IZO

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

A report on Art Moscow, with prices (Artinfo). I can add that a large work on paper by A.Kallima, one of the most heavily-promoted young Russian artists, was sold from the Guelman Gallery stand for a reported €45,000.

The opening of Art Moscow: Marat comes clean (photo: JV). Actually this is an archetypal moment: in order for contemporary art to remain vital, it has to contemplate the possibility of its own irrelevance and uselessness.

Scenes from Art Moscow:
- Tsekh Gallery (Kiev) booth; pretty well sold out on VIP night.
- Blue Nose Alexander Shaburov gives an interview (Guelman Gallery).
- Work by Oleg Dou (Aidan Gallery).
- Anatoli Osmolovski, bread piece (fore); Blue Noses/Ilya Chichkan collaboration allowing you to play ping-pong with Albert Einstein (aft); curator Ekaterina Degot (seated) (Guelman Gallery).
- IV Height group (on the wall); Andrei Prigov (passing by).
- Julian Schnabel at Kaj Forsblum.
- Porno cut-outs by, I guess, Porolon, but maybe I am wrong.
- Triumph Gallery booth.
- Gary Tatintsian Gallery booth.
- Elena Vrublevskaya Gallery, mysterious and effective performance/installation.
- Work by Dima Gutov (Guelman Gallery).
- Girls, girls, girls: in foreground, sculpture by AES+F (Triumph Gallery).

Chubarov conundrum

Talk proliferates about the huge sum (£288,000) paid for Evgeni Chubarov's painting on Thursday. I was called yesterday by a well-known art reporter who wanted my comment on the "conspiracy theory": was the price artificially inflated in order to boost  the value of Chubarov's oeuvre? I had no comment, except to point out that we have seen these spikes before, notably the £500,000+ paid for a work by Krasnopevtsev last year, and to suggest that they may be an artefact of an immature market, in which reputations and values are still being hammered out.  However, there the comparison ends. Krasnopevtsev is dead, has an honoured place in Russian art history and museums etc., and is broadly collected. The million-dollar price paid for his work, however apparently excessive in the context of what had gone before, could be understood as an exceptional price for an exceptional piece (which it was). Chubarov on the other hand, is alive, relatively unknown, was not hitherto widely sought-after, and presumably has a studio full of work. The price paid for his painting doesn't seem capable of explanation in the same way.

The Chubarov case aside, it strikes me as naive to think one could manipulate the market significantly by bidding up prices at a Sotheby's auction: first, even if you are effectively bidding on a work you own, it's an expensive business (nearly 30% of the final price goes to Sotheby's); second, everyone is sceptical of inexplicable price-hikes of this order; third, a single sale does not a market make: what is needed is broad collector demand sustained over years, backed up by scholarship and museum-level support.