Join us for the launch of the paperback edition of “Bacon in Moscow” written by James Birch and published by Cheerio.
The book presents an intimate and sincere account of an audacious quest by James Birch, the young British curator, to mount the ground-breaking Francis Bacon exhibition at the newly furbished Central House of Artists, Moscow in 1988.
Somewhat sidelined by the British establishment, Birch found himself not only the subject of a honey-trap, but also the focus of the KGB and a picaresque and shady cast of officials, attachés and politicians. Birch’s exhibition brought an unseen Western culture to Russia during perestroika, just before the fall of the Berlin Wall, making it part of the sea of change in the events that subsequently unfolded.
“A rollicking cultural adventure before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the meteoric rise of contemporary art in the nineties. James Birch pulls off an artistic coup necessitating endless champagne nights in Soho with Francis Bacon and marathon Moscow vodka sessions with the mysterious Sergei Klokov. Fascinating and true. What a liver!” – Grayson Perry