THURSDAY - The New Tretyakov Museum

THURSDAY - It's gotta be odd to see the posting times of the blog here; i'm trying to match 'em to the real times we were at things, but it posts them with central standard time... I'm so confused on what time it is. At best, I'm gettin' 'em in some kind of chronological order. And I think I'm adjusted to the time change.

Ok, so after chocolate, we went to the New Tretyakov Museum with Bill. All modern and contemporary artists painting and sculpting in styles that ranged from realism to avant garde modernism and post-modernism. Tretyakov was kind of analogous to Carnegie in his philanthropy and collecting the work of great Russian artists from around the country for everyone to enjoy.



There's a State Tretyakov Museum that we'll see tomorrow, but today we went to this one and got to it via a sculpture garden that leads to the museum. There were wonderful stone and bronze pieces there and to the far end was a place referred to as "The Graveyard of Fallen Monuments." Here many of the monuments that were torn down or graffitied at the end of the Cold War. The founder of the KGB, a huge, beautiful Soviet seal with hammer & sickle surrounded by sheaves of wheat, and a special exhibit for Stalin that also includes a wall that symbolizes all the people who died during his reign.


Further on from this is the New Tretyakov, and the modern pieces in it were fun, hopeful, colorful, and uplifting. It's truly a new generation of artists who seem to be looking forward, seeing the potential for a new Russia.

From large modernist koi paintings to bronzes of playful animals,to realist landscapes, to an oil painting of a construction scene that actually came out of the wall as real framing and scaffolds, to a large exhibit of all-nude charcoals, cast bronze, and pencil self-portraits by a woman, who was boldly seated in her own exhibit (yup, we asked if that was her... that's some serious fortitude!), the Tretyakov was filled with wonderful, creativity.