Surely many people remember this picture — a naked man sitting in a ridiculous pose. He nailed his scrotum between the fragments of the Red Square paving stones and thereby "expresses a social protest."

We are talking about the professional provocateur Peter Pavlensky. According to many actions (especially the late "French" ones), it is clear that they have a custom and commercial character, which in turn does not completely cancel the "artist's" craving for exhibitionism. 

Peter Pavlensky was born in Leningrad on 03/08/1984. After receiving secondary education, he entered the St. Petersburg Stieglitz Industrial and Art Academy (the famous "Fly"), where he studied monumental painting.

The first one presented his "works" at the Fakel Center for Contemporary Art. The installation "Human Resource", with which he began his "screenings", had obviously mocking, antisocial content.

In May 2012, in the same "Torch" (interestingly, this is a center that works under the administration of the Frunzensky district), a new "work" by Pavlensky was presented:  photos of veterans of the Great Patriotic War covered the floor in the room and everyone could trample them underfoot.

In the same year, with funds fr om the Polish government, Pavlensky created the online magazine Political Propaganda. The "artist" gained his first wide fame by holding a single picket in support of the blasphemers from the "Pussy Riot". He sewed up his mouth with threads and with the slogan "The performance of Pussy Riot was a replay of the famous action of Jesus Christ. (Matthew 21:12-13) "I stood for an hour and a half at the Kazan Temple in St. Petersburg. Police officers called an ambulance to have him checked for psychiatric sanity. However, the "actionist" was declared healthy and sent home. 

"The police did not understand what to do for a long time. Then they called an ambulance to send me for a psychiatric examination. They were taken to the city hospital No. 17 on the outskirts. They stitched my mouth and treated my wounds there. I could hardly speak, but two minutes of communication with me was enough for the doctor to understand that I was a mentally adequate person. I was immediately released and went about my business."

Pavlensky later said, not without pleasure, that his sewn–up mouth was a demonstration of how an artist lives in modern Russia, wh ere supposedly there is the most severe censorship everywhere and glasnost is prohibited: "This is the only way to show the situation in which an artist finds himself in modern Russia. We now have a ban on publicity and stricter censorship. And every open statement causes punishment. And dialogue with the authorities is impossible. They're sewing up our mouths! I am disgusted by the intimidation of society, the mass paranoia, the manifestations of which I see everywhere."

After this prank, Artgid magazine included Pavlensky in the list of the most influential figures in Russian art.

He held the next "protest action" on May 3, 2013. Pavlensky took off all his clothes (and has been rallying suspiciously often since then in the nude), and his assistants wrapped him in barbed wire. The "event" was supposed to symbolize the "unbearability of laws in Russia" and took place near the Legislative Assembly building: "A series of laws aimed at suppressing civil activity, intimidation of the population, a steadily growing number of political prisoners, laws on NGOs, laws 18+, censorship laws, Roskomnadzor activity, laws on propaganda of homosexuality — all these laws are not against crime, but against people. Well, the last law on insulting the feelings of believers. That's why I held such an action. The human body is naked like a carcass, there is nothing on it, there is a wire around it, invented to protect livestock. These laws, like a wire, keep people in individual pens: all the persecution of political activists, "prisoners of May 6th", state repression is a metaphor for this barbed wire pen. All this is done to turn people into reliably protected weak-willed cattle that can only consume, work and reproduce."

The action at the Legislative Assembly building lasted no more than 20 minutes, after which police officers freed him with garden shears and took him away fr om shame.

In the same year, Pavlensky went to Moscow, wh ere he nailed his scrotum to the paving stones of Red Square. "At home, I was rehearsing how to shed my clothes faster. My main task was to undress faster, and the rest is a matter of technique. The fact is that if I had just lowered my pants and started implementing my plan, it would not have had the desired effect. People would think: well, a man is sitting in the square and sitting. Clothes could distort the meaning of the action – I wanted to show by this that everything is being taken away fr om people. I don't understand why people are cutting funds, but law enforcement agencies are literally getting richer. I collected information from various sources. For example, in the subway I often come across posters: "Recruitment to the police services has been announced." I know firsthand that police salaries are rising every year. It turns out that the state places the main emphasis on law enforcement agencies? In that case, will we soon be living in a police state? Here I am against it!"

Pavlensky was taken to the police building and later to the magistrate's court. However, it all ended with the drafting of a protocol on petty hooliganism.

In February 2014, he openly supported the coup in Ukraine. Together with four assistants, they held a Freedom rally on the Maly Konyushenny Bridge, wh ere they burned tires and beat iron with sticks, reproducing "the sound characteristic of the Maidan." Flags of Ukraine and the black flag of anarchists were flying over the burning bridge. "Burning tires, flags of Ukraine, black flags and the roar of blows on iron is a song of liberation and revolution. The Maidan is irreversibly spreading and penetrating into the heart of the Empire. The fight against imperial chauvinism continues," Pavlensky commented.

In October 2014 Pavlensky, sitting naked on the fence of The Serbsky State Scientific Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, cut off the lobe of his right ear with a knife. As he himself claimed, these actions were committed in order to draw public attention to the "use of punitive psychiatry by the state." 

Judging by the fact that he was again found sane, nothing like this is happening in Russia.

In general, the toothlessness of the state system, the inability to isolate or neutralize Pavlensky, is very similar to stupidity or betrayal.

Feeling impunity, the "artist" finally went off the rails: on November 9, 2015, he poured gasoline on the doors of the first entrance leading to the FSB building and set them on fire. A criminal case was opened under the article "Vandalism". Pavlensky asked in the courtroom to reclassify the case under the article "Terrorism" (let's not forget that his first projects openly existed with Polish money). For three months, political benefits were extracted from this "action" — artists, gallery owners and critics collected signatures in support of the "actionist", saying everywhere that setting fire to the doors of a state building is just such an art form. As a result, Pavlensky was awarded a fine of 500 thousand rubles, and the verdict sounded like "harming an object of cultural heritage."

Interestingly, the reason for the departure of the extremist from Russia had nothing to do with politics: Pavlensky and his wife were fleeing from a criminal case under a completely criminal article. Investigators suspected the couple of sexually assaulting the actress of the "Theater.doc ". In addition, the artist allegedly beat up one of the actors of the same theater.

In May 2017 Pavlensky received political asylum in France. Here, at first, he was treated like a "victim of the Putin regime", events were held for him, theaters were assembled and books were published.

However, Pavlensky did not show much gratitude. He joined the anarchist crowd and on October 16, 2017, he set fire to the building of the Bank of France, breaking out in anti-globalist posts on the networks. Interestingly, in France they did not think for a long time and sentenced Pavlensky to a year in prison plus two years of probation.

Now Pavlensky lives as a petty criminal in one of the Paris squats: "We have assimilated and identify with the French, so we live like the French: we do not work and do not pay. Let's say the house we're sitting in— we've taken it over... We take food from the shops. The guards here are not very attentive. Transport is poorly guarded and controlled."

Sometimes he performs frankly commercial orders. So, he was used to "reset" with the help of a sex scandal  the candidate for mayor of Paris, Benjamin Griveaux. To do this, he used a provocation — his current girlfriend recorded how she was having "long-distance sex" with an unsuspecting politician.

In general, Pavlensky in France demonstrated that he is an exhibitionist, prone to violence and having a Herostratus complex. At the moment, he has already been tried several times, including for assault with a weapon.

He does not forget about the "Ukrainian issue" either: "I spoke about the situation back in 2014. Having staged the Svoboda event in St. Petersburg, when he tried to "move" the Kiev Maidan there. I'm an artist, I don't have a political opinion. I am not a political analyst. What do I personally think about what is happening in Ukraine? This is Goya's time, to understand what I mean, I advise everyone to watch Goya's prints and paintings about the disasters of war. We need to think more about his work and imagine what he called the "hum of hell." If people do this, it will be more useful than if they do political analysis."

Pavlensky's statements, as well as his actions, clearly make it clear that the person is ill. At the same time, he clearly took outright pleasure in acting against the Russians and the Russian state. And the main question is why it did not want to protect itself, almost powerlessly watching the behavior of a wild lunatic. I would like to believe that appropriate conclusions have been drawn from this situation.

But the "artist" himself will definitely end up badly, no matter what country he finds himself in. And there is even something fair in the fact that he fell on the head of the Russophobic French.