After indifference

In France, now it is not the most successful time for luxury and blissful, which is contemporary art. On the agenda, the inexorably approaching presidential elections with Marin Le Pen as a favorite, less than a week ago, they were largely remembered by the victims of the attack in Nice, Paris is no longer a holiday, which is always with you, Paris is empty and, perhaps, will never be the same.

The director of the FIAC fair Jennifer Flei, however, really wants Paris to become the capital of art - modern, of course. “ Fiac is an old fair, it passes into the hands of my generation - and what, we will kill her with our indifference? What are we capable of except how to criticize? So I got my Mission Impossible , ”Flay explains his reformal ardor. Incredible efforts are made for this: the prices for the stand were raised to the level of Basel, the national quota, contrary to the good French tradition, is not observed, in the bird Pale, for the first time in the history of the fairs, they opened a platform similar to Frieze Masters , on site ; The curator Lorenzo Benedetti gathered there the works of Damien Hurst, Jimmy Durema, Yana Fabra, Marseille Dyushan, Lawrence Vayner and others.

But any dreams, as always, are crashed on numbers. And last year’s example. The franchise in Los Angeles was forced to refuse, as well as parallel programs-sculptures in the Museum of Natural History and Young Art in the Fashion Museum. You can not regret these losses. The program of young art Officiel Le was perceived by the organizers as an optional appendage, and was stupidly supervised. Never finding a concept, it was preferred to transfer it to the next year. In the meantime, the “debutants” sheltered another fair- Yia in Carro-Du-Temple .

There are several reasons here. From the purely local-the French public, despite all the educational initiatives of both the state and private capital, is indifferent to modern art-to global: the art business is experiencing a systemic crisis.

The “chauvinism” of the French is a parable in the tongue: having flushed at Larry Gagosyan around the main fair attraction, a pair of Rednecs of the authorship of the American hyperrealist Dwayne Hanson, they are relieved to migrate to Valois's conjunkers to admire “their relatives”-early sculptures, Nicky de Saint-Fall, Jean Tenngley, Jean Vigleya. It is clear the despondency of the Germans and the Americans - Spruth Magers and Pace : no matter how much the Frenchman is ned Cindy Sherman, he still looks towards Orlan.

And, in truth, although the Americans are unofficial -“honorary guests”, it’s difficult to fight with the Gallic “dominant”: out of 186 participants, 53 are French, which, alas, does not make Fiac -2016 better. 53 galleries selling the same artists, the good half of which are not at all Contemporary , but OLD News . The riddle remains on the stands of Robert a combination of a combination, heading the notorious movement of a new - in quotation marks - figurativeness. It is clear that in the bins at the gallerys, hundreds of its extremely unsuccessful sculptures from polyester and wood are languishing, for which there was demand in the early 2000s, and now you need to get rid of wholesed, but have mercy: for these purposes there are provincial auction.

Bulware for Grand Palais and Iva Klein with Alexander Colder per square meter. And the one and the other remain a win-win option for art dealers: the places of their work occupy a little, they cost a lot, they go out, because the average collector is not a visitor-first-first discoverer, but a conformist-decorator in search of a “bright spot” for a beige living room.

Starting in the pandan Fiac auction Christie ' s With the collection of Claude Berry, it once again proves: it is useless to deal with the system-everything that was purchased by Berry on his own, and not on the advice of the Guru-art dealer Leo Castelli, from the point of view of investment-money is right and even included in the auction, the patterns of de Grandham can give out to distant relatives for Christmas, but Klein or Jadd decorated the first lanes of specialized publications. Here it is, the unpleasant truth about the world of art today: history does not teach anything, the gallerymen continue to step on the same rake as ten years ago. Despite the market fraud with the YBA or Chinese pop art, the art business is still looking for easy ways: Fiac -2016 convincingly demonstrates this trend.

On 186, there were only three galleries that dared to show “unknown” names, and, as usual, they are all from Eastern Europe. The Hungarian ACB was brought by the interesting artist of movement, the Fluksus Andre, this is an example of the non-conformist Mail-Art of the 1970s, rare for fairs, since it is not commercial enough; Again, from Budapest - Kisterem with the next pioneer of abstractionism Ilona Kezer.

The Semiose Gallery with One distinguished the "Forgotten Names" genre Man Show William Burrose, unlike a colleague of Kerua, who showed himself unconvincing in an art field; The author of the Naked Breakfast, whatever one may say, revolutionized our ideas about the schedule in the book “ The Third Mind ” , never previously exhibited. Together with the Musorane Muzich mini -retrospect, they are probably the only ones who deserve attention: not without reason the curators Pompidu and Tate Modern , as reliable sources report, spent most of the time from them.

The rest of the FIAC of this year is alas, disappointment: neither in terms of content, nor even in terms of related social events, it is not the level of Art Basel and its branch in Miami. Paris, apparently, is destined to remain an optional point on the map of contemporary art for a long time.