IZO

Laura K. Jones's London Dispatch includes a Berlin report from Time, space... meh! (Artnet).

 

Kunstkontakter video report at Time, space... meh! (Kunstkontakter).

Time, space... meh! opens on Wednesday, 6-9 pm (Matthew Bown Galerie). If you are in Berlin, welcome/велкам/höchst willkommen.

Berlin is still a cheap and cheerful place to start up a gallery, but maybe not such an easy place to make a living. This is made clear by the decision of Jablonka, which in Cologne seemed almost a museum institution rather than a commercial enterprise, to close its Berlin space (ARTINFO):

“Berlin is an economically retarded place! The collector’s market is nonexistent,” he [Rafael Jablonka] declared in an interview with ARTINFO last week. “Well, there are some collectors in Berlin, but I don’t think they are buying in Berlin. Why do artists go to Berlin? Because the rents are low. But there is no other business there, there is no reason to be in Berlin.”

Apl315 at Matthew Bown Galerie (artycok).

My article on the recent Andrew Graham-Dixon BBC TV series, Art of Russia (Open Space, in Russian).

Skype conversation:

 

I was going to comment on Andrew Graham-Dixon's recent TV series Art of Russia, made for the BBC and broadcast over Christmas, but then I got asked to talk about it by Zinovy Zinik for the BBC Russian Service. Here's the link (BBC, in Russian). There is one mistake in what I say: I attribute to AGD the phrase that Deineka created his mosaics in Mayakovsky metro "despite Stalin". AGD did not say that, although that would be my paraphrase of the sense of his remarks. So, my apologies to AGD for that, and I'll add, what doesn't come across in the interview, that his films are full of fascinating colourful material, and an acute sense of personality and subtext. Anyway, if you are interested in my theory of "two churches" in art, listen away...

Ekaterina Degot and I on Olga Lopukhova (Open Space, in Russian).

Old conversation.

Video by Kunstkontakter of Apl315's show in Keithstrasse (Kunstkontakter). Exhibition page (Matthew Bown Galerie). Below, I'm wearing Greatcriss fashions (Greatcriss) with the St P-based designer in front of Apl315's The Future Of Graffiti Belongs To The Invetebrates.

Street art a la mode. Odessa cops? chasing Apl315's crew, Fat315.

 

Hanging out with Odessa graffitist apl315 (next show at Matthew Bown Galerie) I learn there is a "graffitiists' mobile phone" in Ukraine. It's a Nokia 1100, which costs about 200 grivnas, has a flashlight (useful for night painting), and is robust enough to use for prising the caps off beer bottles on those long train rides.

Vernissage-chronicler Konstantin Schneider, host of Kunstkontakter, was at the Matthew Bown Galerie opening of Three Colours: Berlin (Kunstkontakter). Unfortunately the quality of his video leaves a little to be desired in this instance, but thanks Konstantin. And musician Ute Be chose the show as her Saturday must-visit for the Berlin Tagesspiegel (Tagesspiegel, in German).

Family plug: my brother William speculates on the new moon-race (New Scientist). Now, not many people know this, but the law of the moon, so trendy these days, is not actually a novel study-subject. The interesting Argentinian artist Leopoldo Maler, who also studied law, produced a dissertation on the subject in the early 60s. Just sayin'.

Also on New Scientist: what should museums throw out (New Scientist)?

New paintings by Damien Hirst

Hirst-Pinchuk split? Pinchuk on the Hirst show at the Wallace Collection (Guardian):

Hirst's heart-stoppingly rich Russian friend Victor Pinchuk was also there, and afterwards he observed that the rooms housing Damien's paintings were heavily protected – no champagne allowed, everything behind glass. By contrast, the Rembrandts were hung where "everyone was sloshing liquids". "Why is that?" asked Pinchuck.

Why indeed? Maybe to protect the wallpaper? And Hirst on his "crazy people" collectors (Daily Mail):

I worked out very quickly that if you've got two people and they both want something and they've got a lot of money then it goes for a lot of money. As an artist you kind of have to ignore the market 'cos it can just be created by two crazy people.

Meanwhile, views are in on Hirst's paintings: "deadly dull", "amateurish", "adolescent" (Adrian Searle/Guardian); "many of the paintings simply don’t pass muster" (Sarah Crompton/Telegraph); and (Rachel Campbell-Johnston/Times):

The paintings are dreadful. Think Francis Bacon meets Adrian Mole. So why are these works now hanging in the Wallace Collection? What are they doing in the home of such masters as Rembrandt or Poussin, Titian or Fragonard?  The answer is simple: they are by Damien Hirst.

This is pretty well what I wrote for Open Space six months ago, on the occasion of Hirst's show in Kiev ("Hirst's new pictures are inept and amateurish" etc.) (Open Space, in Russian). So I reckon I was the first to give the verdict on his new work work in a specialist art publication. I've posted the English version of what I wrote then below the cut.

Unsolicited IZO testimonial:

Hi Matthew- I've had an AMAZING response to the notice about the diary [IZO, last week] -probably 15 or 20 orders already (and from all over the place not just the UK). very exciting. thanks and all the best, julian [Rothenstein].

Keep sending those unsolicited testimonials! BTW, if you are interested in taking an ad for your gallery or other enterprise in the right-hand column, mail me.

Plenty of folk will be in London for Frieze this week, but anyone in Berlin is welcome at my gallery for Three Colours: Berlin, opening on Wednesday evening (Matthew Bown Galerie). Paintings by young artists Sarah Alexander, Johannes Bittmann and Stefanie Kabitzke, and music by DJ Onassis playing fruityloops.

My review of the Moscow Biennale and ArtMoscow on Artnet (Artnet). Email response from Katya Degot:

My dear, it is very stupid (and not fair) of you to think I am criticizing Gintovt out of competition - simply because I am supporting "conceptualists". Are Gutov or Chernysheva conceptualists? And don't you believe people can really have political positions?

Well, people can really have political positions. But to a large extent the political and aesthetic positions overlap. Is that the way human beings are made, or the way Russia is made?

Also: record attendance at Biennale (Open Space, in Russian). And a Biennale report from Valentin Diaconov (Artinfo).

From Laura K. Jones's London Dispatch, which also covers the Mat Collishaw show in Berlin (Artnet):

As the sun rose over the Pan Am building, eight stragglers decamped to some of our party’s home for the weekend, the Matthew Bown Gallery (Berlin), which opens its inaugural show, "Painting of the ‘80s," this month to coincide with Berlin Art Forum and numerous other piggy-backing art fairs. The gallery is housed in a huge apartment in the diplomatic quarter. Until recently it was the homely home of Germany’s bundespresident, Walter Scheel, and his wife, but now looks very different painted white with a bunch of Julian Schnabel artworks on the wall.

In the October-November Russian Art + Auction: my articles on the upcoming Faibisovich show in Moscow (it opens early next year) and on the 1988 Sotheby's Moscow auction. A + A doesn't publish online, unfortunately.

Bombila (бомбила) record? I got in a car at Mayakovsky Square and asked to be taken to Pushkin Square. "I don't know the way" (Дорогу не знаю) said the driver.

Email received:

Hello!  My name is XXXXXX and I was model for Arnis Balčus photo-story "Killing rampage" (...). Photos of his work Episodes were exhibited in your gallery on year 2006 and they can also be seen on your web-sight [sic]. The thing is that I'm becoming a muslim and as you maybe know, it's absolutely unacceptable for muslim woman to be seen publicly this much uncovered. My request to You is to be responsive and remove those pictures of 'Killing rampage' where I can be seen or at least cancel the option where they can be enlarged. Please. It is really important for me.  Hoping for Your understanding and praying  Best regards, XXXXXX

I will do what she asks because I don't see any reason not to, although I imagine there's an argument against. Balčus's artwork itself will not be affected; I'm not sure how he'll deal with the request on his website.

Screen grab of my house in Moscow on Yandex street view (Yandex, via dolboeb).

Interior view of the new Matthew Bown Gallery, Keithstrasse 10, Berlin. It's in a classic Berlin hochparterre apartment that was previously inhabited by former Bundespraesident Herr Walter Scheel. On the wall: Julian Schnabel, Alexander Pope, 1983.

Short version of an interview by Anna Arutyunova with top collector Peter Aven, the full version to appear in the October Art+Auction (Open Space/Art Times, in Russian):

I take advice only on price, says Aven. As far as the painterly qualities of what I buy are concerned, I make my own decisions.

 As I understand, this issue of A+A will also contain my introduction to the upcoming show by Semyon Faibisovich at the Museum of Modern Art on Gogol Boulevard, and a reminiscence, again by yours truly, about the 1988 Sotheby's auction. UPDATE: the Aven interview is in the already-published September A+A, my contributions will be in the October-November issue.

IZO site analysis. Below are, according to Alexa, the main keywords driving traffic to IZO. Some I can understand - Julia Milner, Masha Sergeeva, Dasha Zhukova etc - and I am pleased to see my banned documentary movie, My Night With Julia, getting traffic. I am intrigued by 'russian avant garde warez' - sounds like good if dubious business. But I typed "doctrine of shapron" (inc. inverted commas) into Google and the only result was the Alexa page referencing IZO. What's all that about? In fact it's a search engine failure: on some page or other of IZO the name Shapron appears together with the word Doctrine.

And here from Alexa is the IZO demographic: it seems that relative to the general internet population I am most popular with 25-34 year old women, with college education, without children, who read IZO at work.

Missive received:

DEAR MATTHEW 
HOW ARE YOU/ READING YOUR BLOG. VERY INTERESTING/ESPECIALLY IF I TRANSLATE IT TO RUSSIAN FOR IK THROUGH "AUTOMATIC TRANSLATOR" THEN ITS FUNNY AS WELL. 
EK

In reply to my request for a sample automatic translation:

IK SAID IT SOUND LIKE CHLEBNIKOV! ABSOLUTELY GREAT.

So here's a Google translation and, for comparison, a babelfish take on 'Chapman bros "dupe the art world" by pretending to be Russian artists for a week':

Chapman Bros "простофиля искусства во всем мире", делая вид для российских художников на неделю

" bros Чэпмена; dupe world" искусства; путем претендовать быть русскими художниками на неделя

Big gallery/small gallery. Big is better, right? Well, it's a lot more difficult to fill. I'm meeting artists who say they'll need a year to produce the necessary amount of work.

Fair warning, as they say in the auctions: the distributors (Central Books) only have eight copies left of my book A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters. Current retail is £125 inc. (I think) delivery, which may be cheaper than what's offered on Amazon, I haven't checked. I don't have any spare copies either. Socialist Realist Painting has jumped from $75 retail before it went out of print to $290+ (today's price).

A discussion of the role of Yours Truly in the development of the market in Socialist Realism (artinvestment.ru, in Russian):

From the newspapers: ..."In no small part thanks to the creative approach of Matthew Bown to the profession of dealer, who needs not only to praise but intelligently to create demand for a movement, interest in Socialist Realism awakened at the end of the 1980s and prices grew for this art, which was still an exoticism to Western collectors.
(...)
Message from Tyutchev:
Matthew didn't help anyone, he bought what nobody wanted. And it will be wanted only after the passage of time, when the Soviet past will be reconsidered without the speculations of those currently in power. (...) Western collectors perceive [Soviet] Russia as an unique social phenomenon and a great epoch, in which the eternal Russian dream of happiness for all was reflected. From this stems the sunny optimism of Soviet art. In contrast to the aggressive and cynical nationalistic art of fascist Germany. (...) Matthew understood this and took away the "epoch" in order for it to proceed triumphantly around the world and return to the homes of our Hirst-lovers now understood and buoyed by the attention of perceptive Westerners.

Kim Zigfeld on censorship in Russia on the pretext of the struggle against "extremism" (Pajamas Media). In Kyrgyzstan, the killing of a political dissident and beating of a journalist in pursuit of the so-called Great Game (WSJ).

Picasso's last home, in Vauvenargues, southern France, will open to the public for the first time today (Times). I lived in Vauvenargues, with a permanent view of the Picasso house, in 1994-5; my son was born in the hospital in nearby Aix-en-Provence. It's a sweet sleepy little village, named after an essayist of the C18 and overlooked by Cezanne's Mont Sainte Victoire. No doubt it will now become a tourist nightmare.

An interesting couple at the 9 May celebrations in Moscow.

Collapse of internet service at my Moscow flat prevents me from scanning and posting a letter recently received requiring me to register availability for military service in Russia. Perhaps I've acquired Russian citizenship without realising it.

Report on Damien Hirst in Kiev (Kate Sutton/ArtForum).

My report on the Hirst event is up on Open Space (Open Space, in Russian).

From ArtForum:

Kiev is a good place for amateur street photography. The place is rich in facture, people don't seem to mind your taking them, and you don't feel you're going to be asked to desist, or worse, by the police. A few shots by yours truly from last week.

Sotheby's will have a Ukrainian section in their upcoming June Russian contemporary sale. I was given a preview of some of the works by a Kiev dealer: they look interesting. I'm also selling a few things in this auction.

Marat Guelman writes (galerist, in Russian):

Today is the peak of my career. The great writer Volodya Sorokin beat me in the bath-house with birch twigs.

Piggy-backing on this: the peak of my career was a couple of years ago when a friend called me to say she'd been watching a Russian TV programme about the three main enemies of Russian culture: Marat Guelman, Vladimir Sorokin and Matthew Bown.

I know Olga Chernysheva has made a series of photos of flower stalls, I'm not claiming originality, but a month or so ago in Moscow around midnight I came across one in an empty street and totally misted up; it might as well have been a Sputnik for all the contact it was having with Planet Earth; mobile phone photo.

Last Monday was a page-view record day, excepting a few days last year when some sex blogs picked up on something. The recent move from daily to weekly publication has led to only a small decline (<10%) in visitors. I'm glad you find IZO useful, people. In fact, the week as a whole has been very good, helped by links to my paragraph on Ukrainian banking contortions (IZO) by economics blogger Tyler Cowen (Marginal Revolution) and uber-pundit Megan McArdle. McArdle links in the context of comments about Ayn Rand, whose famous book, unread as yet by me, was apparently inspired by her family's Russian experience (The Atlantic):

All of Rand's writing is dominated by the fact that she lived through the birth pangs of Soviet Russia, and saw her family's business destroyed by Lenin's ideology, and extraordinarily incompetent economic management.

Unfortunately, we now have a situation where people's livelihoods have been destroyed by the extraordinarily incompetent economic management of Bush, Blair, Brown etc.

Russian top-blogger papasha_mueller gives me a couple of interesting links but also suggests I have a Russian wife or cleaning-lady to do my translations (papasha_mueller, in Russian)!!! Sorry, no such luck: all IZO translations are my own unaided effort.

Hey, papasha! Russian top-blogger papasha_mueller takes me to task for a post last week (IZO) dealing with the Western powers' attempts to influence the russian-language blogosphere (papasha_mueller). 

He thinks that my last sentence, which states that the Russians are pursuing a similar strategy, transforms the whole post into anti-Russian propaganda. Well, I don't think that a reasonable person would agree: plainly, Western activities are the main focus of the post.  

papasha further asks for evidence to support my statement that "There is plenty of evidence that Russia has been waging this kind of propaganda war for some time." Well, for example, here's an article which discusses the creation by Russia of "a network of friendly bloggers ready to disseminate propaganda on demand" (WP).

In fact, it's not clear to me why my assertion that Russia is using the same propaganda tactics as Western powers should be viewed as anti-Russian. If I were Russian, wouldn't I want my government to be doing this sort of thing?

My article on the Kandinsky Prize is up on artnet (artnet). For even more retrospective coverage, click on Kandinsky Prize in the Categories. Artnet also has a list of 300 most searched-for artists; nary a Russian, unless you include Naum Gabo (artnet); number one, currently, is adolescent-girl sentimentalist photographer Sally Mann.

Kandinsky Prize skandal "rumbles on" (John Varoli/Art Newspaper):

Emelyan Zakharov, co-owner of Triumph Gallery, which represents Beliayev-Guintovt, thinks the controversy is rooted in a conflict between two media groups. Ms Degot is a senior editor at Openspace.ru, a web portal for the arts launched last summer by Art Media Group; at the end of December it also launched the Russian-language edition of Art & Auction magazine.

Art Media Group’s main competitor is Art Chronika, one of Russia’s oldest and most established art magazines and published by the Art Chronika Foundation, co-sponsor of the Kandinsky Prize.

Actually, I don't agree with the conflict thesis. As far as I know Degot prosecuted her campaign querying the prize neither at the behest of her employer at Open Space, Valeri Nosov, nor indeed with his prior approval. 

Email received:

Dear Matthew,

My name is [XXXXXX], I work for Conde Nast in Moscow. I'm doing a
feature for Russan Tatler magazine with a monthly rating of hot young
things about town. This time it's a rating of the most eligible
expats living in Moscow. We are looking for successful and attractive
single men, with an interesting career and/or background. There will
be a 1/4-1/8 page story on each guy and a photograph. Would that be
something you'd be interested to do?

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.