Russian Artist Shot Dead in Poland; Knausgaard on Unlearning in Art

Russian artist Semyon Skrepetsky was shot dead in Biała Podlaska, eastern Poland, on June 17, 2025. Police reported multiple shots from close range, treating it as a targeted killing. The artist was known for satirical portraits of Vladimir Putin and Alexander Lukashenko. Three days before his death, he performed in Berlin outside the Russian embassy, placing a Russian flag in a trash bin and displaying an image of Stalin holding Putin as a baby. Meanwhile, in the Yale Review, Audrey Wollen challenges contemporary cultural pessimism, citing Jason Farago, Mark Fisher, and W. David Marx, but argues that repetition, not innovation, drives culture, referencing Picasso, Duchamp, and Warhol. In the SZ, Verena Mayer reports on Vienna's Lueger monument, tilted 3.5 degrees by artist Klemens Wihlidal as a "permanent fall" to confront Karl Lueger's antisemitism. The city opts for contextualization over removal, despite calls from the Jewish community. In the Paris Review, Karl Ove Knausgaard links Edvard Munch's "The Sick Child" to Lars von Trier's "Idioten," emphasizing unlearning as key to art, citing art historian Stian Grøgaard.