We Buy and Sell Souls – art action by Komar & Melamid and the Nest Group

1/9Poster advertisement for the buying and selling of souls by Komar & Melamid Inc. (image courtesy of the former Komar & Melamid studio)

1/9Advertisement on the video display in Times Square, New York. (photo courtesy of the former Komar & Melamid studio)

1/9Official document certifying the sale of Andy Warhol's soul. (courtesy of Komar & Melamid studio)

1/9Komar & Melamid buying Andy Warhol's soul on February 6, 1979 in New York. (photo courtesy of the former Komar & Melamid studio)

1/9Souls on display in Mikhail Odnoralov’s Moscow studio. (photo courtesy of Vadim Zakharov www.conceptualism-moscow.org and Victor Skersis)

1/9Mikhail Odnoralov’s Moscow studio during the auction. Mikhail Roshal can be seen holding the telephone. (photo courtesy of Vadim Zakharov www.conceptualism-moscow.org and Victor Skersis)

1/9Mikhail Roshal making a soul sale at the auction. (photo courtesy of Vadim Zakharov www.conceptualism-moscow.org and Victor Skersis)

1/9Audience/customers at the Moscow auction: (l–r) Mikhail Roshal, Victor Skersis, Gennady Donskoi, Tatiana Kolodzei, Igor Makarevich, Aleksandr Yulikov, Mikhail Odnoralov, and Elena Elagina. (photo courtesy of Vadim Zakharov www.conceptualism-moscow.org and Victor Skersis)

1/9Customers after the auction (members of the artist collective Nest are crouched in the foreground). (courtesy of Vadim Zakharov www.conceptualism-moscow.org and Victor Skersis)

The event was initiated by Komar and Melamid, the founders of Sots Art in the early 1970s and teachers of a number younger Moscow Conceptualists, including members of the Nest, who emigrated from the Soviet Union to New York in 1977. One of the newly emigrated artists’ first projects was to establish a company that would buy and sell human souls. They launched an advertising campaign which included posters and print ads. They also took out an advertisement on the Times Square video display, sponsored by the Public Art Fund of New York. Komar & Melamid, Inc. purchased several hundred American souls, including that of American Pop artist Andy Warhol (1928–1987), who donated his soul for free. An advertisement in the New York Times announced “the first auction of un-official American art in the Soviet Union simultaneously in New York and Moscow on Saturday, May 19, 1979, 12:00 p.m. New York Time.” A heated auction took place in Mikhail Odnoralov’s apartment, where the soul of American collector of nonconformist Soviet art Norton T. Dodge (1927–2011) drew particularly heated bids; Warhol’s soul sold for thirty rubles. The customers who attended included the poet Genrikh Sapgir (1928–1999), art historian and collector Tatiana Kolodzei (b. 1947), and Anatoly Lepin (b. 1944). Artists who attended included Alena Kirtsova (b. 1954), Vadim Zakharov (b. 1959), and Yuri Albert (b. 1959).