Issue link: http://read.uberflip.com/i/753090
37 www.russianartweek.com The second room, Man and Machine, is about the relationship between human beings and machines and it takes into account the philosophical dimension of this relationship. It opens up the themes of increased power and a materialist view of the world, as well as the worker as an image. After a rather red room, which includes Lenin's funeral, we have a grey room, which depicts different aspects of being a worker. The next room is Brave New World, which is about the new way of life, so it includes highly politicised paintings, like Kustodiev's Bolshevik. As Ann mentioned, the exhibition also features a room dedicated to Malevich's works. It is a strict reassembling of the paintings that Malevich showed in 1932, with some works by his followers, accompanied by a number of the tiny architektons that Malevich created, as well as a selection of porcelain pieces. We wanted to counterbalance Malevich, who is avant-garde, if you like, with someone whom most people in Britain do not know: Petrov-Vodkin. So we have a Petrov- Vodkin room, as Natasha said. In doing so, we can show that although Petrov-Vodkin's paintings are very beautiful, figurative, and inventive, they are not avant-garde. Consequently, it balances the avant-garde with another style and shows some of the variety I mentioned earlier. Another room is Fate of the Peasants, which examines the peasants' journey from desperation through the idea that industry and agriculture are twin pillars of the Communist government, to being devastated by civil war and famine. Then there is the room New Society, New Citizens, which is about the late 1920s and the NEP [New Economic Policy], which includes some material that has been rarely displayed previously because the Soviets never really promoted NEP advertising themselves. The room called Stalin's Utopia focuses on male and female sport, the idea of gigantism, the Palace of the Soviets and essentially shows socialist realism coming into its own; the workers need to know what the future for which they are striving looks like. It illustrates that the ideology has shifted to narod, the people are the nation, and to partiinost, commitment to the Party line. There is also a slide projection from the Memorial Foundation in Moscow of gulag victims, with each one shown for a few seconds and briefly introduced, enabling visitors to meet them all in a rather intimate and confrontational way. In fact, this intimate, confrontational approach depicting the light and the dark aspects of everyday reality is a feature of the whole show and can be seen in each of the rooms. INTERVIEW