Bear Wakes from Hibernation, Heads for Art Market

On February 2, Christie’s sold a 1963 Picasso, “Tête de Femme”, for £8.1 million ($12.9 million), in London. This sum, twice the top pre-sale estimate, was attained after a bout of Russian telephone bidding, Bloomberg reported. This impressive result follows a successful week of Russian art auctions in London at the end of 2009. The Art Newspaper reported that market figures are on the up again after nose-diving in 2008.

At auction it is often not so much the art but the investment Russian collectors are after. And Russian buyers don’t just want Russian art, “they want flashy, colorful pictures by the big names,” said Thomas Seydoux, Christie’s international head of Impressionist and modern art, of the recent Picasso sale.

The current climate seems far from the heady days when an anonymous buyer could purchase the entire Rostropovich collection from Sotheby’s before its planned sale, thus canceling the auction (September 2007). Or, as rumors circulating at Christie’s in June 2008 would have us believe, when a Russian client saw Monet’s “Le bassin au nymphéas” in the pre-sale view and considered purchasing it with a view to cutting it in half to better fit his interior decor. Hopefully he was joking; the painting sold for £40,921,250.

It is unfair, however, to make such wild generalizations about the habits of a nation’s elite. Especially a nation of such extreme contrasts. The combination of monied individuals and a rich but fragmented political and cultural history makes for a convoluted patchwork of artistic production and promotion. The frivolity of wealthy collectors in the pre-credit crunch days, was matched by the desire of certain individuals to put Russia on the map of international contemporary art.

The Red October Chocolate Factory, Moscow

Dasha Zhukova and Maria Baibakova both received a lot of international attention when they opened their contemporary art centers in Moscow. The Garage Center for Contemporary Art, in Konstantin Melnikov’s converted Bakhmetevsky Bus Garage, and Baibakov Art Projects, in the Red October Chocolate Factory, both opened in 2008 to a media storm – partly because of the projects they were running, but also because of the glamor and riches of their artistic directors. With an oligarch father (Baibakova) and partner (Zhukova), these young women could have all the Chanel bags, furs and Cartier jewels they wanted – but they wanted more, they wanted a huge, trendy converted industrial building in which to stage impressive contemporary art shows. And they got it – and good for them!

With plans drawn up for these projects before Sept. 15, 2008 (the day that Lehman brothers filed for bankruptcy, also the day Damien Hirst made millions at Sotheby’s in London), these centers may have scaled back their projects but they are still an active part of the Russian and international scene. The Garage hosted the third Moscow Biennale last fall, curated by French curator Jean-Hubert Martin. With the theme “Beyond Exclusion”, and including artists from five continents, it was a powerful statement of art in a globalized world. Other collaborations include a show of art from the Pinault collection in 2009 – and, it is rumored, an upcoming exhibition curated by the Espace Louis Vuitton in Paris.

Subodh Gupta, "Very Hungry God" at the Garage CCC, photo by Grigoryev

The resurgence of the Russian market is happy news for auction houses, galleries and collectors -  it also seems to have spilled over into the general consciousness of the international art world if current shows and events are anything to go by.

The recent Kandinsky retrospective at the Guggenheim was “generously supported by” Baibakov Art Projects; France is celebrating l’année de la Russie in 2010, with a variety of cultural events; and London, long favoured by the Russian gliteratti, will see at least two major shows of Russian contemporary art this spring.

Aktis, a new gallery for Russian contemporary art, is to open with an exhibition of ‘non-conformist’ artist Vladimir Yankilevsky, on February 23. The label loosely describes art produced from the 1950s to the 1980s, that didn’t fit into the Soviet regime. Yankilevsky’s work, along with other exhibitors at the Manezh exhibition of 1962, was famously rejected at “degenerate” by Nikita Khrushchev. Instead of quashing the movement however, this judgement was thought to have encouraged the non-conformists’ development.

Another exhibition, opening at the Haunch of Venison in London this April, is to provide a major overview of the more overtly politicized ‘non-conformists’ of the 1980s. “Glasnost: Soviet Non-Conformist Art from the 1980s” will focus on the propaganda-fuelled, satirical aesthetic of the transitional Gorbachev era.

A similar show was held at La Maison Rouge in Paris in 2007 in partnership with the State Tretyakov Gallery.  The artists featured may not have conformed with the Soviet regime but they were quickly recognised for their artistic value. “Museum curators were aware of the non-conformists” said Dianne Beal, director of Galerie Blue Square in Paris, “they just couldn’t show their work”. Cultural policy evolved with the political upheaval in the 1980s and now the Tretyakov boasts a rich contemporary art collection.

In fact, while the media have focused on the young and beautiful newcomers, the Russian contemporary art scene has had strong support within the Russian Federation for several years. As well as the Tretyakov, the Moscow Museum of Modern Art was opened in 1999, the Ekaterina Art Foundation in 2002 and the Stella Art Foundation (by Stella Kesaeva, another oligarchette) in 2004.

The State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow, photo by Bernt Rostad

So everything might be looking pretty rosy in the Russian art world. In a country where art is so inextricably linked to private wealth – the arts scene is closer to the US than the European model, relying on foundations and donations – the stabilizing of global commodity markets can only be a good thing for support for the arts.

But there is always the possibility that they may just be putting on a good front. On the February 4, the Guardian reported on the planned destruction of an artists’ colony in Moscow. Founded in Moscow’s Sokol district, the artists’ colony was set up in the new Soviet Union in 1923 to plans mapped out by the great Soviet Architect, Alexei Shchusev, but now looks like another victim of the mayor, Yury Luzhkov’s destructive construction plans for the new Moscow. The proposal made front page news in the Russian press.

The same week saw obituaries of David Sarkisyan. Dubbed “The Keeper of Moscow’s Architectural Conscience” in the New York Times, David Sarkisyan was director of the Shchusev State Museum of Architecture in Moscow and activist for the preservation of Moscow’s modernist architecture, which has become an increasingly endangered species since the beginning of Luzhkov’s term in 1992.

These incidents remind us of the fragile nature of Russia’s cultural heritage and also the rudimentary nature of cultural policy. Liza Fetissova, director of young contemporary Russian photography gallery in Paris, Russian Tea Room, is happy to see the developments in contemporary art in her native Russia, but laments the lack of support for young artists. “The Garage is all very well” she says “but there is no system behind it. Artists are like free electrons”.

There may appear to be more opportunities as celebrity Russians make the headlines, and non-conformists revel in the sort of recognition they couldn’t receive in their youth. But a glitzy facade hides the usual difficulties, one more Potemkin village to shelter the Bear.