The Russian Woodstock

"You see, miracles do happen in the Soviet Union," said a bearded, beaming Moscow painter. "We have had four hours of freedom here this afternoon," exulted another artist. Their cause for jubilation was the officially sanctioned "Second Fall Outdoor Art Show" at Moscow's Izmailovo Park last week.

Two weeks earlier, the first (and unauthorized) outdoor show had abruptly ended when bulldozers, dump trucks and water wagons literally drove the artists underground by churning their works into the mud (TIME Sept. 30).

Bad international publicity following the destruction of the first art exhibit apparently had an effect. Scores of KGB agents stood quietly by while more than 10,000 spectators inspected some 150 paintings done in a variety of contemporary styles, including abstract, surrealist, impressionist and pop. All of these have been expressly forbidden to Soviet artists, who are supposed to hew to the woodenly representational standards of socialist realism.

Startled Stares. As might be expected, the quality of the art was less an issue than the unique opportunity to show it. Some canvases were quite obviously done by laissez-faire Sunday amateurs, while others displayed a disciplined professionalism. A borsch equivalent of Andy Warhol's Campbell's soup can drew the kind of startled stares that pop art has been receiving in the West for more than a decade. Although organizers had promised that there would be no overtly anti-Soviet or religious art, there was one surrealist still life boldly titled Homage to Pasternak, and another artist caused an ideological stir by exhibiting a psychedelic portrait of Jesus. After taking a stroll through the exhibit, Poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko remarked: "I see some good pictures, some bad ones and some mediocre ones, but the most important fact is that they are here in the first place."

Only time will tell whether "the Russian Woodstock" (as one French diplomat called it) signals the beginning of an end to Soviet insistence on cultural conformity. Said one exhibitor: "We are skeptics by experience. Perhaps this will be the start of a great tradition, or perhaps there will just be more repression." In any case, the success of the show has already had its impact on other Soviet artists. A group of iconoclastic Moscow poets are talking about asking permission to hold a public outdoor reading of their proscribed verse.

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