Russia and the Third Reich / On the importance of Bernhard Wolf’s socialisation in Moscow for his artistic work
Herwig G. Höller

Since the 1960s, those responsible for Styrian cultural policy had almost made a maxim of “overcoming the bulwark” and artistic experimentation – a fact frequently illustrated in particular by the trinational “Trigon” (1963–1991) and the steirischer herbst festival (1968–). In this favourable climate, the art scene in Graz was able to assume a minor, even international, pioneering role despite its limited size. Particularly with regard to art from the Soviet Union, the city pulled off a number of scoops in the late eighties that went down in Russian art history. Peter Pakesch, for example, the director of Grazer Kunstverein at that time, brought the Muscovite conceptual artist Ilya Kabakov to Graz in 1987: it was Kabakov’s first trip to the West and the start of a brilliant international career. In 1988, the Kunstverein invited Constantin Zvevdochetov and German Vinogradov, 1989 saw the zany gigantic show “Russian mind” in the “Wall” building, and a large-scale project called “The Wall” took place at the Institute of Architecture at Graz University of Technology in 1990.

Although Bernhard Wolf – like his fellow artists in Graz – had followed most of these projects very attentively, he really only came to Russian art through the steirischer herbst festival in 1991: Pakesch had invited the Muscovite underground artist Aleksandr Liashenko alias Petliura to join the high-profile group show “Körper und Körper” (featuring Herbert Brandl, Mirosław Bałka, Franz West, and others), hiring Wolf as Liashenko’s assistant. Petliura presented one of his clothing installations in the Gothic hall of the Stadtmuseum, focusing on clichés about Austria by performing as a “Russian Mozart”.

Meeting, befriending and working with Petliura and his colleagues would soon make itself noticeable in the work of the budding artist from Graz. Many subjects which Wolf would later deal with can also be seen in the context of and as an interaction with the Russian art scene. This applies not only to exchange projects with an obvious reference to Russia, but also to projects which supposedly refer solely to Austria. This is true even of a thesis written at the Faculty of Law at Graz University dealing with the freedom of art and its limits. Although formally Wolf was examining the legal situation in Austria – the question under scrutiny was far more topical in Russia in the early nineties than in Austria – it was at this time that actionist varieties of Muscovite Radicalism, which by no means spared Russian criminal law, reached their pinnacle. In 1992 and 1994, the artist from Graz stayed for a prolonged period in Petliura’s community in Moscow’s Petrovsky Bulvar, visibly imbibing the atmosphere of the time.

This influence of Moscow is, however, also reflected in an artistic project which at first glance appears equally Austrian. Since the mid-nineties, the artist had been examining the totalitarian legacy of the Third Reich. As the Republic celebrated fifty years since the end of the War in 1995, he grew a Hitler moustache for one month. But that was not all: the artist defamiliarised historical subjects, commenting disrespectfully on photographs from the Third Reich, and having a formally unassuming portrait taken, moustache and all, as an “unknown soldier”. The collected works were finally compiled in the booklet called “Die wahre Geschichte des Dritten Reichs” (The true story of the Third Reich), published in a small edition by the artist himself. The miniatures were a source of provocation – the “Ocean of emotions” image, in which numbered dots could be joined together to form a swastika, even gave rise to the threat of charges.

This species of humour was without doubt frowned upon by the Austrian mainstream at that time. Germany, too, whose mass culture is known to exert a substantial influence on Austria, only began to see vigorous humorous attacks on the Third Reich at the turn of the millennium. Prime examples include Walter Moers’s initially controversial comic series “Adolf, die Nazi-Sau” (Adolf, the Nazi Pig) (1998–2006) or Dani Levy’s film parody “Mein Führer – Die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler” (My Führer – The Really Truest Truth about Adolf Hitler) (2007).

Wolf’s approach made perfect sense from a Moscow perspective: he was engaged in a practice of doing down authorities which had become an important artistic technique in nineties’ Russia. The emotionalism of his reaction to the Nazi past, then still very palpable in the one-time “City of the Popular Uprising”, is specifically reminiscent of the caricature-style pictures of Muscovite artist Constantin Zvevdochetov. While visiting Graz in 1988, the latter, by his own account, had observed genuine die-hard Nazis, later mocking the Nazi regime and its more humdrum moments in various works. But Petliura and co. will have inspired Wolf, too: Aleksandr Liashenko’s community, with its collective artistic manifestations, was characterised by a trashy, carnivalesque reinterpretation of many values and an anarchic handling of clichés. Petliura’s very first trip to Graz had already shown that even Austria’s icon Mozart could be no “sacred” exception in this respect. Inevitably, the same had to go for other “Austria” icons such as Hitler and Schwarzenegger. To the latter, Wolf’s old acquaintance Aristarch Chernyshov together with Vladislav Jefimov erected a provocative virtual memorial in a “Terminator monument project” in 2002.

But back to the early nineties, which seem of key importance with regard to Wolf’s artistic socialisation. While millions of Russians recall this time as one of social disaster, for artists it held fascinating opportunities in store: against the backdrop of a post-Soviet clean slate, fundamental societal mechanisms became more visible than in the comparably stable Western European societies, and the time of upheaval created opportunities for artistic interventions which, in addition, often attracted a great deal of attention. This was particularly true of public space. With the end of the Soviet Union, officious poster propaganda had vanished, while “capitalist” product and brand advertising – already practised for decades in the countries of the West – was still in its infancy. This kind of advertising in public space, that slowly began to manifest itself on the face of Russian metropolises in 1993/94, was to begin with extremely controversial among the population: one anecdote from St Petersburg recalls that initial efforts by the municipal underground railway company to allow advertising at stops had to be aborted following public protest, only succeeding on second attempt.

Working on what was in a sense virgin terrain was extremely appealing to artists. Even before the arrival of blanket commercialisation, two projects in Moscow and St Petersburg, in which Wolf was involved, presented poster works in public space in 1994. In the St Petersburg project, “Ideology and Communication”, anonymous opposition became apparent, with Wolf’s small-format posters soon being destroyed. In Moscow, on the other hand, the artist Aristarch Chernychov had cooperated from the outset with an outdoor advertising company on the “Art belongs to the people” project curated by him, with this company responsible for pasting the artistic posters created by two dozen artists. The outdoor advertising company very likely regarded this art as an inexpensive test run for increasingly densely packed commercial use of its advertising space, which was still fiercely criticised by the public at the time.

But the pictorial language of Wolf’s graphical work can also be interpreted as a reaction to the empty space which was to be filled at that time. And the title of Chernyshov’s project, once a call for the “popularity” of art in the Soviet Union, can be seen as almost paradigmatic for his approach to art. “Art belongs to the people” were the words once spoken by Lenin to the German communist Clara Zetkin in 1920: “It must have its deepest roots in the broad mass of workers. It must be understood and loved by them.” Not only does Wolf’s commitment in public space testify to the fact that he is interested in a dialogue with as many viewers as possible. Simple pictograms which are, or at least might be, borrowed from popular culture appeal to the viewer on familiar ground. In contrast, the added slogans, found particularly on Wolf’s posters, refuse to serve as conventional captions.

But the Petrovsky Bulvar rubbed off on Wolf particularly as a participant and organiser of larger-scale art actions. Not only did he exhibit together with the legendary Pani Bronya (1924–2004), an impoverished pensioner transformed by Petliura into a star of the art world. The Graz-based artist group FOND, which Wolf had been a member of since the early nineties, brought colourful Muscovite art life to Graz on several occasions – culminating at the 1996 steirischer herbst festival when FOND joined forces with artists from Moscow to produce a major FONDweltSCHAU (FONDworldSHOW) with an Austrian revue. Wolf’s flat back then in Morellenfeldgasse had practically morphed into the Petrovsky Bulvar for several weeks, with a productive exchange between two very different art scenes leaving lasting traces at least since then. Traces which have remained unmistakable in Wolf’s art ever since.

Herwig G. Höller, freelance journalist and slavicist, lives in Moscow and Graz