IZO

In the Kyrgyz national art gallery valuable works of art are falling into decay: the equipment controlling the micro-climate and temperature in the stores is broken, and no paintings have been restored for the last 13 years - because there are no restorers (centrasia.ru, in Russian).

The import of American chicken legs, what used in the 90s to be known as "Bush's legs", will be banned from 1 January. This will hit the diet of the poor, for whom the cheap legs are a favourite food, because Russian producers cannot meet the demand (Stengazeta, in Russian).

The so-called "column of Makarevich", part of the drama theatre in Veliki Novgorod. The objection to the column, so-called because Andrei Makarevich, then a young architect and later member of the rock group Mashina Vremeni, worked on its design, is that it is a suicide spot (Russia-ic).

Diamond & Schmitt Architects from Canada will complete the reconstruction of the Mariinsky Theatre following the dismissal of Dominique Pierrot (Russia-ic).

The Bronze Age monument of Arkaim, near Chelyabinsk, is becoming a focal point of pagan gatherings, to the dismay of the church (Russia-ic).

A band of art-thieves has been caught in Zaporozhe, Ukraine (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

Info on the Russian edition of Art+Auction (press-release.ru, in Russian).

An exhibition of the naive art of the USSR opens at the Shchusev architecture museum tomorrow; the exhibition reflects the work of the amateur art circles that were encouraged from the 1930s (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Neither the Tretyakov Gallery nor the artists' union which jointly occupy the Central House of the Artist are happy with the proposed reconstruction plans (Fellton, in Russan).

Classic fact-book on Siberia published by British government in 1920; downloadable/flip-throughable (Archive.org).

Russia mulls Israel drones purchase (AP). A real indicator of rapprochement, of course, other signs of which are visa-free travel, Israeli passports for non-resident Russian oligarchs and a suspension of Israeli military aid to Georgia. But one wonders how the US of A will like that idea.

Jason Eskenazi's Wonderland; photos of the ex-USSR in the 90s; beautiful pictures (NPR) (thanks, MK).

Too much doom-and-gloom today. So here's an art-party in the Artefaq club (mnog).

Minister of Sport Vitali Mutko says that Russian football faces a cash squeeze because of the Crisis; on the question of fixed matches (IZO, earlier) he said (championat.ru, in Russian):

Unfortunately we are aware of such matches in Russian football, but we can't prove anything. We are not an investigative committee.

Mayor Yuri Luzhkov's plans for the Proviant Stores (IZO, earlier) now include an extra building, a glass dome over the courtyard and multi-storey car-parking, all of which is causing widespread consternation; architect Evgeni Ass, for example, calls Luzhkov's plan of putting a museum of Moscow's history in the Stores "nonsense" (Kommersant, in Russian).

Users of the social site odnoklassniki.ru are planning a boycott because of the introduction of paid services (Open Space, in Russian)

2004 book: The Legalisation (Laundering) of Income from Criminal Activity: A Textbook in Diagrams (Ozon, in Russian).

I missed this: 24 photos from the Kandinsky Prize ceremony (mnog). Below: Anatoli Osmolovsky has his say.

Despite the cunning pr (IZO, earlier), Yuri Grymov's Strangers turns out to be a damp squib in Russia (TNR).

Ekaterina Degot, who runs the widely-read art section of the Open Space portal, is under heavy pressure because of her leading role in the opposition to the Kandinsky Prize decision. "Prepare the obituary of a critic," she emails from Kiev. Let's hope she isn't in fact compelled to resign.

Many photos of the 14 December rally in Vladivostok to protest against the raising of import tariffs on used cars (IZO, earlier), which will hit the Vladivostok economy very hard (matroskin_cat, in Russian).

Spider has some comments and questions about what he calls "Nosov's pseudo-arrest" (spdr, in Russian):

1. This subject came up for the first time last Friday in exactly the same form. The next day our hero [Nosov] alive and well calmly accepted congratulations at the launch of Art+Auction.

2. [Nikolai] Molok [editor of ArtKhronika] knew about this matter, and being a cautious, professional person he said he was waiting for further confirmation. For what reason did he publish it today without double-checking?

3. In M. A. Guelman's LiveJournal, Mr Kashin suggests (fuck knows if it's true or a lie) that our hero is in London. This is also strange if true, given the undertaking not to travel (which is probably the case, because it's a common measure).

Spider adds that as things stand ArtKhronika has made a sizeable faux pas and is looking bad.

According to Open Space, ArtKhronika has apologised for the erroneous information posted on its website (see previous post). Well, that's all very well, but it's all over the Russian internet (Open Space, in Russian).

Extraordinary news: I can't vouch for any of it: I'm translating it exactly as it is, with the links, and appending the Russian below (kotomish):

According to information in ArtKhronika, Valeri Nosov, the former deputy Finance  Minister of the Moscow Region and the owner of Artmedia Group, which publishes the Open Space web-portal, the magazine Blacksquare and the Russian Art+Auction, the first number of which has just been published, has been arrested. Nosov is accused of financial and property crimes. According to information received by Artkhronika, at the end of the autumn Valeri Nosov was let go from his post in the Moscow Region government, his passport was confiscated and he gave an undertaking not to travel. Nosov is involved in the same case as ex-Finance Minister of the Moscow Region government Mr Kuznetsov and his spouse Zhanna Bullock, who in the summer managed to leave Russia.

http://artchronika.ru/item.asp?id=116

That's all.....

UPDATE: Dear readers! The information about Valeri Nosov, owner of the company Artmedia Group, has not been confirmed. Please accept our apologies.

http://artchronika.ru/item.asp?id=118

http://www.openspace.ru/news/details/6563/- Open Space has discovered that the news has been removed, but really it had to be removed, it exposed Artkhronika to criticism.

But а little worry remains... And rumours have been flying for four days.... And talk of problems for the last six months... What's going on?

Back to my commentary now: According to Kommersant, Mr Nosov at some point took over Mr Kuznetsov's job as Finance Minister but resigned in late October.  (PRagent, in Russian). That of course could be the source of the "rumours" mentioned by kotomish and seems to confirm one part of ArtKhronika's original claim, that Mr Nosov was let go from his post. Apparently the budgetary situation in the Moscow Region is complicated:

An anonymous source of Kommersant in the banking sphere explained that the region's current problems are connected to the destruction of the method of atttracting investment that was created by the former Minister of Finances of the region Alexander Kuznetsov and his deputy Valeri Nosov.

More info: Marat Guelman carries the same ArtKhronika report but then adds that Nosov is, according to [Open Space writer Oleg] Kashin, in London. A comment to Guelman's post by Kashin also states that Nosov is in London and that he has not run away (galerist, in Russian).

On another LiveJournal site there is speculation that this affair might be part of a "corporate war" between Open Space and ArtKhronika (art_links, in Russian).

.I can only add that if anything does interfere with Mr Nosov's publishing activities, it will be a significant loss to the Russian art world. Open Space has very quickly established itself as a major forum and the first edition of Art+Auction looked very good.

Old Russia hand Suzanne Massie (Russia Blog).

Vlaimir Putin to take control of domestic film industry (Nick Holdsworth/Variety):

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is taking personal charge of progress in the development of the country's film industry as chairman of the government council on the progress of domestic cinematography, unveiled Monday. Putin will "personally supervise" government initiatives to support the film industry, according to the Russian federal press service. 

French life models on strike (Guardian).

Some mystery about the views of of Jean-Hubert Martin, Kandinsky Prize judge and curator of the upcoming Moscow Biennale. When the Kandinsky Prizes were awarded, he was ill and couldn't attend, and therefore didn't vote. But he is on record as saying, of the overall winner, Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt: "I don't understand how such uninteresting works, devoid of any innovativeness, could win such a prize" (IZO, earlier). Yet, according to Kandinsky Prize committee chairman, Shalva Breus, at the long-list stage of voting Martin had given Belyaev-Gintovt nine marks out of a possible ten (IZO, earlier).

Marat Guelman says that the new snob.ru portal is getting its content by means of nice girls who phone you up and ask for commentary or permission to copy-paste from your LiveJournal. He also suggests that the popularity of Eurasian nationalism is down to boredom (скука) (galerist, in Russian):

I think that Kurekhin, Timur Novikov, Limonov and Dugin represent the consciousness of this boredom. I used to know Dugin well. ... He is a talented fringe figure who writes speculative texts, the main point of which is to be original. ... He's not a fascist. He's certainly not a nationalist. In this country there are more followers of Tolkien than nationalists.

On playing hockey in Russia (Toronto Star):

To be sure, being a pro hockey player has perks – even half a world away from the NHL. ... Grahame is a celebrity at Barracuda, a spacious restaurant in midtown Omsk with an aquarium tucked into a wall. One recent evening in November, platter after platter of prosciutto, sausages and other meats are brought from the kitchen and the restaurant's owner, a Serb who moved here some 10 years ago, brought complimentary salads – pork salad with mayonnaise, beef salad with beets and red peppers, chicken salad – and beers. ... Grahame and a team trainer eyed each other and Grahame joked about fighting for the few pieces of fresh vegetables left as garnish on the salad plates. "It's a point where greens have become like dessert," Grahame said.

Oddly enough, since the reporter is in Omsk and concerned with how players are being treated, no mention is made of the probably preventable death in October of young star Alexei Cherepanov, which made headlines everywhere (gothamist).

The next International Tchaikovsky Competition, planned for 2010, has been postponed until 2011 (RIA Novosti).

Few English people know they are deeply indebted to a Russian linesman (Guardian).

Russia has recently seen demonstrations by people protesting against a big increase in customs tariffs on imported pre-owned cars. Apparently 90% of the [working?] population of the border cities Vladivostok and Kaliningrad is involved in the car import business. In the Far East and Siberia, 40,000 firms face closure and 400,000 people  face unemployment. The new laws have been introduced after lobbying by industrialists in Russia (Auto News, in Russian).

A look at the  show organised by Maria Baibakova at the Red October factory (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

Contemporary art in China (James Panero/New Criterion):

Today’s Chinese avant-gardists do not “share either the political intent or the reckless bravery of the Tiananmen organizers,” [the art critic Richard Vine] notes. “The cruel lesson of June 4, 1989 is that repression sometimes works.”

But of course the blandness of content and emphasis on craft is one of the reasons it's so popular.

The contemporary art "bubble of bubbles" (Ben Lewis & Jonathan Ford/Prospect):

The Georgian Boris Ivanishvili spent $95m on Picasso's Dora Maar au Chat—a work of art that he still hasn't unpacked. When it was flown back to Tbilisi, the airport was closed down and the army turned out to ensure the work's transfer to a secure warehouse. 

... work has been churned out by cookie-cutter artists without regard to originality or aesthetic merit. Economist and historian of financial crashes, Edward Chancellor, observed recently: "Most contemporary art is inherently worthless. It is not like Titian and other old masters of which there are few and whose value will not fall away. It's like subprime CDOs."The propaganda of the art entrepreneurs has also reached a final level of absurdity.

We were told that the decline of paper assets would lead to "a flight of capital into art." The art market, Tobias Meyer of Sotheby's said in June, is a one-way street: "For the first time since 1914 we are in a non-cyclical market."

Savik Shuster's live show on Ukrainian TV: a discussion of the Golodomor and Russian-Ukrainian relations with the participation of a wide range of commentators (kanalukraina.tv, in Russian).

Shain On Yo Krezi Daimond.

Folks like to use the music of the late pop legend Viktor Tsoi to promote their cause. Recently it was a bank in Kazakhstan had the idea. Now the new political movement Solidarity, whose organising "bureau" includes Garri Kasparov and Boris Nemtsov, wants to use Tsoi's work as its theme – but apparently hasn't asked permission of the rights' holders, his family. The song in question is (I Want) Changes (Перемен) (moritas, in Russian; via dolboeb).

Radio interview with Ekaterina Bobrinskaya (judge), Shalva Breus (founder/sponsor), Alexander Borovsky (judge), Emelyan Zakharov (gallerist) and Alexander Panov (critic) about the Kandinsky Prize ceremony (Moskva FM). According to Breus, judge Jean-Hubert Martin, at the long-list stage of the voting, gave Belyaev-Gintovt (hereinafter, ABG) nine points out of ten (I believe Martin is later on record as wondering how such an artist could win the prize). Bobrinskaya says that the judges were pressured prior to the vote; Breus states that in Miami Valerie Hillings was approached by a leading Russian critic and asked not to vote for ABG. Breus's view is that "talented art is patriotic art"; Bobrinskaya states that no substantive artistic criticism has been made of ABG's work beyond objections to his use of gold. Zakharov says the whole scandal is "provincial". According to Bobrinskaya, jury-member Erofeev agitated against ABG on political grounds, even though he had earlier shown ABG's work in a Sotsart context and bought it for the Tretyakov Gallery. Alexander Panov gives an agitated commentary at the end in which he recants from the accusation of Fascism directed at ABG.

Radio interview (by telephone) with Ekaterina Degot about the Kandinsky Prize (Moskva FM). According to Degot, the Deutsche Bank representative applauded as Belyaev-Gintovt made a gesture like a Nazi salute. UPDATE: Ruth Addison, who works at Triumph Gallery, writes to contradict this: 

As for the alleged Nazi salute, I was there. I did not see anything like that. I saw Beliayev hold up the award. I heard Osmolovsky shouting. I applauded. I saw many other people in the hall applauding, including the Deutsche Bank curator, who turned towards Osmolovsky and appeared to ask him to be quiet as Beliayev could not make himself heard. ... the Nazi salute accusation ... could have serious consequences for the reputation of a respectable European curator who has done nothing wrong and it should not stand.

Report on Art + Auction launch (Izvestia, in Russian):

The supper in honour of the appearance on the Russian media scene of the leading publication about the art-market and collecting Art + Auction was well-attended and lively. The owners assembled their potential readers - collectors and millionaires - in the Kasta Diva restaurant. Among the guests were businessman Pavel Teplukhin, producers Valeri and Alexander Rodnyansky, media-magnate Konstantin Remchukov, Artem and Darya Mikhlkov and TV presenter Sofiko Shevardnadze.

Rich man's fancy: Russian businessman Evgeni Yakovlev has paid for a series of photos featuring Isabelle Adjani as Margarita from Bulgakov's novel The Master and Margarita (kinomania).

Miss World 2008 speaks! 

Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt at Triumph Gallery (thanks, MK).

A book by Ilya Kabakov on the 60s-70s underground (pavel-otdelnov).

Soviet-era anti-Zionist propaganda film (the Zionists are accused of financing anti-Soviet propaganda); apparently never shown in the USSR (Google video) (via frau-derrida).

Dmitri Khankin, Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt's gallerist, has made a statement about the Kandinsky Prize award on the snob.ru website (via dmitrivrubel):

Belyaev-Gintovt is not new to the gallery scene, he's been working for a long time, consistently, and his work sells well. He is a good, talented artist. He has quite specific political views. He is a Eurasian, a follower of Dugin and other Russian philosophers. But the prize is awarded not for accomplishments in philosophy but for an art project.

Favourite Russian social-site passwords (exler).

Review of the Baibakov Art Projects show at the Red October factory space, with slide-show (Milena Orlova/Kommersant, in Russian).