ABSTRACT
Sergej Gladkich reviews the 1989 ROCI exhibition in Moscow, Born in 1952 in the USSR, Gladkich moved to East Berlin in 1976, where he worked as a translator from Russian to German, German to Russian, and French into German. This chapter, published in the last months of the German Democratic Republic (GDR), aims to confirm the increasing openness of the GDR cultural media to Western art and displays an obvious delight in Rauschenberg’s virtuosity. In the admittedly unlovely rooms of the Central House of the Arts, Robert Rauschenberg is introduced for the first time to the Moscow public with around 350 works—collages, assemblages, objects, installations, etc. Responses ranging from bewilderment to euphoria, which is not surprising after so much previous abstinence. ROCI, conceived as a charitable/commercial foundation, gives the Pop artist who knows every trick in the book the chance to play a role beyond the borders of his own land.
