The original photograph (below) – of two Russian policemen kissing in a birch forest – drew opprobrium from politicians when it was shown in Moscow’s Art4.ru gallery. It shot the Blue Noses Group to fame last autumn. The photograph is called ‘An Epoch of Clemency’ and the Blue Noses Group is made up of Viacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov from Siberia. They were first shown by the Marat Guelman Gallery in Moscow.

The image was pulled from an exhibition of Russian art in Paris, leading the New York Times to run an article entitled ‘ Putin’s last realm to conquer: Russian culture‘.

See the launch cover for Esquire in Moscow.

The glories of Elle in Russia.