About Vladimir Mayakovsky


Vladimir Mayakovsky's work is perhaps the only example of a fusion of poetic and political revolutions. Mayakovsky became a symbol of political renewal for an entire generation of Russian poetic avant-garde. At the same time, he actively attempted to overcome not only the gap between the poetic and the political, but also the void between high modernist poetry and mass culture. It might be said that Mayakovsky's main occupation was the restoration of the unity of culture, split by modern art and the policy of radical avant-garde. But this search for a new unity of culture paradoxically led Mayakovsky to cultural loneliness. Other modernist-oriented poets and artists of his generation perceived his "soviet" verses as a betrayal of true poetry, while typical representatives of the soviet cultural mainstream did not at all welcome the synthesis of avant-garde and Soviet ideology. As a result, the unifying project imagined by Mayakovsky was, in fact, understood by no one, Today, the relationship between art and politics, as well as between high art and mass culture, remains essentially as problematic as it was in the Mayakovsky era. The figure of Mayakovsky stands today both as a promise and a warning. In VMayakovsky, Alexander Shein perfectly captures the drama and loneliness of a poet trapped inside social success. In this sense, the film is not only about Mayakovsky, but, rather, about the paradigmatic fate of a poet and artist in an era of cultural and social rifts.

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-Boris Groys