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The Irony Tower: Sovetskie Khudozhniki vo Vremena Glasnosti

Sotheby`s auction of avant-garde Soviet art, held in Moscow in 1988, introduced to the West a generation of painters and sculptors who for years had been unable to exhibit their works in public. Solomon, who covered the auction for a British magazine, offers an intimate, thoughtful glimpse of Moscow`s and Leningrad`s artistic vanguards, walking on ice in the unpredictable thaw of glasnost . Works range from Ilya Kabakov`s obsessive re-creation of a Moscow communal apartment, citadel of misery, to painter Larissa Zvezdochetova`s witty, kitschy demolition of communist propaganda. This community of artists realizes that the new freedom may be rescinded overnight. To Solomon, their work "is a warning, a sustained message that says, simply, “Beware, and remember." Illustrated.