IZO

Info received: the Haunch of Venison Glasnost show sold well and there is also interest in several works from a major museum.

Forbidden Art affair

UPDATE II: my comments to Deutsche Welle today (Deutsche Welle, in Russian).

Forbidden Art affair

UPDATE: To an overcrowded courthouse, the judge in the Forbidden Art trial, Svetlana Aleksandrova, read her verdict over 2.5 hours. In the end, she fined Yuri Samodurov 200,000 roubles and Andrei Erofeev 150,000 roubles. The sentences [softer than many expected] will be appealed. Marat Guelman has decided not to carry out his plan to re-create the show in his gallery. Leonid Bazhanov is afraid that the art-world will begin to self-censor (RIA Novosti).

What do I think? I gave an interview today to the Russian service of Deutsche Welle, in which I said roughly the following. I think this trial was only nominally about art and chiefly about power. The artists themselves were not charged. The owners of private galleries that showed some of these works were not charged. The reason being that they are not figures in the post-Soviet apparat, just private entrepreneurs. Samodurov, as head of the Sakharov Centre, and Erofeev, as head of the New Art department at the Tretyaklov Gallery, were figures in the apparat. The aim of the lengthy prosecution, which has been accomplished, was to expel these bearers of an alternative ideology from the corridors of power.

Forbidden Art affair

The verdict should be delivered today, 12 July. Background (IZO).

Andrei Erofeev says the case is a "political fabrication" (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Sanctioned demonstration in support of Erofeev and Samodurov (Interfax, in Russian). Russian artists' open letter (Vesti, in Russian).

ROC says calls for a prison sentence are excessive (gazeta.ru, in Russian). Everyone knows nowadays that you have to whack your enemies somehow without creating martyrs.

Review of blogosphere chatter (RIA Novosti, in Russian). Q&A with Iosif Backstein (Lenta.ru, in Russian). Artkhronika reviews the foreign press (Artkhronika, in Russian). All the works from the show are illustrated on Erofeev's site (aerofeev); below, the Blue Noses' Chechen Marilyn.

Foundation-owner/collector Stella Kesaeva and architecture journalist Grigori Revzin are commissars of the Russian pavilion at the next Venice Biennale (Vedomosti, in Russian). Kesaeva believes Russia should show one or more established artists (Vedomosti, in Russian). Who, then? Someone told me she has acquired a lot of work by Andrei Monastyrsky, so I guess she likes him.

Artguide (Артгид) publisher accuses MTS phone company of plagiarism (kotomish, in Russian). Looks like he has a case.

Meanwhile: MTS Red Graffiti urban art advertising campaign (MTS).

The first Urals Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art will run 9 September-10 October in Ekaterinburg (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Exhibitions

Under-16s not admitted to Andrei Bartenev-curated Kamasutra's Spoon at Moscow Museum of Contemporary Art (NEWSru, in Russian). Below: work by show-participant Inna Nebelyuk:

 

Anna Frants, 220 V, in Berlin (Cyland).

Andrei Kuzkin at Matthew Bown Galerie (MBG). All welcome, reception 14th July 18.00.

Controversial: art world luminaries attend the Kremlin-backed Seliger-2010 youth forum. Among them gallerist Elena Selina (yarmoshuk, in Russian) and artist Anatoli Osmolovsky (dmitrivrubel). This is part of a trend, including Marat Guelman's hook-up with Maria Sergeeva (IZO) and the Voina-style activism of the Nashi youth group (IZO). Maybe it's the Medvedev effect.

Lots of Vinzavod videos, for some reason (Yolike).

Chtak interviewed by Hervé Mikaeloff (thecrane.tv). UPDATE: this seems to be autoplaying: my apologies; can't find anything in the html to turn that off. UPDATE II: the Chtak show is at Orel, London.

PinchukArtCentre announces shortlist for $100k art prize: no Russians, one Ukrainian (Lindsay Pollock).

On the Lena Hades affair (New Times, in Russian).

Minister of Culture Avdeev doesn't think the Forbidden Art show should have become the subject of a criminal prosecution (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

Snob commentary on the Forbidden Art affair (Snob, in Russian).

Komar and Melamid etchings on eBay (eBay).

Artist in Poland removes penis from sculpture after mayor of town objects to it (via LJ radulova).

More on the pending prosecution of Lena Hades (Moscow Times). I suspect that her enemies are waiting for the outcome of the Forbidden Art trial before making a move.

Summings-up at the Forbidden Art trial; prosecutor requests three years at an open prison (колония-поселение) (gazeta.ru, in Russian). Andrei Erofeev's final statement in full (sivilia-1, in Russian). English-language commentary (Economist) (thanks, MK), including:

The well-known Russian gallery owner Marat Gelman has already announced that the day after a guilty verdict is handed down, he will reopen "Forbidden Art" in his gallery.

Guelman says that after a guilty verdict the art community will shun Russia and the Moscow Biennale and Garage will have to close (maratguelman, in Russian). He is planning to add works by Blue Noses from the Mask Show series to the revival of the Forbidden Art show (Forbes, in Russian):

According to Guelman, Forbidden Art 2010 will include the same works as three years ago with the addition of works by the Blue Noses group from the Mask Show series. In 2006 because of pictures by Vyacheslav Mizin and Alexander Shaburov [i.e. the Blue Noses] the English gallerist and art historian Matthew Bown was removed from a flight at Sheremetevo-2. Later he was accused of "insulting third parties".

Well, I was never officially charged with anything, but I was interviewed at length and required to give an undertaking to attend court if required.

Leonid Sokov has been circulating an appeal:

Leonid Sokov leonidsokov@yahoo.com

Дорогие друзья и коллеги!

Прокуратура потребовала наказания устроителей выставки в виде трех лет лишения свободы в колонии-поселении. 12 июля 2010 г. судья огласит приговор. Времени осталось совсем немного. Мы предлагаем обратиться с письмом от имени художественной общественности к президенту РФ Д.А. Медведеву, в надежде помочь Андрею Ерофееву и Юрию Самодурову

Если Вы сочтете для себя возможным или необходимым принять участие в этой акции в защиту наших коллег и наших интересов, то просим Вас ответить на это сообщение до 26 июня.  Мы включим имена ответивших в список подписавшихся под письмом к президенту.

New SPb art guide (artguide).

Kirill Shamanov, originator of Tadjik-Art and Gop-Art, gets award as most famous artist in SPb. Background (IZO).

What's he wearing? Must be leggings by Greatcriss, occasionally sported by yours truly (IZO).

Stop! Who Goes There?, the III Moscow Biennale of Young Art, commissar Darya Pyrkina, opens on 2 July (Kommersant, in Russian).

Couple of Russians in ARTnews's top 200 (ARTnews) (thanks, MK).

Exhibitions

Noeth Korean art: Flowers for Kim Ir Sen in Vienna (Kommersant, in Russian).

Russias! Memory, Distortion, Imaginary at Ca Foscari, Venice (Venice Tourism).

Les Promesses du Passé at Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, looks at East European art over the last six decades (Platform Online).

Pavel Pepperstein at Regina Gallery, London (Regina Gallery).

Oleg Prokofiev (husband of the legendary Camilla Gray) at TG (Moscow Times).

Review of Glasnost at HoV (Artnet). Another one (whitehot).

Literature, books

On Ilya Kabakov and the underground movement: Matthew Jesse Jackson, The Experimental Group (University of Chicago Press).

Book imagines sex-life of Anne Frank (Guardian).

Leo Tolstoy's great-grandson lives life like Dostoevsky character (WP) (thanks, MK):

"I'm living like a bohemian," he jokes with a rascally grin. "I beg, borrow and steal."  According to people who have known him for more than 30 years, Tolstoy's money is gone, vanished, lost at the betting windows of the Laurel, Bowie, Timonium and Pimlico racetracks he used to roam six days a week.

A new translation of In The First Circle (Huffington Post) (thanks, MK).

Website of Aslan Chekhoev's New Museum in St Petersburg (New Museum).

Interview with Nikolai Polissky (Sophia Kishkovsky/NYT).

The Erarta Museum and Gallery of Contemporary Art has opened in St Petersburg (SPb Times).

A couple of Voina group actions (via LJ maratguelman): a "cosmic cock" in St Petersburg, an anti-militia song at the Forbidden Art trial.

More on the cock (plucer, in Russian). Punishment: a fine (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

Police investigators are considering prosecuting Lena Hades (dmitrivrubel, in Russian) (thanks, VK). Not clear what for; probably stuff like this (IZO). Or maybe this (IZO).

Exhibitions

Yevgeniy Fiks, Ayn Rand in Illustrations (Winkleman Gallery).

Sergey Bratkov at Deichtorhallen, Hamburg (Art You Know).

Boris Ignatenko's sandwich-board gallery open in Moscow (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Interview with Erik Bulatov (MK, in Russian). Bonus: influence of Erik Bulatov on contemporary Russian advertising, below.

Exhibitions

Andrei Kuzkin's work looks very well at the main venue of the Berlin Biennale on Oranienplatz. He is represented by a film (below) and a performance. I will show work by Kuzkin in July. The other Russian representative is Olga Chernysheva. Full artist list here (Berlin Biennale).

 

Legendary Soviet-era architect Leonid Pavlov at the Shchusev Architecture Museum (Kommersant, in Russian).

The main room of the new Baibakov Art Projects space has a cathedral-like volume; it reminds me of the Spruth Magers gallery in Berlin (pic below). The space has been criticised in Moscow, but it seems fine to me.  The visitor experience is somewhat compromised by the sound of the air-conditioning. The location is remote from any metro station and so difficult of access if you don't have a car; but what's a little pilgrimage between art-lovers?

The opening show here, Perpetual Battles, explores "the creative potential of conflict, engaging artists who actively isolate, investigate, and aggravate the violence underlying the everyday experience of contemporary society". Could almost be the theme for some biennale, except no biennale would spend its public funding on something so provocative. The most memorable works are a film and photographs by Cyprien Gaillard. His vision overlaps substantially with J G Ballard's. They have in common a fascination with social ritual that intimates or generates violence. Even the flavour of Gaillard's little details -- e.g. the word 'dreams' inscribed on the wall of a new block of flats -- is Ballardian.

Open letter from Andrei Erofeev, currently being prosecuted in the Forbidden Art affair (IZO), to the Patriarch Kirill. Makes the intriguing claim that artists such as Kabakov, Kosolapov, Sokov, Bakhchanyan, V. Sysoev and Roginsky "have always defended Christian values although using the little-understood aesthetics of advanced art" (dobrokhotov, in Russian).

Award of "moral support prize" to artist Ilya Trushevsky, accused of rape, draws protests (Moscow News). Background (IZO).

On the new museum of contemporary art opened in St Petersburg by Aslan Chekhoev (St P Times):

Despite its unprepossessing location above a coffee shop and neon sex shop sign opposite the entrance to Vasileostrovskaya metro, Novy Muzei (New Museum) is an extraordinary space dedicated to showcasing some big names in the emerging contemporary art scene.

Exhibitions

Dual Speech/Dialogue at the Church of St Tatiana, Moscow (tramway-desir). In connection with which, artist Lena Hades "аццки жжот!" (plucer, in Russian). 

Zinovi Zinik on Alex Melamid at PDP (BBC).

Berlin-based Alexei Kostroma's installation at Wilde Gallery (Wilde Gallery). I want Kostroma to do something at my place.

Soviet posters at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art, Auburn, Alabama (oanow.com).

Zurab Tsereteli at National Arts Club, Manhattan (broadway world).

Perpetual Battles at Baibakov Art Projects' new space (Kommersant, in Russian).

Boris Ignatenko's show on sandwich boards in Moscow (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

Gop-art in Perme (Sol, in Russian). Bonus: Gop-karaoke (via LJ art-quasar).

On Kabakov and OCD

By Mark Kelner

For the spawn of Russian émigrés, let alone an art collector, it’s always exhilarating to walk into an installation by the Kabakovs.  In many ways, their work is a point of connection between our lives and those of our parents and grandparents.  I’ve recently done so in London as part of the “Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s” and was very moved.  However, the experience left me melancholy, which isn’t a compliment to the artists, but rather, a critique of a new EU law governing energy.  Yes, I regret to inform you that Europe’s Light Bulb Wars have entered the art world fray, with not only aesthetic consequences, but also emotional ones.

Currently on display at Haunch of Venison is “I Sleep in the Orchard,” 1991/2008, a lyrical set piece of a very ordinary Moscow room filled with deceptively simple, but symbolically charged Russian objects: a bed, some plants, an almost naked canvas, accompanied by minimal text that helps shape a particular and rather, sad narrative.

Illuminating it isn’t a spare and bare 20th century incandescent light bulb, but a very problematic, environmentally-friendly, fluorescent one, which, needless to say, did not exist or could not have possibly been made in Soviet times.

And while sustainability and energy savings are both noble causes, not at the expense of art, please.  Haven’t the Kabakovs, along with their contemporaries, dealt with enough government censorship on the Soviet side, only to have market forces and EU policy interfere with them two decades later?  I believe Haunch, in collaboration with gallerist Volker Diehl, have mounted one of the most important surveys of Russian contemporary art ever.  I look forward to walking into the world’s great museums and seeing some of the same pieces on exhibit in permanent collections.  In the meantime, how many Brits does it take to screw in a new lightbulb?

Public reading of poem in honour of Lenya Ebnuty, Voina activist and hero of blue buckets action. Background (IZO).

Art-animations by Lena Hades (lena-hades). Bottom: the artist, unanimated sadly.

 

The head honchos of Haunch of Venison, Harry Blain and Graham Southern, have left the Pinault-owned gallery (Artinfo). There is speculation that their closeness to Russian art aristocrats such as Dasha Zhukova and Maria Baibakova may encourage them to enter the Russian art business one way or another.

You can read my latest article on Artnet. Dust to Dust is a comparison of the markets in ancient relics and modern and contemporary art (Artnet).

Comment from Vitali Komar:

This is a stunning discovery. It's the beginning of a new understanding. The understanding of the value of art as an analogue of the value of relics is the discovery of a new truth in the history of art [original Russian below].

Ты сделал потрясающее открытие! Это начало нового понимания. Понимания ценности искусства, как ценности реликта, - это открытие новой истины в истории искусства!

I agree. Or as an Artnet reader wrote to the editor:

I think this guy is right.

Interview with Lenya Ebnuty [aka Lenya Nikolaev] (Sol, in Russian), Voina art-group activist, star of the extraodinary blue-buckets action last week (IZO). No less to the point: Nikolaev is reported to have been arrested (dobrokhotov, in Russian).

ArtMoskva this year offers a virtual gallery service (Facebook).

Exhibitions

Anti-Stalin show at Guelman (maratguelman; Snob, in Russian).

Review of If (Valentin Dyakonov/Kommersant, in Russian; with slide-show). Another review (Kommersant). Panoramic pix from the show (invelian).

 

Mikhail Odnoralov at the Marble Palace, St Petersburg (St P Times).

Alex Melamid at Phillips de Pury (Kommersant, in Russian).

Interview with Moscow-based collector Pierre-Christian Brochet (NG Antrakt, in Russian).

The superb British sculptor Richard Wilson opens at the Matthew Bown Gallery this week. The reception for the artist is on Tuesday 1st June 6-9 pm. If you are in Berlin, you are welcome. Here's a recent public work by Wilson.

Khrushchev on contemporary art (via LJ dmitrivrubel).

More thoughts on Ilya Trushevsky (art-quasar, in Russian). Includes this tit-bit:

[Gallerist Elena] Selina said that in Ilya's work the propensity to violence was apparent

You know, Trushevsky produces this literally very black work, and I was tempted to think the same as Selina, but actually I think it's just a rationalisation after the fact.

Another pov: "Trushevsky, I Love You" (Liberty.ru, in Russian). And discussion (ivangogh, in Russian).

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).

You can vote to decide who is the most famous artist in St Petersburg (sobaka.ru).