IZO

Skype conversation:

 

On the art purchases made for Roman Abramovich's yacht (Bloomberg).

Olga Sviblova's ground-breaking 1988 film on the post-1957 avant-garde, Black Square. Download (net-film).

My article on the recent Andrew Graham-Dixon BBC TV series, Art of Russia (Open Space, in Russian).

Rise Up, Russia!

2005 interview with non-conformist artist Alexander Tumanov (retromaniak, in Russian):

- You must have known Glezer, the organiser of unofficial art exhibitions...

- He was never a dissident. You know what his nickname was in Moscow? Glezervative.

- Why?

- I don't know why.

About Black Square magazine, a trend-oriented publication from the Art Media Group stable (Fashion Communication).

 

Last month's but underviewed: Oleg Kulik "in bed" with Maria Kravtsova.


For comparison purposes: performance Woman and Dog.

What do you call Russian as spoken by those who emigrated to Israel at a youngish age? Rubrew? Hessian? Anyway, here's a sample of the new bilingualism (dexamol, in Russian):

Кого я хочу найти: МЫ ПАРА КРАСИВАЯ (М+Ж). мы ищем симпотичную девушку, которая готова кнам пресаеденица и 3анимаца снами полным сексам, или только смаим парням вмаё пресутствие.

Astronauts on the International Space Station now have a "real time" internet connection (infuture, in Russian).

Poetess-activist and "happiness guru" charged (NYT) (thanks, MK):

Some time in the coming month, Russian poetess Yulia Privedyonnaya may be packed off to a psychiatric ward in a case activists described Thursday as a dangerous throwback to the Soviet-era practice of punitive psychiatry.

I would add that the practice dates back in fact to before the Soviet era, at least to the C19. Petr Chaadaev, for example, was adjudged insane in the 1830s.

Photoshopped Yuliya Timoshenkos; below from archiverba (tema).

 

Mayor of Odessa, Gurvits, doesn't let singer Iosif Kobzon into town (proUA, in Russian)? Letter of protest against policies of mayor Gurvits (mrparker). Meanwhile, someone's second day in Odessa...

Goshman's Mama, aka Mama of Gosh (via plucer).

In the pockets of those who died in the Lame Horse fire were 728 grams of cocaine; Igor Markin comments: "here in Moscow is the provinces, that's the cultural capital" (art4ru, in Russian).

Cinema news

Positive review of the December movie release Antikiller 3 (stillavinsergei, in Russian). It's out on DVD and apparently you can down load it here (Myfilmix; somewhat NSFW ads on this page).

The French film Le Concert, about Brezhnev-era classical musicians, is a hit in France (Nouvelobs, in French).

Tarkovsky season at LACMA (LA Weekly) (thanks, MK).

Trailer for the film On This Earth Live Kind, Good People.

Rumour: Valeriya Gai-Germanika to make a TV serial called The Kremlin (dmitrivrubel, in Russian)?

Leonard Cohen will play the Kremlin Palace on March 19 (Kursor, in Russian).

Vandals attack Russian Museum's "street art" project (Fontanka, in Russian).

Curator Rosa Maria Falvo on the Central Asian art scene (Art Radar Asia).

Induction of the first black Cossack.

Titomir, Moscow is Sh*t.

And: muscovites are taller, fatter and balder than the average Russian, likely to be short-sighted, depressed and have tooth-decay (Moscow-live, in Russian).

Sale of the $1.7 million prez Medvedev photo of Tobolsk (IZO, earlier) with insider info (b_insider).

 

Alexei Ledyaev battles the Devil. And Alexei Ledyaev gives an interview.

Hope and Change, the Audacity of Hope... Hope was a woman who inspired prez Obama. Jeremiah Wright set them up together. Now BO doesn't want to look at her (Daily Mail).

Husband of £43,000 boob job benefits cheat 'faked death in Moscow to avoid jail' (Daily Mail). In fact, the story is even more ridiculous than it sounds.

So far this winter in St Petersburg, eight people have died by falling off roofs when clearing snow and ice (Vkrizis, in Russian). "Anti-icicle man" must be an unbelievably risky profession.

Olga Rodionova, embattled heroine of the notorious Book of Olga (IZO, earlier), has won a nominal sum of 20,000 roubles (about $600) in damages for "moral harm" from TV presenter Kseniya Sobchak (Dni.ru, in Russian). Below, I think, the show which got Sobchak into trouble.

13 translators from the VHS era. As far as I know, these movies were dubbed on a single run-through, without preparation.

The studio of sculptor B. I Dyuzhev: 23 photos by Igor Alekseev (moya_moskva).

 

The first prosecution of a Ukrainian citizen for denial that the famine of 1932-33 was "genocide" is underway (Svobodnaya Pressa, in Russian).

Great photos! Evgeni Plyushchenko on his comeback wins European figure-skating crown (dmitrivrubel). Can't help linking back to this (IZO). Championship video below. Also: Russian skating champions outrage Aboriginal leaders with routine learned on internet (Daily Mail). ‘It's not just intellectual property. It's straight-out cultural theft.’ Gimme a break. Video below.

German actors playing the dramatised version of the classic tale of an alcoholic's journey, Moscow-Petushki, got so drunk they fell off the stage (Kursor, in Russian).

Oligarch news

Igor Kolomoisky has bought the Ukrainian TV channels 1+1 and Kino (Izrus, in Russian).

Dinara Kulibaeva, daughter of Kazakhstan prez Nursultan Nazarbaev, has bought the most expensive villa in Geneva; the seller was a Russian, Rustam Aksenenko (MIGnews, in Russian).

Alexander Mashkevich, head of the Eurasian Jewish Congress, is sponsoring the construction of a Catholic church "in a Muslim country" and of a Russian Orthodox church in the Kazakh capital, Astana (Izrus, in Russian).

Re: Dumbo: 6,000-square-foot triplex at One Main for $25 million — the Clock Tower (NYT).

Q. There were reports that the Russian billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov has been interested.

A. I have no comment on who we’ve shown it to.

Mr Justice Arnold (funny a High Court judge should have a name like that...) decides drinks called something like vodka, including "Vodkat", must be alcoholic (Telegraph).

Not Russian but not so far away. On the Pink Panthers (Global Post):

The attractive young woman seduced the son of the jewelry store owner in Rome to find out where the safe was in the owner’s house. She also discovered that the owner needed builders for repairs. Some of the others secured the renovation contract and cased the house. The get-away driver spent weeks learning every one-way road and stop sign in downtown Rome. And eventually the safe-cracker, the smallest in the group, hid himself inside a false-bottomed chest that the others left on the balcony of a bedroom where the safe was located.

Russia's population increases for first time since 1995 (Reuters). I was going to theorise "Dasha Zhukova effect! What Dasha does, others copy!" But it's down to that boring standby of the European pension system, immigration.

Garry Kasparov on chess and computers (NYRB); looking ahead:

...poker [may seem to be] based entirely on human psychology and therefore invulnerable to computer incursion. A machine can trivially calculate the odds of every hand, but what to make of an opponent with poor odds making a large bet? And yet the computers are advancing here as well. Jonathan Schaeffer, the inventor of the checkers-solving program, has moved on to poker and his digital players are performing better and better against strong humans—with obvious implications for online gambling sites.

ArtKhronika's 50 most influential figures in Russian art, 2009. Numbers 1-2-3 are Backstein; Zhukova and Abramovich; Sviblova. Read the full list (Artkhronika, in Russian). Interview with winner Backstein (The Voice of Russia).

A round-up of views on Ukrainian art in 2009 (Art Ukraine, in Russian).

Bozhena Rynska [aka society columnist and blogger becky-sharpe] asks Why Don't Artists Love The Oligarchs? (Artkhronika, in Russian).

Hard on the heels of the art-reality show "featuring" (he never actually appeared, but his oracular pronouncements were handed down by his assistant) Charles Saatchi, Simon de Pury will be heading up NBC Universal's TV show Work of Art: the Next Great Artist (authentic contemporary art).

The Russian National Museum, aka the Fabergé Museum, in Baden-Baden, which houses the Fabergé collection belonging to Alexander Ivanov, has won the right to use the word Fabergé in its name; a court in Frankfurt-on-Main decided the name was purely descriptive and didn't infringe the rights of the complainant, Pallinghurst Resources (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

Wedding-party crooner Yevgeny Shwartz, A Georgian Is Waiting For You.

Fight in Jerusalem? Ramazan, the well-known sports presenter, I think, provides the commentary:

One hundred sculptures of Lenin outside the USSR (ru–lenin).

Noggano and Kupe, Vodka.

Rouble, Doshirak (whatever that means: unappetising Chinese noodles apparently) (via AA).

A visit to Harbin, which still has some architecture from the time of the Russian "occupation", although much has disappeared in the last twenty years (seattle pi).

R. Wood Esq. new Russian fling (Daily Mail). But Ovechkin is #1 bachelor (National Post) (thanks, LQ and MK).