Posted on 09/03/2011 10:47:53 AM PDT by Steelfish
Too Sexy For Stalin: Russian Rowers Embrace Oar Girl Statue A copy of banished nude (pic in URL) adopted by rowing association as new symbol has been installed in Moscow's Gorky Park
"Girl With an Oar," a copy of the 1934 original sculpture by Ivan Shadr, rises on the bank of the Moskva River in Gorky Park in Moscow, is due to be unveiled Saturday.
9/3/2011 The artist may have been a favorite of Stalin, but Ivan Shadr's statue "Girl With an Oar" proved too sexy for the Soviet dictator.
The 23-foot nude statue, sculpted in 1934, was banished from pride of place in Moscow's Gorky Park to Ukraine in 1936 and replaced with a less sensual version, The Wall Street Journal reported.
However, a copy of the original was due to be unveiled Saturday on the bank of the Moskva River in the park at the finish line of an international regatta course, the paper said.
The replacement, still nude but apparently more tasteful, was destroyed in World War II; Shadr died of an illness in 1941 and the model for the statue, Vera Voloshina, was captured and killed by German forces, the WSJ reported.
But the statue is being given new life with Yulia Anikeyeva, a Soviet rowing champion and executive director of the Russian Amateur Rowing Association, telling the paper it had been adopted as the association's symbol.
"We want to show that we now live in a different country. The notion that she must be dressed that's changed," she added.
Imitations of the statue that did not fall foul of the state censors were put up throughout various parks, often dressed tastefully in track suit swimwear and swimwear. Those tarnished the memory of the original, which became something of a joke,....
(Excerpt) Read more at msnbc.msn.com ...
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44382482/ns/world_news-europe/#.TmKCrGGqgmY
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This makes me think of that old Wendy's TV commercial with the "Soviet fashion show".
Forget Stalin, John Ashcroft would throw a hissy-fit over this.
Yes, very nice bootsky.
Artistically the sculpture is crap. Like all fascist state approved artworks, it is bland beyond belief, totally lacking in a dynamic play of light and shadow and belies a cartoonish understanding of the human form and its musculature. You want naturalistic human form sculpture that will set your esthetic eyeballs on a safari of discovery, go with Michelangelo and Rodin.
And, in the absence of welts on her back, the sexist coxswain let's her get away with it, instead of applying the lash.
thank you, you’re a true FRiend.
I was thinking vaguely of a Roman copy of the Cnidian Aphrodite, but I still think it's a copy of something later, Canova-ish.
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