What can you get the man who has everything? In the case of Vladimir Putin, a pro-Kremlin website has decided the appropriate gift is a book of pop culture depictions of the Russian president, who celebrates his 64th birthday on Friday.

The book, In the Lead Role: Putin in Contemporary Culture, is 288 glossy pages of Putin in magazines and books, television and film, graffiti, sculpture, music and consumer goods. There are numerous photographs of public stunts in support of Putin, such as Russians holding letters reading “Happy birthday Vladimir”, and the “I Will Rip It for Putin” rally at which young women tore off sleeveless undershirts with the president’s face pictured in pink.

Since Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, T-shirts and iPhone cases featuring Putin’s image have become popular, found at any airport and in a new chain of army stores.

Viktor Levanov, editor of the pro-Kremlin news site Gosindex, told journalists at a photo studio in downtown Moscow that the birthday book was meant to look at how Putin had “stepped outside the boundaries of personality and became a worldwide cultural phenomenon”.

A Russian football fan wearing a T-shirt bearing an image of Vladimir Putin. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images

“The use of his image in art, literature and journalism can’t not be noticed. Even the presidential campaign in the United States has recently been unfolding around how candidates relate to Vladimir Putin,” he said.

Levanov, who made his name as a LiveJournal blogger, said the book had not received state funding and the profits would go to an Amur tiger centre started by Putin. He said it was not a political statement and denied that a cult of personality was forming around Putin.

But he admitted the authors had gathered material from pro-Kremlin youth movements backed by the state and said he liked the fact that such groups had “done a lot to promote Putin’s image”. Levanov said he would send a copy of the book to the president.

The book features examples of the western media’s supposed distortion of Putin’s image. The New Tsar, a book by the New York Times correspondent Steven Lee Myers, “is supposed to be complete and truthful; however, already from the cover it’s clear that the author was not able to avoid stereotypes,” the authors write. On another page, an issue of Der Spiegel depicting Putin standing above David Cameron, Angela Merkel and Barack Obama is called a “classic of European demonisation”.

'In the Lead Role: Putin in Contemporary Culture' takes dim view of Western depictions of Putin. Get yours in time for his birthday tomorrow pic.twitter.com/VdSPKY6Ylz — Alec Luhn (@ASLuhn) October 6, 2016

As part of the presentation, the St Petersburg artist Kirill Shamanov made attendees reproductions of his 2000 work Putin Gioconda, which involved him drawing a moustache and goatee on Putin’s first presidential portrait. The work is a play on Marcel Duchamp’s 1919 work LHOOQ., a postcard of the Mona Lisa on which the French artist similarly drew facial hair.

Shamanov said the piece was meant to show how Putin’s politics and image were postmodern, unlike western countries that “go to other countries and force their culture and method of governance on them, and imprisonments, concentration camps and killings begin”.

“Modernism is based on ideologies of how one needs to live, like fascism, communism and now liberalism, but there are places that don’t want to live this way,” Shamanov said, offering as an example Syria, where Russia has been waging a bombing campaign to support Bashar al-Assad’s regime. “[Putin] doesn’t force McDonald’s and jeans on everyone. I think that’s real multiculturalism and postmodernism,” he said.

Pages of the book In the Lead Role: Putin in Contemporary Culture. Photograph: Gosindex

Among those attending the presentation was the head of the Putin Facebook fan club, Mikhail Antonov, who had helped with the book. For Putin’s 62nd birthday, in 2014, he organised an exhibition of paintings reimagining the president’s achievements as the 12 Labours of Hercules.

“As we say, a spoon is good before lunch. It’s our president’s birthday, and we want to bring people together who are interested in Putin,” Antonov said.