Photo-manipulations from global politics raise a smile and perhaps a few hackles

Political parodist Andrei Budayev applies modern figures to collages of famous artworks

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By Irina Vähäsarja in Savonlinna
     
      A Vladimir Putin dressed in tight lycra cycling short sprints through a typical Finnish pine and spruce forest with a woman riding on his shoulders.
      Puffing along behind him are joggers George W. Bush and former Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, each with a woman perched on their shoulders.
      A tracksuited Tarja Halonen waves the men in the direction of the correct route, while Tony Blair attempts to squeeze pass Putin on the outside.
     
In essence, what we are looking at is a kind of celebrity political wife-carrying contest - and at the same time an example of the photo-manipulative art of Russian Andrei Budayev.
      This and other examples of Budayev’s imagination are currently on display in an extensive exhibition at the Savonlinna Provincial Museum.
      The show was brought to the city in Eastern Finland by the Russian cultural promoter Mihail Abramov, who has a summer villa in nearby Kerimäki.
      Budayev, who was born in Moscow in 1963, has gained a good deal of publicity and notoriety in Russia for his computer-manipulated photo-collages, in which he blends figures from the modern political scene with historical paintings and a variety of landscapes.
     
The result is a series of delightfully absurd vignettes: for instance a wedding scene with the bride and groom at the altar being German chancellors Gerhard Schroder and Angela Merkel, the pastor blessing their union being George W. Bush, and with a cast of European political leaders looking on as wedding guests.
      Many of the collages, on paper and on canvas, are deliberatiely provocative and "in your face", but this has not prevented them from being accepted by the Russian politicians who have been lampooned in them.
      "Putin, too, has seen the pictures, and apparently he grinned at them", says Irmeli Soininen, the museum’s research associate.
     
Aside from the political juxtapositions the artist presents, the collages leave the viewer astonished at the uncanny way in which Budayev has managed to find just the right facial expressions to put on his characters.
      "He has a vast collection of photographs of politicians. And some of the pictures he has used have been acquired from Moscow newspapers", explains Soininen.
     
Budayev studied political and commercial poster design at the Moscow State University, and this background is very much in evidence in his collages.
      Many of Budayev’s images will open up properly only to someone who knows the faces of the Russian political and business elite.
      However, as a gesture in the opposite direction the artist has included in this exhibition - his first Finnish show - a series of new works that feature familiar Finnish politicians given the same treatment.
     
By way of one example, he has taken Gunnar Berndtson’s iconic painting from 1893 entitled Kesä (“Summer”, see linked image of the original from Turku Art Museum).
      Budayev has inserted a familiar news agency image of a shirtless Vladimir Putin, this time sitting with a rod and line in a small boat, while a headscarfed Tarja Halonen watches the fisherman carefully from a wooden jetty.
     
     
Andrei Budayev’s photo-collages are on display at the Savonlinna Provincial Museum in Riihisaari, Savonlinna until January 27th. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 11:00-17:00.
     
     
Helsingin Sanomat / First published in print 4.1.2008


Links:
  Turku Art Museum: Gunnar Berndtson: Kesä, 1893
  Ilya Repin: Barge Haulers on the Volga, 1870-73

IRINA VÄHÄSARJA / Helsingin Sanomat
irina.vahasarja@hs.fi