CNN: How Culture Can Heal The East-West Rift
01 Jun 14
Editor's note: Nina dos Santos is a news anchor and correspondent based in London. She is the host of CNN International's new business show, The Business View, which airs weekdays at 12pm CET. Follow her on Twitter and tell us, using the hashtag #cnnbusinessview, can soft diplomacy work?
London (CNN) -- While Ukraine's fight for freedom gets bloodier by the day and Russia faces the West's cold shoulder, in the elegant surroundings of London's Somerset House, one oligarch is using art to get his message across.
"This work is called 'Widows,' for one simple reason," says Andrei Filatov as he points towards a picture of five elderly ladies looking forlorn. "Because instead of an icon [on the wall] there is Karl Marx."
And in cottages where the father of socialism has taken the Holy Mother's place, he explains, "this tells us the women depicted have probably lost their husbands in the war."
For almost half a century the widows' empty eyes have stared out over Moscow's Tretyakov Gallery, caught behind the iron curtain as a new, "cold" war came and went.
