IZO

Коламбия Пикчерз не представляет/Как хорошо мне с тобой бывает

Band Eros, Columbia Pictures doesn't present (can't imagine); lyrics below cut.

I talked to Dmitri Vrubel last week in Berlin. The resurrection of his famous wall-painting was proceeding apace and by the time this is published should be complete. He intends to leave the old text at the top of the wall - all that remained after his and the other murals in the East Side Gallery were removed - intact, at least until it erodes completely. As far as Dmitri can tell, the paints he has been given are the same make as those originally distributed to artists after the wall was opened. The East Side Gallery is currently under guard to prevent vandalism of the refreshed artworks; ultimately, these will be covered in varnish formulated to make graffiti easy to remove.

Marat Guelman, no longer a gallerist, has given up the name "galerist" on LiveJournal (maratguelman). But what becomes of the galerist archive of posts and responses, Marat? And what of others' links to your old posts?

Last week in the Museum of Modern Art on Petrovka there was a panel discussion about the Russian presence at the Venice Biennale. It centred on the ongoing criticism (IZO, IZO) directed by Ekaterina Degot and others at the curator of the Russian pavilion, Olga Sviblova. In the end, I'm told, Degot walked out of the discussion demonstratively while Sviblova was talking. Organiser Pierre Brochet deemed the event a great success.

I can't comment on who's right about the quality of curating at the Russian pavilion because I haven't seen it, but there'll be an opportunity to look at Degot's work in this field at the exhibition European Studio, for which she has headed a team of curators; the show opens at the Central House of the Artist on 8 July (CHA, in Russian).

Interview with Petr Aven about the Venice Biennale and state of Russian contemporary art (Milena Orlova/Artkhronika, in Russian):

Q: Do you mean that the State doesn't take an ideological line in art?
A: No. The State has a certain ideology - to an extent it's liberal, to an extent it's an ideology of power and empire, as before. Contemporary artists are all very different, each with a different perception of the world, so the relationship between artists and the State is not straightforward.

Phillips de Pury had a succesful outing with Russian and Ukrainian (mainly Ukrainian) art at the 29 June London contemporary day sale. Best newcomer was Alexander Roitburd, whose Goodbye Caravaggio, prompted by the theft of the Caravaggio from Odessa Art Museum (IZO, earlier) fetched £58,850. Here's a Roitburd video (IZO). Vasili Tsagolov fetched £32,450. You could buy one of these for $10,000 a couple of years ago: here's me on Tsagolov last year: "Vasili Tsagolov's show in Tsekh Gallery, Kiev, reviewed in Kommersant (in Russian). This is not investment advice, it is simply a flight of fantasy by an unqualified observer, but if you want to put money into contemporary Ukrainian art, Tsagolov could be your guy." (IZO, earlier).

Fair warning, as they say in the auctions: the distributors (Central Books) only have eight copies left of my book A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters. Current retail is £125 inc. (I think) delivery, which may be cheaper than what's offered on Amazon, I haven't checked. I don't have any spare copies either. Socialist Realist Painting has jumped from $75 retail before it went out of print to $290+ (today's price).

Belarus Independence Day parade on 3 July: photos (toxaby).

TV personality Viktor Shenderovich has won a libel battle against LDPR politician Sergei Abeltsev; Shenderovich termed Abeltsev an "animal Yahoo" (животным йеху) (Yahoo in the sense of human being in base form, a term from Gulliver's Travels) (Novaya Gazeta, in Russian).

Pravda says the US media is painting Russia black in advance of President Obamas's 6-8 July visit (Pravda). President Obama to give interview to liberal Novaya Gazeta on eve of Moscow visit (Guardian). Comparison of the First Ladies, Michelle and Svetlana (AP).

Vagaries of the contemporary art market: the new show by Yuri Ermolenko at Tsekh Gallery, Kiev (Tsekh), sold out immediately: huge dark paintings featuring skulls and not much else: who would have guessed?

Petty censorship on Odnoklassniki? Stanislav Sadalsky reports that after he posted a joke about President Putin and the social site Odnoklassniki, the site removed dozens of photographs of Putin's "team" from Sadalsky's page (stanis-sadal, in Russian). FWIW (the implication being that Putin's team is made up of old schoolfriends - odnoklassniki):

Putin to secretary:
- Call all my stupid ministers to a meeting.
- Should I use the address-book?
- No, fuck it, use Odnoklassniki, it will be quicker that way!

Bulgarian singer Lili Ivanova performs Unquiet Heart in Leningrad 1968.

Marat Guelman posts a poem by his father (quick translation by MB) (maratguelman):

To their father, children should be a
disappointment
otherwise what kind of children are they, whose children are they?
A donkey's? A camel's?
A father should constantly
get into a rage
break out in a cold sweat,
he should be horrified.
Otherwise what kind of father is he, whose father is he?
A mannequin's? A doll's?
Children should be such
that their father
every evening, on going to bed,
prays to High Heaven
not to wake up in the morning.
Then they are children, and he is a father,
then it becomes clear why
we call God the Father.

Nigaz With Attitude (BBC) (thanks, RA)?

Nikolai Karachentsov et al, I Will Never Forget You.

Genius of Russian obscene language explains the origins of a fire in her house.

The glorious, labyrinthine Ukraine Hotel, Moscow, will re-open as the Radisson Royal on 1 December (Rezidor).

Vadim Shlakhter, Psychic Fitness (via art-quasar).

Journalist Mikhail Berg on being a "bad [Russian] Jew", first of a multi-part series (mikhail_berg, in Russian).

By the way, all those tales of the purity of Jewish blood are just another myth. Yes, all my forbears were Jews. But I arrive in New York and see that the Tajik Jews look just like Tajiks, the Georgian Jews are indistinguishable from Georgians, the Uzbek from Uzbeks and so on.

Yuri Olkhovsky, life-long commentator on Russia, has died. He worked at the NSA, Defense Department, Radio Liberty, Voice of America (WP) (thanks, MK). No word on whether this Cold Warrior ever returned to the territory of the former USSR after he and his parents were put in a camp in Germany in 1941. Maybe not: until quite recently it happened that some Soviet emigrés devoted their lives to the analysis of a country they would never re-visit.

Woody Allen doesn't want to go to Russia (boston.com) (thanks, MK).

A song about the Churks (Azeris).

Ksenia Sobchak nominates Olga Gennadevna Rodionova, heroine of the Book of Olga (IZO, earlier), for the Silver Boot prize.

Copper-nickel 1,2 and 5 rouble coins to be replaced with cheaper steel and nickel; no word on fate of 1 and 5 kopeck coins, which cost far more to produce than they are worth (numismaster.com) (thanks, MK).

Telman Ismailov update. According to someone I spoke to, he's keen to reclaim $800,000 he invested in a film project, but the money has already gone into the production.

Press round-up:

I knew there would be an art-connection: Telman Ismailov has a collection of 2,000 clocks. 

The machinations surrounding his main source of income, Cherkizov market, may stem from a dispute with one Zarakh Itsiev, who is a friend of a friend of Prime Minister Putin; or from Putin's displeasure at Ismailov's extravagant hotel-building in Turkey; or from a battle to diminish the power of Ismailov's ally, Moscow mayor, Yuri Luzhkov (Radio Svoboda, in Russian). 

Abbas Abbasov, vice-president of Ismailov's firm AST, is moving his assets out of Russia. A court case has been opened against Ismailov for contraband, but he has managed to escape to Turkey (news.az, in Russian).

The Cherkizov market [or, as the Tajik traders call it, Cherkiz-bozor] has been temporarily closed; Chinese media sources put the value of seized contraband goods at $5 billion and say several Chinese businessmen have been bankrupted and/or committed suicide. The market had become "a state within a state, an underground town with hostels connected to Stalin's former bunker, with its own system of bribes, its own guardians of the law and brothels" (Segodnya, in Russian). One problem after closure: how to cope now with the 20,000 illegal migrants who worked at the market (Novaya Gazeta, in Russian). 

Mountain Jews have come out in Ismailov's defence, saying he should be able to spend his honestly-earned money where he likes (NIRA, in Russian). Ismailov's brother has been removed from the post of Prefect (i.e., I believe, chief cop) of Moscow's Northern Administrative Area (Polit.ru, in Russian).

Other so-called "thing markets" (вещевые рынки) continue to operate as normal in Moscow. Their main function is to supply cheap goods to the "shuttle-traders" (челноки) from Russia's regions (gzt.ru, in Russian).

My video-narrative from a couple of weeks ago (IZO). Arkady Mamontov's film Cherkizon looks at the Cherkizov Market; my connection was bad and I was able to watch only up to the point where an inspector is considering some claimed "poison slippers", part of the claimed contraband at the market (Vesti, in Russian).

Spencer Tunick is looking for naked models for a project in Moscow (Open Space, in Russian).

Ha! According to this cunning journalist, Michael Jackson, in chiseling and bleaching away at his body, was enacting something analogous to the ideas established by Komar and Melamid in their World's Most Wanted Paintings research (Rob Tannenbaum/NY Mag):

I thought about artists Vitaly Komar and Alexander Melamid, who in the mid-nineties hired pollsters to determine the qualities people most liked to see in a painting and used the research to determine color, theme, and other elements in their canvasses. Michael Jackson did something similar, without the formality of polling (...)  A pollster would likely find what Jackson discovered: The most popular singer in America would be black, but not too black; male, but not masculine; sensual, but not sexual.

Way to make a connection to Russian art, Mr Tannenbaum.

Amatue, Amatue, Amatue: Ukraine girl who likes to be photographed is internet phenomenon (radulova, more pix & videos)!

Russia's 13% tax rate proves the Laffer curve theory right... and wrong. Cutting taxes increases the take where there is substantial tax evasion, but doesn't increase productivity (Guardian).

A call to the police in Kazakhstan.

What a Good Boy: Israeli Lotto ad in Russian.

Actor Rupert Everett's book of memoirs, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, has a colourful chapter about shooting Quiet Flows the Don under Sergei Bondarchuk at Mosfilm in 1990; Everett was in Moscow for a year. You can't read the relevant pages at Amazon for free yet, unfortunately (I got my copy for £1.50 at Sue Ryder Cancer Care in Aldeburgh):

Gangs of Turks posing as queers hung out in the little park in front of the Bolshoi, as Bruno found to his cost one drunken night. Mid-embrace, his lover's friends leapt out from behind trees and stole all his clothes, leaving him in his underpants in minus ten degrees, jumping up and down while trying to hitch a ride home.

I doubt they were Turks, although I don't doubt the anecdote.

A million dollars collected for the construction of the biggest mosque in Russia, in Ufa, Bashkiria, has been stolen even as the foundations are being laid (legitimist, in Russian).

Who's who in Moscow? Those whose forbears back to their great-grandparents were also muscovites account for only 2% of the capital's population. Moscow has grown 10-fold in the last century, to 10.5 million. By 2020 the population is expected to grow to 16 million, of which Russians will comprise 80% and Moscow-born inhabitants less than 50% (this is in line with European norms: 80% of londoners are British, 72% of parisians are French) (ru_anti_moscow, in Russian).

Pre-Cold War culture: the Gremlins from the Kremlin battle Hitler.

Mikhalna in underpass. And for comparison, unknown Russian buskers in underpass.

Leningrad, My Name Is Shnur, in the award-winning animation by Toondra studio (Toondra).

Deep Purple infringes own copyright in Russia (dolboeb, in Russian)! 

The Kirov borough court in Rostov-on-Don decided on 15 June that the group Deep Purple illegally performed its own songs at a concert in Rostov on 19 October last year. According to the decision of the Kirov borough court, the group Deep Purple should have received a licence for the public performance of its songs from the Russian Authors' Society (Российское Авторское Общество), since that organisation represents the rights of foreign performers in Russia even without their knowledge and agreement. For each song sung by Deep Purple without the proper licence the court ordered a payment of 30,000 roubles by the company which organised the concert, to be transferred to the Russian Authors' Society for further distribution to the authors: I. Gillan, I. Paice, R. Glover...

Lolita Milyavskaya and Arkadi Arkan, Honduras (1994). Honduras, Honduras/We are with you in your difficult hour/Honduras, Honduras/The heart of each of us.