Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/753090
34 www.russianartweek.com LW: Is there anything else you would like to add? NM: At this time of political turmoil and shifting attitudes to Russia in the West, we hope that our exhibition will give people in Britain a chance to understand Russia and Russian people through its rich culture and enable all our visitors to see beyond politics instead of judging Russian people through politicians. LW: Why was it decided to organise the exhibition at the Royal Academy? Ann Dumas: Natasha approached me with the idea some years ago and we thought it would be a good idea to the do the show partly as a sort of 'sequel' to the From Russia exhibition that we did at the Academy in 2008 and, more importantly, because 2017 is the centenary of the Russian Revolution. LW: How many artists and works are included in the exhibition? AD: There are 260 objects and about 100 artists. LW: The exhibition will 'survey the entire artistic landscape of post-Revolutionary Russia' for the first time. Why was it important for the exhibition to feature so many different kinds of media? AD: Not the whole of post-Revolutionary Russia. Our time frame is 1917 to 1932. This was a very creative period in all the arts, not just painting. Also it was an important aspect of Communist ideology that art should be manifest in everyday objects, not just fine art or painting, which was considered bourgeois. We have therefore included ceramics, posters, photographs, fabrics and film in addition to paintings because together they reflect the diversity and creativity of the time. LW: What are the highlights? AD: Alexander Deineka, Defence of Petrograd, 1928; Lyubov Popova, Space-Force Construction, 1921; Boris Kustodiev, Bolshevik, 1920; Kandinsky, Blue Crest, 1917; Malevich – a reconstruction of his entire gallery in the 1932 survey exhibition – about 20 works; and Petrov-Vodkin, 15 works. LW: Could you please explain a bit more about the exhibition's objectives? John Milner: Natasha Murray, with whom I have worked a great deal over the years, and I have discussed that often there is no context set out in these exhibitions. The Russian avant-garde has quite different contexts within which it develops, and in the West, Russian avant-garde art is subsumed into the history of modern art without referring to how it came about. INTERVIEW