LETOV. VINYL ART COVERS

Video presentation of the exhibition "Letov. Vinyl Art Covers"

DOP Max Lukyanets

The exhibition is supposed to be an opportunity to see Egor Letov, a leader of Grazhdanskaya Oborona, and his art works as a phenomenon. He was not only a great poet and outstanding musician, but also a conceptual artist. The idea of the exhibition was to gather the art covers of vinyl records created by Letov from 1985 in order to see the phenomenon of conceptualism both in his work and culture of that time.

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The cover is almost half the album. Each cover is an extension of poetry and images. I wish I would release every single music album with another cover! There are a million options. And of course, one of the most important issues is a specific Russian humor

— Egor Letov

Many albums of Grazhdanskaya Oborona (GrOb) were re-released and were issued with another covers that were different from its original design, therefore one music album had several design options. The albums were often reissued in a limited edition, so currently only some music funs and collectors have some exclusive copies, and these records are no longer on sale.

Egor Letov was both a talented artist and collage maker, so he paid great attention to the design of the music albums of his projects such as GrOb and Communism and other ones. Egor Letov and Konstantin Ryabinov also made posters, booklets, guitars, etc.

Egor Letov was the creator of the new generation of Russian rock. It was marginal, peripheral and alternative to Moscow and Leningrad. Grazhdanskaya Oborona had reached the peak of popularity by the end of the 1980s and generated a wave of imitators and epigones. A group of poets, musicians, artists (Konstantin Ryabinov, Roman Neumoev, Oleg Sudakov, Yanka and others) gathered and adopted aesthetic and ethical principles of GrOb. Thus, the new musical and poetic movements were formed. They were Siberian punk or Siberian underground, that is comparable in some ways with conceptualism as a trend of art.

The complexity and conceptualism of the Siberian underground consisted of the contradictions existing in its basis of spirit, content and form, goals and means of achieving them. Thus, GrOb borrowed the ideas of the utopian avant-garde of the beginning of XXth century. In terms of poetics, Egor Letov and the poets of his circle used many conceptualism techniques, such as absurdism, the polysemy of the word and the ambiguity of any text. In music they used punk energy and all its cliches, often in combination with popular Soviet tunes.

Letov also referred to ready-made and collage. This technique hasn't been used to show the relativity and emptiness of any cultural stamp. It was the best way to represent his ideas. Borrowing, rethinking and using various clichés, language stamps, popular quotes and famous works of art were the main techniques of Letov as the poet and artist.

That is why Grazhdanskaya Oborona cannot be called a classic punk band. Its leader, Egor Letov, was characterized by constant search and experimentation in different musical directions. Egor Letov also was characterized by protest, rebellion and revolution. Interest to his art was increased not only due to the design of musical albums, but also to Letov as a conceptual artist.

Grazhdanskaya Oborona (also known as GrOb) was a Soviet and Russian rock band formed by Egor Letov and Konstantin Ryabinov (1964 - 2020) in Omsk, USSR, in 1984. They soon became leaders of underground Soviet and Russian music scene. The were the most cult and influential Soviet and Russian psychedelic and punk rock bands. They influenced many Soviet and, subsequently, Russian bands. From the early 1990s, the band's music began to evolve in the direction of psychedelic rock and shoegaze, and band leader Egor Letov's lyrics became more metaphysical than political.

British trip-hop band Massive Attack has covered their song "Vsyo idyot po planu " (Russian: Все идет по плану) in 2013.

1989

1988

1987

1986

1987

1985

1987

1989

1988

1989

1987

"Mousetrap", bonus video at the exhibition:

Video made by Infant Unconscious ( Detskoye Bessoznatel'noye / Russian: Детское Бессознательное), art group from Nowhere.

It was cut out of different clips and interviews of Yegor Letov.

The music and songs of GrOb got a rotation on the radio, when Egor Letov was alive. But the image of a musician gained some legitimacy in the public and cultural consciousness only in the last few years. Letov's music and poetry is appreciated by the very diverse audience, which is made up of directors, critics, artists, musicians etc. Egor Letov is a part of our culture: his poetry and songs are quoted and often used as references by cultural figures. Philologists, culturologists and art historians turn to the musician's work in articles devoted to contemporary Russian culture. In the case of Egor Letov, one should speak of a perfect, amazing and unique history in modern Russian culture.

Egor Letov is considered the most important and influential poet of contemporary Russian culture.

Egor Letov (1964 – 2008) was a Russian poet, musician, singer-songwriter, audio engineer and conceptual art painter, best known as the founder and leader of the post-punk/psychedelic rock band Grazhdanskaya Oborona

He was also the founder of the conceptual art avant-garde project Kommunizm and psychedelic rock outfit Egor i Opizdenevshie. Letov collaborated with singer-songwriter Yanka Dyagileva and other Siberian underground artists as a record engineer and producer

The exhibition featured archival recordings and interviews with Egor Letov, rare media with music recordings, including CDs, tapes, magnetic albums of 1985, as well as original vinyl covers from 1992 to 2017

I appreciate Natalia Chumakova, musician of Grazhdanskaya Oborona and wife of Egor Letov, and Khodasevich bookstore (Moscow, Russia)

Without their support, assistance and trust it would have never happened

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