Mitki's latest effort to subvert cultural norms
concentrates on those icons of intimate Russian conversation -- bunny
rabbits.
Mayor Anatoly Sobchak's attendance of the opening of Alexander and Olga Florensky's exhibition last week finally confirmed Mitki as part of the establishment.
But Mitki are not as tightly-knit now as they used to be.
"Now is a time when Mitki organize individual exhibitions," said Vladimir Shinkaryov, the group's founder, whose members now seem to be eager to prove that they all are artists in their own right.
Mitki have always been more than a group of artists; they were conceived as a "new mass youth movement like hippies or punks."
Shinkaryov's ironic book "Mitki," written and distributed through samizdat channels in 1985, described a member of the movement as a social outcast wearing a "telnik" (sailor's striped vest), smoking Belomor cigarettes and drinking cheap strong wine out of a big bottle called a "fugas" (demolition bomb).
Mitki spoke with quotes from classic Soviet films, used diminutive suffixes and "did not want to defeat anybody."
The ultimate Mityok (singular of Mitki), in both appearance and behaviour was Dmitri Shagin; the philosopher and ideologue was Shinkaryov; visual images came from Alexander Florensky, who designed almost all the Mitki output, including posters, books, and Mitki's own newspaper, "Mitki-Gazeta" -- despite the fact that they all were accomplished artists.
Mitki's non-aggressive, hedonistic lifestyle was readily accepted by some of the young people, who were sick of the Komsomol movement's organized enthusiasm and were looking for different values.
A crucial part was played by Aquarium's Boris Grebenshchikov who flirted with the idiom for a while.
A brilliant pop myth, it could not last forever, especially in the turbulent perestroika years.
By the end of the 1980s Mitki started to turn into a self-parody, which was quite evident in the quasi-documentary "Mitki in Europe," 1990.
Now Mitki are not the same as they once used to be. Some of them quit drinking, having gone through AA therapy in the US and are more interested in the their own individual works than hanging around together, trying to correspond to their once-formulated canons.
Nevertheless, they recently spent time together working on Mitki's own music album.
Called "Mitkovskaya Tishina" (Mitki's Silence) it is mostly based on music from soundtracks, with lyrics written by the artists themselves.
Grebenshchikov, as well as a couple of other domestically famed rockers, contributed some minor touches to some of the tracks on the album. A CD is expected in December, but the tape and some Mitki literature are already available from the Borey Art Galley.
