IZO

Someone has made dozens of Russian art name-guessing games (Purpose Games).

Guelman Projects will show a collection of reproduction drawings of male nudes by C19 masters that have been annotated by Stalin in red and blue pencil (Svobodnaya Pressa, in Russian).

Prominent Moscow antiques dealer Alexander Khochinsky, owner of the Bogema salon on Novy Arbat, faces multiple claims that his shop took goods on commission but never paid the owners (V krizis.ru, in Russian).

Alexander Yakovlevich Khochinsky came to the attention of [the publication V krizis.ru] in the autumn of last year in connection with the disappearance of Karl Bryullov's painting Turkish Girl. In 2006 this canvas was brought into the Bogema salon by 73-year-old Nikolai Semenov, director of the Romance Theatre on Vosstanie Square in Moscow. According to him, a deal was struck for $500,000 and Alexander Khochinsky requested three days to collect the money. But Nikolai Semenov received neither the money nor the picture, neither in three days nor a year later, and all his appeals to Khochinsky were to no avail.

Hubert Robert at the St Louis Art Museum from 9 June (Art-Patrol). I post this because there are, I believe, more works by HR in the Hermitage than by any foreign artist; he was, as the Art-Patrol website says, "extremely popular among the Russian nobility, who avidly collected his paintings in the late 18th and early 19th centuries".

There are strong suspicions that a work by Boris Kustodiev sold by Christies in 2005 for $2.9 million is a fake. It has, sensationally, been included in the latest volume of fakes published by RosOkhranKultura. Three expert opinions have denied its authenticity. Christies also sold the work earlier, in 1989 (Kommersant, in Russian). The article doesn't give the identity of the painting's 2005 buyer, and nor will I.

Top collectors in Ukraine have formed a club, the Guild of Antiquarians, headed by Igor Ponamarchuk; part of their goal is to reduce customs and tax payments (STB, in Russian and Ukrainian; with video).

The collection formed by Petr Aven, or "collector D2" as he enigmatically terms himself in the foreword, is presented in a substantial tome weighing several kilos, Russian Painting and Graphic Art of the Late 19th and Early 20th Century, published by Slovo, Moscow. The hundreds of illustrations are accompanied by scholars' essays. At the time of writing, I'm not sure where you can easily get hold of this book: it's not listed on Amazon nor have I seen it in the Moscow art bookshops.

Aven's own foreword is interesting for the insight it gives into a collector's way of thinking. He touches on the competitive element ("I needed competition on the one hand and the chance to win on the other"). He talks about the goal of making a comprehensive collection in his niche and about systematisation ("a most important part of the learning process"). He mentions the therapeutic value of his activity (the "psychologically stabilising factor (...) vastly preferable to taking tranquilisers") and the effect of early impressions. Interestingly to me, one of Aven's early impressions was a visit to the widow of Robert Falk, Angelina Shchekina-Krotova. She was one of my first acquaintances in Moscow; the late critic Vladimir Kostin introduced us and in the late 80s I made several visits to her flat located on (I think) Mozhaiskoe Shosse to gather material for my book Art Under Stalin.  I included an anecdote about her beauty in the book (a compliment paid to her by Alexander Deineka in the 30s); she gave me advice not to marry my Ukrainian fiancee, which I ignored, and an early drawing by Falk, which I still have. She was a committed, energetic, civilised promoter of her late husband's art; I can understand that her efforts would have made an impression on the teenage Aven.

Aven, unusually, also thanks the art dealers who helped him assemble the bulk of his collection.

The collection as revealed is incredibly strong in Silver Age art, both painting and graphics, but it reaches into the 1930s. As Aven writes, to assemble such a collection now would be impossible, because of the unavailability of material and sums of money involved. There are numerous wonderful things here. If I were allowed to choose a single painting to hang on my wall, I would hesitate between the two Konchalovskys of 1910, Spanish Woman and The Lover Of Bullfights: brutal fauve-style masterpieces that, it seems to me, are as good as anything produced by artists anywhere in the world at the time.

Well, can you do the sum on the sum on the board in your head (click for somewhat larger image)?

C19 Russian aristocratic portraits (Webshots).

Nikolai Ge's painting The Synhedrion Court, removed from exhibition in the C19 on the grounds that it insulted the Church, has been restored and is on display at the Tretyakov Gallery until 18 January (Grigori Revzin/Kommersant, in Russian).

Igor and Tatyana Preobrazhenski (IZO, earlier) have had their sentences reduced to five years each for their fake paintings scam (ITAR-TASS).

I've written a report on Monday's sales for Open Space, and when it appears I'll post the English version here. In essence, Bonhams sale at first encouraged (33 of the first 50 lots sold) and then suggested that the modern and contemporary market is in a state of prostration (6 out of 46 lots sold). At Sotheby's, 32 out of 55 lots at the prestigious evening sale found a buyer at time of auction, a selling rate of 58%. The top-lot, an Aivazovsky, failed. Prices a little over a million pounds (all prices given here are hammer prices) were achieved by a Larionov nude and the Vladimir Makovsky Rag Market. The beautiful Konchalovsky I referenced yesterday went up to £880,000: the only other works to beat that were a Polenov and a Roerich, both at £900,000. Four Roerichs sold on the night. Overpriced works failed: why would anyone give up to a million dollars for a Bakst watercolour, for Lord's sake? The Sotheby's officials seemed relieved. The auctioneer toured the room, shaking hands with the few buyers in evidence (most sales were over the phone). "There's no crisis in Russia," said one, patriotically, if not entirely accurately. "Thank you, thank you," came the reply.

As far as my back-of-envelope calculation goes, the 144 lots of painting at Bonhams afternoon sale were 35% sold; and the contemporary art at the end hardly sold at all: of 46 contemporary lots (## 99-144) only six appear to have sold. The 19th century lots with which the auction began, however, did well.

A stroll around the Antiques Salon, at which, apparently, the quantity of fakes exceeds "conceivable boundaries" (marina_yudenich, in Russian):

In the end I have to say – without any joy, in fact with sadness – that I stand by my words of five years ago: there are no proper antique dealers left, but instead of them we have distinguished-looking silver-haired black-market traders who in the 1970s sold jeans. And chewing gum.

The XXV Antiques Salon runs until 25 October at the Central House of the Artist (Kommersant, in Russian).

Pukirev's 19th century classic An Unequal Marriage and Ronnie Wood with his new girlfriend Ekaterina Ivanova, taking a walk (I've put the two images together as a commentary on the photo of Wood and Ivanova). Life is stranger than fiction: unlike the poor girl in the painting, Ivanova seems genuinely happy. Is that because of or despite 150 years of female emancipation? I can't get my head round it (OK, I know, it won't last etc).

I'm told that Russian-Ukrainian oligarch Konstantin Grigorishin, who has been collecting since the early 90s and is a particular fan of Alexander Bogomazov (by whom he owns about twenty paintings), plans to open a private museum of some kind in the Moscow region. Grigorishin is reckoned to have a major collection.

The Stockholm Auktionsverk 2-3 October sale fell victim to the worldwide financial uncertainty in a big way. I counted 150+ lots unsold out of 240. It may be that the gradual shift in Russian taste to twentieth-century and contemporary work hurts Auktionsverk a little, since its expertise and catchment area lead to a concentration on pre-1917 art. But the main reason for the sale's failure is surely the worldwide buttoning-up of wallets. Russians are not immune to the perturbations in western markets: the Russian stock-market is down massively (the Russia-Georgia war didn't help, of course), real estate prices are declining, there's a liquidity crisis. I presume many buyers just decided to give Stockholm a miss. It sets a precedent that doesn't bode too well for the London auctions in November; although I personally have no objection to cheaper art: you can buy more of it for the same money.

The International Konstantinovsky Charitable Foundation in St Petersburg has bought the Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky collection of Russian theatre art for "under $20 million" (John Varoli/Art Newspaper).

A report on the Moscow World Fine Art Fair (John Varoli/Bloomberg). Many dealers have a unique source of supply which ensures them some financial stability in an uncertain business. In the case of the Moscow firm Maricevic, it appears to be the work of Russian painter Stepan Kolesnikov:

After the 1917 Revolution, Kolesnikov fled Russia and in 1920 he settled in Belgrade, the Serbian capital. Over the past six years, Maricevic has brought more than 200 of Kolesnikov's works from Serbia for sale in Russia.

It's nice when someone agrees with you; even nicer when it's a portion of the professional art world. A friend calls to quote me this from the most recent issue of The Art Newspaper about the top-lot Kuindzhi at Sotheby's NY last month:

Before the sale, the work's authenticity had been questioned by collectors and dealers, none of whom wanted to go on the record. Sotheby's dismissed this: "We feel these rumours are spread by some dealers in order to scare bidders away and keep prices low," said one top auction house official.

Well, that's a bit far-fetched from Sotheby's: in fact, it suggests they inhabit a parallel universe in which values are inverted. Who are these dealers who want to "keep prices low"???!%$£@!! And it doesn't address the fact that the work sold plainly differs from the illustration of, purportedly, the same work in an early C20 Kuindzhi book that Sotheby's chose to reproduce in its catalogue. A couple of snapshots from Sotheby's catalogue below: on the left, the old book illustration, on the right, the painting that was sold by Sotheby's. Even at the tiny resolution I offer them here on IZO, they plainly differ. Look for example at the markings on the tree-trunks: it's like a game of spot the difference for pre-schoolers. I'm told by someone who viewed the old book itself that the differences really are substantial.

It's hard for me to see how Sotheby's can assert that the work illustrated in the old book and the work they sold are one and the same. It's possible, of course, that it underwent substantial all-over restoration at some point; in which case, one might expect Sotheby's to point that out. But I didn't get the impression, on viewing it in Moscow, that it had been restored. If the old book illustration does indeed represent the third version of this painting by Kuindzhi (the other two being in museums), then, logically, Sotheby's work would be something else: a fourth version, perhaps, painted, I suggest, on a very off-day? Or...? UPDATE: the report in The Art Newspaper is by John Varoli.

The annual spring antiques' salon, the demise of which as a serious event seemed on the cards because of competition from the Fine Arts Fair, looks good this year. There are strong stands from Maricevic and, back-to-back with them at the entrance to the show, LPM Fine Art; and from Private Collection: a selection paintings owned by businessman Sergei Ivanov which include the huge Malyavin shown at Venice in the 20s and unaccountably unsold at Sotheby's a few years ago. The entire Central House of the Artist is full. The best work of the show, in my opinion, is a huge Lentulov from circa 1932: the interior of a shop; asking price is $1.5 million.

The Confederation of Antique and Art-Dealers has issued a statement about the four volumes of fake paintings put out under the aegis of Rossvyakokhrankultura (IZO, passim). It states that these publications "destabilise the market" and destroy the trust between delaer and client; it questions the motives behind the publications, which have the effect of turning Russian buyers away from the Russian antiques' market towards, first, foreign auction houses and, second, contemporary art. Implicit here, perhaps, is a reproach directed at the sponsor/co-publisher of the books, Triumph Gallery (Izvestiya, in Russian).

The Vitebsk art scene at the start of the twentieth century is the subject of a book by Alexandra Shatskikh from Yale (Forward).

The Tretyakov Gallery is apparently re-creating the 1908 exhibition The Golden Fleece, open to the public from today (Gazeta.ru, in Russian). No info on how authentic the reconstruction is, but a nice idea: I'm always intrigued by the notion of art in its original context, which can be so different from today's.

The third volume illustrating purported fake paintings on the Russian market, assembled and published by RosSvyazOkhranKultura, will be launched tonight at the Triumph Gallery (tvkultura.com, in Russian).

An  exclusive on Alexander Ivanov, the man who bought The Egg. He's planning a museum in Moscow and one in Baden Baden, the German spa town that has been re-colonised by the Russian rich set (John Varoli/Bloomberg). A friend of mine who came back from Baden Baden on Sunday tells me there's already a contemporary art museum there, belonging to a scion of the Burda family, which currently hosts a fine Gerhard Richter show. She further tells me that, in the baths themselves, the Russian girls stand out a mile: not just because of their 99% Genuine Brazilian (TM) "haircuts", but because they're far and away in the best shape, and they don't mind who knows it.

Hard to credit after all this time, and after a thoroughly-researched book book which concluded that it was substantially destroyed, but a team of scientists in Germany believe they have discovered the fabled Amber Room in an underground Nazi storage network.

But MP Heinz-Peter Haustein, who has led a decade-long dig in the Ore Mountain region near the Czech border today said he is confident they have finally found the room valued at £200million.

"I'm well over 90 percent sure we have found the Amber Room," he said after electromagnetic tests revealed the cavern.

"The chamber is likely to be part of a labyrinth of storage rooms that the Nazis built here."

UPDATE: what they've actually found so far is gold, and the Tsarskoe Selo museum is sceptical about the Amber room:

Not a single gram of gold was used in the furnishing of the Amber Room ... These suppositions are intended to create a sensation (Gazeta.ru, in Russian).

The Royal Academy's "goodwill payments".

Behind the scenes of the From Russia show (The Art Newspaper).

The day before his arrest (IZO passim) Vladimir Nekrasov appeared on Russian television to show off a painting in his collection, Chagall's Rose Lovers, and to speak about its magical powers, which include helping girls find love and men be warriors (via zverolov).

Jonathan Jones's podcast tour of From Russia.

Russia is returning some C14 stained glass to Germany (BusinessWeek).

A Russian art history classic: French Painters, Russian Collectors.

Slide show of From Russia (The Guardian).

The exhibition From Russia opened at the Royal Academy tonight after extended travails (here and IZO passim). It contains a large number of wonderful paintings, including a fantastic Repin portrait, some brutally beautiful Mashkovs, iconic Maleviches, not to mention Matisse's Dance etc. (Dance is being touted in the British press as The Best Painting Ever, which I know is not true, if only because its companion piece, Music, not on show here, is even better.) A very large plump Kustodiev nude is also pretty irresistible. Good to see real paintings by Tatlin in cubist-influenced style, very strong, and realise I was right to reject recent offers as fakes.  What gossip? That sculptor Anthony Gormley hopes to present his project Event Horizon in Moscow in the spring or summer. Most ambitious planned spot: on top of the FSB headquarters on Lubyanka square. So far neither a yea nor a nay has been received. UPDATE: below, the crowd for the speeches; they wouldn't let any more in the room.

Ringing the bells brought home by Viktor Vekselberg (Boston.com).

News round-up

The Russian Committee of the International Museum Council has written to the Chairman of the Russian Government, Viktor Zubkov, lobbying him in respect of the scandal (and passim) surrounding the Tretyakov Gallery's Sotsart show. The letter apparently asks Zubkov to disregard the petition from multiple "social organisations" asking for TG director Valentin Rodionov's dismissal (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Meanwhile, the Rodionov-Sokolov lawsuit has moved to a new court and the hearing date is now unknown (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

A Square of Russian Heroes has been opened in the park by the Central House of the Artist. The first hero honoured: Mikhail Kalashnikov, creator of the eponymous gun (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

Vasili Tsagolov's show in Tsekh Gallery, Kiev, reviewed in Kommersant (in Russian). This is not investment advice, it is simply a flight of fantasy by an unqualified observer, but if you want to put money into contemporary Ukrainian art, Tsagolov could be your guy.

And also in the Ukraine, someone has bought a canvas by Surikov in a second-hand shop (STB, in Russian). Apparently someone found a Malevich in an attic in Chernovtsy a year ago.

The latest station of the Moscow metro has opened: Sretensky Bulvar. I believe the images in the embrasures (not clear what the technique is) are by Ivan Lubennikov.

News round-up

It looks like the Royal Academy show may get the go-ahead.

The Russian presence at the Palm Beach art fair next year (about 1/3 the way down).

The stolen Ternopol Repin has been found in Kiev.

Jane and Louise Wilson's investigation of the Russian space programme.

Dmitri Bulatov's genetically-engineered tadpoles are among Wired's top-ten 2007 organisms.

News round-up

John Varoli/Bloomberg on the Macdougall results. Up on last time with records for Konchalovsky and Komar and Melamid.

A Shishkin made 7.8 million Swedish krone in Stockholm today (that's about $1.2 million, I think).

The Ukrainian curator Peter Doroshenko has been squeezed out of his job running the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art (it's in England, for some reason) after a "staff mutiny" in the face of his management style and curatorial programme. Doroshenko also co-curated the Ukrainian pavilion at this year's Venice Biennale.

Ronald Feldman, New York's leading Russian art gallerist, seems to have bought some fake Pollocks.

Exhibitions of contemporary Russian art in Paris (scroll down).

Yuliya Shtutina (Lenta.ru, in Russian) casts an eye over the London sales. She points out the high prices for average paintings of "patriotic" subjects which, she speculates, may be gifted to the Russian government.

Pravda (in Russian) is anticipating a big financial scandal involving former Minister of Culture, now head of FAKK (Federal Agency for Culture and Cinematography), Mikhail Shvidkoi.

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

Christies sold the magnificent egg for £8.9 million to, I am told, a Mr Ivanov, of Moscow, who apparently runs a Faberge shop called, modestly enough, the Russian National Museum. He was probably buying for a client. A Goncharova still-life fetched £1.6 million plus premium, an Annenkov portrait £2 million plus premium, as I recall. It was a marathon sale lasting until about 8 pm; there is I think something vulgar and even disrespectful in the amount of art these auction houses are cramming into their sales.

Sotheby's totalled $80 million over two days. Bonhams sale a couple of days ago, I note, browsing through the catalogue, seems to have been more than 50% unsold. Malthusian economics kicking in here perhaps: the offerings on the fringe having expanded beyond what the market can sustain.

Later this evening I bumped into Norman Rosenthal, director of the Royal Academy, and asked him how he was getting on securing the masterworks for his upcoming Russian show. Everything's fine, he said, sounding a mite anxious.

Marat Guelman reports (in  Russian) that a number of Russian social organisations have written to Prime Minister Zubkov asking him to sack the director of the Tretyakov Gallery Valentin Rodionov in connection with the Sotsart affair: a reaction maybe to his lese majeste in suing the Minister of Culture. Guelman further regrets the defection (in Russian) of his young star Aleksei Kallima to the mighty Triumph Gallery, and adds piquant info about who is buying from Triumph. UPDATE: Marat seems to have deleted this post or put it behind lock-and-key.

A good Pavel Peppershtein slide-show, of the show at Ridzhina Gallery, at Art Times.

News round-up

John Varoli/Bloomberg on the Christies and Macdougall Russian art sales. Alexis de Tiesenhausen's defence of his top-lot egg:

"Some say the Rothschild egg is not an Imperial egg, and so not worth the estimate we're asking,'' said Alexis de Tiesenhausen, head of Christie's Russian art department. "But I say, show me an egg with such impeccable provenance, one that has been in the same family for 100 years.''

NTV reports (with video; in Russian) that Valentin Rodionov is claiming a symbolic one rouble damages from Alexander Sokolov for the corruption slur.

Also from NTV: Norman Foster presents his project for reconstruction of the Pushkin Museum.

News round-up

A painting by Repin didn't make it to auction in Estonia last weekend because of customs' problems (Lenta.ru, in Russian). Not clear whether the problems were with Russian or Estonian customs.

Some Brillo boxes in the Museum of Modern Art, Stockholm, attributed to Andy Warhol, are fake. Apparently they were made three years after the artist's death for an exhibition in St Petersburg. No info is given about the exhibition in question, who commissioned the fakes, who perhaps sold them etc.

Alexei Breus writes on the art market in the Ukraine (in Ukrainian). And activists from the Eurasian Union of Youth have smashed up (in Russian) an exhibition at the Ukrainian House of Culture in Moscow of archival documents devoted to the famine in the Ukraine 1932-3; the activists blame the Ukrainian government for blaming the famine on Russia.

Eldar Ryazanov, director of Office Romance (on a straw poll, the most popular Soviet-era film of all) and several other hits, is 80. Here are a few musical clips.

News round-up

John Varoli reports on a planned revival of the Faberge brand. I'm not sure how this sits with an enterprise I reported on in August. What's more, when I walk through the Burlington Arcade on the way to my gallery, I pass a shop selling works designed by a descendant, one Theo Faberge.

The Daily Telegraph appears to be the only mainstream news source reporting on the artists' appeal to Putin and reaction, covered here a couple of days ago.

And: Gene Shapiro auctions got nearly $500,000 for a Vasili Sitnikov a few days ago (estimate $40-60,000).

No letter of legal comfort yet

The Russians are concerned that masterpieces due to travel to London for a survey of early twentieth-century Russian art at the Royal Academy may be entangled in legal claims.

Tokyo show/Konchalovsky movie

Alla Rosenfeld curates Russian theatre art in Tokyo.

The Moscow Times on Andrei Konchalovsky's new film (pdf), Gloss (Glyanets).

Museum shows

Country Life reports on the Empress Josephine's collection at the Hermitage outpost in London:

Her collection of more than 350 paintings, as well as sculpture and works of art, was not only made up of purchases and commissions:a major element was loot from the imperial campaigns. At its heart was the collection taken from the Electors of Hesse-Cassel after the Battle of Jena in 1806, including Claude's Tobias and the Angel and Metsu's Breakfast. Unlike the treasures Napoleon had amassed from all Europe, Josephine's looted works were not restituted on the fall of the empire. To the fury of the Germans, they were bought by Tsar Alexander, an admirer of Josephine and friend to her children, and spirited away to Russia. This explains the presence of much of Josephine's collection in the State Hermitage at St Petersburg.

And The Japan Times reports on Russian art in Tokyo.

Goncharova record

Natalia Goncharova's Picking Apples made nearly $10 million at Christies' Tuesday evening sale in London.

UPDATE: apparently this is a world-record for a woman artist.

London sales IV - the Piter principle

A few months back I posited a mini-boom in paintings of St Petersburg. At Christies yesterday a nocturnal view of St Petersburg by K. F. Lagorio beat the artist's record by more than 10 times, as far as I can tell, to reach £1.3 million plus commission. Hmmm, not a "mini" boom any more...