Whenever a supposedly »major« decision is on the agenda in Russia, and artists and intellectuals alike are expected to take a stance, it is almost inevitable that a reference will be made to one of Maxim Gorky’s texts, which serves as a paradigm for Russian cultural history. In March 1932, the proletarian writer – author of key novels such as »The Mother« (1906), one of the most important representatives of Socialist Realism and in Stalin’s good books in the last years of his life when he was one of the most prominent literary officials of the regime – published an extensive essay entitled »On whose side are you, ›masters of culture‹?«, which appeared simultaneously in the leading Soviet dailies »Pravda« and »Izvestiya«. Gorky’s response to that question remained topical for decades: »You, the intelligentsia, the so-called ›masters of culture‹, must understand that the working class, which has taken power into its hands, has opened up the broadest options of cultural creation to you«. On the subject of critics of the regime, Gorky wrote: »Just look what bitter lessons history is teaching the Russian intelligentsia: it did not go along with its working-class people and now it is languishing in impotent evil, mouldering in emigration. Soon every last one of them will die out and they will be remembered as traitors.«

75 years later, in a not particularly proletarian political discourse, which recently has increasingly been confined merely to commenting on decisions taken by President Vladimir Putin, workers as a subject of politics necessarily play only a subsidiary role. However, the cited passage seems horrifyingly topical if one replaces that insignificant little term »the working-class« by »United Russia« – the name of Putin’s party. In this case however the question that takes centre-stage is whether and how one goes along with the president. Or rather; how and whether Vladimir Putin should remain in power after his second – and as the constitution currently stands, his last – term of office. Since summer 2007 Putin has repeatedly asserted that he will not remain in office, and thus is not seeking for the constitution to be amended. Four veritable grand masters of culture did not wish to let this pass without comment: on 16th October 2007 the Russian government daily »Rossiyskaya Gazeta« published an open letter to the Russian President, and what’s more, it was signed »on behalf of all the members of the artistic professions in Russia«. The signatories – who naturally were not in any way legitimated by their various professional bodies – were artists Zurab Cereteli and Tair Salachov, also known as the president and vice-president of the Russian Academy of Arts, the principal of the State Academy of the Arts in St. Petersburg, Albert Carkin, and internationally renowned film director Nikita Mikhalkov: »The Russian Academy of the Arts appeals to you once more, urging you to remain in your post for a further term of office. In thus petitioning you, we are expressing the opinion of Russia’s entire artistic community of c. 65,000 artists, painters, sculptors, graphic arts, masters of decorative and applied art, set design and popular art.«

This »Letter of the Four« made considerable waves in public discourse and succeeded for the first time in the Putin era in placing political commentaries by artists in the limelight of mass media attention. The letter was attacked in swingeing polemical comments in Russian weblogs and finally one hundred intellectuals, including little-known artists such as caricaturist Andrej Bilžo, conceptual artist Ivan Cujkov or photographer, Dmitri Šubin, signed a counter-letter, calling on President Putin to respect the constitution and hence to step down at the end of his term of office. The media showdown however came on television, a medium that is to a large extent under the thumb of governmental control, and took place on the main evening talk-show to boot. Film director Mikhalkov and the liberal writer Viktor Erofeev engaged in a »dual« on NTV’s »To the Barrier«. Erofeev deftly lambasted the letter signed by his counterpart and in an interactive audience survey he beat the Putin faction hands-down – a symbolic slap not just for Mikhalkov and comrades, but also for their idol Vladimir. The president didn’t hold it against the director: a few days later he ostentatiously attended an exclusive screening of Mikhalkov’s most recent film »12«.

Quite apart from the »Letter of the Four«, an exhibition of contemporary Russian art in Paris also led to heated discussions recently and to a considerable number of public letters. Andrei Erofeev, brother of Viktor and director of the department in the state-run Tretyakov Gallery dealing with the most recent art trends, included newer, post-Soviet works in his exhibition »Sots Art. Art politique en Russie de 1972 à aujourd’hui« (»Sots Art. Political Art in Russia from 1972 to the present«). These were shown alongside more classical works of Sots Art – a conceptualist current in the Soviet underground scene in the 1970s and 80s. When a version of the show was presented in Moscow, it merely triggered expert discussions on the curatorial concept if indeed it provoked any reaction at all. However, when the exhibition was to be exported to Paris, the situation changed in one fell swoop and the officials in charge of granting export authorisations were not the only ones that started to take an interest in the show. In particular, one work by the not particularly politicised fun actionist duo »Blue Noses« even caught the eye of Minister of Culture Aleksandr Sokolov. In their seemingly harmless and lyrical photograph »The Era of Mercy« (2005) – the title echoes a Soviet thriller of the same name – artists Vjaceslav Mizin and Aleksandr Šaburov, in a work entirely in Oliviero Toscani style, portrayed two purportedly homosexual policemen kissing intimately and tenderly in a Russian birch forest. In the daily paper »Kommersant«, Minister Sokolov dubbed this »pornography«, stressing that he wished to prevent it from being exported: »If this exhibition appears there, this will cast enormous shame upon Russia, and we shall have to shoulder the blame for that.«

»The Era of Mercy« stayed at home, but precisely because of that it hit the front pages of international newspapers. Nonetheless, the scandal forecast by the minister would in any event not have come to pass even if the work had been shown in Erofeev’s exhibition in the Maison Rouge in Paris. Erofeev did however become a target attracting much media attention in attacks from a number of Russian Orthodox activists, who managed to trigger initial judicial investigations against him in November 2007 on suspicion of »inciting national, racial or religious hatred«¹. The charges were levelled against »Forbidden Art 2006«, an exhibition curated by Erofeev in Moscow’s Sakharov Centre, which showed works that originally could not be shown in Moscow in the course of 2006 due to censorship or self-censorship. In late November 2007 virtually the entire Moscow art scene came out in support of Erofeev and protested in an open, strongly worded letter against the judicial persecution of curators: »The criminal procedures instigated against the organisers of an exhibition against censorship signifies that censorship is assuming totalitarian traits.« Shortly before this, the news had also got out that the Sakharov Centre, a Moscow institution that concentrates on commemorating victims of totalitarian regimes, along with committed art and political commitment to human rights, was in all probability going to be closed in early 2008. The formal reason is a lack of funding, with support from abroad and state financing drying up, together with the fact that Russian private sector sponsors are not particularly keen to make themselves the target of religious fundamentalists by supporting this kind of institution.

The state bringing pressure to bear on critical art, isolated artists, who – as in Gorky’s day – are seeking salvation in emigration, a deluge of open letters in defence of elementary freedoms – this is all an extremely alarming side of the coin, although its significance for the status quo in Russian contemporary art should however not be over-estimated. That is particularly true sometimes there is an often impenetrable dialectic between state power and art in cases of alleged or actual state intervention. On occasion this also generates unexpected win-win situations – in clear contrast to days gone by, when market considerations, for example, played virtually no part for artists living in the Soviet Union with no scope to leave the country. That means that both the »Blue Noses« and their gallerist, Marat Gelman, can be grateful to the Culture Minister for his clear words, which triggered reports on the photo in question around the globe. However, even the imminent closure of the Sakharov Centre, whose advocacy of human rights and civil liberties has become entirely insignificant in terms of realpolitik in the Putin era, delights more than just the institution’s fundamentalist opponents. The centre’s Supervisory Board also believes that the likely (media) reaction from abroad will be at least modestly useful politically.

Nor indeed are there any signs of fear or a sense of intimidation to be observed in the art scene: quite the contrary. Prominent artists such as Dmitri Vrubel and Viktoriya Timofeeva adopt an extremely critical stance on Russian politics in their works as well as in blogs (http://dmitrivrubel.livejournal.com). Or, to cite another example, two days before the Russian parliamentary elections in 2007, when the »Kandinsky Art Prize« was awarded for the first time, the organisers once again deployed Mizin and Šaburov’s gay policemen – this time on a stage– without having really serious misgivings about it. That was at a gala event with Russian oligarchs and prominent international art-world figures like theatre director and designer Robert Wilson or the director of the Guggenheim, Thomas Krens. The latter also went up on stage to award the first prize, a full 40,000 Euro – more than the British Turner Prize – to »Artist of the Year « Anatoly Osmolovsky. Unlike almost all of the rest of Moscow’s 1990s radical art scene, the former actionist artist has re-invented himself from scratch; he now works with abstract sculptures, which were also shown at documenta 12. In addition, a recent series of lectures by Osmolovsky on contemporary art attracted a great deal of interest in Moscow.

The Kandinsky Art Prize, financed by an international bank, first and foremost illustrates one thing: petro-roubles are flooding into contemporary art as they have never done before, and new gallery venues have emerged, for example in the shape of the first private museum for contemporary art (art4.ru) and in the former winery »Vinzavod«; an art market is developing by leaps and bounds, and in parallel – fostered by private galleries – a star system modelled on the Western (market) model is emerging. One example of this is the former actionist artist Oleg Kulik, enfant terrible of the 1990s, who last summer showed a huge, rather costly retrospective in the Central House of Artists. Or indeed the painter duo Dubosarsky and Vinogradov, who enjoy success on both Russian and international markets and by now act like a smoothly functioning firm; to cite just one example, their most recent venture involved investing in a new Internet TV broadcaster. Parallel to the growing capitalisation of contemporary art, the glamour factor has also increased dramatically, and upmarket members of the Russian celebrity circus made the trip to Venice for the inauguration of the Biennale, whilst Muscovite art dealers are pulling out all the stops to do justice to this clamour for glamour. One recent example saw a show of Marilyn Manson’s watercolours arranged to coincide with the US rock star’s Moscow concert.

Currently contradictions predominate, as is clearly visible, for example, in the person of the curator Andrei Erofeev. On the one hand he is a member of the jury awarding the Kandinsky Prize, feted by influential oligarchs, yet on the other hand – for his curatorial activities – he may soon be facing criminal charges. In classical Leninist terms, contradictions may well lead to revolutions. There is little sign of that in the contemporary Russian art scene. On the contrary: art faces a twofold threat – on the one hand from repressive state power, and on the other hand from the equally brutal market. It is anything but trivial to preserve artistic autonomy between these two poles of tension.

 

Translated by Helen Ferguson

 

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