Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/753090
36 www.russianartweek.com This led us to think it would be useful and interesting to explore how big a part of Russian revolutionary art was the avant-garde, whether the Revolution made the avant-garde revolutionary or whether the revolutionary artists found themselves particularly useful. This meant taking a broader view of the whole range of Russian artists working in the Revolutionary years and to some extent what happened to all their different biographical experiences because, after all, the context that is usually missing was absolutely difficult, problematic, and, if you like, exciting and political. There is no doubt about the variety of Russian art in the revolutionary years, by which I mean through to the late 1920s. However, designing an exhibition in a way that is not going to cause confusion requires careful consideration. It became clear to us that these artists are, to use the phrase I have used previously, 'breathing the same air'. That is, they have things in common even if stylistically they are quite different and even if the media they use are quite different. It then became increasingly clear that they have these things in common because the government told them what to do to some degree. An obvious case of this is the emergence of slogans, such as: 'He who does not work, neither shall he eat' or 'Lenin lived, Lenin lives, Lenin is to live forever'. When we looked into these slogans and ideas, it became evident that they provided a kind of insight each time into what these people had in common. According to Lenin, art should be collective and public. Later, Stalin slightly changed Lenin's criteria and held that art should be nationalistic and promote the Party line. But an art that was collective, political and public was a guideline that everybody had to think about even if they did not follow it and that critics and steering committees were quite clear about. All these points can serve as a critique for visitors as they make their way around the exhibition. It is a visual show, rather than a political one. It has to persuade and engage the visitor through the look of it. LW: Please could you explain more about the exhibition's layout? JM: The first room is Salute the Leader, a concept which was anathema to the avant-garde initially and even to Lenin. Rather self-effacing, Lenin was not especially interested in art, so far as we can tell, or the avant-garde. Bearing in mind the politics, this framework begins to open up the political themes quite readily, and we thought Salute the Leader made it evident that this was a politicised environment. An obvious point to highlight, but not one people usually consider, unless they are historians or political figures themselves, and it certainly does not feature much in other exhibitions. INTERVIEW