The ironic painting I Love Jules Verne’s America dates to the period of his close friendship and cooperation with the art group World Champions. At that time the artists shared a studio and also conceived and performed joint actions which were absurd and spontaneous. They made fun of the intellectual practices of the older generation of Moscow Conceptualists and of Soviet state institutions that used outdated rituals and language.
I Love Jules Verne’s America was acquired from the studio by collector Pierre Brochet. The inscription which is the title of the painting is a categorical criticism of the contemporary United States and states that the artist considers nineteenth‑century America a much more attractive place than the capitalist version of the Ronald Reagan years. The small Polaroid at the center of the painting is a distorted portrait of Gor Chahal in a park. In the late 1980s, the artist frequently experimented with instant photography and the idea of lack of subjectivity, which may be precursors of his later interest in automated techniques.
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