We talk with Alexander Melamid, the most famous Soviet-American artist of his generation. He moved to NYC in late 1970s after being an underground artist in Moscow for a decade — part of the creative duo Komar & Melamid.

He was a success in the NY art world overnight and knew Warhol and everyone who is anyone in the art scene back in the day. Since then he’s lost his optimistic naivete about art but has kept his High Priest of the Art Church status and has been trying to destroy the art world from within — denouncing it, calling modern art senile, and saying artists are welfare queens.

He believes it’s not money that corrupted art — it’s the artist who wanted money, and got it. His advice to young artists is to get the hell out of the profession and he suggests creating reeducation camps for them to become plumbers.

Alexander is full of great one liners — “hubris is the definition of our profession,” “trump is the artist in chief”…

Enjoy the show.

—Evgenia

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