A reader emails the link below with the enigmatic subject-line One Restaurant To Avoid? The photo shows "The businessman Dmitry Kovtun (back to the camera) and the member of the State Duma Andre Lugovoi at the opening of the restaurant Terrassa" (thanks, SW).
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Igor Markin denounces taste of Moscow city authorities, who have decided not to permit the installation of a statue to Yeltsin that he has commissioned (Artinfo).
There seem to be mutterings against the taste of Yuri Luzhkov, mayor of Moscow, who has given us museums for Alexander Shilov, Ilya Glazunov and Zurab Tsereteli (and whose wife, thanks to real-estate deals, has been estimated the richest woman in Russia): coming from the new Minister of Culture and from state TV (polit.ru, in Russian; galerist, in Russian).
Vladislav Surkov (Wikipedia), the Kremlin's chief ideologist, has written an essay in praise of Joan Miro. Surkov's early access to Western Modernism seems to have echoed that of Soviet artists (Russkii Pioner, reproduced by v_orlov):
I was twelve years old when, in the impoverished library of a remote Russian town, by chance I came across a scraggy book with the impudent title Criticism of Modernist Tendencies in Western Visual Art or something similar.
The article is not devoid of ideology. He characterises Miro as a "naive seeker after God", a kind of Orthodox ascetic.
The Lithuanian parliament has adopted a law forbidding the display of Soviet and communist-party symbols (Lenta.ru, in Russian). A similar law exists in Latvia and has been mooted in Estonia.
Riots in the Mongolian capital Ulan-Bator, after Sunday's elections; the opposition party claims the result - a victory for the incumbent president Nambariin Enkhbayar - was rigged; video (Vesti, in Russian).
In Russia, the cult of Putin, in Ukraine - of Timoshenko? (Ekspress Gazeta, in Russian).
Andrei Erofeev, curator of the politically controversial Sotsart show at the Maison Rouge in Paris and also of the Forbidden Art exhibition at the Sakharov Centre, both last year, has been sacked by the Tretyakov Gallery for "breaking museum rules" (нарушение музейного порядка); the New Directions department which he headed will be reorganised. (Gazeta.ru, in Russian). Erofeev fears that the fledgling collection of contemporary art at the TG will be dismantled and dispersed (Kommersant, in Russian). Meanwhile, the investigation into Forbidden Art, in 15 volumes, has been completed and handed to the prosecutor (Polit.ru, in Russian).
Contemporary Russian cinema and government involvement (Mansur Mirovalev/SignOnSanDiego).
Once upon a time the girls dreamed of being tickled by Stalin's moustache; not any more (The First Post). It used to be said, back in the eighties, that there was not a single British male who had not dreamed about Margaret Thatcher. I can believe that, because I once did, and I hardly dream at all, at least to remember. In my dream, I was taking a London black cab, and Thatcher got in and asked me to take her with me. I said, "No, thanks," and made her get out of the cab.
