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Jesus Christ is portrayed carrying a wooden cross, with a hammer and sickle around his neck. A shower of bright light rains down, suggesting the presence of a comet trail. The quotation in the top left of the work reads, “Every nation has the government it deserves,” which is sometimes attributed to the American poet Ralph Waldo Emerson, but actually comes from Count Joseph de Maistre in 1811, in a disparaging reference to the new constitutional laws of Tsar Alexander I in Russia. 1991, when the painting was made, was the year the Soviet Union fell and the beginning of a turbulent political era in Russia. The painting reflects the uncertainty of the religious, political, and cultural environment in the Soviet Union in 1991.
Alexander Vaganov, Every Nation Deserves a Government..., 1991
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This painting shows a large block of “Orbit” brand processed cheese on a black background with pink and blue sparks streaming out of it like a shooting star. Beneath the cheese is the tag, “Dense in the cosmos, empty on the table!”—a reference to the fact that space-era technology had received more state support than the production of basic consumer goods since the 1950s.
Viktor Dorokhov and Valentina Dorokhova, Dense in the Cosmos, Empty on the Table!, 1989
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The painting shows a planet with geometrically patterned rockets sticking out of its surface at different angles. At the top left of the work, a yellow piece of paper says, “The world community is concerned with the violence against the environment in the sixth part of the world,” a reference to the 1926 Dziga Vertov film “A Sixth Part of the World.” A mix of travelogue, found footage, and newsreel, the film advocates unity of all parts of the Soviet Union, which then made up one-sixth of the world. A. Kravchenko, Untitled, n.d.
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