Wrestling

Vera Donskaya-Khilko's Wrestling, 2011

Wrestling, by Russian artist Vera Donskaya-Khilko, was seizedlast Monday, by the police in St Petersburg Russia.

The painting had been hanging in Toshka G (G Spot), Russian businessman Aleksandr Donskoi’s museum and sex shop. 
Four more paintings were seized during the police raid. 
The artist is said to have been very surprised by the raid since the painting dates from 2011 and is has been widely reproduced since then.  Above all, the seized painting is but a copy of the original, which is at the museum’s Moscow branch.

The painting depicts Vladimir Putin and Barack Obama playing “who has the biggest?” in an exponential fight. Apart from the more obvious phallic power competition, the painting is filled with symbols taken from Old Slavic tales of spirituality and exorcism as well as modern ones: Terrorism, is represented by Zurab Tsereteli ‘s “Tear of Grief” behind Obama - the monument was Russia’s official gift to the US as a memorial for the victims of 9/11-;   Liberty, or  cracks in liberty , as the statue of liberty appears behind Obama through the crack of the “Tear of Grief”; Money, symbolized by scrotum and testicles in more ancient times shows an Obama well endowed with a staff of dollar bills and liberty bells, Natural Resources, represented by the birch , the gas and gas canisters by Putin. Ever-present China is not forgotten and appears in the form of the multi-coloured dragons.

A group of Orthodox missionaries attacked Donskoi’s Erotic Museum in Moscow last year.

The four other paintings seized by the police were bu the artist Konstantin Altunin, who has since then fled St Petersburg while Tatyana Titova was detained by the police.  

The incident occurred last September in an effort by the Russian authorities to sweep the country of any art deemed controversial by the government, ahead of the G20 Summit in St Petersburg.

Alexandra David