Behind Russia’s Protests: Artistic Ferment

Jars and rubber bulbs become "Blue Cities" in the hands of artist Tatiana Antoshina (2011). (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

Vladimir Putin, the gunslinger, dominates a mural painted in 2007 by Dmitri Vrubel and Viktoria Timofeeva, showing the personalities of modern Russia. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

Ceremonial Session of the State Council, painted in 1900 by Ilya Repin, hands in the Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.

Plastic birch trees fly in a piece called "They Are Coming Back" by Nikola Ovchinnikov. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

In 2011, Vladimir Dubosarski and Alexander Vinogradov painted "For Valour," a series of odes to the grandmother and grandfather survivors of World War II, known here as The Great Fatherland War. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

Lenin's Tomb turns red to match the the square? The Communist movement? or Lenin's bloody hold on Russia? And why are the Lenins in steel, the metal associated with his successor, Stalin, the Man of Steel? Only Vitali Komar and Alexander Melamud , the ins

Jackson Pollock seems to meet Socialist Realism in "Double Diversion" painted in 2009 by Diana Machulina. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

"The Guys from Our Yard" all have the same face in this photo montage created in 2004 by The Blue Noses, an artist collective represented here by Alexander Shaburov and Vyacheslav Mizin. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

A taxidermist must have helped Yuri Shabelnikov create Russia's doubled headed eagle out of a real bird, or two, in 2005. The cutaway symbols of czarism leave their marks. (VOA Photo/James Brooke)

Marat Guelman shows James Brooke a catalog for Rodina - Motherland shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Perm, Russia. (VOA Photo/Yuli Weeks)

Then-President Vladimir Putin presides over the "Formal Session of the State Council" painted in 2004 by Sergey Kalinin and Farid Bogdalov. Depicting contemporary Russian political figures, such as the head of the Communist Party, the Patriarch and the Ec