Lecture by Alexandra Kharitonova: “The Life of Remarkable Monroes in the Works of Vladislav Yuryevich Mamyshеv"

Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe is one of the brightest, most playful, and at the same time most tragic figures of Russian art in the 1990s–2000s. A painter, performance artist, and master of transformation, parody, and absurdly humorous yet radical artistic gestures, he turned his own body into a tool for ironic dissection of mass culture, media imagery, memory, and even power itself. His works balance between parody and truth, street theater and personal mythology.

In this lecture, we will discuss the phenomenon of Mamyshev-Monroe in the context of post-Soviet culture, the St. Petersburg underground, and global contemporary art. We will explore how the image of Marilyn became a key to Mamyshev’s artistic strategy, his legendary transformations into politicians, film stars, historical figures, and pop culture icons, as well as his final scratched works created in Bali, where the artist died in 2013.

We will examine Mamyshev-Monroe’s early works and his Leningrad performances, his involvement in the art scenes of St. Petersburg and Moscow, his connections with Timur Novikov and the New Academy, and the culture of raves, camp, and post-Soviet glamour. Special attention will be given to his famous photo series and video works, in which the artist adopts dozens of personas—from Marlene Dietrich and Lyubov Orlova to the Pope and Hitler—turning art into an endless theater of identities.

The lecture will also address themes of carnival and character in post-Soviet art. We will discuss why Mamyshev-Monroe is perceived today not only as a legendary figure of his era, but also as an artist who strikingly anticipated and dissected the cult of images and the media construction of identity, which has today become a key marker of social success.

Alexandra Kharitonova is an art critic, expert in contemporary art, curator, columnist, and a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA).

The lecture will be held in Russian.