The unknown warrior

THE two men were about the same size, sturdy and short. Both had fought in the Great Patriotic War, worked in foundries; they could knock each other out. One was broad-faced, gap-toothed and almost bald; the other was swarthy, with bushy black brows and hair. The bald man, Nikita Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, was shouting 'Filth! Dog shit! Disgrace!' at the paintings on display, that day in 1962, on the walls of the Manege Gallery beside the Kremlin. The swarthy one, Ernst Neizvestny, had his answer ready: 'You may be premier and chairman, but not here in front of my works. I am the premier here.'He was manhandled and expelled from the Artists' Union, but he was not arrested, and government psychiatrists pronounced him sane. Khrushchev even half-joked that there was an angel and a devil in him, and as long as the angel had the upper hand, they could get along. Mr Neizvestny liked that remark, for that was exactly what his paintings, and especially his sculptures, were about: struggle, contradiction, multiplicity, flesh against spirit, all within one unity, the human body. His works turned humans into robots, centaurs, giants or...Continue reading
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