Vitaly Komar and his partner, Alexander Melamid, are possibly the best known dissident artists of the postwar USSR and are among the world's most celebrated and iconoclastic artists today. Here Komar examines artistic images of the two most mythologized "founding fathers" of the US and the USSR, Washington and Lenin.

With their sharp eyes for irony and the absurd, Komar and Melamid raise fascinating issues of political iconography, popular representations, and national memory. For a sample of their work, visit ?America?s Most Wanted Paintings on the Web? which utilizes marketing research to examine the notions of ?true? people?s art in fourteen different countries.

Sponsored by: Russian and East European Center

In conjunction with: Art History Program, College of Fine and Applied Arts, Continuing Education in International Affairs, Department of History, Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Department of Sociology, Drobny Program for the Study of Jewish Culture and Society, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, International Programs and Studies, Krannert Art Museum, Lorado Taft Lecture Fund, Painting Program, Program in Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security (ACDIS), Program in Comparative Literature, Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory, School of Art and Design