IZO

Exhibitions

Suprematism and Zaha Hadid at Gmurzynska, Zurich (FT).

"Strikingly timid" survey of Russian video art at Futura, Prague (Prague Post).

Review of Vis-a-Vis, main project of the II Biennale of Young Art (Valentin Dyakonov/Kommersant, in Russian).

Gaddafi's son shows paintings in Moscow (Reuters).

Review of Richard Wilson at Matthew Bown (Tagesspiegel, in German). Beautiful show; unfortunately the 1000-degree sculpture Red Hot intermittently breaks down: the physics of the interior is complicated.

Review of big Tsereteli show in Paris, part of the Russian-French friendship year (Louvre Pour Tous, in French).

Exhibitions

In Perm: two photo reports from If (Якщо) (Sol; ri-z0ne). Below: Marat Guelman and Ekaterina Degot; work by Alexei Sai (I think); BMW decorated with bullet-holes.

 

In USA: Shepard Fairey at Deitch Projects (NYT). And bonus link: Orly Taitz-with-placenta painting (OC Weekly) (thanks, MK)!

Anya Zholud at the Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art; discussion (art4-ru, in Russian).

Zinovi Tolkachev (1903-77) at the Museum of Contemporary Russian History, Moscow. Tolkachev was a fascinating figure: a communist from age 14, allied with the Boichukist muralists in Kiev in the twenties, worked with Diego Rivera, and as a soldier in WWII helped liberate Auschwitz (salnikov-vova, in Russian).

The Pereman collection was bought by Alex Adamovsky, head of the OLEDO group, who plans to open a private museum in Kiev (alek-epstein, in Russian).

Just sayin'...

Alphonse Allais was a French journalist, writer and humorist, born October 20, 1854 in Honfleur (Calvados) and died October 28, 1905 in Paris. Famous in the Belle Epoque, known for his acerbic pen and absurd humor, he is the misunderstood author of the first abstract paintings: his monochromes Harvesting Tomatoes at the Side of the Red Sea by Apoplectic Cardinals etc. were submitted to the Salon of Incoherent Arts a generation before the White Square on White Background of Kazimir Malevich, generally considered the first example of this.

The above from French-language Wikipedia (Wikipedia). Below, his Battle of the Negroes in a Deep Cave in Darkest Night-time (1893) (via i.ua, in Russian).

Malevich family settles ownership dispute with Guggenheim Museum (NYT).

A book I hadn't read before my dad gave me a copy the other day, Jack Chen's Soviet Art and Artists (1944) is basically a propaganda effort, but contains interesting details and reminiscences of a Chinaman's study at VKhuTeMas/VKhuTeIn in the 1920s, e.g.:

 

 

The Desert Of Forbidden Art is inspired by the story of Igor Savitsky and the Nukus Museum (desertofforbiddenart) (thanks, MK). Once upon a time, at the suggestion of Ray Johnson, I wrote a film-script about a young art dealer in Moscow rescuing masterpieces of socialist realism; it didn't  go anywhere.

Kandinsky gives Guggenheim Museum biggest week's attendance ever (NYT) (thanks, MK).

New to me (info submitted to IZO by email, apparently by Susanne Orlando of Galerie Orlando, Zurich, which trades in Russian avant-garde art): The Russian Avant-Garde Rag. The current issue, number 2, is devoted to the Chauvelin-Nakov conflict over works attributed to Ekster, which seems to have been subject to a ruling in a court in Orleans, France (The Russian Avant-Garde Rag). For earlier reports on that dispute (IZO). The previous issue (The Russian Avant-Garde Rag) criticises people who denounce claimed Russian avant-garde fakes on the grounds that it is an attempt to control our "freedom to enjoy the work of the Russian Avant-Garde". I've no idea who's behind this publication.

Aleksei Smirnov on the artist Falk and his time, in three parts (retromaniak part 1, part 2, part 3, in Russian). The article makes it clear that in the Soviet era not only avant-garde works were faked; so, appearance of a work by (say) Falk or Petrov-Vodkin in a 70s-80s-90s catalogue or book is not a sign of authenticity.

I liked the [American-Russian couple Eddy and Nina] Stevens's living room (...) on the walls were icons that were genuinely made in Rublev's circle at the beginning of the fifteenth century. These icons were supplied by one Moroz, a shady character, a patron of the mentally-ill artist Vasya Sitnikov (...) Moroz lived somewhere near the Lubyanka, by the KGB building, to which he had entry. But later he was imprisoned for some crime all the same. (...) 

In the courtyard there was a nicely heated garage where Nina kept her collection of Moscow avant-gardists. In this collection were a good Tyshler, some insects by Plavinsky, a lot of Vasya Sitnikov, black cups on grey backgrounds by Krasnopevtsev (...) 

On one occasion Nina suggested I go with her to Falk's studio (he had already died) and try to buy from his widow the Nude which had been at the jubilee exhibition of the Moscow artists' union and which Khrushchev had for some reason made an issue of. (...)

Madame Stevens authorised me to offer from ten to thirty thousand dollars. In those days in Moscow these were enormous sums of money. (...)

I knew of course that I wouldn't be able to buy the Nude, and Mrs Stevens was not interested in any other Falk. But I said to her that I'd probably be able to persuade the widow. I decided firmly to stop visiting the Stevenses, the role of cicisbeo (the Venetian term for the second man in an elderly lady's household) didn't suit me. In order to finish the Falk business I dug out of the attic a big old unfinished canvas by my father from the VKhuTeMas period, on which a naked female model was outlined, and on it I painted three works based on sketches I made during my visits [to Falk's widow] - two of Falk's Paris landscapes and a small ugly nude. At this time on the same canvas I also faked two small portraits by Petrov-Vodkin. All this was flogged by a shady friend to some foreigners and my fakes were subsequently exhibited in Europe and reproduced in catalogues.

Sotheby's NY's 2 November Russian sale features the Schreiber Collection (Artdaily).

The Ludwig Museum has acquired a collection of original avant-garde photographs from Daniela Mrázkowá (AN-online, in German).

Sensation (ANSA)!? 

Long-lost works by Russian painter Kazimir Malevich and followers of his Suprematist movement are on show in Rome for the first time since their recent chance discovery in the Belarus city of Vitebsk.  ''The paintings and drawings had been hidden in the cavity of a wall where they had lain for decades. They resurfaced thanks to a stroke of luck, when the owners of the house decided to renovate it,'' said Rome art dealer Roberto Gnisci who worked for over a year to mount the event at his Chimera gallery.' (...) Gnisci said the folder's owner, whom he met during a visit to Latvia last year, feared the state might seize the works and asked him if he would take them abroad.  (...)  A friend, the late art and film critic Mario Verdone - father of popular Italian actor-director Carlo Verdone - urged him to go to Paris and seek the advice of Jain [sic] Watson, a reclusive authority on the German and Russian avant-gardes.  (...)  the elderly critic agreed to come to Rome to see the paintings, once they were delivered to Gnisci. (...)  ''Despite his frailty and a recent illness, Watson was as enthusiastic as a schoolboy when he examined the works. He was certain they had not been forged."

I think they may mean Ian Watson. Forged? What a thought.

Book review: David King's Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union From the Revolution to the Death of Stalin (Abrams, $50) (NYT). David has an incredible collection, and he sourced much of it decades ago from the Communist Party of Great Britain.

At the New York Film Festival: "Don Argott’s Art of the Steal (...) energetically traces the history and scandals surrounding the Barnes Foundation, home to one of the world’s most celebrated collections of modern art" (NYT).

Milton Glaser's tower atop School of Visual Arts' new theatre in NY pays homage to Tatlin (Caslon Projects).

Fell-out-of-bed-laughing dept. Someone claims they have a big holding of hitherto-unknown Ukrainian avant-garde art, presumably removed from special storage in Ukraine when the USSR fell apart (Zerkalo Nedeli, in Russian) (thanks, NI):

...recently Israeli citizen David Harel visited Ukraine and claimed that in his collection was a "whole list" of canvases by the Ukrainian avant-garde. Various sources name Alexandra Exter, Vasili Kandinsky, Kazimir Malevich, El Lisitsky and Vladimir Tatlin among the artists. (...) The collector thinks it possible that the paintings he inherited were taken from the collection of the Museum of Ukrainian Art (now the National Art Museum) in Kiev soon after the disintegration of the USSR in the early 90s. In any case, some of them came into possession of his family with that legend attached...

So, if the above "legend" is true, then presumably Mr Harel inherited the paintings from a deceased member of his family who was involved in a major crime, at the very least as a receiver of stolen goods. In that case, why not just give the paintings back? The director of the National Art Museum, Anatoli Melnik, says:

It's not out of the question that this rumour is put about by the owner of the collection in order to increase the market price of his pictures.

You don't say?!?!

Review of Norbert Lynton's Tatlin's Tower: Monument to Revolution (Guardian).

The Faking Of The Russian Avant-Garde (ARTnews). It's old news, essentially, but this is the result of a "six-month investigation" and gathers together a large amount of disparate material which confirms that fakers and their witting (hey, maybe even unwitting) accomplices are abundant. As the article points out, the "provenances" used by fakers are no provenance at all:

Hundreds of works have appeared in recent years at auction houses and in galleries all over Europe, from Munich to Madrid. These works have very sketchy provenances in which certain assertions are repeated again and again: the works are said to have come from hitherto unknown private collections or to have been smuggled to Israel by immigrants in the ’70s or to have been deaccessioned by provincial museums in the former Soviet republics—although this practice was strictly forbidden—or to have been confiscated and hidden for a half century by the former KGB (the secret police), although experts say there is not a single documented case of avant-garde works emerging from KGB vaults.

Dubious avant-garde show in Finland (Helsingin Sanomat):

Suspicions have been raised that works on display an exhibition of Russian avant garde art, which opened recently at the Wäinö Aaltonen Museum in Turku might be forgeries.

In a review appearing in Wednesday’s edition of the business newspaper Kauppalehti, critic Otso Kantokorpi raises questions of the authenticity of the works, and asks if the exhibition might be “the greatest art forgery of the 21st century”. (...)

Kantakorpi says that the exhibition should be an international sensation, as the known works of Rodtsenko [sic], for instance, are very small in number, and the Turku exhibition has a number of Rodtsenkos that had been previously unknown.

“...The works are ridiculously bad. Miracles sometimes happen, but 25 previously unknown Rodtsenkos do not suddenly appear from the collection of a Turku real estate developer”, Kantokorpi says.

Colector Vyacheslav Kantor, head of the European Jewish Congress, former head of the Russian Jewish Congress (until his recent resignation), has announced that he will open a Museum of the Art of the Avant-Garde in Geneva. The museum will present Kantor's collection, which is based almost exclusively on 20th century artists of Russian-Jewish origin. The first exhibition will be curated by Andrei Tolstoy (Tatyana Markina/Kommersant, in Russian).

I read that among the few works by non-Jewish artists in Kantor's Geneva-based collection is Valentin Serov's famous The Abduction of Europa. I wonder how Kantor got an export licence for that?

There is a further interview with Kantor; apparently his collection is fifty times over budget (Tatyana Markina/Kommersant, in Russian). I'm not surprised by that. Kantor is known to the auction houses as the biggest spender on contemporary Russian art: for example, he bought Ilya Kabakov's Beetle, which set a Russian contemporary record; and he has also bought major international names such as Rothko and Nevelson. His conception of the Jewish in art is not based, as far as I can tell, merely on race/religion/ethnicity: it posits a certain kind or kinds of intellectual identity. Rothko, who communes with God, is in. Kabakov, who appends texts to his images, is in. Faibisovich, who paints social subjects, is (as far as I know) out.

The Rita and Herbert Batliner Collection, assembled over 50 years, contains works by the Russian avant-garde (Artdaily). Let's hope they're authentic!

The Villa Olmo in Como currently has a show of 80 works by the Russian avant-garde (alibi online, in Italian). Discussions are afoot with Viktor Vekselberg to show his Faberge works there (CiaoComo, Babelfish translation from Italian).

Recent articles by John Varoli

Some of these appear in the May issue of The Art Newspaper but are not necessarily available on the internet. Full texts below the cut.

A report on the Kandinsky exhibition at the Pompidou Centre (AP).

Breaking news: Russian art scandal in the Tours chateau-museum. The exhibition Alexandra Exter and Her Russian Friends (Alexandra Exter et ses amis russes) has been closed prematurely and all 192 pictures seized by the police following a complaint by art historian Andrei Nakov. Nakov thinks only two of the works are genuine, and has furnished magistrates with evidence to back up his claims. The show was organised by another Russian art expert, Jean Chauvelin. He denies Nakov any competence and points out he has been working on an Exter catalogue raisonné for 10 years. Of the 192 seized canvases, 130 belong to M. Chauvelin himself. He hasn't given the police any certificates of authenticity because, he says, "I don't need to, I am the expert!" Nakov claims he had to act because Exter's "moral right" was passed to him. (Le Monde, in French) (thanks, PM). 

To put this in a broader context (aferizm.ru, in Russian):

In Switzerland in 1988 Andrei Nakov, organiser of an exhibition of work by Mikhail Larionov, was involved in a court case: all 197 works were deemed fakes.

Two ambitious European exhibitions currently showing are based on the Costakis collection, one at Tate, London, the other at the Maillol Museum, Paris (The Atlantic). "There are some real surprises" writes the critic, but fails to find any.

Some of Shepard Fairey's designs for Saks (see IZO, earlier) (thanks, NI).

Soviet Film Posters in the Silent Era is an exhibition of early Soviet cinema posters at the National Film Centre, Tokyo (Japan Times):

All the posters here were gifted to the museum by Ippei Fukuro (1897-1971), an enigmatic figure who, according to museum curator Yoko Akasaki, operated as a freelance translator and researcher, living on and off in the Soviet Union throughout the 1920s.  "He translated Russian books for children and books about mountains," Akasaki explains. "He was also a pioneer who presented Russian science-fiction novels in Japan. He spent several periods in the Soviet Union before returning in 1930, when he brought back most of the posters. Even after that, he continued to have posters sent."

Russian avant-garde books (migueloks).

On the very obscure 1920s avant-garde in Smolensk (alt_smolensk, in Russian, with photos; museum.ru, in Russian).

Review of the show Rodchenko & Popova: Defining Constructivism at the Tate (Independent):

...when we look back 90-ish years to the art of Russian Revolution, it seems like a kind of joke. The look remains instantly recognisable and rather friendly. But its energy, commitment and optimism have become frankly unbelievable. Those blocky graphics and lettering! Those zooming diagonals! Those slicing sheets of pure colour! It's a style that comes with exclamation marks, and for us that means it comes with irony. Its name was Constructivism. Can we take it seriously at all?

Book review: David King's Abandoned Dreams: A Visual History of the Soviet Union from 1917 to the Death of Stalin (New Statesman).

Ueber-dealer Helly Nahmad bought the $60 million Malevich (IZO, earlier), but, according to Nahmad, it was bought on behalf of someone else (Kommersant, in Russian).

Family of El Lissitsky's German wife seeks to reclaim Paul Klee painting (Bloomberg):

Sophie Lissitzky-Kueppers inherited the painting, “Sumpflegende” (Swamp Legend), in 1922. She loaned it and 15 other works to Hanover’s Provinzialmuseum in 1926, shortly before she left Germany to join the Russian artist El Lissitzky near Moscow, whom she married ... The painting was seized from the Hanover museum in 1937, under the orders of Joseph Goebbels, for the Nazi exhibition of “Degenerate Art” in Munich. ... In the “Degenerate Art” show, “Swamp Legend” was mocked as the “confusion” and “disorder” of a “mentally ill person.” The Nazis sold it in 1941. Several changes of ownership later, the picture was acquired by the city of Munich and the Gabriele Muenter Foundation in 1982. It has hung in Munich’s Lenbachhaus museum since then. Lissitzky-Kueppers, who was banished to Siberia by Stalin as a German living in the Soviet Union during the war, failed to recover her paintings. She died in penury in Novosibirsk in 1978.

On the preservation of avant-garde architecture in Moscow (Times).

Scamsky Inc. (Heidi Brown/Forbes) (thanks, MK). When it comes to the "experts" who authenticate olde works:

Experts working privately can charge up to $100,000 or 5% to 10% of a painting's selling price. One expert, speaking on condition of anonymity, says a Russian dealer planning to sell a fake Malevich offered her $50,000 to authenticate it. 

Even experts who've made "mistakes" usually stay in the fold. Andrei Nakov sued the Geneva Tribune in the early 1990s for its coverage of a scandal involving his certification of 1,500 pastels and drawings by Malevich contemporary Mikhail Larionov. Chicago's McCrone Research Institute, which did chemical analysis, and a Swiss court both concluded many were fake, but Nakov won the suit and stands by his authentication. He's working on a translation of his Malevich catalogue raisonne. Art world insiders question the inclusion of some works, but Nakov says his analysis is thorough and well documented.

What Forbes mentions is only the visible part of the iceberg. Check the IZO Fakes category (IZO) for some other bits-and-pieces. There are people today, I know some of them, running substantial faking operations, abetted by auction houses, dealers and collectors. Unfortunately most of the fakes encountered cannot be publicly challenged or documented as such because of libel laws, not to mention threats of violence. The fakers operate with effective impunity and have huge sums to gain and nothing to lose except the cost of some oil, canvas and an unscrupulous artist's time.

The upcoming Rodchenkova-Popova show at the Tate will perhaps give the fakers another chance to add provenance to their warez. The museums don't care too much, neither do the dealers. Triumph Gallery's Emelyan Zakharov's buck-passing is characteristic, I fear, of dealer attitudes in general: "We will sell a work as long as it's had exhibits in two museums." In fact, a museum exhibition should be understood as adding precisely zero credence to a work, ditto authentication by an artist's relative, a certificate from some of the laboratories and all the other plausibility-enhancers. If you are thinking of buying an expensive painting, here's some advice I wrote in 2006 (IZO).

Another version of the recent Malevich sale at Sotheby's NY: that the buyer was connected to the legal firm that regained the work for the artist's heirs.

Presumably because gallerists are on holiday or in Miami, Vinzavod is almost empty of shows apart from the Pirosmani exhibition at Proun Gallery. The paintings have been assembled from private collections by Marina Loshchak. Three, I noticed, including one particularly fine work, are the property of Zurab Tsereteli's Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art, so his money hasn't been completely wasted. Two, including what I reckoned to be the top work of the show, a large scene of Georgian businessmen at table, belong to Shalva Breus, owner of Art Chronicle magazine. Many of them are painted in oil on oilcloth, not a great medium for the longterm because it cracks up. I also heard that many of the Pirosmani works in museums in Georgia are kept in appalling conditions and are in a bad state of repair.

A crazy theory has been brought to my attention: that Google founder Sergey Brin (who was born in Moscow) bought the $60 million Malevich in New York recently. In the absence of any other theory, and because it's such a fun idea, I offer it up here.

Early C20 art from the Russian Museum is on view now and through January 18 at Caixa Girona Fontana d'Or Cultural Center (Artdaily).

Email received:

The Changing Faces of the Russian Art Market. A Discussion Forum.  Tuesday, 2 December, 6pm to 8pm. Bloomsbury Auctions, 6 West 48th Street, New York. Panelists: Mark Schaffer, Ph.D., Director A La Vieille Russie Gallery, New York. Irina Shkurkina, Director, Alternative Investments IndexAtlas Group LLC, New York. Amy Kouznetsova, Director and Co-Founder Sputnik Gallery, Moscow. Michael Patrick Hearn, Russian Literature, Consultant, Bloomsbury Auctions, New York. Moderator:  Emily A. Thompson, Consultant, Fine Art Appraiser. RSVP to Marta Pavlik at +1 646 454 8510 or marta.pavlik@bloomsburyauctions.com.

To accompany the sale of the Ivan collection of Russian avant-garde books (Bloomsbury Auctions).

A review of Jackie Wullschlager's new biography of Chagall (Sarah Boxer/IHT).

200 works from the Costakis Collection are on show at the Maillol Museum, Paris (ana-mpa, in French).

New Babylon in Sydney (Sydney Morning Herald).

Russian paintings at Sotheby's yesterday didn't do so very well (AP). Eight out of 14 "important" Russian lots were sold, including 1920s paintings by Boris Grigoriev and David Burliuk, but not the top lot, Bogolyubov, nor the second top-lot, Aivazovsky. Nineteenth-century is out of fashion, or at least over-priced because of an eye on past glories.

The Kandinsky prize shortlist preview opens in Moscow tonight. Christies' big impressionist and modern art evening sale also takes place tonight in New York. It's heavy on the School of Paris of course but also has several Kandinskys, including a 1910 work (lot 48) estimated at $15-20 million. I'm waiting for Matisse to come down a bit more (there's a – admittedly not very exciting – 1907 portrait estimated $600-800,000) and Faibisovich to go up a bit more so I can swap ;)

The Malevich: "just one phone bidder vied for it" (Bloomberg). Can you vie for something on your own, without competition? Just asking.

Sotheby's evening sale last night: 45 out of 70 lots sold (64%). They'll be happy with that I think. Malevich sold at low estimate, as noted below. Russian art held up well in Boris Grigoriev: three lots sold, one at low estimate, one at high, one over estimate (Sothebys).

Well, it sold of course, but for $60,002,500 inc. premium. Does that mean the person who made an "irrevocable bid" (IZO, earlier) got it?