IZO

Friedhelm Hutte, the Deutsche Bank representative on the Kandinsky Prize jury, says he regrets voting for Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt to receive the prize (Open Space, in Russian).

A whole collection of comments on the Kandinsky Prize affair, copied from the private site Snob, were posted by Spider on 23 December (David Sarkisyan & Viktor Miziano; Olga Sviblova & Pavel Peppershtein; Emelyan Zakharov; Natalya Semenova & Aleksei Tarkhanov; Ivan Dykhovichny & Pavel Peppershtein; Mikhail Kamensky; Dmitri Khankin). I'll quote Viktor Miziano below:

When we are dealing with an artist who makes use of certain radical ideas it's important to understand the relationship of the artist to these ideas. Because there is a tradition in which an artist plays at being a supporter of such ideas without in fact believing in them. ... Knowing [Alexei] Belyaev [-Gintovt] and the stages of his artistic development, I am of the opinion that he is probably manipulating ideas.

Apparently the publisher of Open Space, Valeri Nosov, is pleased with the independent editorial line taken by the art section editor Ekaterina Degot in connection with the Kandinsky Prize controversy (which allays fears expressed on IZO earlier).

Another take, Western this time, on the Kandinsky Prize (Max Seddon/Frieze):

If Belyaev is persona non grata in Russian artistic discourse, he is perfectly at home among the oligarchs and jet-setters – he is represented by the appointment-only Triumph gallery, which he praises for its ‘metaphysical status’ and ‘palace style, reminiscent of a beautiful era.’ There’s absolutely no contradiction there. Belyaev’s glossy ultra-nationalism is a just winner as the only artist on the list who truly integrates Russia’s Soviet hangover with its hyper-capitalist present. 

Jury-member Alexander Borovsky on the Kandinsky Prize. He defends the jury against the charges brought by Degot and others. Interestingly, he draws multiple comparisons between the current debate and the polemics of the early Stalin era, late 1920s-1937. He explains why he voted for Belyaev-Gintovt.  Belyaev-Gintovt's political views he characterises as part of the artist's aesthetic project, a manipulation of context (ArtKhronika, in Russian):

Liberal critics got worked up about many things. They failed to understand one thing: the artist is manipulating politics, not vice-versa.

Possibly. On the other hand, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

Deutsche Bank has published an idiotically bland review of this year's Kandinsky Prize, of which it was the sponsor (DB Art Mag).

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

Mark Kelner, well-known dealer in non-conformist art, has some thoughts about this year's Kandinsky Prize:

It would be certainly naive to leave politics abstract and apart from Russian art these days. And perhaps from a historical perspective, the Non-Conformists of the 70s and 80s, were equally as viable as political tools as I believe Belyaev-Gintovt to be now. The main difference being, whereas as a collective whole, the dissidents and those influenced by them artistically were in protest to the Establishment, Belyaev-Givtovt is in the support of it. And while I dislike his winning something so high-profile and something based on creative merit, (I feel Gutov's contribution was much more organic, engaging, while not being "easy-to-get" or too accessible!), I'm not actually that surprised really. It's beginning to make sense. Russia's strength in oil reserves and the (once!) high prices for it, supported the recent proliferation of the Bear's new found aggression towards the West -- the Georgian War, overt threats over NATO expansion and missile defense shields, bomber patrols off Alaska, Naval exercises in Venezuela, and deepening military ties to China. All of this needs to be reflected in art, of course, and in Belyaev-Gintovt, I feel that a not-too-subtle subtext exists between what's happening now and the end result of what's historically possible and proven as artistic emblems of power and symbolist imagery of fear, perhaps, I'm saddened to say, from not a too distant future.

UPDATE: Kelner's view coincides, more or less, with that of Groys, who sees Belyaev-Gintovt as a stark sign of the times. I'm more and more intrigued by Belyaev-Gintovt himself. Ekaterina Degot suggests his nationalistic art may have begun as a kind of joke. Yuri Albert says the hostility to him is because he's an outsider. Who is this ironic invader who has thrown the art-world into disarray? A quick browse suggests that the unusual (in Russian) surname Gintovt may be of Lithuanian origin. To be precise, the only Gintovts I can find listed in the cyrillic wikipedia are a Major-General in the C19 Russian army and two people who received Yad Vashem awards for saving Jews during the Holocaust in Belorussia.

Yuri Albert responds to Ekaterina Degot's analysis of the Kandinsky Prize result and puts the uproar in context (dmitrivrubel):

... it's too late to get upset and shout "For shame!": if you take part in such a contest you have to be ready to lose to a fascist. ... No-one was too fastidious to show next to a fascist until the final ceremony. ... Marat Guelman was not too fastidious to work for Rogozin and to give space to Krylov,  the poet-orgsniser of the Russian March, and to Limonov, the fascist. We weren't worried, we didn't even discuss it. We were indifferent to what Timur Novikov was preaching, and in what way is he better than Belyaev? Everyone's friend, the sensitive watercolourist Volodya Salnikov, publicly annunces he is a Stalinist and in his LiveJournal discusses the quantity of Aryan blood in his veins and we (me, too) prefer not to notice and we shake his hand because he's an old friend and it's awkward not to. It's easier for me not to shake Belyaev's hand because I don't know him. I think the storm of disapproval has blown up because Belyaev isn't one of our crowd, and so it's easier to take a principled stance.

More on the Kandinsky prize ceremony (Valentin Diaconov/Artinfo):

... rumors were flying that the prize’s sponsor, Deutsche Bank, would soon withdraw its support.

The Kandinsky Prize skandal seems capable of evolving as a confrontation between the old-established contemporary art magazine, ArtKhronika, which sponsors the prize, and the new stable of titles from Art Media Group: the Open Space website, where the Art section is headed by Ekaterina Degot; Blacksquare magazine; and the new Russian Art + Auction. In her most recent commentary on Open Space, Degot describes "Dugin's Eurasian nationalism", of which Belyaev-Gintovt's work is an expression, as "a point of consensus between Russian society and the authorities"; she implies that ArtKhronika, which expresses the views of the "new Russian ruling class", shares this consensus (Open Space, in Russian):

I don't know now how to behave towards ArtKhronika magazine. To advertise in it now is not an innocent act any more. To write an article for it is to support a certain kind of politics.

There's more and more Kandinsky Prize stuff pouring out: videos of the pre-prize picket, statements from artists, voting conspiracy theories from Ekaterina Degot and others. I can't keep up. Here's the group Krem'L, Peace Labour May (via dmitrivrubel).

Boris Grois on the Kandinsky Prize, video interview (Open Space, in Russian).

The inside dope on the Kandinsky Prize jury's voting (Milena Orlova/Kommersant):

"I don't understand how such uninteresting works, devoid of any innovativeness, could win such a prize," said Jean-Hubert Martin ... The charman of the prize steering committee, Shalva Breus, who had one vote, admitted that he voted for the sotsart veteran Boris Orlov. Andrei Erofeev spoke out sharply against Belyaev[-Gintovt], although earlier he had included him in an exhibition. But Belyaev's supporters had the extra vote: voting "for" were art critic Ekaterina Bobrinskaya, head of new directions at the Russian Museum Alexander Bobrovsky, Guggenheim Museum curator Valerie Hillings, and director of Deutsche Bank Art Friedhelm Hutte. The latter two admitted they were startled by the stormy discussion of Belyaev but they were judging the works, not the context. Alexander Borovsky called Belyaev an artist in the tradition of Timur Novikov and Sergei Kurekhin and announced that he would not allow him to be smeared.

More Kandinsky Prize/Belyaev-Gintovt stuff:

1) Dima Gutov on the prize ceremony (kava-bata, in Russian):

Osmolovsky's performance in which he caused a scandal by shouting out "Shame" was as good as his best actions. As the critics of the XIX century used to say: the masks are off. I was afraid the affair might be obscured by giving the prize to me or Orlov. Let them show it around the world, their ugly mugs plain for all to see.

In fact, I'm not sure a Western audience would pay much heed to the content of Belyaev-Gintovt's work. That's the beauty of a culture saturated with messages. But I think his paintings would get even less attention as art. I'm not saying he's devoid of ability, but his work's overblown in all respects.

2) The statement of the Kandinsky Prize protest groups who mounted a picket at Vinzavod (the socialist movement Forward [Социалистическое Движение Вперед]; What Is To Be Done group [группа "Что Делать]; independent critics, artists activists) (kava-bata, in Russian & English):

We could care less about the Kandinsky Prize. It doesn’t matter to us whether the ultra-rightwing artist Belyaev-Guintovt wins it or not. We do not appeal to the powers that be, whether cultural, political or judicial, because we have no illusions about their commitment to democracy. We address our appeal to the art community and civil society. Our purpose is to draw their attention to the fascization of Russia’s ruling class.

This is happening in parallel with the profound crisis of the neoliberal order and its ideology, which makes no distinction between right and left, brown and red, fascism and communism, recognizing only private property and the “self-regulating” market. Thus does the eclectic “left-nationalist” ideology of Eurasianism converge with the stance of the prominent members of Russia’s business and media elite who serve on the prize’s jury and board of trustees. “Let a thousand flowers bloom!” “All ideologies are equal!” “Art beyond politics!” These slogans, which have always served the uncontrolled expansion of the market, are today being spouted by these respectable men and women. As they thus make profitable investments in art, flagrantly fascist utterances are legitimized in the public sphere.

Marat Guelman on the Kandinsky Prize: basically he seems to think along the same lines as me (galerist in Russian):

The worst thing is that despite the starry jury the prize went to the least interesting project of the three on the shortlist. ... It's lifeless kitsch, but because it's lifeless not everyone sees it for what it is. Gilding, pretentiousness - it's rubbish.

There are loads of art and culture prizes in Moscow these days. For example, the FSB arts prizes have just been awarded (Axis, scroll down).

Kandinsky Prize follow-up: Cheers and jeers at Kandinsky Prize (NY Times). Osmolovsky leads revolt (Reuters). Dmitri Khankin, Triumph Gallery, defends Belyaev-Gintovt (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

Dmitri Vrubel has a photo of the prize-winner (dmitrivrubel).

Boris Groys, awarding the Kandinsky Prize this evening, before he opened the envelope containing the winner's name, made the point that all the three artists represented on the finalists' shortlist had distinct political views and that the choice of the jury would inevitably have a political resonance. After the choice of Belyaev-Gintovt was announced, a number of Moscow's most prominent art-world figures made their dissent and disgust known to Shalva Breus, owner of Art Khronika magazine, which organises the prize. This event looks like it will turn into the biggest scandal in the Russian art-world for quite some time, dwarfing questions of state censorship of exhibitions etc.

Belyaev-Gintovt's aggressively nationalistic politics, which have been characterised as "crypto-fascism", may be deduced from his work and manifestoes (see for example the website doctrine.ru or the page atnazbol.ru). Belyaev-Gintovt rejects the "fascist" moniker (evrazia.org, in Russian):

I'm more used to being accused of communism than of fascism. But accusations of fascism are obviously misdirected. I am a member of the Eurasian Movement, which looks to the East, to a union with our great Eastern neighbours - China, India, Turkey, Persia and others.

There's an interview with Belyaev-Gintovt in Art Khronika in which he explains his participation in the Eurasian Youth Movement, rejects accusations of anti-semitism, and explains his ambitions for a Grand Style (artchronika.ru, in Russian). I won't analyse his statements in detail here: apart from anything he is a painter and his major utterances are visual not verbal. He appears to be a favoured artist of Alexander Dugin, a leading ideologist of Russian nationalism and expansionism.

The question arises whether the prize's sponsors, Deutsche Bank, and its non-Russian jurors, including Valerie Hillings (of the Guggenheim Museum), Jean-Hubert Martin (curator of the upcoming Moscow Biennale) and Friedhelm Hutte (Global Head Deutsche Bank Art) were or are aware of the political implications of their choice. It's also unclear what kind of horse-trading went on in the jury that Russian members such as Andrei Erofeev, Ekaterina Bobrinskaya and Alexander Borovsky should have participated in the unexpected decision.

Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt has won the Kandinsky Prize. I was, er, wrong ;) And I'm surprised. Congratulations to him.

Kandinsky Prize (Премия Кандинского) first results: young artist winner is Diana Machulina, media art project of the year is by PG Group.

The Kandinsky Prize to be announced this evening is a three-way final between Dima Gutov, Boris Orlov and Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt. Who will win? Well, I'll stick my neck out and make a prediction. My guess is that Belyaev-Gintovt won't win: he is in the shortlist for reasons of pr, or zeitgeist, or to create a mini-scandal, or whatever; apart from his perceived "crypto-fascism", which would cause a bigger scandal if he won, he is the weakest of the three nominees. Of the other two, my pick would be Gutov, but he is a Guelman Gallery artist and another Guelman artist, Anatoli Osmolovsky, won last year. So I think for that reason, if no other, the prize may go to Orlov, who shows with XL. I'm not saying that the judges will necessarily reason along my lines, but I think they may be subtly guided, or subconsciously incline, in that direction. Meanwhile, Tatyana Nazarenko has today won one of the $50,000 Triumph prizes awarded annually to artists, writers and performers (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

You too can vote in Igor Markin's You Are An Artist competition (art4.ru). I can't quite understand what Alexei Sundukov is doing there: he's been an artist for some time.

An open letter from the Chto Delat (What Is To Be Done) group of artists and writers to the Kandinsky Prize:

Enough about Belyaev [-Gintovt, one of the artist-finalists]: he deserves the Leni Riefenstahl Prize, as dissenting jury member Yerofeyev aptly put it. What is more important is that this decision is acutely symptomatic of cultural production in Russia today. It is not that the curators and critics in the jury of the Kandinsky Prize are fascist sympathizers, although “the jury’s decision can be interpreted as a show of solidarity with [Belyaev’s] position,” as Joseph Backstein, Moscow Biennale commissar, noted. The problem is that they are ultra-liberals. Their market utopianism makes no distinction between right and left, brown and red, fascism and communism; it sees irony lurking around every corner to make everything nice and normal again.

Actually, I would have thought that Belyaev-Gintovt's "crypto-fascism" or not is neither here nor there: he's just not to be counted among the best artists in Russia, this year or any other year. Just as the over-populated nominees' show seemed to curry favour with every significant gallery in Moscow, so Belyaev-Gintovt's choice as finalist seems to curry favour with the very rich (they say) Triumph Gallery. Or it may reflect a tendentious view, on the part of the jury, of the Russian Art Of Our Times: a belief that it ought in some way to reflect the new Russian religious-nationalistic outlook: so last year's winner was Anatoli Osmolovsky, maker of contemporary "icons", and this year the nationalist Belyaev-Gintovt is pushed forwards.

Interview with Shalva Breus and preview of the Kandinsky Prize (John Varoli/Bloomberg).

The Kandinsky Prize ceremony has been moved from 9 to 10 December (thanks, JV). The reason is the day of mourning for Aleksi II.

Film-maker Mark Leckey has won the Turner Prize (Guardian). He likes to complain about middle-brow art critics.

At the BOB awards in Berlin, photographer Denis Klyuev's LiveJournal site has been chosen as the best Russian-language blog (above-usual, in Russian).

By the way, neither Lena Hades nor Marat Guelman are happy with the selection of Belyaev-Gintovt as a Kandinsky-Prize finalist. Guelman's objections are vaguely expressed, but Hades is explicit: she quotes critic Andrei Kovalev to the effect that Belyaev-Gintovt is a "crypto-fascist" (galerist, in Russian; lena_hades, in Russian). A whole range of responses to his nomination my be found on Open Space (Open Space, in Russian).

The Kandinsky Prize shortlist has been announced:

Project: Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt, Dima Gutov, Boris Orlov.

Young artist: Anna Zhelud, Diana Machulina, Grigori Yushchenko.

Media art: PG Group, Blue Soup, Vladimir Logutov.

A review of the Kandinsky Prize show (Max Seddon/Moscow Times).

I've posted my photo-report on the Kandinsky nominees (IZO, earlier) show but this is more comprehensive (asya-prazhskaya).

Marat Guelman rubbishes the Kandinsky Prize show (IZO, earlier). He is right, absolutely (galerist, in Russian). The impression created, in fact, is that the organisers are trying to keep a lot of people, gallerists (who are potential advertisers with the founding magazine, ArtKhronika) included, happy.

The Kandinsky Prize show in the Central House of the Artist is useful in that it assembles work by about 60 artists, I think; it's also odd, most of the work being displayed in a kind of twilight; and much of it is pretty lightweight. In general, the established artists come off best: Dima Gutov, Blue Soup, Escape group all look good. Among the lesser-known and younger artists I also liked Anna Titova's photos and Ksenia Peretrukhina's video portrait series called The Brides of Joseph Beuys (which through some Freudian slip I initially misread as The Brides of Joseph Backstein), although the video quality is poor, for whatever reason.

Diana Machulina:

Alexei Belyaev-Gintovt:

Blue Soup:

Dima Gutov:

Blue Noses:

 :

Escape:

Blokhin & Kuznetsov:

 

Anna Zhelud:

Dmitri Vrubel:

Georgi Puzenkov:

 

Vladlena Gromova:

Alexander Gronsky:

Sergei Kostrikov:

Marina Zvyagintseva:

Anna Titova:

PG Group:

Ksenia Peretrukhina:

Igor Pestov:

The PinchukArtCentre [sic] has announced a prize for Ukrainian artists up to 35 years of age. There is an open submission via a website. First prize is 100,000 grivnas (Proza, in Russian).

Apparently at the meeting referenced in the previous post, Patriarch Aleksi II announced the creation of an Orthodox Church cinema prize, to be awarded on 24 May 2009 (gazeta, in Russian).

Here's the long-list for this year's Kandinsky Prize (kandinsky-prize.ru). Possibly a little inflated by gallery-lobbing (good names are there who haven't done anything really noteworthy in the past year)? But it's only the long-list.

The what-might-have-been "alternative reality" list of Nobel Prize for Literature winners does give you pause for thought about the prize's relevance, not just today but, er, ever (Great Books Guide). The literature prize seems to benefit from some kind of reflected glory from the science prizes, which presumably are quite soundly-based. Mind you, the art world throws up just as many overnight wonders. When Graham Greene was alive there'd always be a frenzy of speculation in the British press about whether he'd get it. He never did of course. Then, after the announcement, they'd ask him his feelings about some author he'd probably never heard of. His answer would be something like: "Well, it'll give him a boost." Russia has done OK: four winners in fifty years: Brodsky (already an emigre), Solzhenitsyn, Sholokhov (the endless debates concerning his authorship or not of The Quiet Don seem to have been put to sleep: I for one liked that conspiracy theory), and Pasternak.

The rules for the next Kandinsky Prize competition have been changed: there will be no people's choice category, and no artist of the year; the latter category will be replaced by a "project of the year". The long-list show will run 7-20 November (Lenta.ru, in Russian).

The Russian Booker (Букер) Prize finalists have been announced (gazeta.ru, in Russian). The winner will be announced on 3 December.

An annual prize for realist painting (За сохранение и продолжение традиций русской реалистической школы живописи) has been awarded to Nikolai Kolupaev (lunina22, in Russian).

Alexander Gafin, head of the Peter Aven Foundation in Latvia, talks about the Kandinsky Prize, of which the foundation is co-sponsor, and the international diplomacy inherent in Aven's decision to show the exhibition of nominees' work in Riga (Rosbalt, in Russian):

Above all, it was because art corrects and improves the impression made by the country.

A report on the Innovation awards' ceremony (Marina Kamenev/Moscow Times).

An ironic interlude about women in art, by Aidan Gallery owner Aidan Salakhova and the director of the Moscow House of Photography, Olga Sviblova, dressed in black with white maids' pinafores, showed why Russian feminism might struggle in practice. The two sang and giggled through their own song with the only discernable lyrics being, "Can you imagine a man as an object."

Well, I wouldn't mind if some beautiful girla a la Olga or Aidan "objectified" me once in a while!

Video/film/light-box artists Blue Soup won the Innovation Prize visual arts' award last night, beating out Yuri Albert and Andrei Monastyrsky. The young artist's prize went to Ira Korina, which makes a useful double-first for XL Gallery. Curatorial project of the year: Oleg Kulik's Veryu (thanks, ED). Art critic winner was Andrei Kovalev for his book Moscow Actionism. The late Dmitri A. Prigov was awarded a prize for his contribution to Russian art (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

The Innovation Prize candidates have been announced: Viktor Alimpiev, Yuri Albert, Anton Litvin, Andrei Monastyrski and the Blue Soup group are the shortlisted artists. Other categories: curatorial project, theory and criticism, regional project, new generation.