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Mayakovsky Museum
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When:
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Daily; not Wed
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Where:
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Mayakovsky Museum
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Mon, Tue & Fri-Sun 10am-5pm; Thu 1pm-8pm
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The Mayakovsky Museum opened in January 1974, creating a new way of paying tribute to an artist's legacy. Both anarchic and accessible, the building is worth visiting even if you have never heard of the great man's works. Numerous corridors, stairways and paths are decorated with the poetry, prose and propaganda of one of the leaders of Russian Futurism. This revolutionary zeal guides you into his mode of thinking and through one of the most creative periods of Russian history.
Mayakovsky was born in Georgia in 1893, leaving his home of Bagdadi to attend the Moscow School for Painting and Sculpture. It was here that his initial interest in the Futurist movement was sparked and he was inspired to found the Left Front of Art (LEF) in the wake of the October Revolution of 1917, with fellow Futurists Alexander Rodchenko and Osip Brik. His friendship with Brik proved to be a fateful one, as Mayakovsky soon fell in love with Brik's wife Lili, and actually moved into the couple's home.
This most awkward of relationships is one of the factors which led to Mayakovsky's decision in 1930 to commit suicide, and the quietest of the museum's many rooms is the one where this act occured.
For those who are interested in reading up on the artist before they visit, Mayakovsky's best known works include the poems A Cloud in Trousers and Brooklyn Bridge and the play The Bedbug, a satire on life in Soviet Russia.
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