The smaller stage of the Bolshoi Theater in Moscow during a performance of the opera “The Tale of Tsar Saltan” on March 28. (Nanna Heitmann/Magnum Photos for The Washington Post) Russian musicians, actors, writers and others who oppose the war are being exiled, while Putin compels artists remaining in Russia to demonstrate allegiance. By Francesca Ebel and Mary … Read More
Current News
Playwright and director sentenced to six years in prison by Russian court
Theater director Yevgenia Berkovich and playwright Svetlana Petriychuk were arrested in May 2023 and prosecuted behind closed doors in Moscow over a play they staged in 2020. By Mary Ilyushina The Washington PostJuly 8, 2024 at 4:16 p.m. EDT Playwright Svetlana Petriychuk, left, and theater director Yevgenia Berkovich sit inside a glass cage while the verdict … Read More
2 Russian Women Put on a Play. Then the State Came for Them.
The prosecution of a prominent playwright and a director in Russia over their work is a chilling sign of increased repression, cultural figures say. Yevgenia Berkovich, left, and Svetlana Petriychuk inside a courthouse in Moscow in May. The two are being tried on charges of terrorism relating to the production of their play, “Finist the … Read More
Josette Molland, Who Told of Life in Nazi Camps Through Art, Dies at 100
She endured horrors as a captured member of the French Resistance, and to ensure that her story, too, would survive, she depicted them years later in a series of stark paintings. Josette Molland at 22 in the clothing she wore as an inmate of a Nazi forced-labor camp. Credit…Photograph, via Private Collection By Adam NossiterMarch 6, … Read More
When Artists Can’t Go Home All That’s Left Is There Art
By Celeste MarcusMs. Marcus is writing a biography of Chaim Soutine.Feb. 25, 2024 Pablo Picasso was among the few who stood beside Chaim Soutine’s grave as his corpse was lowered into it. It was Aug. 11, 1943, and Paris was under Nazi occupation. Mr. Soutine — the artist, the genius, the Jew — had died in … Read More
Opinion Today
February 27, 2024The New York Times By Parker RichardsStaff Editor Art speaks across borders, and we often look to artists both to explain and to transcend. Even in exile — think of the dissident Chinese artist Ai Weiwei, or the Russian writer Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn — they can speak for a homeland they have left, or at least … Read More
Opinion Ukraine’s secret weapon: Art
By Anna Husarska and Mikhail RevaFebruary 23, 2024 at 3:25 p.m. EST The Washington Post Upon Ukraine’s fate in this war may hang the fate of peace on earth. (Mikhail Reva) Anna Husarska is a journalist and policy analyst. Mikhail Reva is a painter and a sculptor. Two years ago, when Russia launched its war against Ukraine, Mikhail Reva, … Read More
Anselm
An art documentary by Wim Wenders steps inside the work of a man who says his art is about ‘the open wound of German history’ Review by Mark JenkinsThe Washington Post January 1, 2024 at 7:00 a.m. EST Artist Anselm Kiefer on the grounds of his studio compound in a scene from the documentary “Anselm.” (Janus … Read More
Pussy Riot arrives in Iceland, urinates on a Putin portrait
The first Pussy Riot retrospective reveals the Russian artists at their defiant best Perspective by Sebastian Smee Critic The Washington PostDecember 16, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EST REYKJAVIK, Iceland — For more than a decade, Pussy Riot — a feminist, anti-Putin art collective — has been staging brilliant, disruptive and often poetic political stunts. These “actions,” … Read More
A poet’s ground-level account of the collapse of Uyghur society
In ‘Waiting to be Arrested at Night,’ Tahir Hamut Izgil mourns a world of loved ones and letters lost Review by Dan KeaneThe Washington PostAugust 2, 2023 at 10:00 a.m. EDT Tahir Hamut Izgil in Fairfax, Va., on July 31. He and his family fled China in 2017. (Marvin Joseph/The Washington Post) When mass detentions swept … Read More