Artists from the Masoch Fund conducted something akin to the Stanford experiment in the gallery; they declared dictators and maniacs as artists; they commented on art from space. They spoke harshly and straightforwardly about the most painful and difficult topics, no matter how much it annoyed the audience who did not want to see their works. Tetyana Zhmurko talks about the creativity of Lviv’s scandalists.
The Masoch Fund is associated with scandal by many: the works of these artists were removed from exhibitions, shows were closed, or simply refused to be held. Scandal, as the most effective way to force society to react, is largely a component of the Masochs’ artistic method, often embedded in the very fabric of the work. Provocation, pressure on society’s sore spots — the main strategies of the Masoch Fund, which resonated well with the 1990s — a time of searching for new boundaries of the permissible.
The association appeared in Lviv in 1991, the main participants being artists Ihor Dyurych and Ihor Podolchak; co-organizer — director Roman Viktyuk. The group took the name of the famous writer Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, who was born in Lviv but essentially had nothing in common with them. The name rather outlined the cultural area associated with the writer, as well as the artists themselves. Moreover, Masoch’s name is associated with the “marginal zones” of culture and society — zones where, according to the artists, interesting events took place and art was created.
Art in a void
The artists announced themselves with a stunning action “Art in Space” (1993), in which they showed video documentation of Ihor Podolchak’s personal exhibition of etchings on the orbital station “Mir.” Being in open space in a state of weightlessness, the cosmonauts commented on the works, essentially taking on the role of performers. The project questioned the concept of “cultural context,” showing the possibility of a work existing outside the usual coordinate system — with the viewer, gallery, curators. At the same time, it gives an idea of the unlimited possibilities of the early 1990s, when the commercial system had not yet formed and the work truly “levitated” in “empty” space.
The standard of art trolling can be considered the postal actions of the Masoch Fund: “Happy Victory Day, Mr. Müller,” during which the artists sent Victory Day greetings to all people with the most popular surname in Germany — Müller; or “Telegram of condolences to the Korean people on the death of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.” The artists confronted society with difficult, unspoken, often taboo topics, roughly pushing for a rethinking of history.
The victim’s obligation
The group’s activity resonates with the principle of “aesthetics of interaction” — a term introduced by French art historian and curator Nicolas Bourriaud in the early 1990s. According to it, the starting point for art is human relationships, and the work becomes the result of interaction with the audience. The Masoch Fund often “forced” viewers to become involuntary performers of its actions, placing them in uncomfortable situations that require a choice.
In “The Last Jewish Pogrom” — one of the most provocative projects of the mid-1990s — the artists did not leave the audience the right to be passive participants. They divided everyone who came to the exhibition into two groups, forcing each to choose the role of victim or pogromist and behave accordingly during the project. Each was given a pogromist’s memo or a victim’s obligation, which they had to sign. The “victims” were not allowed to leave the exhibition space, for example, to go to the toilet, and had to unconditionally obey the pogromists. The pogromists could move freely, drink alcohol, and behave outside moral norms and rules. Three banners imitating granite tombstones were installed at the exhibition: one without inscriptions, another with the names of the victims, and the third with a swastika painted over the names. These slabs corresponded to the stages of the pogrom’s development: anticipation, the pogrom itself, the immortalization of the victims’ memory.
In the text for the action, the artists wrote: “The pogrom is the main structural element of Jewish history throughout the entire period of the absence of Jewish statehood. Thanks to pogroms, Jews managed to develop a national character that allowed them to seize dominant positions and reproduce Israel. One can speak of the POGROM as positive selection compared to war — negative selection.” By transferring the pogrom from the historical space into the sphere of art, the artists thereby seemed to “close” this topic.
The harshness and cold-bloodedness, detachment, straightforwardness of the artists caused outrage and misunderstanding. In 1995, “The Last Jewish Pogrom” became the reason for the closure of the entire exhibition “Kyiv Art Meeting,” which took place at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv.
People as material
In 2001, the artists created their largest and most provocative project “The Best Artists of the 20th Century.” Working with the main thesis of contemporary art proclaimed by Joseph Beuys — “everyone can be an artist” — Ihor Dyurych and Ihor Podolchak declared politicians, terrorists, sexual maniacs whose activities horrified and at the same time fascinated as the best artists of the 20th century. Dictators Adolf Hitler, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, and Kim Il Sung; serial killers Albert DeSalvo and Jeffrey Dahmer; scientist Sigmund Freud; war criminals Karl and Ilse Koch; bandits Bonnie and Clyde; gangster Al Capone; pedophile and murderer Marc Dutroux and others acted as artists for whom humanity was working material. For each “artist,” a body of works and a brand under which goods were released were developed.
Photos of bloody crimes — “works” of Al Capone — or sparrows dying in convulsions — “project” of Mao Zedong — horrified and at the same time captivated the gaze. The aestheticization of violence revealed a new paradigm of the time, largely anticipating the main event of 2001 — the explosion of the Twin Towers in New York. This terrorist act would rivet millions of people to television screens; later art critic Achille Bonito Oliva would call it “bin Laden’s ‘performance.’”
In 2001, the project “The Best Artists of the 20th Century” was selected to participate in the first Venice Biennale of contemporary art since Ukraine’s independence. After all procedures and competitions, the project was scandalously removed, and since then it has never been shown in Ukraine.
The Masoch Fund was and remains a unique artistic phenomenon, the emergence of which in the “pictorial,” traditionally thinking art Ukraine causes surprise. The activity of the Masochs, which arose against the backdrop of the collapse of the USSR and the resulting uncertainty about the future, was at the same time consonant with international processes.
Photos provided by Ihor Podolchak