Price-point for the kissing policemen: 14000 euros (John Varoli/Bloomberg). Price-point for smallest work by Osmolovsky from his show at Guelman Gallery (below): 5000 euros.
Price-point for the kissing policemen: 14000 euros (John Varoli/Bloomberg). Price-point for smallest work by Osmolovsky from his show at Guelman Gallery (below): 5000 euros.
Interview with TG director Valentin Rodionov, mainly about the Maison Rouge Sotsart show (here and IZO passim) (Kommersant, in Russian). Rodionov:
When Sarkozy visited President Putin, he mentioned the fact that an exhibition from the Tretyakov Gallery was travelling to France and 17 works had been removed on censorship grounds. Putin replied immediately: "We don't have censorship."
I understand that Rodionov's lawsuit against Minister of Culture Alexander Sokolov protesting the allegation of "corruption" has again been delayed by a move to another court.
The age of video art seems to be well and truly here. Of five works I sold on the first day of Zoo, three were video pieces, including the most expensive, a work by Blue Noses that I sold a year ago and which the buyer asked me to re-sell on his behalf. Today three more video works were reserved. Maybe this is all a function of the brand new 46-inch 100 mhz LCD screen on which I am showing things, but I don't think so. People today regard the screen almost as their natural habitat.
Paul Abelsky in Russia Profile takes a thoughtful look at the Sakharov Museum's Forbidden Art show (registration required) (pdf) and the events and issues surrounding it.
“In Russia the fighting is rougher, tougher and dirtier, but the debates themselves are not unique to Russia,” Bown said. “ Also, I think it’s wrong to assume that the Russian bureaucracy is monolithic in its attitudes. There’s clearly a difference of opinion between the Ministry of Culture, which provides export licenses and museum wall-space for the Blue Noses and others, and the Customs’ authority and FSB, which holds up and confiscates their work.”
Brian Droitcour's review of the just-opened Blue Noses show at Guelman Gallery is up. A meme that recurs here (I saw it in yesterday's Russian press, although maybe it originates in some cunning gallery pr or other?) is that the Noses are the Moscow art scene's version of Borat. What does this tell us? Well, that we human beings like to understand things by analogy, I suppose. I saw the show today and was, frankly, for all my admiration for the Siberian wunderkinder (who sell well in my gallery), ever-so-slightly disappointed: the mixture of old and new work, conceived obviously as a riposte to the attack on Guelman and his gallery last year, seemed to me to lack some of the customary exuberance. But maybe I was simply feeling under the weather; certainly Tretyakov Gallery curator Andrei Erofeev's assertion that the Blue Noses are the most "impressive phenomenon" in 21st century Russian art is arguable. It is interesting note to what extent Guelman's, and more broadly Moscow artists pass around motifs and ideas among themselves: monkeys, for example, have over the past few years appeared as surrogate humans in work by Oleg Kulik and Dima Gutov and now again here.
In the last few days the Saatchi Gallery blog has reprised the Blue Noses confiscation. Meanwhile, on his blog, Marat Gelman reports that the next Blue Noses show, entitled ебаный фашизм (I'll leave the translation to someone more, er, articulate than I) opens in his gallery 15th January.
Natasha Milovzorova at Guelman Gallery emails me a letter to sign, on the basis of which the eleven Blue Noses' works held at Sheremetevo Airport are to be released into Guelman Gallery hands. No word at present of any charges. Does this bear out my instinct that the whole event was a bureaucratic vagary of the customs/airport police? On a related, perhaps, topic: Masha Lipman of the Washington Post looks at the controversy around the movie Borat in Russia. Her assertion that the reluctance to distribute Borat is "the first time the post-Communist Russian authorities have banned a piece of creative expression in years" may or may not be strictly correct, but it overlooks the problems faced in recent times not only by me with the Blue Noses but also by exhibitions such as Look Out! Religion!
Gif.ru reports (in Russian) that the confiscated Blue Noses' works will be held for 10 days by the prosecutor's office.
The Blue Noses page is up on the Matthew Bown website, together with a description of the events surrounding the show, including links to worldwide press comment.
UPDATE: here are some of the links, I'll add more as they appear:
The Art Newspaper
Culture Kiosque
PDN Online
Publius Pundit
ArtNet
International Herald Tribune
St Petersburg Times
Daily Telegraph (Australia)
Guardian Unlimited
Moscow Times
Kommersant
New York Times
The Scotsman
ArtDaily
ABC (Australia)
Reuters
Sunday Times (UK)
Axis
Newsru.com
NY Arts Magazine
