* From May 28 to June 13, 2004, Nizhny Novgorod will host a video retrospective, "Thirty Years of Dutch Video Art", from the unique collection of the Netherlands Media Art Institute (Montevideo). The event is part of the international exhibition series "The Metaphysics of Hope". The sponsors are the Russia Ministry of Culture and Mass Communications, the Mondrian Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Four big installations exploring the themes of Mass Communications, Registration, Media Specifics and Narrative, chart the development of Dutch video art from 1970 to 2000. The video-jukebox computer system helps visitors make selections from a huge video archive featuring works by both recognised masters and new sensations. The Mass Communications sector shows video as an alternative to television, while the Registration area demonstrates how video is used to record events and processes. Media Specifics cover the technological capacities and individual features of video's visual language. Experiments with abstract forms co-exist with innovative editing here.
* From May 28 to August 15, Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery is displaying one of the most spectacular projects, "The Journey of Mona Lisa", which is dedicated to and inspired by Leonardo da Vinci's most famous painting. The artist behind the concept is Georgy Puzenkov, who has won recognition with his computerised images. In the 1990s, he created a virtual Mona Lisa and three parts are included in the Tretyakov installation: "Mona Time Tower 500", "Mona Lisa Goes Russia" and "Mona Kosmos 21".
Visitors are welcome to enter a gigantic tower made of black aluminium, 30 metres in circumference, 10 metres in diameter and six metres high, housing 500 images of Mona Lisa painted in sparkling hues. The inside of the tunnel features 500 mysterious smiles. The "Mona Lisa Goes Russia" sector exhibits 35 photographs placed in illuminated boxes to trace the great picture's surreal "journey" about Russia. This series was inspired by Mona Lisa's arrival in Moscow in 1974, when more than two million people made a pilgrimage to see Leonardo's masterpiece.
The third installation is accompanied by Puzenkov's "Mona Kosmos 21" tunes based on the music discovered in Leonardo's archives.
On June 3, 2004, the Tretyakov Gallery will host a meeting with Georgy Puzenkov that will also be attended by leading Russian and foreign art historians and critics.
* From June 1 to 30, Moscow's Helos-Heritage gallery will be the venue for an exhibition, "Soviet Impressionism", dedicated to the 20th-century Russian school of painting. "Russian sales" involving art from last century have been recently particularly successful at Sotheby's and Christie's, mirroring the interest all over the word in pieces from that period.
Official Soviet art focused on great communist building projects and portraits of state government leaders. Still, there was another, less known, romantic trend known as Soviet Impressionism, which was genuine art free of stereotypes and imbued with true human emotions.
The exhibition "Soviet Impressionism", a retrospective of Soviet Russia's life from 1950 to 1980, displays landscapes, still-lifes and portraits by such talented artists as Makarenkov, Schetchikov, Tolkunov, Gremitskikh, Machkin, Vaneyev and Sergeyeva.
* The exhibition "Boris Kustodiev "(1878-1927) to be held at the State Tretyakov Gallery from June 1 to September 5 is timed to coincide with the 125th anniversary of the outstanding artist's birth.
In the autumn of 2003, this exposition was on display at the Russian Museum in St Petersburg, the city where the painter spent the greater part of his artistic life. It is above all the sunny, colourful and multifarious world of the Russian provinces that is associated with the name of Boris Kustodiev, a member of the World of Art group. On view are 350 paintings and drawings from the collections of the Tretyakov Gallery, Russian Museum and the museums of Nizhny Novgord, Saratov, Peterhoff, Ivanovo, Tyumen and Minsk. These are portraits, genre scenes, landscapes, still-lifes, sketches, theatre scenery and posters.
Kustodiev sang the praises of Russian merchants and always presented them in a joyful and picturesque environment. In 1906, he was commissioned to illustrate the Popular Editions series. Although the series was never published, the illustrations made the author famous. Kustodiev first won acclaim when he displayed the canvas "The Fair" at an exhibition of the Union of Russian Artists. His pictures about Russian folk people combined the traditions of Primitivism with the exquisite devices of Impressionism and Art Nouveau.
The Tretyakov Gallery highlights such Kustodiev's masterpieces as "The Fair", "Rural festivities", and "Shrovetide". Many of his famous pictures depicting wonderful fetes and beautiful women were created when the artist was already wheelchair-bound (due to spinal tuberculosis). He used to say: "Love for life, joy and vivacity, love for everything Russian have always been the only subject of my works..."
* In the last week in May, the Turkish festival swept all the major theatrical venues in Moscow: the State Kremlin Palace, the Tchaikovsky Concert Hall, the Rossia Concert Hall, the Sergey Obraztsov Puppet Show Theatre, the Moscow International House of Music, the State Museum of Oriental Arts and the Moscow House of Photography. One of the festival events lasting from May 21 to June 4 is a show of Turkish painting and applied art at the Oriental Art Museum. The Moscow Photography centre is also running an exposition, "Turkey is an Eternal Poem".
On June 2, the Maly Theatre affiliate stage welcomes to a Turkish version of Maxim Gorky's play, "The Lower Depths" and Turkish singing star Tarkan will perform at the Luzhniki stadium on June 2.
