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Opinions are divided on the Russian pavilion. Sergei Popov, the Director General of the Pop/off/art Gallery, wrote on Facebook that the display in the Russian pavilion “bears no relation to contemporary art”: “Two words describe our pavilion better than any others in my opinion: bombast and substitution. The entire programme of the project is full of bombast: the Hermitage, Sokurov, Rembrandt, St Luke’s Gospel, the Academy of Arts, war, mercy, classics, darkness, videos… Substitution is a word that describes many processes in our country, and in culture more particularly. It is frightening, painful and horrifying to show the real current state and so we cover ourselves with museum classics and make them safe.” Popov called Shishkin-Hokusai’s works witty and said that they “tried to save the situation.”
Liza Savina, the founder of the Sparta Cultural Initiatives Foundation, on the contrary called the Russian pavilion “all of a piece and fairly intelligible”. In her opinion it speaks about national identity: from the 18th century Russia “did not have its own secular [cultural code]: they bought in the Flemish, the Dutch, a few Italians, French of whatever sort and started to learn to live with that. For that reason, as the basis of our identity and the main signs of the cultural code is the Hermitage collection. Over a couple of centuries, we managed to grow great Russian literature out of those signs; Christ in the wilderness as a symbol of Russian spirituality. … Strictly speaking, though, it is not the most risqué national identity. The Estonians, so they say, have lined their entire pavilion with glass vaginas.”
The Art Newspaper calls Sokurov and Shishkin-Hokusai’s exhibition a massive advert for the Hermitage, and the reporter for The Guardian admitted to running away from the Russian pavilion “unable to bear the Rembrandtian gloom, the spectre of Christ and the burning soldiers…”
