Artist Without Borders: Wall Breaker’s Fate
For the past five years, Dmitry Vrubel, the author of the legendary “Brotherly Kiss” on the Berlin Wall, which has become a symbol of the end of the Cold War, has hardly left the house. Except to walk the dog. He lived more in the virtual world, where he built a museum accessible to everyone and taught young artists about VR technologies. And yet the real world got to him. At the height of the pandemic, Dmitry had already suffered from covid, he was afraid of getting infected again, but despite all the precautions, two years later he fell ill again. He celebrated his 62nd birthday on July 14 in the hospital by posting a smiling selfie in an oxygen mask. And fell into a coma. For exactly a month, the doctors fought for Vrubel’s life, but could not do anything. The universe played a fatal joke on the author of the iconic image: for him, a great voyage in art began with the end of one cold war, and the end of his life fell at the beginning of another.
Some call Dmitry Vrubel the artist of one picture, but this is not so. Vrubel was before the “Brotherly Kiss” and after. “Before” he was a notable avant-garde artist: in 1987 he took part in the first exhibition of the Avant-Garde Club (KLAVA), from 1986-1996 he organized the Kvart-Art Gallery in his apartment – one of the iconic points of underground art. After The Kiss, Vrubel did different things, but the main thing was the development of the virtual space, where the artist built his “cloud” gallery for everyone. However, the story with this work has become really phenomenal. Graffiti hit the pulse of time and was imprinted in the collective unconscious as an image of the destruction of barriers – an open world. One day Dmitry Vrubel woke up famous – it happened in 1990.
Since January 1990, 118 artists from 21 countries have painted over the 1316 meters of the Berlin Wall on the east side – this is the longest art gallery in the world. The gray wall – from the main railway station to the Oberbaumbrücke – has been turned into a vibrant exhibition illustrating the history of a quarter of a century of separation. And the most popular among the many graffiti was a wall painting by Dmitry Vrubel, which depicts a savory kiss between Brezhnev and Honecker, copied from a 1979 photograph of Barbara Klemm banned in the USSR. Vrubel’s work was talked about even before the drawing was finished, and since then he has remained the most famous in the East Side Gallery (Eastside Gallery). “God! Help me survive among this mortal love,” the artist wrote under the graffiti.
The idea to paint a forbidden photo came to Dmitry back in Moscow. He told about it to Alexander Brodovsky, who worked as a guide-interpreter in the GDR. It was he who came up with the idea to make a monument on the east side and it was not easy. “Such things could still be imprisoned, Soviet underground artists then could exhibit only in West Berlin,” the artist recalled at that moment. By the way, Brodovsky also invited Dmitry Alexandrovich Prigov to paint his famous eye on the Berlin Wall, but something didn’t work out. But the work of Vrubel turned out. And the Berlin Wall, which separated people for more than a quarter of a century, became a symbol of their unification, and his “Brotherly Kiss” – its main work.
Over time, the East Side Gallery lost its former appearance: an inscription like “Vasya was here” appeared on top, tourists chipped off pieces from the wall as a souvenir, the colors faded. In 2009, the open-air gallery was decided to be restored. The old “Brotherly Kiss” was erased. Dmitry Vrubel agreed to write a replica of the work, but it differs from the first one – it is more realistic and drawn. 2009, like in 1990, became a milestone for Vrubel. Prior to that, Dmitry and his wife and co-author Victoria Timofeeva (together since 1995) lived between Russia and Berlin. But then they finally moved to Berlin, where in the same 2009 a personal exhibition of Vrubel and Timofeeva was held at the Museum of Modern Art in Berlin. However, at the same time in Perm they showed the exhibition “The Evangelical Project”, which reflected, according to Boris Groys, “the paradox of modern faith.” The Gospel of Vrubel & Timofeeva, contrary to the meaning of this word (good news), did not tell the reader anything good: God is dead, his apostles are martyred, the general picture of the world is terrible, pre-apocalyptic…
Vrubel knew how to be sharp and ironic. They say that real art cannot be momentary, it remains in eternity only if it is multi-layered and subtly comprehends immortal themes. However, there is no escape from the moment, important works are often born in a historical context. Such is the vicious circle. In this sense, the work of Dmitry Vrubel is indicative: many of his works were a reaction to specific events and news, which the artist closely followed, but turned out to be wider and more newsworthy. In the technically realistic, anthropomorphic painting of Vrubel, one feels a surrealistic overtone, on the verge of science fiction.
However, in recent years, Vrubel has been more fascinated by virtual art. He created a VR museum where you can travel through the halls and study in detail classical masterpieces and contemporary art. At the same time, the artist taught young artists, taught them to build their own VR worlds. Among his students there are people with disabilities, and for them this opportunity to engage in creativity without barriers is especially important.
“VR is a real, already working technology,” Dmitry told MK at the height of the pandemic. – In the future, it will somehow change and it will not just be VR glasses, but holograms or museums made on a 3D printer … We do not know the future, but it is clear that people will gain access to the cultural riches of civilization through modern technologies, first of all , VR. It’s a very exciting time for VR artists. Our virtual museum is constantly updated (updated – M.M.), new rooms appear. The very idea of a home museum coincides with the times of my youth – the 70-80s, when they came to visit someone and looked at something from our home albums with paintings, for example, by Rembrandt. Everyone can now have such a home album, but not on paper, but virtual, where they are in natural size with perfect lighting and excellent resolution. And this is a breakthrough of the cultural blockade and isolation in which most of humanity is.
So Dmitry Vrubel remains in history not only as the author of the image of the collapse of barriers in the real world, but as a pioneer of the virtual world.