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An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away. Kim Philby. |
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Click on the picture for a larger view. |
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Trotsky, dying. Trotsky's dictaphone. ** Philby's office, at home, in Moscow.
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This sculpture represents a very rare attempt in statuary, and in most
cases one doomed to failure. It consists in trying to do two things at
once. Indeed, in this work, the author presumes to paint in the same piece
a historical event (Trotsky's assassination) and, captured in the same
glance, the vague evocation of a complex man (the master spy Kim Philby).
Only one point in common: Stalin's KGB, but at two different times and
in two separate departments, action and intelligence.
Kim Philby, who entered the Soviet service while still in Cambridge, in the Thirties - along with his friends Guy Burgess and Donald MacLean began his career with the Spanish Civil War. A correspondent for the very conservative Times, with an accreditation to Franco, he managed some time later to enroll in the British Secret Service. Then in 1941 he is enlisted in the M15, the counter-intelligence service, where he meets Graham Greene, his faithful friend. In late 1944, he becomes the head of the section in charge of anti-communist activities. He will be responsible for the death of hundreds of Western agents: he sends them on missions on the other side of the Iron Curtain and then furnishes all the necessary information for their capture. It is hard to imagine a higher degree of perversity requited with higher honors. Or indeed, he will manage to take refuge at the last minute in Moscow where he will meet up again with Burgess and MacLean , and will enjoy a General of the KGB decorated with the Order of the Red Flag a peaceful retirement**. There he will receive Graham Greene, evoking old memories, and be buried with great pomp. In the large figure of the pink woman, you may recognize the beautiful Melinda, wife of his friend MacLean. A red sentence which can be read lazily by spinning Mrs. MacLean clockwise starting on one hip and ending on another, after having skirted the rump's crest, discloses a precept signed by Hippocratus: "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away". But the real author appears on the lower abdomen, under the sophisticated form of a fleece-writing: "To Melinda with love from Kim." To finish off with this stunning creature, let us just add that she is hatted with a tortoise shell topped with a triumphant red star. This sculpture would be incomplete without Lenin whose striking expression (to present communism) SOVIETS + ELECTRICITY is engraved on a brass plaque screwed into StalinŐs back, next to a large light switch. Let us not forget that: "Not only have we cut heads off, but on top of this we educated them". Lenine
See the other side of the sculpture.
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