Inspired entirely by Billy Joel's Leningrad:
Viktor was born in the spring of '44
And never saw his father anymore
A child of sacrifice, a child of war
Another son who never had a father after Leningrad
Went off to school and learned to serve the state
Followed the rules and drank his vodka straight
The only way to live was drown the hate
Russian life was very sad;
Such was life in Leningrad
I was born in '49
A Cold War kid in McCarthy time
Stop 'em at the 38th Parallel
Blast those yellow reds to hell
Cold War kids were hard to kill
Under their desks in an air raid drill
Haven't they heard we won the war;
What do they keep on fighting for?
Viktor was sent to some Red Army town
Served out his time, became a circus clown
The greatest happiness he'd ever found
Was making Russian children glad
That children lived in Leningrad
But children lived in Levittown
And hid in the shelters underground
'Til the Soviets turned their ships around
And tore the Cuban missiles down
And in that bright October sun
We knew our childhood days were done
And I watched my friends go off to war;
What do they keep on fighting for?
And so, my child and I came to this place
To meet him eye to eye and face to face
He made my daughter laugh, then we embraced
We never knew what friends we had
Until we came to Leningrad
My first silkscreen evar. Done in drawing fluid first. Didn't put enough medium in the ink, so the final editions were pretty badly degraded. -_-; Oooops. (This is the first test-print, on plain ol' newspaper, hence the wrinkles.)
More from quexthemyuu 
Sta.sh
why out of everything do you choose a church?
Leningrad was one of the symbolic city of socialist-communist ideal, which is atheistic, not to say antitheistic?
I am concerned.
The silhouette used on the screen is inspired by the church built into the Catherine Palace, with some simplifications (never used drawing fluid again, damn stuff... and it sure didn't help that it was cheap student-grade material). Besides offering the "onion-head-hat" form that so immediately evokes old Russia in many a Western mind, it allowed me to apply the symbols of Catholicism (not Christianity in general, but specifically Catholicism) into the piece.
This was done for a class at the University of Notre Dame, which, you may know, is a stiffly Catholic school. ("Went off to school and learned to serve the state.") I am not Catholic, and the longer I spent under the flag of the Holy See, the more I came to realize that very few of my fellow students were "really" Catholic, either. Many of them were simply following the vatican's latest edicts, one-by-one, as they were issued. It was all very much like either America OR Russia's gulp-after-gulp acceptance of early Cold War propaganda. Specifically, when anti-homosexual bias was sanctioned by the administration's refusal to allow club status to a GLTB organization on campus, the line "blast those yellow-reds to hell" came to mind... a hateful rallying cry.
Consider, then, the significance of a church under the arcing missiles, and guarded by iron spikes, looming before two men and a little girl who approach in it's negative form. The higher eschelons of the Catholic church, especially among their educators, appear just as threatening to outsiders as the once-mighty communist government.
Again, thank you so much for asking.
...and there is honestly NO WAY to derive that from the image without an artist's statement, because I had to wheedle every blurry thing out of GOTTDAMN DRAWING FLUID.
U surprised me
Well u see, i'm [proud to be] a socialist [or a 'hardout commie' as my friends refer to
I'm not sure how communism and its related schools-of-thoughts are regarded to now, but I presume the narrow-minded McCarthyism is no more supported by the population.
Well,... about religion... what else should i say, I'm an atheist... so yeah
Wait,... confirm if I'm wrong, but I thought those onion-roof, Slavic christianity is called the Eastern Orthodox church, how are they related to catholicism?
Okiy, that's about the political stuff. About ur painting... dont blame ur Gottdamn drawing fluid. Coz there's nothing to be blamed in that awesome piece
America seems to have back-pocketed Communism as an old dog with no teeth left and gone on to targeting "terrorsm," the broad description of which means "any country who looks shifty to us and has something we want." IE, regimes in Iraq, Iran, maybe Syria, but definitely not the genocide in Sudan, because we don't want anything that they have.
Really, when you're an imperialist nation looking for reasons to put a military force in a nation, terror covers a lot more ground than Communism these days. McCarthyism is, sadly, alive and well, only now it's the "turrists" going on the no-fly lists, while the Communist and Socialist threats of the 60s and 70s sit in their retirement homes and watch CNN in despair.
The Eastern Orthodox denomination is also known as Orthodox Catholic. There are sub-denominations (as a rule!), but the two are otherwise the same entity.
You aren't alone, brother!
If we make our arguments with conviction, the world will wake up some day. Fight on!
O_O I dont get any of these... churches' stuffs...
Hmmmm... 'brother' has a... religious connotation...
I know, I'm not alone, we are not alone [in case u ARE truly an atheist, which i feel like u are]. But they are about 7 times more not alone than us [a statistic i no longer am sure of whose accuracy and reference]...
Still, i AM fighting on!
Btw I befriended u
I like the two tone color; it reminds me of old soviet propaganda (what you were trying for correct?)