✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

You have reached the limit of free articles.


To enjoy unlimited access to Culture Whisper sign up for FREE.
Find out more about Culture Whisper

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy

Each week, we send newsletters and communication featuring articles, our latest tickets invitations, and exclusive offers.

Occasional information about discounts, special offers and promotions.


OR
LOG IN

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

Thanks for signing up to Culture Whisper.
Please check your inbox for a confirmation email and click the link to verify your account.



EXPLORE CULTURE WHISPER
✕ ✕
Turning tips into memories
Login
Signup

Please fix the following input errors:

  • dummy
Forgot your username or password?
Don't have an account? Sign Up

OR
  • LOG IN WITH FACEBOOK

If you click «Log in with Facebook» and are not a Culture Whisper user, you agree to our Terms & Conditions and to our Privacy Policy, which includes our Cookie Use

Support Us Login
  • Home
  • Going Out
    • Things to do
    • Food & Drink
    • Theatre
    • Visual Arts
    • Cinema
    • Kids
    • Festival
    • Gigs
    • Dance
    • Classical Music
    • Opera
    • Immersive
    • Talks
  • Staying In
    • TV
    • Books
    • Cook
    • Podcast
    • Design
    • Netflix
  • Life & Style
    • Beauty
    • Fashion
    • Gifting
    • Wellbeing
    • Lifestyle
    • Shopping
    • Jewellery
  • Explore
  • Shopping
  • CW SHOPS
  • Support Us
  • Get Started
  • Tickets
  • CW SHOPS
Get the Best of London Life, Culture and Style
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
Visual Arts

Red Star Over Russia, Tate Modern, review ★★★★★

08 Nov 17 – 18 Feb 18, Open Fridays 10am - 10pm

Through propaganda, photos, postcards and more, the Red Star Over Russia Tate Modern exhibition paints a vivid picture of Russia’s complex Soviet era while unearthing hidden gems

By Daniel J Lewis on 15/2/2018

5 CW readers are interested
Nina Vatolina Fascism, The most evil enemy of women, 1941. Tate Image courtesy the David King Collection
Nina Vatolina Fascism, The most evil enemy of women, 1941. Tate Image courtesy the David King Collection
Red Star Over Russia, Tate Modern, review 4 Red Star Over Russia, Tate Modern, review Lucy Scovell
Being the centenary of the 1917 Russian Revolution, this year has witnessed a flood of events and exhibitions commemorating the beginning of the era-defining Soviet regime and its aftermath. Institutions from the Royal Academy and the British Library to the Design Museum have taken on all things revolutionary. Is there anything left to discover?


Red Star Over Russia proves that there is always more to learn about this country’s history which seems as vast and varied as Russia itself.


TRY CULTURE WHISPER
Receive free tickets & insider tips to unlock the best of London — direct to your inbox
The curators have done an impressive job of condensing the personal collection of David King, the late acclaimed graphic designer and artist, from around 250,000 artefacts to a more manageable 250 or so.




Gustav Klutsis, Moscow All-Union Olympiad, 1928


Through six large rooms, the multi-media material stretches from the first attempt to overthrow the Tsar in 1905 up to the relatively more liberal post-Stalin period, known as the ‘Thaw’.


Choosing not to dwell on the economic havoc wreaked by the Bolshevik takeover, the exhibition tells instead the story of how Russia swung violently from optimism to political terrorism and paranoia under Stalin and back again over the course of fifty years.


In the first couple of rooms, the enthusiasm for the heady days of the new Soviet state is palpable. Propaganda seems a dirty word today but then art with an unashamedly political focus was at the very forefront of the avant-garde.


These striking propagandist posters command your attention with colour — plenty of Communist red here — and imagery that shout as loudly as their titles: Emancipated Woman: Build Socialism!; Raise Higher the Banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!; Death to World Imperialism.




Valentina Kulagina, WAIT, Soviet Art Exhibition, 1931


The latter piece reveals these artists’ surprising outward looking character. For them, Russia’s revolution was an international event. To further pull out this thread, the exhibition shines a light on the publication of USSR in Construction, one of the first international illustrated magazines. The issues were translated into several languages and bristle with impossibly cool photography and designs from Aleksandr Rodchenko and his Varvara Stepanova. Their excitement leaps from the page.


This multilingual, multicultural and collaborative vision would be submerged as the communist nation dragged itself into the 30s under Stalin and wouldn’t be picked again until the 1940s when the much-feared conflict with Hitler’s Germany became reality.


The need for a bold return to an earlier dynamism is particularly strong in the posters of Nina Vatolina — collector David King’s favourite artist — where images of the increasingly unpopular Stalin were exchanged for the ‘Motherland’ in order galvanise the public in the ‘struggle against fascism’.


These more colourful works are reserved for the final room while the exhibition spends time exploring the history of the Union, told mainly through a series of small artefacts — posters, postcards, photos, letters — that would have littered people’s homes.




Gustav Klutzes, Raise Higher the Banner of Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin!, 1933


One of the exhibition’s more memorable displays discards with labels completely. A bank of mugshots of Stalin’s ‘enemies of state’ from the Gulag prior to their execution are left without names or numbers, which are provided in catalogues separately. Without identification, these citizens’ stares hold you uncomfortably.


This showcase of portraits is the centre piece of the room exploring the ways in which Soviet Russia erased traces of enemies through image manipulation.


On the whole, the team at Tate Modern have succeeded in the tough task of making a private collection amassed over several decades cohere and make sense. King’s personal interests hover behind Red Star Over Russia, so you may have to share his enthusiasm to really enjoy certain corners of this exhibition.


But generous and honest, Red Star Over Russia leaves a lasting impression of turbulent times that were as colourful and creative as they were cruel.


What Red Star Over Russia, Tate Modern, review
Where Tate Modern, Bankside, London, SE1 9TG | MAP
Nearest tube Southwark (underground)
When 08 Nov 17 – 18 Feb 18, Open Fridays 10am - 10pm
Price £13.30
Website Please click here for more information



Most popular

Things to do in London this weekend: 19 - 21 August
Things to do in London this weekend: 19 - 21 August
London's loveliest indoor swimming pools
London swimming pools you can visit without membership
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London (Photograph: Peter Lewicki)
London Theatre Guide: best plays on now in London, 2022

Editor's Picks

They Come to Us without a Word II2015Performance at Teatro Piccolo Arsenale, Venice, Italy, 2015.Photo by Moira Ricci.© 2017 Joan Jonas : Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York : DACS, London.
Joan Jonas, Tate Modern review
Best art exhibitions, London, 2018
Best art exhibitions, London, 2018
Lucian Freud, Girl With Dog (1950-1). Tate. © Tate
Review: All Too Human: Bacon, Freud and a Century of Painting Life, Tate Britain,
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
5

Tate Modern

Contemporary Art

Art

Exhibition

Russian Art

Russia

Modernism

You might like

  • Ilya Kabakov and Emilia Kabakov, The Six Paintings about the Temporary Loss of Eyesight (They are Painting the Boat) 2015. Private collection  © Ilya & Emilia Kabakov Photograph courtesy the artists and Pace Gallery

    Ilya and Emilia Kabakov exhibition review ★★★★★, Tate Modern

  • Modigliani, Reclining Nude, c.1919 © Tate Modern, Tate Modigliani Show 2017 Modigliani London

    Modigliani Exhibition 2017, review ★★★★★, Tate Modern

  • Mark Dion, Whitechapel Gallery, London

    Mark Dion: Theatre of the Natural World, Whitechapel Gallery



  • The Culture Whisper team
  • Support Us
  • Tickets
  • Contact us
  • Press
  • FAQ
  • Privacy
  • Terms and conditions
  • Cookies
  • Discover
  • Venues
  • Restaurants
  • Stations
  • Boroughs
Sign up to CW’s newsletter
By entering my email I agree to the CultureWhisper Privacy Policy (we won`t share data & you can unsubscribe anytime).
×