IZO

Irresistible new book, or, Is Marina An Evil Murdering Art-Dealer? (PR.com):

Serpentauria is a suspense thriller novel set in the American Southwest in which the bodies of healthy men found in the desert lead to a Russian art dealer, who is a snake lover testing out a deadly toxin to be used in political assassinations on these victims. ... Soon the trail leads to a beautiful Russian émigré, Marina Dubchov, who runs an art business from her palatial desert home, and is a snake lover, who has been developing an untraceable toxin from snake venom that is perfect for political assassinations. As the investigation proceeds, she seduces both FBI investigators, Wayne Dancer and Julie Anderson, ... the investigation raises a number of questions? Is Marina an evil murdering art dealer? ... What is at stake and who has the upper hand?... Says Owner and author of the novel Erik D Stoops, This project is going to be a cult classic.

Erik D Stoops is the author of Boas & Pythons: Breeding and Care and other animal titles (Amazon).

In St Petersburg on 27 August a print-run of the artists' magazine Chto Delat was seized by police and the editor, artist Dmitri Vilensky, arrested: they were caught up apparently in a crackdown on an opposition printing-press (Mute). More (Lenizdat.ru, in Russian).

Vladimir Sorokin has published a new collection of short stories, Sugar Kremlin (Сахарный Кремль), apparently a sequel to Day of the Oprichnik  (Kommersant, in Russian):

It's about contemporary Russia, which stands at the tipping-point of the XX and XXI centuries. A century of high technology but Soviet mentality - that is contemporary Russia. I wanted to say my word abvout this. It's a phenomenal situation, that Russia cannot shake off sovietism and devises more and more new forms of it. 

Grisha Bruskin has a new book out (Syracuse University Press).

The fight to preserve Jerusalem's Russian library, which has the largest Russian-language holdings outside the former USSR (Jerusalem Post).

Possibly Solzhenitsyn's last interview (Independent).

Amongst the nominees for Russia's Bunin Prize for autobiography is Leonid Bilunov, aka Lenya Makintosh, a crime boss, chosen for his book Three Lives (gazeta.ru, in Russian).

An appreciation of communist-era jokes, culled from a new book, Hammer & Tickle (FT) (thanks, TM).

Vladimir Nabokov's son has decided to publish his father's last novel, The Original of Laura, which in his will Nabokov requested be destroyed; the son's decision was preceded by a visit from his father's ghost (Oregon Live).

The International Federation of Russian-speaking Writers (Международной федерация русскоязычных писателей) plans to site bronze Pushkin monuments, designed by sculptor Leonid Vatnik, in countries all over the world (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Bjork and Antony Hegarty, Dull Flame of Desire. What's that gotta do with Russian art, Matthew, you Bjork-groupie (or, er, Hegarty-groupie?)? Well, the words are based on a poem by Fedor Tyutchev (1803-73); and you can hear them in the Russian original as part of the final scene of Tarkovsky's Stalker (спасибо, MR).

A book review: The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture From Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn by Solomon Volkov (Martin Rubin/LA Times). Maybe invest in it now, because these things can go up: my own Socialist Realist Painting is currently at $375-$550 on Amazon and $375-$620.47 on abebooks ;) That's a 500% appreciation minimum on the opening price (depending when you click on those links, the prices may vary, of course).

The New York Times delves lovingly into the history of writer and political activist Eduard Limonov (thanks, MK).

A monumental work of genealogy, a book of 1886 which describes the family history of the entire 60,000 Ingush population living around Vladikavkaz, has been republished (Rossiiskaya Gazeta, in Russian). Apparently

in Ingushetia it is considered indecent not to know your family history eight generations back.

The well-known satirist "Mr Parker" (Maxim Kononenko) has published a parody of Vladimir Sorokin's Den' Oprichnika (Day of the Oprichnik) entitled Den' Otlichnika (Day of the Honours Student) (Gazeta.ru, in Russian). Apparently Kononenko's novel satirises liberal values.

The son of Vladimir Nabokov, Dmitri, is considering whether to carry out his father's wish and destroy the manuscript of his last, unfinished novel, The Original Of Laura (Pravda, in Russian).

News round-up

Commentary on the Russian market for luxury goods and high fashion in Kathemerini.

A little more on the case against the Preobrazhenskis, reported earlier. PS, The venerable (founded in the thirties) weekly Moscow News, where this report is, is due to be shut down by its owners in January next year; can't recall where I read it though.

Russki Zhurnal (in Russian; pdf) has an interview with bookshop-owner Boris Kupriyanov, facing a sentence of up to two years for the distribution of "pornography": novels (in Russian translation, I think) such as Lidia Lunch's Paradoxia, Pierre Bordage's L'Evangile du Serpent and Virginie Despentes's Baise Moi. Describing a campaign against his shop which he describes as "terror", Kupriyanov  suggests that books selling "intellectual literature" may cease to exist in Moscow.

Prospective England soccer manager has collection that includes Kandinsky and Chagall (The Guardian).

A report celebrating a show in Kiev that marks the 250th anniversary of the Russian Academy of Arts includes the statistic that 400 artists worked on the interior of the resurrected Cathedral of Christ the Saviour in Moscow (Kievskii Telegraf, in Russian). PS here are some historic photos of the original's destruction.

Poem by Gorokhov

Via viketz.

News round-up

About 300 people attend at The Museum of Russian Art to hear my seminar on Geli Korzhev yesterday. Beats the 30 or so I once joined at a panel discussion about Russian art in Tate Modern.

Irina Kulik/Kommersant (in Russian) looks at the Art of the Twentieth-Century fair at the Central House of the Artist (in previous years, A Half-Century of Soviet Art). A mixture of official art and non-conformism. A Evgeni Chubarov, who has reached over half a million dollars in London auctions, is on offer from Elizium gallery for $50,000, which on the face of it suggests his London prices are curious and perhaps unsustainable. Irina Zatulovskaya, who was bought by the Guggenheim Museum at ArtMoskva this year, is $10,000.

After The New Yorker, now The New York Times gets into Damiel Kharms.The same paper also looks at booming Moscow. We assume that the money will be where the democracy is. Perhaps that's still the case: but for how long?

The publisher St Petersburg publisher Astrel is preparing a novel written entirely by computer (Nohchi.ru, in Russian). Called Real Love (Nastoyashchaya Lyubov) it was compiled by a computer programme on the basis of an analysis of Anna Karenina and 13 other works. The computer took three days to compose the text.

News round-up

A new contemporary art gallery, GMG, opens in Leontevski Pereulok, Moscow.

Viktor Vekselberg's Faberge-heavy Svyaz Vremen (Link of Times) fund is planning a museum.

John Varoli/Bloomberg has an English-language report on the Kandinsky Prize. See also the awards ceremony pic, below.

Winner of the 2007 Russian Buker (Booker) Prize (noted this year for ignoring new novels by such celebrated names as Pelevin and Sorokin), is Alexander Ilichevski's Matisse. I am currently reading one of the six finalists, Daniel Shtain, Translator, by Ludmilla Ulitskaya: it's good (Vedomosti in Russian).

Steven Seagal (he's an actor) is planning a $100 million Hollywood-quality film studio in Moldova (Ria Novosti, in Russian). He says:

It will be an excuse to spend more time in the Republic

He's the first I've heard of to fall in love with Moldova. Chercher la femme, maybe. Or, to be fair, l'homme. Interestingly, there are 225,000 google hits for Steven S. and 260,000 for Stephen S., but Steven seems to be correct.

Two new books

Zinovi Zinik's new collection of stories, At Home Abroad, will be presented at cafe Mayak, Moscow, on Sunday 9 December at 6 pm.

Now-he-tells-me! dept: Alfred Taubman, former owner of Sotheby's, has some views about selling art in his autobiography:

Taubman shows how selling fine art and antiques really isn't that different from marketing root beer or football

News round-up

John Varoli/Bloomberg on the buyer of The Egg and Christies results, which at $81 million just topped Sothebys. If you think the top bidders are throwing their money around heedlessly, think again:

"Commercially, it is insane to pay more than 8 million pounds for this egg,'' said Andrei Ruzhnikov, a partner at Aurora Fine Art Investments, a fund owned by oil billionaire Viktor Vekselberg.

My comment about Bonhams yesterday was accurate as far as it goes, but they also sold 70% by value, which is not too far off Sotheby's and Christie's levels.

After considering the bidders, the widow of Dmitri Prigov has sold the rights to four novels to Irina Prokhorova's NLO publishing house.

News round-up

Sophia Kishkovsky on VDNKh today.

There is a suspicion that documents at a forthcoming (29 November) Christies' sale were stolen from the Russian state military archive (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

A retrospective of Turner Prize winners will be brought to Moscow in February by the Tate Gallery (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

The debate between French novelists Michel Houellebecq and Frederic Beigbeder at Vinzavod was, according to RIA Novosti (in Russian), a "fiasco". The two "opponents" apparently drained a bottle of vodka together and their answers to questions eventually became "incomprehensible".

A Russian film, Konstantin Lopushansky's version of the Strugatsky brothers' Ugly Swans, has won first prize at the Ravenna Film Festival.

News round-up

Well-known French novelist Michel Houellebecq is in Moscow seeking funding for a film, writes Kommersant (in Russian).

The exhibition of nominees for the Kandinsky Prize opens to the public tomorrow at Vinzavod.

The Historical Museum will be given additional accommodation, increasing its size from 20,000 to 40,000 sq m (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Yuri Gagarin's daughters have won a court battle to prevent the name of their father being used in a film they object to. The daughters claim that the film, hitherto entitled Gagarin's Grandson (this name presumably now in doubt, because the court has also prohibited the use of Gagarin's name in the title of the film), paints a false picture of their father (in Russian).

Writers on ZhZh

Below the cut, a list (in Russian) of writers who have blogs on LiveJournal, compiled by LJ user avmalgin.

News round-up

A new novel by Andrei Kurkov.

A striking 'ecotower' proposed by Norman Foster for Khanty-Mansiisk.

A new book from Prestel on the Peter and Irene Ludwig collection of modern Russian art. I have an interest, in that my answers to questions set by the editors are printed here, as well as an illustration of a fine Rukhin that I sold to the Ludwigs a few years ago. The collection reflects the breadth of the Ludwigs' taste: some Socialist Realism and Severe Stylet, non-conformism, much 'permitted art' of the 70s and 80s. A few of the acquisitions seem to have been, as my children might put it, 'random': a rich man's whim or acquiescence in the studio of a needy artist, perhaps. But there are also the favourites, Zhilinsky, Nesterova, Nazarenko among them, represented by fine and now scarcely-obtainable works.

Sorokin injured

Writer Vladimir Sorokin was knocked off his motorbike by a KamAz truck last Friday. He is currently in hospital with a broken collarbone (Grani.ru, in Russian).

Bunin prize, Russia in Cannes, glamour in Moscow

The expert committee of the Bunin literary prizes has resigned en masse after the council of trustees inserted without consultation an extra ten names into the short-list of candidates; no info on which names, but some of them were apparently completely unknown to the expert committee (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

President Putin has sent his congratulations to the annual Russian art festival in Cannes.

Reading is believing

An interview (in Russian) with Yuri Polyakov, the editor of the Literary Gazette, historically Russia's pre-eminent literary paper.

Hot Potter update

The official Russian translation of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is due on 13 October with a print run of 800,000, reports Lenta.ru. Somewhat later than the unofficial translation. Oreanda.ru describes a number of Harry Potter spinoffs around the world, including, apparently, a Russian one called Harry Potter and the Ex-KGB Agent, in which Voldemort is guilty of poisoning a spy in London (Oreanda.ru, in Russian). So that's a mystery solved, then, and Berezovsky's off the hook.

Volosaty Nosilshchik ;)

Harry Potter's Russian fans have pretty well completed an unofficial translation, reports Lenta.ru (in Russian). Still available, I believe, in Russian shops: books about Tania Grotter, a Harry Potter clonette; she is unavailable in the West because of a lawsuit against her.

Into Kharms' way

The New Yorker on Daniel Kharms: a writer of probable genius who did Samuel Beckett before Samuel Beckett and maybe did him better.

Return of the ё

The Ministry of Culture and Communications is considering making the letter "ё" (pronounced "yo", with a short "o" sound) compulsory as opposed to optional in written Russian. The letter was dreamed up in 1783 and first used in written form in 1797 in the word слёзы (slyozy - tears). A decree following the 1917 revolution made the use of the letter optional, with the result that, on the one hand, it is widely replaced by a simple "e", which confuses foreigners (Khrushchev was actually Khrushchyov); and on the other, that many less-literate Russians have begun to spell words featuring "ё" with an "o" in an attempt to match the sound (from RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Da Vinci Code II

The lawsuit mooted more than a year ago by Hermitage expert Mikhail Anikin has got underway in Nashville.

New novel: Volk's Game

It's an exciting, often brutal story of Russian gangsters fighting over priceless works of art. Its characters are colorful, its descriptions of Russia are vivid and its suspense is palpable. In terms of sheer entertainment, "Volk's Game" is an impressive debut, and it is not without its serious moments, too, particularly with regard to the bitterness the war in Chechnya has brought home to Russia. The only possible objection to the book is its level of violence, which is off the charts. This is not a novel for the faint of heart.

Shalamov centenary

RIA Novosti reports on the centenary conference that discussed the work of Varlan Shalamov, author of Kolyma Tales.

After reading Solzhenitsyn's One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Shalamov telephoned the author to pay his compliments, but remarked: "You have a cat living in a prison camp. That couldn't have been true - the cat would have been eaten."

News round-up

A criminal inquiry has been opened against the organisers of the show Forbidden Art, staged in the Sakharov Centre, Moscow, last year; see The International Herald Tribune or the BBC (in Russian).

RIA Novosti reports on negotiations for the return of the artworks removed by Captain Baldin from Germany in 1945. Apparently a favoured idea now is for the works to go back in return for a 'storage charge' of 2 million euros. Not bad: over the period 1945-2007 that equates to more than 32,000 euros a year for the space under Captain Baldin's bed... ;)

Finally, a couple of old geezers, er, I mean, geniuses. Alexander Solzhenitsyn getting the State Prize from President Putin (via LJ user dmitrivrubel), and Boris Mikhailov in the Ukrainian pavilion, Venice.

Back not in the USSR

LJ User belyrabbit has demonstrated apparently that John Lennon was related, by marriage, to Pushkin.

Alexander Pushkin
Sergei Pushkin (Alexander Pushkin's son)
Nadezhda Gannibal (Sergei Pushkin's wife)
Yakov Gannibal (Nadezhda Gannibal's cousin)
Elizaveta Byndomskaya (Yakov Gannibal's wife)
Prasnovya Byndomskaya (Elizaveta Byndomskaya's sister)
Nikolai Vulf (Prasnovya Byndomskaya's husband)
Nikolai Vulf II (Nikolai Vulf's son)
Anna Bubnova, nee Vulf (Nikolai Vulf II's daughter)
Anna Bubnova II (Anna Bubnova's daughter)
Syuniti Ono (Anna Bubnova II's husband)
Eisuke Ono (Syuniti Ono's brother)
Yoko Ono (Eisuke Ono's daughter)
John Lennon (Yoko Ono's husband)

News round-up

Kommersant reports on a proposed luxury-goods tax. Yes, hard to see how it could be enforced efficiently - but it could catch virtually anyone of wealth for tax violation, if the need arose.

Peter Schmidt is protecting The Museum of Russian Art.

Solzhenitsyn has been awarded the Russian State Prize; a belated decision, or what?

Popular realist painter Sergei Andriyaki has created a water-colour metro train.

The Kinotavr Film Festival opened Sunday in Sochi: this is the main festival of Russian cinema.

Daily Tolstoy

Lenta.ru reports (in Russian) that from dailylit.com you can now get an English translation of Anna Karenina and War and Peace in the form of daily emails, each containing enough for a 5-minute read (Anna Karenina breaks down into 430 emails, War and Peace into 675, which makes for a total read time of about 36 and 56 hours respectively).

Trouble in clubland

The French writer Frederic Beigbeder, author of the novel 99 Francs, is preparing to publish a book on Moscow which lays bare some of the seamier nightlife. He names names and already, I am told, a lawsuit is underway from an eminence of the club scene. Beigbeder has this to say about Moscow:

Moscow makes me think of Paris in the twenties, when American writers such as Hemingway and Henry Miller came to fuck the girls and lead a freer life.

So, we know what he's been doing, then. In fact I wonder how much longer some of the more notorious city-centre clubs can survive in the increasingly conservative moral climate. Places where, upon entering, you are swamped by nearly-naked girls offering lap-dances at a few dollars a pop and urging you to rent a private room on the premises to do whatever else you feel up to: in a word, brothels. Moscow does await its Henry Miller, I suppose: maybe it's Beigbeder?

Epstein on Grossman

Joseph Epstein appreciates (pdf) Vasili Grossman's Life and Fate:

A great book, a masterpiece, "Life and Fate" is a book only a Russian could write.

Round-up

The Moscow Times has detail on a couple of events covered here a few days ago: the Innovation Prize and the projects for a monument to Yeltsin (or EBN [Eltsin, Boris Nikolaevich], as someone dubbed him). In a sign of the times, in Moscow, the Soviet-era Museum of Public Catering will become a museum of the art of cooking. Russia is Guest of Honour at the Geneva Book Fair; the curator of the Russian pavilion describes contemporary Russian literature as ""tough, brutal and visionary at the same time." And in the St Petersburg Times Leo Mourzenko looks the new patriotic Russian cinema in the form of the movie May and finds it to be A Crime Against Art.

News round up

Down but not out: Marat Guelman announces (in Russian) that he is retiring from work and the public eye until the autumn, for health reasons. I don't know, but one surmises that his problems may be connected with the vicious beating he received in October.

And some nuggets from Lenta.ru:

The first day of Sotheby's 2-day Russian sale (yesterday) made $12.7 million, top lot being a miniature Faberge "armchair", $2.28 million. Meanwhile a mammoth skeleton originating from Siberia has just fetched $352,000 at Christies; and the FSB is publishing a book of love-correspondence involving the founder of the Soviet secret police, Felix Dzerzhinsky: an original pr move; maybe it will shed new light on his nickname, Iron Felix? 

News round-up

The Hermitage has a new project, called Hermitage 20/21 and based in its new wing, which will show and collect contemporary art (from Gif.ru, in Russian). From the press release, I think: "The Museum will collaborate with collectors and artists who can support the project with their works". Which suggests to me that the Hermitage (like now the Tretyakov and the Russian Museum) will work closely with the private commercial sector.

BYU NewsNet looks at the Springville Museum, Utah, which contains one of the pioneering collections of Soviet realism, put together by director Vern Swanson:

"I would say that the most popular collection we have would be the Russian one," Swanson said. "People come from all over the United States just to see this collection."

Vern and I had a lot of contact in the nineties, when we helped assemble the collection of Ray and Susan Johnson, which forms the core of the Museum of Russian Art in Minneapolis.

A new English-language magazine (pdf), Russia!, presents Russian culture to a US audience. It appears to have a strong roster of editors and contributors (Art Lebedev, Marat Gelman, Boris Akunin). I can't help thinking that exclamation mark is the sign of an inferiority complex, though.

And a blog review (pdf) of Russian graphic novel Siberia.

Alice in Wonderland in Wonderland

I often think of a trip to Russia as a trip to Wonderland, or Through the Looking Glass. The Moscow Times tells the story (pdf) of how Alice finally appeared in the Soviet Union.

Solzhenitsyn today

Zinovi Zinik's extended piece on Solzhenitsyn (pdf) has been published by the Times Literary Supplement. Essential, if controversial, reading.

Ice

The Moscow Times reviews (pdf) the first English translation of Vladimir Sorokin's Ice.

And: The Washington Post previews the English translation of painter Maxim Kantor's novel The Drawing Textbook.

Mr Parker/Sergei Minaev

LiveJournal user Mr Parker, creator of the Vladimir Vladimirovich satires (in Russian; also published in English in The Moscow Times), has announced the closure of his blog (in Russian), one of the most frequented on Russian LiveJournal. He accumulated 28,734 posts, 14,328 pictures, over 3,500 'friends", 998 Mb of disk space.

Sergei Minaev, author of best-selling Dukhless (rough translation: soulless), an author whose contemporary nihilism may be compared to that of Michel Houillebecq, will publish his second novel, Media Sapiens, about a Goebbels-inspired "information terrorist" during the 2008 Russian elections, on 13 February. The timeframe interests me: it's set a year in the future: socio-political speculation, perhaps, in the form of a novel: almost a new genre.

Pasternak update

The Washington Post looks at the new book (pdf) on Doktor Zhivago's CIA connection which I reported on last month.