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An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away. Kim Philby.

     

Click on the picture for a larger view.

   

kim philby
Painted wood, steel, enamel, bakelite,
brass, ceramic, bronze,
tortoise shell, ball bearing and Johnny Walker "Black Label" whisky.
H.250, W.150, D.95 cm (1996).

FURTHER INFORMATIONS

 

Léon Trotsky
*Trotsky, crafty.


Léon Trotsky
Trotsky, dying.
Léon Trotsky
Trotsky's dictaphone.
Kim Philby
** Philby's office, at home, in Moscow.

REFER TO

Léon Trotsky
Alain Dugrand
Trotsky. Mexico 1937-1940.
Documents Payot.


 

 

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.
The base of the sculpture is thus taken over by one of the most famous murders of history, Caesar's assassination, maybe, or Kennedy's. The day is August 20, 1940. Stalin in Marshal's uniform standing in blood up to his waist has just driven the famous axe seven centimeters deep into Leon Trotsky's skull*. The head still emerges, already clothed in a white bandage, and you can guess the terrible wound under the safety pin.
Then we pass onto the floor above. A pink and impressive person with her breasts sticking out is spinning around, revolving on Stalin's cap. Deprived of legs, she has the small of her back incredibly curved so that her majestic behind is able to hold up four and a half liters of "Johnny Walker Black Label", the favorite brand of that great whisky lover Kim Philby. The sculpture is dedicated to him, or so reads the brass plaque wielded by a curious gray appendix sticking out of Stalin's shoulder.

HAROLD ADRIAN RUSSEL "KIM" PHILBY
Commander of the Order of the British Empire / Order of the Red Flag
SIS/KGB
1912-1988
"He betrayed his country. Yes, so maybe he did that, but which one of us hasn't betrayed, for someone or something that mattered more to him than his country"
    Graham Greene

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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