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distributed with the daily telegraph tuesday_september 29_2009 about contemporary Russian artists
creativity Russia’s contemporary art scene looks to be developing healthily
no past, just the future
Those seeking a comprehensive able 20 years ago. Decades of peared, the experience of the is rarely seen in for-
sign of how much Russian art Soviet-era censorship, isolation 1990s meant contemporary eign galleries and
has changed since the collapse and repression saw the handful Russian art remained a field museums; on a visit
of the USSR need only look at of “non-conformist” artists in solely for its few hundred prac- to Moscow earlier
Oleg Kulik’s grizzled chest- the country go underground, titioners, much as it had been this year, Tate Mod-
length beard. Kulik is best staging exhibitions in their own under the Soviet Union. The ern curator Frances
known for his Nineties series of apartments or performances in scene, therefore, is still relative- Morris was report-
“human dog” performances, the woods. Many of them, in- ly small. With the appearance of edly besieged with
which saw him travel around cluding conceptualist hero Ilya the nouveau-riche, by-appoint- complaints over the
the world naked, “escaping” Kabakov and SotsArt founders ment-only Triumph Gallery in absence of Russians
from a leash, ferociously biting Komar and Melamid, left the 2007, the number of major gal- in the museum’s per-
people and defecating in country altogether. leries swelled to five. Regardless manent collection.
museums. When the USSR collapsed, the of whom you ask, there are not The situation does,
Russian art world essentially many artists either. Artist and however, seem to be
max seddon
had to start from scratch. gallerist Aidan Salakhova puts improving. This year’s
art critic Throughout the 1990s, the Mos- the number at a round 101; this Venice Biennale had a
special for russia now
cow scene effectively consisted is somewhat worrying when you record number of Rus-
of four galleries more interested consider the first Moscow Bien- sian artists in the main
Many interpreted Kulik’s per- in showing works than selling nale in 2005 had more than 400, exhibition (five of uni-
formances as a metaphor for them to the then-miniscule and that a study carried out last formly excellent quali-
Russia itself: naked, poor, some- class of collectors, and one year found New York to be home ty) and a record number
thing to be feared, a product of state-funded centre without to 130,000. of Russian exhibitions
the unbridgeable conflict be- any state funds. Partly as a re- Largely for the same reason, in the parallel pro-
tween West and wild East. This action against the non-existent Russian art is generally bereft gramme (three of decid-
year, however, he staged a “spa- art market, many turned to the of movements, trends, and po- edly mixed quality). In “Properties of a Revolution”,
tial liturgy” for a Monteverdi nihilistic and unsellable genre litical reactions. It is instead Thanks to that, some of the best the Blue Noses group (Vy-
opera at Paris’s Theatre de of actionism. Kulik was natu- still a story of individuals. That artists from the conceptualist acheslav Mizin and Konstan-
Chatelet (for which he grew the rally at the fore, impersonating atomisation of Russian artists movement finally seem to be tine Syutnikov) offer political
beard), was awarded an order a disco ball and running for makes the field as a whole dif- getting their due. Pavel Pepper- parties the services of firms
for services to art by the French president as a bull; so was an- ficult for curators to character- stein’s gorgeous watercolors of producing “tools of the prole-
government, and is currently archist Anatoly Osmolovsky, ise. Group exhibitions are thus “landscapes of the future” in tariat”. Two men, as the mass-
preparing an exhibition in the whose pronouncements ranged often subject to the personal the Russian pavilion rightly es, show their indignation in
TsUM department store for Sep- from theoretical texts to spell- whims of curators, which can won plaudits across the board, front of commercial signs
tember’s Moscow Biennale. ing out obscenities on Red even lead get them into serious and sold out at the Art Basel fair
That rapid transformation from Square. trouble. a week after the Biennale open-
bete noire to establishment fig- Though that financially barren Provocative curator Andrei ing. Old hands Igor Makarevich
ure would have been unthink- climate has long since disap- Erofeev saw then-culture min- and Elena Elagina, featuring in
opinion
ister Alexandr Sokolov ban the main exhibition, were hon-
several works – including the oured earlier this year with an Is it a good time to collect
an inclusive moscow biennale
“Blue Noses” duo’s infamous exhibition in Vienna’s Kun- contemporary Russian art?
Kissing Policemen photograph sthistoriches Museum along- RN asked several market ex-
– from leaving the country for side old masters such as Breugel, perts for their opinions.
Erofeev’s 2007 “SotsArt” show Durer, and Rubens.
in Paris, labelling the art “a dis- Domestically, the scene appears VladislaV eFimoV, artist
grace for Russia, which we’ll to be developing strongly. The In Russia, the art market is
have to answer for”. Currently dearth of exhibition spaces is still uneven and unformed.
Erofeev is on trial for another gradually being corrected by There are absolute stars
2007 exhibition, “Forbidden private enterprises in old in- who sell well and keep gal-
Art 2006”, on charges of “incit- dustrial lots, particularly the leries in business; and there
ing hatred or hostility”. Winzavod complex, the former are the artists who are do-
Non-politicised curators, often Red October Chocolate Factory, ing very interesting things but
under the influence of Soviet- and a massive constructivist in whom gallery owners have
era conceptualist art and its bus garage run by Roman little interest because they all
references to the early 20th- Abramovich’s girlfriend Dasha deal in the same established
chives
century avant-garde, can also Zhukova. These developments names. I hope the situation Oleg Kulik (above) first became famous as a “human dog” in the early 1990s. He was the founder of an art
l
AR
A
produce exhibitions that over- have helped bring about a hith- will even out, that there will genre that featured human bodily suffering. One famous example was his performance “I can’t be silent
son
R shadow their participants. Olga
erto unthinkable interest in be a level playing field like in anymore! Strassbourg, European Parliament”, which had a man being tortured with a branding iron in
pe
M Sviblova’s Russian pavilion at contemporary art from Russia’s the Nineties. September’s Art the shape of the European Union logo. It’s as if the artist is being crucified on the British flag
o
FR the Venice Biennale this year trendy youth. Moscow exhibition will tell:
Andrey Philippov. Mazay. 2008. united seven artists under the Artworks have now replaced if the top names (on which
incomprehensible theme of public landmarks as the back- all gallery owners have been this year of crisis prices have
“Victory over the Future”, a nod ground of choice for girls to betting) sell poorly, the own- dropped. But I cannot say the
The Third Moscow Biennale of The Biennale’s principal show- towards a famous Futurist pose in photographs; hipster ers will look for something art situation has changed sig-
Contemporary Art will be held place will be the Garage Cen- opera from 1913 that saw set bible Afisha magazine recently else. Poverty may be a way nificantly in Russia because of
from September 25-October 25 tre of Contemporary Culture. designer Kazimir Malevich highlighted a new craze for, of out of the commercial horror the crisis. True, there is a popu-
and will feature some 80 art- It will also include Winzavod, make the first experiments that all things, going to lectures. of the last few years. lar opinion that the crisis is for
ists from all over the world. “The Red October and even the cel- would eventually lead to his fa- There is, likewise, much prom- the best, because only the best
theme, Against exclusion, ap- ebrated Tretyakov Gallery. Ce- mous “Black Square”. ise in Russia’s young artists, soFia trotsenko, director, work will remain. But I think we
plies (in the project’s manifes- lebrity special guests include This last also owes a great deal particularly those working in winzavod contemporary art won’t be able to say anything
to),” says curator Jean-Hubert Britain’s Antony Gormley, Isra- to Russian art’s relative obscu- abstract genres, and former centre definite before October, after
Martin – who is also curator of el’s Mikhail Grobman, Holland’s rity on the international scene, members of the Radek group I would say the time to col- the Art Moscow exhibition. Of
national museums of France and Van Lishaut Studio and Russia’s which, by Sviblova’s admission, based around Osmolovsky at lect contemporary Russian course, I would like to see more
the former director of the Pom- Vladimir Sychev. The world-fa- led her to feature seven artists the turn of the decade. It may art began a couple of years new names, which is a pos-
pidou Centre – “equally to basic mous American artist Spencer instead of the customary one. still have a long way to go, but ago. And the point is not the sibility of the crisis. Whereas
human rights and to the world of Tunick – known for his nude Bar Kabakov, Kulik and a Russian art has come astound- prices, but the force of cre- before every gallery strove to
aesthetics, which today finds it- photo sessions – will present handful of others, few Russian ingly far in such a short time; ativity – the number of tal- sell as much as possible, and
self before an inquisitive lover of his photo project “Moscow In- artists are known in the West there’s no reason why, like Ku- ented works and the number everything did get sold, sales
all forms of art.” dividuals”. except to a small circle of insid- lik’s beard, it can’t continue to of new names. Of course, in have now dropped and gallery
ers and specialists. Russian art grow further still.
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