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Article: Approaching Bacon. (Francis Bacon exhibition at the Pushkin Gallery, Moscow)
- Article from:
- The Economist (US)
- Article date:
- October 1, 1988
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1988 Economist Newspaper Ltd. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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THE Francis Bacon exhibition in Moscow, which opened on September 22nd, marks a high and visible point in cultural glasnost. Mr Mikhail Gorbachev's new spirit of openness has allowed such recent well-behaved exchanges as the Pushkin/National Gallery swaps, but an exhibition by the vieux terrible of western art is candour of a different order.
For the past half-century, the only contemporary art available to the Russian public has been Stalin's state-sanctioned Soviet Realism, a high-minded, clean-limbed (and fully clad) celebration of Marxist-Leninist ideology. Mr Bacon's exploration of the human condition, often through the medium of some of the most carnal ...