31.01.2006
Paul Abelsky, Russia Profile, January 26, 2006

Russia's foreign policy initiatives may be generating mixed results abroad, but a number of ambitious programs and displays featuring the country's cultural heritage have aroused new interest in the artistic legacy of Russia. Things Russian are trendy again, prompting the New York Times to write about New York's "Slavic moment," which straddles everything from fashion designers' evocation of Slavic decorative motifs to the broad popular appeal of the exhibit of Russian art at the Guggenheim Museum. The Christie's and Sotheby's auction houses hold specialized sales of Russian art, having identified it as one of the world art market's booming segments.

The arts have long been one of Russia's preeminent exports, but during the last year the touring masterpieces have received more of an official imprimatur, with exhibits often graced by the presence of the country's high-placed representatives. As the catalogue of the Guggenheim stated, the exhibit was "realized under the patronage of Vladimir Putin, president of the Russian Federation," who also made an appearance at the opening, which coincided with the United Nations summit in New York last September. Russia! В as the show was called В staked an emphatic claim for Russia's distinctive place within the world artistic tradition. According to a recent press release from the Guggenheim, the exhibit was one of the most successful in its history, drawing almost half a million visitors in 17 weeks В more than any prior specialized show.

Putin was also present at the opening of the Europalia Festival in Brussels, wholly devoted last year to Russian culture. If government sponsorship became one pillar of the new cultural offensive В in the form of official support and contributions by state-owned museums В the other prop was provided by Russia's wealthy benefactors. Viktor Vekselberg's collection of Faberg? eggs was showcased in Brussels, while Vladimir Potanin's charity fund financed a significant portion of the Guggenheim extravaganza.

Parallel to this series of high-profile expositions of canonic Russian works, the country's lesser known contemporary artists are getting more exposure in the West. A show called "Moscow Breakthrough" opened at The Bargehouse in London last November, representing 20 Russian artists. Soon after, several New York galleries hosted Russia 2, a wide-ranging exhibit, the fuller version of which was first shown at the first Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art last January and February.

Beginning Dec. 8, and continuing for more than a month, three New York galleries В the White Box and Magnan Projects' Annex in Chelsea, and the Ethan Cohen Fine Arts in TriBeCa В presented works intended to counter the government-sanctioned worldview of the so-called "Russia 1." The idea was to conjure up "a parallel cultural system," as the exhibit description stated, aiming to build "a platform that supports a broad range of free artistic expressions."

Russia 2 was curated by the White Box's Juan Puntes and Marat Guelman, the owner of one of Moscow's first and most influential post-Soviet galleries. The credit for the show's conceptual framework clearly goes to Guelman, a former government-connected spin doctor who has also for years been a towering figure in the Russian art scene. Guelman is a veteran of the grueling political skirmishes of the mid-1990s, joining forces with Gleb Pavlovsky in 1995 to co-found the Foundation for Effective Politics in 1995. He has long been adept at manufacturing parallel realities, whether during the 1996 presidential election campaign against the Communist candidate Gennady Zyuganov or in Ukraine's presidential elections in 2004, where he was deployed along with a group of Russian spin doctors to fashion a winning strategy for Viktor Yanukovich.

The nearest precedent for Russia 2, however, is the "Unofficial Moscow" festival in 1999 in the run-up to the city's mayoral elections, conceived by Guelman to oppose the candidacy of Yury Luzhkov. Then the idea was also to strike at the cacophony of government-fabricated taboos and constructs. Following the 2004 debacle in Ukraine, Guelman publicly renounced overt political activities, joined the minor Social Democratic Party, and committed himself to art-oriented projects.

Guelman and his presumed opponents seem to be drawn to Manichean abstractions, where subtler shades of meaning are elided in favor of virtuous and all-consuming visions. The bifurcated framework of Russia 2 draws on the juxtaposition first described in Culture 2, a book by prominent Russian cultural historian Vladimir Paperny. Paperny termed the radical and dynamic period of the early revolutionary years as Culture 1, an interval of time that was then supplanted by the Stalinist Culture 2, a phase of conservative retreat.

Guelman's interpretation reverses the implicit logic of Paperny's construal of Russian art and architecture. Russia 2, as the description states, is a "symmetrical response to the hermetically closed culture of Russia 1 or Putin's Russia." By limiting the subject matter to a confrontation with what is seen as a stifling present-day Russia, however, the artists of Russia 2 formulate an even more hermetic system without offering compelling alternatives.

The exhibits in New York showcase a more compact version of what first appeared at the Biennale in Moscow last year. The group of contributors comprises all the cutting-edge artists of Russia's present contemporary art scene. They include Blue Noses group, the duo of Alexander Vinogradov and Vladimir Dubossarsky, Oleg Kulik and others. Diverse media are represented, from video installations and paintings to computer collages and sculptures, joined together in a relatively tight gallery space.

Most works indulge in imaginative irony, appropriating the symbols of the Russian state and history, and reshaping, scorning and overlapping them. Alexander Kosolapov's 2002 bronze sculpture entitled Mickey Lenin presents the recognizable figure of the Soviet leader with Mickey Mouse's head on top. Lenin is also featured in the video installation by Blue Noses, in which a short looped movie is projected into a cardboard box from above, showing the fidgety effigy in a state of restless sleep.

Other emblematic characters take center-stage in Russia 2. Yury Shabelnikov's untitled sculpture displays a two-headed stuffed eagle, Russia's imperial and presently reclaimed coat-of-arms, pinned against an aluminum background that includes the carved contours of the actual imperial emblem. Avdey Ter-Oganyan commandeers suprematist abstractions made famous in the early 20th century by Kazimir Malevich. His prints on canvas show arrangements of basic multi-colored shapes, with detailed title inscriptions shown at the bottom. The subversively counterintuitive headings vary. One states that "This work is aimed at the kindling of religious conflicts," while another proclaims that "This work calls for attempts on the life of V. V. Putin in order to prevent him from governmental and political activities."

Finally, some works also incorporate religious issues. AES group displayed digital collages from their series entitled "Witnesses of the Future. Islamic Project." One dystopic image shows the Statue of Liberty shrouded in a burqa, a traditional item of clothing for Muslim women that completely covers the face, while another pictures the Guggenheim museum adorned with minarets. Several artists tackle Christian themes, a subject that has caused particular rancor with the Russian public. Kosolapov's "This is My Blood" is a painting of Christ next to a Coca-Cola logo, shown against a bright red backdrop.

The works on display aim to capture an open-eyed courage that defies and illuminates what is perceived to be Putin's overbearing Russia 1. But the authors often descend into uncomplicated mockery; they lack the kind of pointed elaboration of a parallel Russia promised in the exhibit's manifesto. The shows ran during the same time the Guggenheim exposition was on display, but the juxtaposition was muted by the very fact that Russia 2 was included in the list of special supplemental programs presented around New York concurrently with Russia!

The so-called Russia 1 has a tendency not only to subsume its challengers, but also to retaliate against them. A civil suit was filed against the organizers of the exhibit when it was first shown in Moscow. The plaintiffs В a group of nine members of the Moscow Union of Artists В sought financial compensation of 5 million rubles ($179,000) for the "moral harm" caused by some of the works. In a feat of near-perfect timing, days before the exhibit was scheduled to open in New York, the second hearing was held in a Moscow court. The confrontation of the two Russias could hardly have been better orchestrated.

Still, the exhibit falls short largely on artistic merits. Usurping and caricaturing the reputed symbols of Russia 1 resulted in a grotesque facsimile of the reality the artists sought to undermine. The clones of Lenin, Christ and the imperial eagle teach the visitor little about Putin's Russia, and even less about the authors' declared aspiration to build an open and superior alternative.


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