Could there be another Russian revolution? I pondered this the next day when I toured the Mayakovsky Museum, a shrine to Vladimir Mayakovsky (1893-1930), who was an early supporter of the Bolsheviks, as well as a poet, artist and filmmaker. Mayakovsky, who liked to wear earrings and use radishes for buttons, also published a manifesto titled A Slap in the Face for Public Taste. Harrassed by government censors, he eventually committed suicide, allowing him to be seen today as a martyr of free thought. The museum is a chaotic affair that displays Mayakovsky's cartoons, agitprop posters and volumes of poetry spread wide. Social protest, it seems, is never tidy.
Neither is it all champagne and caviar over in Winzavod, a contemporary arts center that is the newest addition to Moscow's modern art scene. The exhibit space opened in 2007 in a converted wine factory in an industrial neighborhood on the city's outskirts.
After nosing around several galleries here, I stopped into M&J Guelman, which was exhibiting watercolors by Marilyn Manson, the theatrically ghoulish rock star. Inspired by "serial killers and their innocent victims," the accompanying catalog dryly explained, Manson's paintings dripped with blood reds and bruised purples. A crowd of young Muscovites observed them closely and with apparent admiration; most were already sold.
Feeling glum, I was happy to get back on the subway. One of the Soviet era's proudest accomplishments (Moscow's underground transportation system was launched in 1935), it seemed proof of the glories of communism. A ride costs less than 50 cents, even though the well-maintained stations are marvelously elaborate, with carved wooden doors, bronze statuary, chandeliers and marble floors.
Quite swell, too, was my next destination - a gilded, rococo bathhouse called the Sandunovsky, which was built in the 19th century. Sexes are segregated here, I discovered, with the men sitting in wet saunas and slapping themselves all over with white birch tree branches. Then, they gather in a baronial locker room to talk, smoke, eat heaping plates of boiled shrimp and gulp alcohol. One especially jolly guy tried to befriend me by sharing his bottle. It was only midafternoon, a bit early for cocktails, I thought, but it was priceless to see the man's look of incomprehension when I kept politely refusing.
Obviously, this hadn't happened to him before.
