IZO

Batman was in Russia in 1990. He even saved Gorbachev (zloy-alex).

On the evening of 29 November the artist Dmitri Pimenov, armed with a toy pistol, threw a fire-cracker at the feet of Mikhail Gorbachev in the Central House of the Artist. Pimenov was taken to a psychiatric clinic (plucer, in Russian):

His last words, which he shouted from the ambulance window, were: "I have become the subject of an artistic performance by Gorbachev's bodyguards."

Interesting background to the new Cold War tensions, many of which revolve around NATO's expansion eastwards, which Russia regards not only as a danger but as a betrayal (Henry Hamman/FT.com):

Jack Matlock, US ambassador to Moscow in 1990, was quoted by Zelikow in that 1995 article as saying “we gave categorical assurances” to Gorbachev of no Nato moves east. When I called him at his home in Princeton, Matlock restated that Baker had made the assurance.

I hate to say this: the Russians should have got it in writing.

Apparently this video is by someone called Tom Stern, and you can view it in HD on his vimeo page.

The Great Russian Warrior Gorbachev (via galerist).

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News round-up

The Royal Academy Russian show is on again (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

Artmers (halfway down page; in Russian) on the rise of AES + F in 2007 and the role of Triumph Gallery. Some useful info on the range of achieved prices. The article is entitled Why AES + F Didn't Get The Kandinsky Prize, but doesn't actually seem to provide said info. As I understand it, AES + F actually came out winners after the first vote, thanks in part to enthusiastic lobbying by, among others, juror Petr Aven; at which point competition-organiser Shalva Breus explained the importance of Anatoli Osmolovsky's work and persuaded the jurors to vote again. Osmolovsky fits a new paradigm with which art-oriented oligarchs are toying: a turning away from Western contemporary influence back towards varieties of Russian spirituality and the old Russian avant-garde.

Dmitrivrubel has a good selection of New Year's greetings by Russian leaders; Putin, Yeltsin, Gorbachev, Brezhnev.

Happy New Year! May 2008 be an excellent one. Below: fireworks in Moscow last night. UPDATE: at Robert Amsterdam, Time on New Year's Eve in Moscow, 1965.

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Gorby in London

At last.

Margaret Thatcher circa 1984: "I like Mr. Gorbachev . We can do business together. We both believe in our own political systems. He firmly believes in his; I firmly believe in mine. We are never going to change one another."

Bagman

I missed this. Gorby by Annie Leibovitz, backdrop the Berlin Wall, advertising Louis Vuitton (from New York Times).

Dmitri Prigov II

Dmitri Prigov, hospitalised following a heart attack, has died, reports Lenta.ru.

I met Prigov in the 80s and bought a drawing from him that I still have, a melancholy satirical image of Mikhail Gorbachev drawn in ink on newspaper. Some years after the collapse of the Soviet Union he moved to England and set up home in Stanmore on the outskirts of London. Here his wife, his son Andrei and Andrei's family lived, and here he too was based, when not shuttling to Moscow and around the world. He observed a rigorous, almost monastic regime: the day was divided into the hours for writing and the hours for drawing, with a nap between; he worked deep into the night. When he relaxed, he smoked and drank beer. I saw him read his poetry in London last year, at a gathering of British musicians and writers. "Perform" is a better description than "read": sitting at a table, he delivered his work in a sonorous dramatic fashion, sometimes almost shouting, sometimes almost singing. It was a compelling experience even to the bulk of the audience, which was non-Russian-speaking.

His website (all in Russian) is here.
 

Memories of the Brezhnev administration

New York gears up for the Sotheby's and Christies Russian sales, but a different kind of Sotheby's auction in Moscow tonight as limousines used by Brezhnev, Gorbachev and Yeltsin go under the hammer. The latter two were driven around in a ZIL (Zavod imeni Lenina, i.e. Lenin Factory) limousine built around a bomb-proof bubble. Brezhnev apparently drove his own Japanese-made Nissan President:

The former Communist party general secretary, who ruled the Soviet Union between 1964 and 1982, once lost control and scratched the car, the Sotheby's material said. A buyer will still be able to smell Brezhnev's tobacco in the car, Boris Kakhmetkin, 58, the current owner, said in an interview.

Which reminds me: my flat in Moscow was re-decorated a few years ago by a builder who used to work in Brezhnev's Kremlin. He told me that he was once given the task of reshaping the leader's wooden lavatory seat more comfortably to accommodate his considerable posterior.

Happy 75th

Gorby, as he is affectionately known by the English tabloids, is 75 today. There was no big pictorial cult of Mikhail Gorbachev, although official photo-portraiture was idealised to the degree that the entrancing birthmark on his forehead was usually retouched away (see below). But this was not for want of enthusiasm from artists such as Dmitri Nalbandyan. I visited Nalbandyan in his vast studio on Soviet Square in the late 80. Having plied me with oranges flown from the Caucasus ("esh mandarin!") he showed me a big official portrait of Gorby, painted as soon as he came to power. To Nalbandyan's disgust, his attempts to sell it to the state were unsuccessful.