Mania Grandiosa is the diagnosis and the name of the three Leningrad art school alumni exhibition – U.Alexandrov, I. Goldenshluger and K.Molosh. The authors suggest that grandiosity is not about a large scale, Vychetich and Cereteli were hopelessly diminishing in size while their creations were growing bigger.
The figure of an artist looks far more impressive against the canvas background, which is reduced to the size of a post card. Especially when this canvas-postcard is a reproduction of his own picture, done by himself. ‘We don’t copy the old masters – we challenge them by reproducing our own pictures in a smaller size - the pictures that were, will be and never will be painted’ – said Ivan Goldenshluger.
Placed in a box reminiscent an old puppet theater, these ‘reproductions’ cease to be mere paintings, they are almost a theatrical performance, where the characters are heroic Mujahidin, Chukchi Jew, Fahrenheit with a shotgun, but, above all, crowded on the stage ‘pictures’. ‘A ticket to immortality is the appearance on the pages of ‘Ogonek’ (the popular 50s magazine), being copied by the pupils of different art schools, when your decorations for a play are exhibited in the Theatrical museum, and to top it all, having your own hall in a world-known art gallery. And exactly this ticket to immortality, with all its listed and implicated components, the Leningrad trio grant themselves with the appropriate gravitas for such a solemn occasion. That is their megalomania.