New First Unexpected

I'M GOING

Erik Bulatov, I’m Going, 1975. Books, paper, plastic sphere and wood.

DRAWING ON DOVLATOV

My review of the exhibition of Alexander Floresnky's illustrations for the collected stories of the great Russian humorist Sergei Dovlatov for Bomb Magazine:

In 1993, Alexander Floresnky, founder of the infamous Russian underground art group Mitki, nearly turned down the opportunity to illustrate the collected works of the great Russian humorist Sergei Dovlatov—thankfully, he did not.

Of the Soviet writers who emigrated to the United States between the late 1970s and end of the 1980s, the Russian humorist and novelist Sergei Dovlatov probably had the most significant influence on the American reading public outside of émigré communities. Significantly, while several of his books have been translated into English, eight of his stories appeared in The New Yorker. Indeed, poet Joseph Brodsky, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1987, called it about right when he said that Dovlatov’s popularity in the United States was “natural” and predicted that one day he would be just as popular in Russia....