IZO

Alik Sidorov, co-editor of A-Ya, the journal of unofficial art published in Paris in 1979-80s, has died in Moscow (Open Space, in Russian).

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.

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

The first Russian number of Art + Auction is out now (Open Space, in Russian); in it you will find my article on Alex Melamid's recent work.

A list of New York art blogs (chelseaartgalleries.com). UPDATE: many of the links are dead or uninteresting, sadly. BUT: This site also provides good precis of the New York contemporary sales, including thumbnails of unsold and withdrawn lots that the auction houses themselves tend to censor out post-sale. I see that at Phillips de Pury's Friday sale a painting by George Pusenkoff fetched $38,000 plus premium (chelseaartgalleries.com). I wonder why he has chosen to frenchify his surname: Pusenkoff as opposed to the English transliteration Puzenkov.

Review of Sarah Thornton's Seven Days in the Art World (FT).

John Varoli has sent a precis of his Russian-related articles in the November Art Newspaper; not all available online; see below the cut. I was interested in this about the Melnikov Garage:

"The relationship is very straightforward,'' said Erica Bolton, GCCC spokesperson. "The Museum of Tolerance will be housed on the 1st floor and GCCC will be on the ground floor. So they will not interfere with each other.''

At last Artkhronika has gone online in a rather nifty turn-the-pages flash format (Artkhronika).

Upcoming book, Art and China's Revolution by Melissa Chiu and Zheng Shengtian (Yale Univ., $65 (280p) ISBN 978-0-300-14064-4,) includes contemporary artist Zheng Shengtian's reflections on the influence of Soviet art on Chinese artists (Amazon (this looks like a different edition of same book)).

Preview of Dennis Dutton's The Art Instinct, an "attempt to interpret art via Darwinism" (counterforces).

I've just attended the launch at the Serpentine Gallery of Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton. It deals with the "status-driven world" of contemporary art. I've browsed through the first chapter, on auctions, and it looks pretty good (Amazon).

I get a warm fuzzy feeling when the same name pops up in different contexts and at different times. It suggests life really is a kind of soap opera a la A Dance To The Music Of Time. Alexander Goldfarb is now best known as an ally of Boris Berezovsky's and author of a book about the late Alexander Litvinenko. But, on browsing through the useful tome Komar and Melamid by Carter Ratcliff (1988) I read that it was Alexander Goldfarb who in 1976 introduced gallerist Ronald Feldman to the work of Komar and Melamid.

Video: Boris Grois interviewed by Ekaterina Degot (Open Space, in Russian).

Viktor Miziano discusses his book Progressive Nostalgia (Прогрессивная ностальгия. Современное искусство стран бывшего СССР), which looks at contemporary art in the countries of the former USSR (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, in Russian).

Past Imperfect, a "memoir in anecdotes" by Grisha Bruskin, came out in English translation earlier this year (Amazon).

An exhibition about A-Ya, the emigre magazine through which many, including me, became acquainted witrh Russian underground art (Moscow Times).

Some resources: Andrei Kovalev's recent book on Moscow Actionism of the 90s has sold out, but his flickr stream has loads of documentary photos (flickr). David Riff's blog contains occasional essays on events in Moscow, most recently Viktor Alimpiev's show at the Ekaterina Foundation (Moscow Diary). ARTinvestment.RU is a new Russian-language site analysing the market (artinvestment.ru)

A review of Solomon Volkov's The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn (Washington Post).

The decision by the Russian-language culture-portal Open Space to provide hit-numbers for its posts is interesting in its revelation of reader interest and, maybe, the popularity of its writers. Most articles seem to have received somewhere in the region of 150-300 hits. My recent piece on the non-conformist market has crept over 400, thanks perhaps to having been picked up and commented on on a couple of Russian blogs. A look at the Melnikov Garage by John Varoli: over 500. A review of the new Bekmambetov film, Wanted: over 600. Ekaterina Degot on the Melnikov Garage: over 1000. The runaway top scorer is Degot's analysis of the Forbidden Art affair, which has received more than 4000 hits.

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.

An interview with Marat Guelman (NG Antrakt, in Russian):

Why don't you like Damien Hirst's crystal skull?

There is a definition of what an artist does, given by Boris Grois. It's valorization: the transformation of the cheap into the expensive. The artist takes something cheap and does something with it, or simply changes its context. Something which once cost nothing becomes expensive or priceless. Damien Hirst took an expensive thing and from it made another expensive thing. His was the activity of a jeweller, not an artist. He spent 40 million on making the skull and it costs 100. The material plus extra for the work. This tramples on the principle of valorization. An artist makes art out of unregarded materials, he makes something from nothing.

I don't entirely agree with this. Expensive materials - gold, silver, lapis lazuli - have in the past been integral to the art-making process, and in this sense Hirst's skull is atavistic, a reversion to ancient attitudes (which may indeed also be the attitude of Hirst, and of today's oligarchs) in which material and spiritual value are conflated; but it is not exactly excluded as art. And "making money out of junk" (to paraphrase Grois via Guelman) is not a satisfactory definition of what an artist does; it's entirely cynical. But, there is something poignant about the high value, including monetary value, attaching to objects whose raw material costs are trivial, and this poignancy, it seems to me, is a condition of spiritual experience. The other art forms - literature, music, cinema - are essentially immaterial; but visual art struggles towards transcendence through the object, and the sense of blatant expense, which we get from things such as Hirst's skull or, to give another example, the giant shiny "egg" shown by Jeff Koons at this years Royal Academy Summer Show, generates an intrusive awareness of material values. We're looking at such things and thinking, basically, "Well, how much did that cost to make?" This interferes with contemplation just as much as, say, the introduction of pornography into narrative art: the result is a dissonant, inadequate experience.

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).

All is tickety-boo in the booming world of Russian art; but it wasn't always thus.

Alexander Galich
The Ballad Of How The Director Of Antique Shop No. 22, N. A. Kopylov, Nearly Lost His Mind, Told By The Man Himself To Doctor Bespalov (1968)
Free translation with the kind assistance of ZZ and MV

Tonechka nagged me to death
So I bought her a walnut suite.
At first I wasn't on the take, not even a little bit!
But once I started, it was unstoppable!
The wheels of hell began to grind,
A hundred here, a diamond there,
Eventually got me a dacha in Kratovo,
Got me a Mother-Volga motor car!
Money-money-money-money
You are our servant, and our boss.
Our stock is most refined
Nothing ordinary, no teacups and teapots.

Teacups and teapots, fruit and veg,
Anyone can get stuff like that, even a total loser!
Even a total loser!

Our stuff is for those in the know:
In Tsar Pavel's style, and King Louis's,
And for someone in the know - the more beaten up it is
The more he likes it, because it's not new!
Of course, it's a no-no by mistake
To mix up France with Sweden...
Recently at our second-hand shop
An old lady turned up.
She wasn't carrying a crystal objet,
Or porcelain bonbons,
But records with Stalin's speeches,
Precisely ten of them - and all in an album.

Well, I've knocked about a bit, I'm experienced!
But I knew immediately - I was finished!
I was finished!

The price of the speeches was exactly thirty roubles.
(The devil brought me this old bird, this bitch!)
Did I need, because of this rubbish,
To end up looking at the sky from behind bars?
Understand this point, my friends
(I've got good stock, not rubbish!)
I couldn't take it, and I couldn't not take it -
Either he's a genius, or he's not, yet?!
The press cannot agree
and different folk have different views...
So understand my situation
It was extremely unpleasant!

People are debating this question, they are arguing,
And now I have to decide, I can't sleep!
I can't sleep!

Cursing in my soul, but outwardly smiling,
I choose  polite words:
For the album - thankyou!
I'll take it - for cash!
And I give her the fruits of my blood, sweat and tears,
The salespeople around me are surprised:
It may be a modest sum,
But it doesn't grow on trees!
All day I'm like a hamster on a wheel
Oh, the bright sky turns dark!
You can believe me or not,
But something supernatural had begun.

Well, I've knocked about a bit, I'm experienced!
But I knew immediately - I was finished!
I was finished!

Either people got wind of the old lady,
Or she met some of her friends -
But the next morning I had a triple queue
All of them with records and albums!
The mountain just grew and grew
And my cash was all gone!
I needed a precious directive from someone on high!
But there was no directive!
The dacha in Kratovo turned to dust and ashes,
And the Mother-Volga, too, my little darling!
And in my head the thought kept hammering -
Either he's a genius, or he's not, yet?

"I'm a little girl, I like to dance and sing,
I haven't seen Stalin, but I do love him!"
Well, I've knocked about a bit, I'm experienced!
But I knew immediately - I was finished!
I was finished!

UPDATE: Galich's The Tale Of The Portrait Of Khrushchev (YouTube, in Russian).

A book on Mikhail Matyushin by Margareta Tillberg has been published by NLO, Moscow.

Drama at the Timur Novikov show in the Markin Museum (art4ru, in Russian):

The eternally drunk Moscow art-critic Kovalev
speaking at a round-table
devoted to the work of the great Russian artist Timur Novikov
called the latter a fascist and a pederast
apparently in the conception of the eminent art-critic
these epithets were merely the beginning of a generally positive statement
which was not fated to be heard

Sergei Bugaev (Afrika) (The Banana Boy)
jumped up from his seat
puffed out his chest
with the words (roughly)
- Will you answer for "fascist" and "pederast"? Kazimir Malevich had a revolver to hand for such occasions.
it turned out that in Afrika's hand, instead of a revolver, was a glass
- Unfortunately I don't have a revolver.
With a grand gesture Afrika smashed the glass in his fist on the round table devoted, you will remember, to the work of Timur Novikov,
fragments sprayed in all directions, fortunately hitting no-one.
Kovalev, having sensed the danger of real physical consequences, chose to leave the round-table.

(Russian version after the cut).

A press release gives more info on the actual and planned activities of Art Media Group, whose Open Space site I mentioned recently. At present the portfolio of projects consists of Open Space; the journal Black Square, which is apparently aimed at "yuppies" (яппи: interesting how English-language terms are imported into Russian more-or-less accurately, but without a complete understanding of their nuances: here "yuppie" is a term of approval, implicitly); and a planned Russian version of Art+Auction, which should appear before the end of 2008. The occasion for the press-release was the publication of the Russian translation of a book by Judith Benhamou-Huet about the pricing of art (pressrelease.ru, in Russian).

Now, having flown back from Spain (Easyjet air ticket London-Malaga-London: £40; taxi London-Stansted airport, one way: £65), I've had time to explore the new Open Space Russian culture magazine, I see that it keeps the market-focused Art Times site as a discrete section but adds a further section called simply Art, which includes an occasional blog by Ekaterina Degot. There are tabs devoted to cinema, theatre, literature and music, but the double dose of visual art sets the tone; it's plainly the best art-oriented publication on the Russian-language internet.

OpenSpace.ru, the new culture portal and successor to Art Times, appears to be open to visitors.

I understand that the much-missed Art Times will be back online soon, with a new design.

An IZO reader writes, apropos the Markin-Kabakov bust-up:

These Russians should stop writing blogs - the diary is a tricky genre and very rarely shows the best part of the person.

That's true, and, what's more, conceivably even applies to some non-Russians. IZO isn't really a diary, but my old attempts to write a diary always foundered because of the attendant confusions: questions such as: what is my point-of-view? what is the tone I seek? AND WHO AM I, ANYWAY?

The film Oleg Kulik: Challenge and Provocation (Олег Кулик: Вызов и Провокация), directed by Evgeni Mitta, will premiere at the 35MM cinema, Moscow, on 15 May. It is the first in a planned series of ten films about contemporary Russian art. Mitta was the founder, together with Aidan Salakhova and Alexander Yakut, of the first commercial gallery in Moscow, First Gallery, in 1989 (RIA Novosti, in Russian).

A compendium of public opinion about the Voina performance Fuck for the Teddy Bear-Heir (plucer, in Russian; via galerist).

The forgotten Bloomsbury Group girl, ballerina Lydia Lopokova: "At the peak of her ballerina fame, she was far more famous and more written about than any other member of the group" (Guardian). But she was a Russian and therefore an outsider. From the point of view of posterity, it is usually catastrophic to abandon your national context.

I read in (I think) Moskovski Komsomolets, but can't find a link, that Ilya Glazunov has published a large book of memoirs.

For the last week or so Marat Guelman has been on holiday in Jamaica and, with time on his hands, has filled his Live Journal (in Russian) with a quantity of reflections on contemporary art. Intriguing, perhaps worth developing as a book.

MYARTINFO will be presented in its Russian version in Moscow on 18 April at Vinzavod. Russian artists are invited to sign up to share their work: visit the site, click on the small Russian flag (top right), then further click on Подписка, and then fill in your info.

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

Andrei Tarkovsky: Film and Painting: an extended essay by Mikhail Romadin (Creative Review). It's from a new book of essays.

A book review: The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture From Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn by Solomon Volkov (Martin Rubin/LA Times). Maybe invest in it now, because these things can go up: my own Socialist Realist Painting is currently at $375-$550 on Amazon and $375-$620.47 on abebooks ;) That's a 500% appreciation minimum on the opening price (depending when you click on those links, the prices may vary, of course).

Igor Markin has announced he is going to close his very entertaining LiveJournal.

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.

The public on the recent action by Voina; and Andrei Kovalev on Ilya Kabakov (both in Russian).

Russian artists in Israel.

The first book in a planned 22-volume series entitled The History of Russian Art has been published in Moscow. The first volume covers XI-XII centuries; 650 pages, 2,000 print run (Regnum, in Russian).

The Russian events magazine Afisha now has a video channel devoted to exhibitions. Here's a few of their reviews (all in Russian): Anatoli Osmolovski, AES+F, Boris Orlov, Blue Noses.

The Phillips de Pury catalogue for tomorrow's sale includes an excellent DVD: a documentary film about the 1988 Sotheby's auction in Moscow, with background and interviews.

LTB Group, Chief Executive Louise T. Blouin, is expanding into Russia with a Russian-language version of its artinfo.com website. The press conference/launch, probably to be held at Vinzavod. is planned for April (presumably to coincide with the photobiennale, run by Olga Sviblova).

Exhibition of three videos by Boris Groys (I think).

Sociologist and political analyst Boris Kagarlitsky and curator and critic Viktor Miziano discuss art and culture in post-Soviet Russia (KhZh, in Russian) (via galerist and kava-bata). On the same exalted level: Miziano, Ekaterina Degot and Andrei Erofeev discuss the role of curators (Oksana Sarkisyan/artinfo, in Russian).

Ekaterina Degot is getting ready to blog.