Kumu Art Museum

(23 July 2019)

Perestroika art is a revolt against political establishment, not art establishment. Revolts against art establishment strive to seduce the audience away from the canon. Revolts against the system strive to offend the elites and are often ugly; the audience is the collateral damage.

Rick Owens’s dresses, without imitating Alexander McQueen, borrow his ideal: freedom as the ultimate value. The freedom to entertain and express an idea is also the freedom from being identified with this idea. A dress is a vehicle for an idea.

To a greater extent without than within the museum, Tallinn is strangely subservient to its Soviet past. Are the displays of souvenir busts of former leaders of a purportedly oppressive regime the best way the town can appeal to tourists? Has not the town built a new identity? (The country has, so why not the town?) Perhaps, Tallinn attracts the Northerners who seek the thrill of the past that they themselves have narrowly escaped, instead of attracting those who would value the town for its defiance towards that past. The new identity is also probably slow to percolate into the Old Town due to its peripheral location.