IZO

Honestly, I'm worried about those readers who check IZO compulsively several times a day ;) Time is invaluable, and in order to give us all a little more of it (I need some for new projects), IZO is moving to a schedule of weekly publication. Henceforth a digest of Russian art and cultural news will appear on Mondays at or about 6 am (GMT when I'm in London, otherwise according to location). I realise the site may lose a bit of buzz, for which сори, but needs must. On the other hand, it may gain reflectiveness; and I don't rule out non-scheduled news when the occasion warrants. In any case, please keep the links, tips, comments and responses coming.

[Post removed]

Oh boy, everybody is finding their content on IZO. For example, here's Natalia Radulova, one of Russia's toppest bloggers (compare IZO and radulova).

President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin have both wished Tair Salakhov a happy birthday. As First Secretary of the Soviet artists' union in the late 80s he wielded considerable power in, I think, a not illiberal way. He okayed, for example, the Francis Bacon, Robert Rauschenberg and Gilbert and George exhibitions in the Central House of the Artist. The one time I asked him for a favour I was treated very well. I was having trouble getting some photographs for my book Art under Stalin from the Sovetski Khudozhnik publishing house. I was being stalled, for weeks. In the end I appealed to Tair Teimurovich: could he speed things up? He picked up the phone and of course I had the prints in my hand a few hours later.

Less news today because I'm in Berlin.

I just emailed some artists in London about a hold-up to their show in Kiev, the Crisis being to blame of course. One writes back:

Thanks... sorry to hear their bad news - maybe Obama will fix it?

First snow expected in Moscow this week (Regnum, in Russian). Freakishly enough, London had its first snow last week. Below: Moscow summer sunshine at my local underpass.

How does IZO make money? So much money. About £100 a month? Well it provides "tips" to Rupert Murdoch, that's how.

The news flow was interrupted by an unexpected overnight stay in Berlin. If an agreed contract is signed in a week or two, the Matthew Bown Gallery may re-open in Berlin in 2009.

Cashing in on the caviar crisis (israelenews). I'm not sure how this dilemma is decided in Russia:

Most rabbis say sturgeon -- and by extension caviar -- are not [kosher] because the fish apparently has no scales, which makes it forbidden food under Jewish dietary laws.

But Hebrew University scientist Berta Levavi-Sivan, who has participated in the sturgeon-rearing project, begs to differ, insisting that magnification will reveal that the fish do indeed have tiny scales.

But sometimes I feel I might might appear a bit scaly under a microscope... Once upon a time you could get a one or two kilo (I forget which) tin of good black caviar in Moscow for about 200 dollars. Living in a one-room rental in the working-class suburb of Pechatniki, I used to eat it for breakfast, either with a spoon or on hot Georgian lavash bread bought from the back door of the Arakvi restaurant the night before. Now the only person I know who eats caviar with a spoon is a Bulgarian metals trader.

IZO reader MK sends me a link in which Bruce Sterling remembers briefly Timur Novikov (Wired). MK writes: "Mr. Sterling's heartfelt words are in agreement with most everything I ever heard about Timur." It's a strange coincidence for me to come across this straight after watching for the second time The Diving Bell and the Butterfly: Novikov's plight had something in common with the writer in the film, in that it excluded him completely from his professional activity. In Novikov's case the cause of his blindness was meningitis, I think. I saw him at what must have been his last show, at Aidan Gallery in 2002, sitting quietly behind a table, listening, answering questions; a few hours later that night for some reason I made the film My Night With Julia. There doesn't seem to be an English-language Wikipedia entry on Novikov. His work is still cheap at auction; that may change. I believe someone's creating a foundation and/or catalogue raisonné.

Last night I am sitting after the Saatchi opening in the Oriel brasserie in Sloane Square watching Nicholas Logsdail of the Lisson Gallery drift in and out with his beautiful young mixed-race companion etc and talking to a friend who is married to a Japanese lady and he tells me that some Japanese regard the British as unruly dangerous and frankly incomprehensible which strikes him and maybe even me as conceivably a wee bit unjustified but quite possibly not and then this morning I stumble across a photo of a Brit who decided to go for a swim in a Japanese imperial fountain... (drugoi). UPDATE: Youtube:

Opening of the new Saatchi Gallery last night. It's a beautiful space on four floors just off the fashionable Kings Road: really, a great addition to the London gallery scene. Mr Saatchi's first show is of Chinese contemporary art. On the top floor in the Project Room: tabloid newspaper paintings by Aleksandra Mir; and in the Phillips de Pury Gallery, Julian Schnabel. Below: Matthew Bown looking a bit fragile with Julian Schnabel. Loads more photos below the cut: I don't know who most of the people are.

The graphic artist Boris Efimov (Yefimov) has died, aged 108 (Daily Telegraph). It's a strange business, thinking about the depths of time that extremely old people link to. About 1980, when working as a caretaker at a block of flats in the Marylebone Road, I got to know a gentleman, a Mr Solomon, who was very nearly one hundred years old. He came from a family of similarly long-lived people. One of his relatives - maybe a great-grandfather - had told him, way back circa 1885-90, about how he, as a child, had seen Napoleon in Trieste. I looked it up: that would have been in 1797, I think.

Naomi Campbell is prepared to adopt the Russian Orthodox Church of her billionaire boyfriend, Vladimir Doronin (RIA Novosti, in Russian). I received an orthodox baptism in Moscow 20 years ago this month; I haven't paid much attention to the church since then, but it doesn't seem to have done any harm.

Preview of the Kabakovs show, opening in Moscow tonight (John Varoli/Bloomberg). And formerly Moscow- now NY-based conceptualist Irina Nakhova remembers visiting Ilya Kabakov in his Moscow studio (Vremya, in Russian).

Reader CT wonders: why not add comments to IZO? Well, several people have suggested it, but I think, really, I'm too lazy to deal with the extra admin. I'm always happy to respond to emails.

Nataliya Shmarenova, from Ukraine, has won the Mrs World title; but she loses it if she divorces in the next year (Kleo.ru, in Russian). So it's not a slam-dunk for her, because these things do put a strain on the marital bond. I was once a judge for the Moscow competition Miss Tolstushka - roughly, Miss Fat Lady - which was organised by Moskovsky Komsomolets newspaper and held in the Luzhniki sports stadium in front of a football-match-sized crowd. I made what I thought was an elegant speech about the beautiful fat ladies in Russian art - Arkhipov's peasant girls, Kustodiev's merchants' wives and so on - but it seemed to go above everyone's heads and one guy in particular kept heckling me. The show-winner, who had to dance, sing, answer difficult questions and also perform a satirical striptease, returned home that evening to find that her husband - the heckler himself - had left her in disgust. How did I get that job? Well, I was on a plane to Moscow when someone opened a locker and a bottle of wine fell out onto my head. The owner, who turned out to be the organiser of Miss Tolstushka, apologised profusely, offered me a drink, we began to chat, and soon it was in the bag.

My column looking at the Sotsart market, and in particular at the show Glasnost/Perestroika which opened at Diehl + Gallery One, Moscow, is up (Open Space/Art Times, in Russian). Apparently a version of the Diehl show is planned for Haunch of Venison, London, early next year.

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.

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).

No more will I be in multiple minds at cocktail parties:
"What do you do?"
"Me? I'm a Russian art blogger."

I just received an email from a documentary film buyer interested in acquiring rights to my film about a Russian prostitute, My Night With Julia (2003). It's actually unshowable now on UK TV after a ruling, which followed its first broadcast, that it was degrading or exploitative or something along those lines: it's the only TV documentary in living memory to get such a blanket ban. The terms offered are: all media (including online streaming), US, UK, and Italy for 5 years for around £1000. The offer's for a clip of up to 8 minutes only, and of course I'm flattered by the interest, but even so, how do documentary makers make a living at these rates?

In December 2007 I gave the artist Katie Paterson her first show; soon after I sold her first major work, now in a Spanish museum; and now, less than six months later, she has been snaffled, snapped up, scrobbled  (as John Masefield wrote in The Box Of Delights) by the very rich Albion Gallery, which shows James Turrell, Ilya Kabakov and other stars. I'm extremely happy for Katie; and the Albion Gallery is on the ball; but what's a small gallerist to do when the big ones are cruising like great white sharks with an insatiable appetite for new talent?

I looked at a building for sale on Kastanienstrasse in Berlin today. It's a trendy avenue known colloquially as Kastingstrasse, because film directors source their beautiful people on it. I couldn't get into the building. A couple of young men were doing renovation work on a commercial space in the basement. I asked one of them them what business would be operating from there.
    "I'm gonna be shooting porn films," he replied, in English. "My cousin here will play the starring role," he said, indicating the other chap, who was up a ladder with a paintbrush.
    I didn't quite know what to say. He seized on my silence:
    "Is there anything wrong with that?"
    I detected a trace of aggression.
    "No," I said, "but you don't seem to have much room here."
    "Size doesn't matter," he said.
    "Well, some women say it does."
    "Aha! They just say that to make you feel insecure."
    "Quite the reverse," I said.
    He obviously wasn't German.
    "Where are you from?" I asked.
    "Naples."
    "Oh," I said, "I love Naples. The wonderful Capo di Monte museum... The late Caravaggios..."
    "Do you have an art gallery?" he asked me, with acute intuition (although maybe not - every second shop in Berlin seems to be turning into an art gallery).
    "Yes."
    "I have some art to sell."
    "What do you have?"
    "Oh, a Joseph Beuys, some other things," he said. "Email me..."

The Times  and Artnet (scroll down for both) have picked up my Abramovich story (thanks, LJ).

On Monday 10th March I will be participating in a panel discussion at the City Inn, Westminster, about the Russian contemporary market. The event is organised by ArtInsight and Olga Tararukhina. Also taking part: Jo Vickery from Sotheby's, the chair is Anders Petterson from ArtTactic. I won't give more details for the simple reason that the event is booked out with a waiting list. Also, my article on the state of censorship in Russian art, entitled Shut The Duck Up, is in the latest issue of the venerable journal Index On Censorship. This issue is Russia-themed, mostly by Russian authors. Unfortunately Index don't post the content to their website, but you can subscribe here.

Off-top, on beach

Light reportage because I am hiding from the sun (still strong through the clouds) in the Thai resort island Koh Samui. Below is an artist at work, around midnight, on the main street by Chaweng Beach; crouching down ­- his muse, maybe. Most shops, including the art galleries, open at around midday and stay open until 10-11-12 at night, when it is still extremely warm. The tourist artists seem to cull their subjects from the vast catalogues put out by international print publishers, which contain thousands and thousands of the world’s most “popular” images. The abstract no less than the figurative paintings in their showrooms are copied from these catalogues. Collectively these artists should have, if they cared to collate it, the data to perform an analysis of worldwide popular taste in art similar to that undertaken by Komar and Melamid in their series of the world’s favourite and least favourite paintings, which were based on opinion research. Like artists in Russia circa 1980s, they seem to have a good thing going relative to most of the population, some of them banging out paintings at a rate which earns them $100 or more a day, or, say, $25,000 a year: a very good Thai income. As far as I can discover, Russian art has not penetrated here, but a cyrillic sign in the photo offers “RUSSKII DAIVING” (Russian Diving), and I heard riotous applause at a transvestite nightclub when the chief diva began a rendition of a song by Katya Lel’ that goes roughly “Poprobui dzhaga-dzhaga” (“Try my jaga-jaga”, whatever that may be). So, it seems: Katya Lel' = Gay Icon.

Saatchi on the case

In the last few days the Saatchi Gallery blog has reprised the Blue Noses confiscation. Meanwhile, on his blog, Marat Gelman reports that the next Blue Noses show, entitled ебаный фашизм (I'll leave the translation to someone more, er, articulate than I) opens in his gallery 15th January.

Released!

Natasha Milovzorova at Guelman Gallery emails me a letter to sign, on the basis of which the eleven Blue Noses' works held at Sheremetevo Airport are to be released into Guelman Gallery hands. No word at present of any charges. Does this bear out my instinct that the whole event was a bureaucratic vagary of the customs/airport police? On a related, perhaps, topic: Masha Lipman of the Washington Post looks at the controversy around the movie Borat in Russia. Her assertion that the reluctance to distribute Borat is "the first time the post-Communist Russian authorities have banned a piece of creative expression in years" may or may not be strictly correct, but it overlooks the problems faced in recent times not only by me with the Blue Noses but also by exhibitions such as Look Out! Religion!

Post-arrestum

Gif.ru reports (in Russian) that the confiscated Blue Noses' works will be held for 10 days by the prosecutor's office.

Post-arrestum

The Blue Noses page is up on the Matthew Bown website, together with a description of the  events surrounding the show, including links to worldwide press comment.

UPDATE: here are some of the links, I'll add more as they appear:

The Art Newspaper
Culture Kiosque
PDN Online
Publius Pundit
ArtNet
International Herald Tribune
St Petersburg Times
Daily Telegraph (Australia)
Guardian Unlimited
Moscow Times
Kommersant
New York Times
The Scotsman
ArtDaily
ABC (Australia)
Reuters
Sunday Times (UK)
Axis
Newsru.com
NY Arts Magazine

Post-arrestum

I feel it behoves me to report that I was treated in civilised fashion during my detention at Sheremetevo airport, installed in the First Class Lounge, plied with tea and cake. It was of course a fairly dramatic event, being removed from the plane minutes before take-off. The little room where I was questioned is decorated with quaint Soviet-style posters warning against bribery etc., but my interrogators (there were several) didn't seem mired in the past and professed surprise that plainly absurdist works such as the Blue Noses' should have been the cause of my detention and a minor skandal. My statement was punctuated by calls from Reuters, Ekho Moskvy radio station and other news outlets who had been alerted to the story by Marat Guelman's LiveJournal and press campaign. The journalists' thesis seemed to be that my arrest signalled to re-introduction of wide state censorship of the arts. I'm not sure if I buy that. The entire exhibition has however been confiscated in Moscow, and although I believe it will be released, it is unclear to me when that might be. For the time being at least I understand that charges are being considered, although exactly for what, and against whom, I was not told. I have given an undertaking to return to Moscow as and when required.

UPDATE: I have a text from Julia Guelman: Marat has been assaulted, his gallery smashed. Maybe this puts a different complexion on yesterday's events.

Savile Row protest

The Matthew Bown Gallery is situated above the premises of the venerable firm of outfitters, Huntsman (est. 1849), in Savile Row. For the last century, Savile Row has been the home of England's leading gentlemen's tailors (Huntsman itself has a distinctive style: once you know, you can spot a man in a Huntsman suit at 50 yards). But now the rising rents in the fashionable street have brought the tailors out in protest. They were all perfectly well-behaved: sitting upstairs in the gallery, nobody heard a thing. Will we see London's art dealers staging a similar protest about the effects of droit-de-suite (artists' rights payments) that came into force in the UK on February 26th?