IZO

An appreciation of communist-era jokes, culled from a new book, Hammer & Tickle (FT) (thanks, TM).

Recent monologues by Oleg Kulik (Liga Svobodnykh Gorodov, in Russian). Below: one of a series of works made in Tibet, 2008.

Not much love for Russia in Ukraine. New regulations require that films shot in Ukraine are made in the Ukrainian language; currently much film and TV production is in Russian, partly to cater to the large Russian-language population, partly to increase commercial viability by distribution in Russia (Gazeta.ru, in Russian). The Russian comic Maxim Galkin's jokes, broadcast on the Ukrainian TV channel Inter, have been the subject of a commission of enquiry due to their "plain disrespect" for the Ukrainian people (Gazeta. ru, in Russian). And Ukrainian TV boss Vasili Ilashchuk has described Russian Dima Bilan's victory in the Eurovision Song Contest as a "falsification": he refers to an opinion poll in the Balkans which revealed that not a single man on the street would have voted for Bilan (Gazeta.ru, in Russian).

A new method in the battle against fakes, developed by Dr Elena Basner, formerly of the Russian Museum, relies on the presence or absence in the pigment-binding oils of isotopes released by nuclear explosions in 1945 and later (Times).

Dr Basner, who is a consultant to a Swedish auction house, plans to use the technique to test the authenticity of Russian avant-garde works dating from 1900 to 1930. “The number of avant garde fakes out there is unbelievable, probably more than the number of genuine works,” she said.

“Collectors and dealers do not want to come to us. They are afraid the market will resist this technology. There are many people who have an interest in keeping fakes in circulation.”

UPDATE: this news was first broken by John Varoli in The Art Newspaper.

Julian Schnabel on Tarkovsky's Andrei Rublev (Daily Telegraph).

Ilya Glazunov has announced that lot 415, A View Of The Kremlin, at Sotheby's upcoming Russian sale, is not by him: "it is appalling and compromises my reputation as an artist." However, Sotheby's Russian boss Mikhail Kamensky insists it is by Glazunov (Kommersant, in Russian; via galerist, in Russian [who adds that Kamensky has "proof" that the painting is by Glazunov]). What will be the result of all this? Probably that the price will go up ;)

Now, having flown back from Spain (Easyjet air ticket London-Malaga-London: £40; taxi London-Stansted airport, one way: £65), I've had time to explore the new Open Space Russian culture magazine, I see that it keeps the market-focused Art Times site as a discrete section but adds a further section called simply Art, which includes an occasional blog by Ekaterina Degot. There are tabs devoted to cinema, theatre, literature and music, but the double dose of visual art sets the tone; it's plainly the best art-oriented publication on the Russian-language internet.

Pavel Pepperstein will show at Sutton Lane Gallery, London, from 14 June to 5 July. Below, from the show, one of a series of Objects above the Sea (Thanks, YW).

OpenSpace.ru, the new culture portal and successor to Art Times, appears to be open to visitors.

Hollywood blockbustahz re-imagined as Russian fairy tales (slashfilm.com).

Another look at the Moscow World Fine Art Fair (Daily Telegraph):

It is men like Dmitry Kushaev, a millionaire banker, who are helping stave off a collapse in the mid-range market. Mr Kushaev, who says he would never pay more than about £270,000 for a painting, says he has begun to branch out into Western art for the first time.

A report on the Moscow World Fine Art Fair (John Varoli/Bloomberg). Many dealers have a unique source of supply which ensures them some financial stability in an uncertain business. In the case of the Moscow firm Maricevic, it appears to be the work of Russian painter Stepan Kolesnikov:

After the 1917 Revolution, Kolesnikov fled Russia and in 1920 he settled in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Over the past six years, Maricevic has brought more than 200 of Kolesnikov's works from Serbia for sale in Russia.

The Russian population, and with it the Russian language, is declining in Kyrgyzstan. This is not a trivial matter, because Kyrgyz is apparently an inadequate language for the twenty-first century (tol.cz):

Russian dominates in science and technology because Kyrgyz lacks many specialized terms, but is not confined to those fields. At Osh State University, authorities could not find a Kyrgyz equivalent for the Russian word meaning “art,” so the Faculty of Arts bears the Russian title iskusstvo.

Another academic, Alexander Katsev of Kyrgyz-Slavic University, echoed such concerns at a roundtable in March on the role of the Russian language in Kyrgyzstan, stating that no important texts have been published in Kyrgyz since the country’s independence.

Donald Trump has found a Russian buyer for his oceanfront estate in Palmbeach (IHT).

In Belarus, president Lukashenko has introduced a law requiring all public musical performances to be officially sanctioned (mail.ru, in Russian).

At time of writing, freelance.ru has 14,319 Design/art blogs put up by professional illustrators etc. This is work by glooh; he is pretty lurid and may well not be to your taste, but the site is a good resource.

Thoughts on Dima Bulan's triumph in the Eurovision Song Contest (Telegraph):

While Bilan may have started out with a local choir in obscurity in Ust-Dzheguta, a small industrial town in a province of southern Russia, his song Believe, with its English lyrics, is a product of an altogether more professional outfit.

His American producers, Jim Beanz and Timbaland, are responsible for tunes by Britney Spears and Shakira - not, at first sight and sound, the most iconic of Russian performers.

That may be changing. Dima Bilan's power ballad, and the millions that went into producing it, may appear an ominous sign of Russia's determination to stamp its dominance on even the most superficial competition.

An interview with Jean-Hubert Martin, named as curator of the third Moscow Biennale, which will be held in the already-legendary Melnikov garage. He plans on bringing in little-seen art from Africa, Asia, Oceania. Apparently, there are already over 110 biennales around the world (Kommersant, in Russian).

Sergey Dvortsevoy's film Tulpan has won first prize at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard category (myway).

From email received, it's plain that not everybody agrees with this rumour.

A look at Christies' forthcoming sales, including, on 9 June, the most valuable icon sale ever (Artdaily).

Dima Bilan wins the Eurovision Song Contest! Congratulations, Dima! (Daily Mail). UPDATE: Ukrainian Ani Lorak came second.

It is believed that Ukrainian collector and museum-owner Viktor Pinchuk bought Jeff Koons's Hanging Heart ($23.5 million at Sotheby's) and Diamond (Blue) ($11.8 million at Christies) last November (NY Times).

The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis, is showing pre-1917 Russian colour photography (Star Tribune).

Prokudin-Gorskii (1863-1944) had to abandon his camera and projector when he fled Russia in 1918 and there is no replica or diagram to show how the equipment worked. Each of his 3- by 9-inch glass plates contains three virtually identical images, shot respectively through red, green and blue filters. When projected through a special three-lens projector, the images converged into a single, full-color image. But the original glass plates are too fragile for a long exhibit.

At a charity auction in Cannes rapper and designer P. Diddy bid against oligarch Umar Dzhabrailov for Madonna's guitar. Dzhabrailov proved himself the greater warrior, winning the instrument for €350,000. He also bought Sharon Stone's Porsche cabriolet (Komsomolskaya Pravda, in Russian).

Bonhams have previewed their June Russian art auction, including the Goncharova which they apparently beat Sotheby's for, at the British ambassador's residence in Moscow (Kommersant, in Russian). Bonhams will also sell Russian books and manuscripts on June 10 (Rare Book Review).

At the Sotheby's Moscow preview (23-25 May) Mikhail Kamensky, the head of Sotheby's Russia, promised unspecified "sensational events" in the world of Russian art. Sotheby's Deputy Chairman Lord Poltimore said that the number of Russian buyers at Sotheby's in 2007 was double the number five years earlier, and the sum spent more than 12 times higher: $192 million vs $15.5 million (RIA Novosti, in Russian). A look at the works brought over by Sotheby's (Marina Kamenev/Moscow Times).

Not to be left behind pr-wise by the bigger boys, Macdougall auctions have previewed their forthcoming sale in Kiev (Liga, in Russian).

A look at negotiations behind the Moscow Architecture Biennale, which opens on 27 May (Kommersant, in Russian).

The Moscow International Fine Arts Salon, which opens on 27 May, is previewed (Kommersant, in Russian). Commentary from the the organisers, including the detail that the cost of a stand is €800 per square metre (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

A new building of 100,000 square metres will be constructed for the Russian State Library (still known familiarly as the Leninka); it will be connected to the existing building by a tunnel or a bridge (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

An auction in Moscow organised by the Russian Gallery of Arts, which specialises in C20 Russian realism, raised $350,000, with a 50% unsold rate (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Andrei Erofeev, head of the New Directions department at the Tretyakov Gallery, is the second person to be charged in connection with the show Forbidden Art (IZO, passim); he is accused of breaking a law against the inciting of "racial, national and religious enmity" (Lenta.ru, in Russian). A photo-reporton Erofeev's arrival at court for questioning on 22 May and the picket outside is on the Russian Street Art blog, whence the below pic.

Communists in St Petersburg are protesting against the Russian release of the latest Indiana Jones movie, which depicts "Soviet terrorists who are trying to destroy the USA" (Gazeta.ru, in Russian).

In Moscow, Bonhams has opened a show of top-lots from its June auction (Gazeta.ru, in Russian).

The new Minister of Culture, Alexander Avdeev, has met the press. In addressing the charge of censorship levelled at the ministry under his predecessor, he stated that the ministry would not engage in censorship, but would fight vulgarity (пошлость). This he distinguished from "hooliganism" (NTV, in Russian):

You can find hooliganism in the work of Esenin and Mayakovsky, but not vulgarity.

The only art-world figure in the picket in support for Yuri Samodurov appears to be Petr Verzilov, one of the participants of Fuck for the Teddy Bear-Heir (Credo.ru, in Russian).

Dima Bilan is upset because the well-known journalist Vladimir Solovev has described his Eurovision song and performance as, well, crap, and suggested that he and his team were of "non-traditional sexual orientation" (Bilan has a fiancee and his team-members have girlfriends) (Komsomolskaya Pravda, in Russian).

A preview image of AES+F's upcoming show, entitled Europe-Europe, at RS&A Ltd, London. In eighteenth-century style, a Jewish boy is swooning with love in the lap of a skinhead girl. Actually, nothing's inconceivable in Moscow. I can't make out what their book of love is, unfortunately.

Garry Kasparov attacked by a flying penis (Thanks, MK).

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The Minnesota Zoo izba has arrived (Star Tribune).

Dima Bilan, whose struggle for his own stage-name featured on IZO before (actually, he recently got his name back [Gazeta.ru, in Russian]), has reached the final of the Eurovision Song Contest (Kommersant, in Russian). According to the Moscow News I read on the plane a few days ago, he is in fact the bookies' favourite, but a new voting system, introduced after last year's final to counter possible East-bloc collusion, has made the outcome less than certain. This is his semi-final performance; the song's composers were over-anxious to tick all the boxes imo:

A rare auction of ancient art took place in Moscow yesterday; no info on results (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

While digressing, as we are today, on the state of Britain, I get this news by email and text message:  a man has just been arrested for the attempted murder of British artist Gary Webb, who currently has a show at top gallery The Approach W1. Apparently the man, driving a white van, tried to force Gary, riding a moped, off the road, and finally succeeded, chipping and dislocating his shoulder and putting him in hospital. It happened on the Old Kent Road, London (thanks, LKJ).

An exhibition called Five Seasons of the Russian Avant-Garde, curated from works in the Costakis Collection, is on display now in Thessalonikis (Athens News Agency).

I just received an email from a documentary film buyer interested in acquiring rights to my film about a Russian prostitute, My Night With Julia (2003). It's actually unshowable now on UK TV after a ruling, which followed its first broadcast, that it was degrading or exploitative or something along those lines: it's the only TV documentary in living memory to get such a blanket ban. The terms offered are: all media (including online streaming), US, UK, and Italy for 5 years for around £1000. The offer's for a clip of up to 8 minutes only, and of course I'm flattered by the interest, but even so, how do documentary makers make a living at these rates?

The latest Western-made Russian gangster movie, Say It In Russian, starring Faye Dunaway, will be part of the Monte Carlo TV festival (Fox Business).

A video report on last Saturday's all-night viewing at Vinzavod, Art4ru and other venues (Russia Today).

A retrospective of the Mosfilm studio is at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, from next week (Washington Times).

With Amy Winehouse's reportedly opening the Melnikov Garage in mind, here's a look at how much Western pop stars are paid to perform in Russia (Komsomolskaya Pravda Vladimir).