The opening ceremony of the Sochi Winter Olympics last week prominently featured the touchstones of the Russian avant-garde, The Art Newspaper notes.  References and tributes to Malevich, Tatlin and Rodchenko could be seen throughout the ceremony, but some critics noted that the inclusion of these artists was a bid by Vladimir Putin to culturally tie the country closer to Europe.   “He needs to feel that attempts to become European are immediately appreciated and not rejected,” says Marat Guelman, the curator and former museum director forced from his post at the Perm Museum over political critiques. “Otherwise if he sees that whatever he does he is trashed, he’ll spit on it all and start building an Orthodox Iran.” Read more at The Art Newspaper

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