POETIC EXTREMES AND EXOTIC EROTICA
Just recently, London’s Riverside Studios one of the capital’s several community centers which also serves as concert venues/cinemas) played host to a “Twenty Years Of Vladimir Mayakovsky” exhibition.It offered Londoners a look at the definitive collection of papers, posters and pix relating to the tum-of-the-century Russian revolutionary poet and performer.
POETIC EXTREMES AND EXOTIC EROTICA
LETTER FROM BRITAIN
Cynthia Rose
Just recently, London’s Riverside Studios one of the capital’s several community centers which also serves as concert venues/cinemas) played host to a “Twenty Years Of Vladimir Mayakovsky” exhibition.It offered Londoners a look at the definitive collection of papers, posters and pix relating to the tum-of-the-century Russian revolutionary poet and performer.
ft even features his spectral presence, in a flickering bit of old film, entitled The School Mistress And The Hooligan. Mayakovsky, of course, played the Hooligan— and managed in 10 minutes to both Move Fast and Die Young. The School Mistress And The Hooligan contained a condensed version of the High Romance (ultimate union between the title characters is achieved only as the hooligan’s life ebbs away and they hold hands) by which Mayakovsky chose to live and die.
Given Mayakovsky’s full lips, bullish bravado, and self-conscious swagger, its vision also offered a perfect vindication of Patti Smith’s claim (staked in CREEM) that he was “the original rock star.”