leadership when its chief art director was caught taking kickbacks from
artists. His replacement decided to use new artists. Bokser was the first of
the newcomers, then, one by one, came his friends. Nevertheless, having an
art director who was sympathetic to expressive and symbolic art—surreal,
allegorical imagery with hidden references and meanings—did not
immediately change the way things were done. “It was very difficult in the
beginning because Reklamfilm had to get permission to print each poster
from the department of film distribution, which demanded that everything
be conventional.” Ironically, the films did not have to sell or make money,
so in any other context more freedom would have been possible.
Bokser’s breakthrough came when an editor at Reklama Cine did
what Bokser referred to as “a very strange thing” by printing a small
quantity of one of his formerly prohibited posters. The image for Luis
Buñuel’s The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie,showing a slice of salami in
the shape of a heart, was exhibited both in- and outside of the USSR—the
first time since the constructivist art of the 1920 s that such a symbolic
treatment had replaced the official Russian pedantic representation. The
public response was so positive that it encouraged a shift in the policy of
the film distribution department. As if by waving a magic wand, a new
style of conceptual film posters, which owed more to the Polish tradition of
illustrative poster art than to Russia’s constructivist legacy, were produced at
prodigious rates. Each of the regular Reklamfilm artists produced between
twenty and thirty posters annually. For a few years, the posters were printed
in quantities that exceeded one hundred thousand and could be seen
everywhere, providing a festive atmosphere to the otherwise drab Soviet
cityscapes.
Bokser was not, however, content just to do film posters. He
turned to social art that rejected the style known as socialist realism, which
he argued was really “socialist romanticism.” His satiric jabs at the Soviet
establishment, especially the failings of perestroika, became well known. “I
was skeptical about perestroika almost from the beginning,” he explained at
the time. “It quickly became merely a new slogan. Of course, it’s better than
Stalinism.” Indeed under Gorbachev the promised freedoms were rationed;
the majority of Bokser’s social commentaries were prohibited from being
printed by the official publishing house and in many instances could not
even be shown in exhibitions. Leaders of the Artists Union, to which
Bokser belonged, would not allow certain critical representations of Lenin
and, especially, Gorbachev to hang since they feared losing their positions.
“In our country it is normal,” he said. “I do not feel offended by these
people. I can understand the pressures brought to bear.” Yet Bokser
continued to do unpublished critical works for a small coterie of friends.
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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