| tel: +7(495)930-40-64 |
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| www: http://waytomoscow.com |
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| Vadim Sidur. «The Appealing», 1979. Installed in 1985 in Dusseldorf (Germany) http://www.sidur.ru |
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| Vadim Sidur. Monument to the Victims of Violence. Was erected in 1974 in Kassel http://www.sidur.ru |
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| Paradise |
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Through the Deepest Darkness...Even if I go through the deepest darkness, I will not be afraid, Lord, for you are with me. Psalm 23 Bear witness to the Soviet Union’s unofficial art of 1960‘s through 1980’s and the concurrent fight for free speech and human rights. Together we’ll visit the Andrey Sakharov Museum and Community Center and the Vadim Sidur Museum. The Sakharov Museum’s permanent exhibit is divided into three sections: The USSR's Totalitarian Past, with special emphasis on the history of repression, the prison camp system, and the human rights movement; Human Rights in Russia Today, including audiovisual displays on ethnic conflict in Chechnya, Tajikistan and other regions; and The Life and Work of Andrei Sakharov. The Vadim Sidur Museum is dedicated to one the greatest Soviet artists and sculptors, "the Soviet Henry Moore" as Western journalists used to call him back in the seventies. A nonconformist artist, he was oppressed by the Soviet authorities for his art, which posed a striking antithesis, both in form and in essence, of the canons of socialist realism. Shall we listen to the sculptor? Vadim Sidur. Later on I was killed in the war…Human memory is too short, too weak and imperfect. I was and am continually oppressed by an actual physical feeling of being burdened by responsibility for those who died yesterday, are dying today, and inevitably will die tomorrow. Perhaps it is these very feelings which serve as a moral spur, and for the creation of the cycle of statues you have asked me about… It would seem that the horrors of war of this global human meat grinder which only through a miracle did not pulverize us completely but rather only partially, it would seem that after this inconceivable nightmare there could not be general peace, not to mention the happiness of existence. But never since have I experienced so keenly this celebrated joy of life - because to survive the meat-grinder was unreal and improbable, it was a miracle of miracles. When as a an eighteen year old junior lieutenant commanding the machine-gun platoon I actually went to my native city (Dnepropetrovsk) and my old street, I saw from the corner that nothing remained of the house where I was born and grew up. Only the chimney struck out like an innovative memorial to my childhood and youth, and nearby there was a grown maple, formerly a small sapling, which my father and I had planted several years before the war. Later on I was killed in the war, but the miracle of resurrection took place and I remained alive. Sometimes it even seems to me that this was preordained in order for me to be able, in the end, to create “Memorial to Those Who Perished by the Bomb” and that it is no accident that in my life I have met wonderful, objective people who have helped and continue to help me feel that this was preordained. I remained alive, but this didn’t happen immediately. For a rather long time I hovered between life and death in a hospital for “Jaws and abdomens” among people without jaws and those, shivering small shivers, with yellow cut-up abdomens… It was no only in order to enroll at the art school that I went to Moscow. At the time, my head was still wounded and was continually wrapped in bandages.A bullet from a German sniper hit my upper left jaw, a bit of the lower part of my eye and temple, knocking out everything possible, then went through my tongue almost cutting it off and cutting through to the corner of my lower right jaw, carving a huge hole. The metal fragments from this shattered bullet are still in me. None of this was according to the rules: A shattered bullet must explode upon entry. The “Dum-dum” bullets always explode at the point of contact with the living or unliving, or even with a blade of grass. Instead of a hole there formed an unhealing, slobbering honeycomb that slobbered especially profusely when I wanted to eat or when I smoked: Pavlov’s theory about conditioned reflexes was affirmed in full. My bandage quickly became wet, and it was necessary to take it off and clean it often. I urgently needed n operation, and this was the reason for my trip. I had the operation in the Central institute of Traumatology and Orhtopedics.It was here that they made faces for those who, in the literal and not the figurative sense, lost their own in the war. They also did plastic surgery at the institute, but the majority of the young men and women there, blind and deaf, walked along the corridors and sometimes along the street with plastic and cardboard faces instead of their own. Several of them had only noses and chins. It was horrible to look at them, and still more horrible to imagine what was beneath the cardboard faces… THIS remained with me forever. I was one of them, only I was more lucky.I consider it not quite true to speak about my “burning” interest in war, violence, inhuman cruelty. It’s not an interest or even a duty, but a living necessity. I have been trying for many years without success to free myself from what overwhelmed me at that time.(A-YA #5 1983) Vadim Sidur Museum tel: (495) 918-5181 Adress: Novogireevskaya st, 37/2 metro station: Perovo 12.00 p.m -18.30 p.m days off: Mond, Tuesd * * * Andrei Sakharov Museum and Public Center Adress: Zemlyanoy val st,57/6 Metro stations: Kurskaya, Chkalovskaya,Taganskaya
11.00 am - 19.00 pm day off: Monday Tel: (495) 623 4401, 623 4420 |
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