By Ekaterina Askarina.
In the middle of 1990-s, amid the ruins of the Soviet system, pepped up by the breeze of unlimited freedom, two men set out to build up a New Russian Paradise. Two decades later they ascended to the Olympus of the most expensive living contemporary Russian artists, with record prices at Sotheby’s and Philips de Pury. The legendary Moscow duo, Vladimir Dubossarsky (°1964) and Alexander Vinogradov (°1963) are called ‘artists of the generation’.
No coincidence, their works appear on the covers of books by postmodernist writer Victor Pelevin, the author of the cult novel ‘Generation P’, which describes the formation of new capitalist businessmen, former members of Komsomol, who would rule the new state. ‘P’ stands in the title for ‘Pepsi’, the symbol of desired Western world’s material happiness, absorbed, like by a sponge, by those, who would form the country’s first business, political and media elite.