“Jaws of Stalin” removed from exhibition at the Museum of Modern History

The opening of the exhibition “Unbreakable Union” at the Museum of Modern History of Russia, timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the USSR, turned into a scandal that can be considered a bold homage to the legendary Bulldozer exhibition.

The pathos of solemn speeches, delivered in the best traditions of officialdom, was diluted by the head of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia (TSHR) and the head of the exhibition project, Konstantin Khudyakov, who said: “The collapse of the USSR is not to blame for artists, but for officials who brought artists to the Bulldozer Exhibition and Malaya Gruzinskaya, – rabid and obscurantist censorship. Here and now she was also there – they removed the works of Oscar Rabin, Sergei Simakov and mine – “Stalin’s Jaws”. Ugliness!”. The correspondent of MK became a witness of the “disgrace”.

A large-scale project for the 100th anniversary of the USSR was prepared for a long and difficult time. It is also timed to coincide with the 100th anniversary of the emergence of creative trade unions, the legal successors of which are modern associations of artists – the Moscow Union of Artists and the Russian Union of Artists. The exposition, organized chronologically, includes more than 100 works, most of which are from the collections of the Museum of Contemporary History of Russia.

The Moscow Union of Artists was also going to show their artists along with colleagues from the TSHR and works from various collections, but then refused. “Viktor Glukhov (head of the MHS. – MM.) ran away – shamefully and cowardly,” Konstantin Khudyakov commented (although one work, actually the head of the Moscow Art Union, Glukhov, nevertheless turned out to be at the exhibition – it is on a safe topic and depicts a children’s room). In general, the “Unbreakable Union” was bursting at the seams even at the preparation stage.

The hanging and architectural solution turned out to be quite conservative, with a touch of Soviet officialdom. The selection of works is diverse and contrasting. At the beginning of the exhibition, for example, one can come across a rare painting by Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin depicting a working-class family in a modest room: a mother looks at the father of the family with a smile, a baby sleeps peacefully in a cradle, a teenager pulls on tarpaulin boots, and a rally is “boiling” outside the window. red flags. At the beginning of the exhibition, the Russian avant-garde with its Suprematist, Futurist and Constructivist revolutions was bypassed, but some of its heroes were still left.

Most of the exhibition space is devoted to official painting – portraits of Lenin (including those by Isaac Brodsky), Stalin, Zhukov, paintings glorifying the labor of workers, May Day demonstrations and the everyday life of a Soviet person charged with faith in a brighter future.

By the way, many of the authors of the “correct painting” managed to serve their time. For example, Sergei Dunik, the author of the painting “The Signing of the Treaty on the Formation of the USSR at the First All-Union Congress of Soviets,” learned to draw in prison, and when he got out, he graduated from the Surikov Institute and began to paint canvases on historical and revolutionary topics, and did it so “selflessly” that they did not send him to the front, they took care of him. He was more fortunate than many colleagues in the art workshop.

The degree of pathos subsides when the chronology of the exhibition reaches the 1960s. The thaw came back to haunt the art of non-conformity of artists. They worked more and more to the table, but from the heart.

Here is Dmitry Plavinsky’s relief “Turtle”, and collages from maps and Soviet newspapers by Vladimir Nemukhin, and Christ going to Calvary, Lev Krapivnitsky, and a dashing female portrait by Anatoly Zverev. There is also a small still life “Window and Lamp” by Oscar Rabin, which was added at the last moment – instead of another canvas, filmed for censorship reasons.

In addition to him, the work of Sergei Simakov “The Judgment of Paris” was also removed, which had previously been shown more than once in various museums. “They removed it, apparently, because there are two naked women, and they don’t have a very good figure,” Konstantin Khudyakov ironically.

“Stalin’s jaws” of Khudyakov himself also fell out of favor. The digital work depicts the real false jaws of the General Secretary, which ended up in the hands of the author at the time when he worked as the chief artist of the Lenin Museum. Khudyakov placed them in a crystal Faberge egg, connecting Soviet mythology with the tale of Koshchei the Immortal.

This work was supposed to be included in the final section of the “Unbreakable Union”, which presents the work of the post-Soviet period. As a result, we have a “hodgepodge” without a “jaw”: the usual oil on canvas with harmless themes argue with the ironic anti-utopias of Pavel Pepperstein and constructivist drawings in the spirit of Tatlin on the Pravda newspaper by Yuri Avvakumov.

In a word, no matter how they tried to drive the 100-year history of art into the socialist realist canon, it still turned out to be postmodernism. Largely due to the courage of Konstantin Khudyakov, who in Soviet times combined the position of the chief artist of the Lenin Museum with exhibition activity at the semi-dissident art platform of the City Committee of Graphic Artists.

At the end of his bright welcoming speech, Konstantin Vasilyevich gracefully thanked the museum, mentioning that a considerable amount was paid to the museum for rent. The officials turned a little pale. After that, Vladimir Mashkov, artistic director of Snuffbox, God knows how he ended up at the opening, diluted the explosive atmosphere with a quote from the classic: “Balzac said that art should not copy nature, but express it. Here we see how the nature of Soviet man is expressed. It’s hard to disagree with him.