The Marble John Lennon Monument at Biryuzovaya Katun, Altai

The John Lennon monument in Altai is a surreal marble sculpture by Vladimir Voychishin in a glade behind the Prostor art gallery in Biryuzovaya Katun, a tourist zone in Altai Krai. Its opening was set for 20 August 2014 and reported by Beatles.ru on 21 August, and press at the time called it the only marble Lennon monument anywhere.

A carving that waited two years for a site

Vladimir Voychishin was born in Barnaul in 1954. From the early 1990s he worked abroad, in Kenya, the UAE, Iran, the United States, Germany, England, the Netherlands and Canada, before settling back in Russia in 2001. The State Hermitage bought three of his pieces in 2008. Before Lennon he had already carved marble figures: a Roerich monument in 2009 and a Charlie Chaplin taking a spa cure in Belokurikha in 2013.

The fullest account of how the monument came about is published by KARO Altai, a local tour operator. By its telling, Voychishin, who lives in Belokurikha, carved the figure in Barnaul in 2012. He had spent long stretches in England, visited Liverpool and the Cavern Club, and had a block of grey Altai marble in his workshop that he thought was on the small side for the job. The finished Lennon then sat for about two years.

The same account says the site came from another project. Voychishin had already made a marble monument to Nicholas Roerich in Biryuzovaya Katun and pushed for an art gallery there. After long wrangling over approvals, the building opened as the Prostor gallery, and Voychishin and designer Sergey Nesterov decided to put Lennon in the glade behind it. In July 2014 RIA Novosti reported the opening as planned for 20 August, in the UK-Russia Year of Culture. Beatles.ru reported the monument open on 21 August 2014, and the regional news agency Amic.ru, looking back in 2021, also dates the opening to 2014.

Reading the front

News reports describe Lennon standing on a vinyl record that melts downward, with a guitar, a microphone and a giant beetle beside him. He wears a coarse robe. Voychishin tied this to the 1966 row over Lennon's remark that the Beatles were more popular than Jesus, and said he meant no offence to anyone's faith. The tour operator reads the melting record, with its stylus, as a nod to the American record burnings that followed. Its description adds a halo behind the head carrying the word Imagine, a guitar neck with a torn strap coiled round the microphone stand, an old equalizer above it, and a scarab about half a metre long at the base, a pun on beetles and Beatles.

Reading the back

Walk round the pedestal. The 2014 reports put a portrait of Yoko Ono on the back. In the tour operator's more detailed description, the reverse shows part of a white piano whose keys pour down over a full-size drum marked The Beatles, pushed along by a second scarab. A cracked brick mask of Yoko Ono is set into the left side of the keyboard. Above the piano, a loudspeaker pierced by a stone points to the band's first name, the Quarrymen. The operator gives the whole piece as about 3 metres on a granite pedestal about 1.5 metres high, and credits Novosibirsk carver Dmitry Gavryutenko with the serpentinite plate giving Lennon's name in Russian. Beatles.ru called it a two-metre monument in 2014, which may count the figure alone.

Directions from the Chuysky Trakt

Biryuzovaya Katun is in Altaysky District of Altai Krai, not the neighbouring Altai Republic. The tour operator's directions run as follows. From the Chuysky Trakt, cross the bridge over the Katun, turn left at the junction towards the Taldinskiye caves, then left again after about 90 metres and park by the shop or the gallery. The monument is a little over 100 metres south-east, on the glade behind the buildings. The operator adds that the stone path and round platform leading to it are laid out as a banjo, the first instrument Lennon learned.

What has joined the glade since 2014

The glade has gained company since 2014. A pair of Lennon's round glasses went up in 2016: Alexey Repin and Sergey Nesterov designed it, Roman Koshelev made it in metal, and one lens holds Lennon's autograph. The tour operator dates the glasses to 17 October 2016 and gives them as 1.5 by 3.5 metres, and lists a 5.5-metre easel with an enlarged copy of Voychishin's painting on Strawberry Fields, put up at the entrance on 20 August 2016. In 2020 the glasses made the top 100 of a national vote on Russia's most unusual sculptures, run by Tutu.ru and the Moya Planeta TV channel.

Every summer since the monument went up, the zone has hosted Because of the Beatles, a free festival where Siberian rock and jazz musicians play Beatles covers. It took third place for Siberia and the Far East in the 2017 Russian Event Awards, and the 2024 edition fell on 13 July.