Misplaced Pages

Alexander Brener

Article snapshot taken from Wikipedia with creative commons attribution-sharealike license. Give it a read and then ask your questions in the chat. We can research this topic together.
Russian-Jewish performance artist and activist
This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately from the article and its talk page, especially if potentially libelous.
Find sources: "Alexander Brener" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (October 2008) (Learn how and when to remove this message)
Alexander Brener
Born1957
Alma-Ata, Kazak ASSR, Soviet Union
EducationKazakh National Pedagogic University (named after Abay)
Known forPerformance art, literature art-activism
MovementMoscow Actionism, Neoism, Actionism

Alexander Davidovich Brener (Russian: Александр Бренер) (born 1957, in Alma-Ata, Kazak ASSR, Soviet Union), is a Russian performance artist and a self-described political activist. He is considered one of the main figures of Moscow Actionism along with Oleg Kulik.

Work

Brener's performances of note include defecating in front of a painting by Vincent van Gogh at the Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, having sex in front of the Monument to Alexander Pushkin (Rostov-on-Don), and vandalizing art works by other artists.

He was jailed in 1997 for painting a green dollar sign on Kazimir Malevich's painting Suprematisme. In the court case Brener said in his defense:

The cross is a symbol of suffering, the dollar sign a symbol of trade and merchandise. On humanitarian grounds are the ideas of Jesus Christ of higher significance than those of the money. What I did was not against the painting. I view my act as a dialogue with Malevich.

Giancarlo Politi, the editor of Flash Art, resolutely defended Brener from the pages of his magazine, stirring controversy and campaigning for his acquittal. Brener was sentenced to five months in prison, where he wrote the essay Obossani Pistolet. In the text he explains his beliefs and summarizes his actions. In 2000 Brener disrupted the press conference of Manifesta 3 in Ljubljana by spraying slogans on the presentation screen and handing out leaflets stating: "Demolish neo-liberalist multicultural art system now!" Bodyguards came and dragged Brener out of the hall. He was later arrested by Slovenian secret police in the streets. In 2003 Brener vandalized the work of Swiss-Italian artist Gianni Motti during the opening of Motti's exhibition "Turnover" at Artra Gallery in Milan.

Brener co-wrote a number of books together with Austrian artist and critic Barbara Schurz, including Bukaka spat Here, Tattoos auf Gefängnissen, Anti Technologies of Resistance and The Art of Destruction.

Brener is mentioned in passing in Stewart Home's 2007 novel Memphis Underground.

An artwork by the art collective IOCOSE is dedicated to Brener.

Books

See also

References

  1. "Oleg Kulik |".
  2. Fineman, Mia (2004-12-12). "Art Attacks". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2020-05-20.
  3. The Independent - Art Attacks
  4. Sokolov, Alexander (1997-06-01). "ALEXANDER BRENE Alexander Sokolov" (PDF). wotan.dds.nl. Retrieved 2023-04-12.
  5. "RebelArt - Surfing with Alexander Brener". Archived from the original on 2011-03-08. Retrieved 2012-02-21.

External links


Stub icon

This Russian artist-related article is a stub. You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it.

Categories: