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As a barrage of Russian missiles struck Ukraine last month, two trucks loaded with
Modernist artworks left Kyiv and headed west. After a perilous run to the border, they
were held up when a stray missile landed over in Poland. But the paintings made it
across, then down to Madrid, where they form the core of a new exhibition, “In the Eye
of the Storm”, which opened at the Thyssen-Bornemisza museum this week.
It was not your
usual art opening , reports my colleague Michael Reid, who wrote about it this week—not least because it
included a video message from Volodymyr Zelensky. “This exhibition will tell us what
Russia is trying to destroy by war,” Ukraine’s heroic president declared. The works on
display were part of a great flourishing of creativity in Ukraine in the first three
decades of the 20th century, which was itself snuffed out in Stalinist repression and
purges. The Ukrainian ambassador to Spain spoke at the museum too. The applause was
fervent, Michael tells me: “The atmosphere became quite emotional.”
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Plot Twist, our new culture newsletter. We hope it
will become your weekly source of advice on what to watch, read and listen to—and, as
well as that, a guide to the disputes raging around the world over statues,
cancellations, free speech and more. This is an era, it seems to us, in which politics
and culture have become especially intertwined.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine is a case in point. We have previously written about the
virtue (or otherwise) of
boycotting Russian culture, about a Ukrainian rock star who is
singing for victory, and a ballerina who left her troupe to
take up arms .
Culture and war might seem like opposites, but culture is how war comes to be understood
and remembered. It can also be a motive to fight, as Mr Zelensky said. I spent several
years
covering Ukraine as a correspondent, and saw how, in a place long dominated by outside powers, art and culture became a
repository of national feeling and identity.
In his article, Michael focuses on “Sharpening the Saws” by Oleksandr Bohomazov. He
liked the painting for its bold experimentation and vibrant colours, which, he says,
reminded him of contemporaneous art from Latin America, a region he knows intimately.
You can see the picture at the top of the newsletter. I’m glad he introduced me to
it.
Meanwhile our lead book review this week is about
big data and artificial intelligence. We’re all used to reading about AI’s potential for abuse: surveillance, the
infringement of privacy and civil liberties, all that monitoring and intrusive
marketing. The two books we review explain how these technologies can be used to tackle
inequality and make the world a better, fairer place. It was an enlightening
read.
Elsewhere this week we wrote about:
Thank you for reading Plot Twist. You can get in touch with us with ideas or feedback
at:
[email protected].
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