A Russian court on Monday convicted a museum director and a curator of inciting religious hatred with an exhibition of paintings and sculptures that, to many, ridiculed the Russian Orthodox Church. In a criminal case that tested the boundaries of artistic expression in Russia, the court ruled that the exhibition was “openly insulting and blasphemous.”…
The exhibition addressed spiritual and political aspects of the Orthodox Church, whose influence over politics, if not society generally, has grown since the Soviet Union collapsed.
One sculpture depicted a church made of vodka bottles, a biting allusion to the tax exemption the church received in the 1990s to sell alcohol. A poster by Alexander Kosolapov, a Russian-born American artist whose work often satirizes state symbols, depicted Jesus on a Coca-Cola advertisement. “This is my blood,” it said in English.
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