| 7th International Art Fair "Art-Moscow 2003" During the press screening in the 8th hall of the Central House of Artists, where the main part of the exhibition of the Art Moscow fair was located, enthusiastic whispers from critics fluttered: “How fat! How delicious!” Indeed, the first impression from “Art-Moscow” is that the quality level of the goods offered has improved. Every gallery has stars. Or contemporary Russian art - from Koshlyakov, Zvezdochetov, Tanya Lieberman to the groups Escape and Radek. Or world modernism - Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Robert Rauschenberg.
According to Expo Park director Vasily Bychkov, this year Austria became the official guest of Art Moscow. Perhaps this explains the style of well-fed respectability that reigns at the exhibition. Among the Austrian galleries that attended the fair are Artmosphere, specializing in pop art and contemporary photography, galleries of Klaus Engelhorn, Ernst Hilger and longtime friend of Art Moscow Hans Knohl. Our galleries (the gentlemanly list of permanent participating galleries this year, thanks to the rigor of the expert commission chaired by Aidan Salakhova, has hardly expanded) are trying their best to comply with the new rules of the game of “bourgeoisness”. In the press release of the exhibition you can read a quick interview with several buyers of Art Moscow. In their honor, a special project “Contemporary Art in Private Collections” was organized. Almost all respondents (Olga Slutsker, Natalya Ivanova, Dmitry Kovalenko) consider beauty to be the principle of forming their collection. “Make it beautiful for us,” customers ask. "It will be done!" - the artists answer. And they do. Who (Alexander Savko) draws the Simpsons in the mise-en-scène of Reshetnikov’s film “Deuce Again.” Who (Sergei Kalinin, Farid Bogdalov) paints with a broad brush Viktor Chernomyrdin in the golden uniform of a tsarist official from Repin’s “Meeting of the State Council”. Who (Valery Koshlyakov) shows the ruins of Rome on corrugated cardboard. Judging by the same statements, consumers on the Russian art market are not very concerned about the conceptuality of Contemporary Art. They prefer to trust the muddy philistine intuition. Here are the words of collector Paola Messana: “Each painting from my collection is associated with some themes close to me. For example, Zvezdochetov’s work Romania Mare. I bought this painting for my birthday. My zodiac sign is Gemini, born in Rome. And in the picture there is a she-wolf and two twins who remind me of Romulus and Remus. And the humor around fascism and homosexuality is also very funny.”
The “painting” trend, officially legitimized by Victor Misiano, has had the effect of leaving other genres almost out of the picture: video art is poorly represented, there are few installations, and no one entertains people with happenings. In general, all this is not bad. I gained self-confidence, careful preparation, and a taste for presentation. The era of a kind of gallery narcissism is coming. The self-satisfied satiety of all members of the Art Community, curators, artists, “users” is now the most powerful engine of successful trade.
And yet, only one gallery dared to show the very mechanism of the art market. This is always the unique Kovcheg gallery that performs at Art Moscow. Every hour they change the display at their stand. They hold exhibitions of one painting: either their favorite artists of the “soft avant-garde” of the 20s and 30s, or non-textbook works of nonconformists (abstract expressionism from Erik Bulatov, for example). The viewer is intrigued. He is taken “behind the scenes” - the screen of the stand - and is offered to broaden his horizons of knowledge, to independently study the gallery’s “depository” with other rarities, the time of which (the appointed hour of the show) either has not yet come, or has already passed. The introduction is accompanied by a fascinating story from the curators (Sergei Safonov, Dmitry Smolev, Yuri Petukhov) about the provenance of this or that item. Such a hyper-individual approach to a potential buyer cannot but bear fruit.
So, the fair finally began to correspond to a sane market format. And it doesn't pretend to be more. And for those who are looking for them - good non-profit projects today, a lecture by the famous theorist Boris Groys the day after tomorrow (April 25) and the “Art Moscow Workshop” in early May. Sergei KHACHATUROV |
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