Ekaterina Degot provides comprehensive history and analysis of the show Forbidden Art at the Sakharov Museum (IZO, passim) and the subsequent prosecution of its organisers, Yuri Samodurov and Andrei Erofeev (Open Space, in Russian). She asserts:
Anyone who has been paying attention will be in no doubt that contemporary art here is merely a cover for ultra-right forces who weant to destroy the Sakharov Museum.
She deals with the question of intimidation, by the example of prosecution, of curators and museum directors; but, of course, no-one admits to actually having been intimidated. Although it's happening, for sure. For example, Elena Kovylina's film Dying Swans, a bloody piece of minimalist baroque in which a killer stalks a ballerina, shown recently at Rabouan Moussion Gallery in Paris, was commissioned originally by the Contemporary City Foundation in Moscow, whose director, when he saw the finished product, refused to show it, citing fear of reprisals.
Degot also offers a grown-up sweep at the scandal-artists such as Blue Noses, PG Group and Voina, who use sex as part of their shock tactics:
As the art historian Catherine Millet wrote in her book, The Secret Life of Catherine M, when as a young woman she couldn't think of anything intelligent to say, she usually proceeded to oral sex.
Oh, the old oral sex get-out, I'm so tired of it...
Beneath the cut: an article of mine, Shut The Duck Up, that was printed in the March 2008 issue of the journal Index on Censorship (for some mysterious reason, Index doesn't publish its articles on the internet). It covers some of the territory as Degot; it's out of date now (Alexander Sokolov is no longer Minister of Culture, for example), but may be of interest. UPDATE: it just so happens that that particular issue of Index on Censorship (March 2008) last night won the Periodical Award at the Amnesty Media Awards (Jeremy Dear).