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From Andrey Kovalev's
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New!!!
Ilya
Kabakov Dossier
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"Caution,
Religion!" Criminal Against Head of the Sakharov Museum!!!
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Special
research for Thomas Krens
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Francesco Bonami and Venice Biennale spy reports
Articles
Total
Return. Art News, May 2004 (Volume 103/Number 5)
The issue of “trophy
art”, which used to arouse so much emotion, now reached the phase of
stagnation. German ambassador in Russia Hans-Friedrich von Ploetz speaks of
“complex of restitution” and humbly repeats that he “can only express his
desires, hopes, expectations”. He also states that the issue of “artistic
trophies” of World War II “is one of the few remaining unresolved issues”
in relationship between two countries. In the nineties the German government
used the “art trophies” question for bringing pressure upon Boris Yeltsin,
but now the situation has changed. The issue of Russian debt to Germany is not
as keen now, and Moscow began using the old problem for its own purposes,
directly provoking Germans.
Irina
Nakhova. “Increased alert degree” // Flash Art, May 2004
Light-boxes are spread around the dark hall, on their glowing sides there
are pictures of gas stations in the night and houses typical for one-storeyed
America, colored with Christmas illumination. Something Vladimir Lenin referred
to as “the idiocy of rural life”, a perfect scenery for David Lynch’s
chasing around his American phantoms. This combination of disunity and
collectivism, incomprehensible for a European, had already been described by
Jean Baudrillard in his famous book “America”.
Avdey Ter-Oganyan – Artist and Public Enemy
- Flash Art, 2003,
Summer issue
exhibition “Art Manege-98” where he cut to
pieces cheap paper icons bought in a church shop. Later he was sued for a
fabricated charge of “promotion of international and religious hatred”. In
1999 he became an outlaw and currently resides in Czechia without even being
able to visit his own exhibition. There is another Russian artist who was also
forced to become a political immigrant, Oleg Mavromatti who nailed himself to a
cross during an action titled “I’m not the son of God” in 2000, he was
charged on the same cause and escaped to Bulgaria. Both cases show that
previously ungodly Russia eventually becomes a country where atheist sayings are
persecuted by the state, and religious extremists are allowed to go unpunished
for attacking exhibitions. In 2000 Andey Ter-Oganyan’s exhibition at Marat
Guelman’s gallery was attacked. It is quite important to denote that religious
extremists domesticated some of radical artistic technologies, as they painted
their malediction upon the iconoclastic artist with spray cans. The
“performers” who attacked the exhibition “Beware – religion” at
Sakharov’s Center adhered to similar technique.
Francesco Bonami.
Biennale Is Not a Total Installation. Interview by Andrey Kovalev
(in Russian. - 'Vremja
Moscow news' - 04.02.03)
What I mean is you cannot display your dream, art for art’s sake. Nor
can you focus on a simple description of the world.
I don’t think so. Obviously we are all obsessed by the idea of
“public” as a certain abstract group of individuals. But it is necessary to
work with the individual viewer in mind. Especially, if you’re getting up a
major exhibition where the viewer will have very little time for examining any
one item.
The last thing I want is a trite effect. My chief objective is not just to
illustrate some abstract idea, but to show the metaphors it sprouts. I do not
intend to offer the viewer a master key to understanding, my aim is to achieve
the purity of idea representation.
Andrey Kovalev. Moscow Express.
Kulik v. Kourni in the Russian art capital
Shorter version - at Artnet.com http://www.artnet.com/Magazine/features/kovalev/kovalev12-2-02.asp
Though Kulik has not given up his old tactics of epatage and scandal, the
wild '90s in Russia, when Kulik acted a mad dog, are now over. His history of
aggressive actions is increasingly associated with a notion of "wild money
in Russia being made basically by those who embrace violence as a lifestyle."
The quotation belongs to Victor Tupitsyn, the Russian-born American critic and
philosopher who supports Moscow conceptualists with Ilya Kabakov as their head
and bitterly attacks those of the neo-NEP movement.
In truth, Kulik's achievements in the 1990s mirrored the Russian Capitalist
revolution, and reflected step by step the intensive transformations of the new
class's collective body. Oleg Kulik, the bad dog of young Russian capitalism,
now concerns himself with legal decoration of offices and informational flows.
Russia,
Where Monsieur de Jourdain Meets The Great Gatsby or
Russian Art Economy: From Potlatch to Market Utopia
This fact also reflects the reality, for during the 90’s several galleries
have been stoically functioning as museums of modern art, kunsthalle and other
non-commercial institutions. Thus, the main trouble of the art market in Russia
is that legal non-market forms of production and distribution are hardly
noticeable within it.
“The story
of K&M”.
Vitaly
Komar, Alexander Melamid. “Dmitry Tveritinov’s story” @ Marat Guelman’s Gallery.
ttp://nyartsmagazine.com/70/km.htm
And now, in an atmosphere of patriotic excitement that embraces America, such
deconstructing gestures also look like evidences of a might-have-been story. This brutal
and ironic gesticulation seems somewhat irrelevant from the standpoint of American
patriotism. So the merry old fellows had to travel back to eighteenth century. But the
real problem is that conceptualism that declared the impossibility of direct message and
ambivalence of significates and denotations also became a historical style after 9.11.01.
Andrey Kovalev. Kassel Documenta
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/museology/kassel.htm
Kassel Documenta is commonly compared to the Olympic games, but, being an
inhabitant of former Eastern Empire, I remember great all-Union exhibitions held
in the USSR, where regional unions of artists struggled fiercely for the right
to ‘represent’. The rhetorical scheme designed to justify these pragmatic
actions (‘National diversity of Socialistic realism’) bore a somewhat
suspicious resemblance to today’s postcolonial terminology.
It is quite understandable, since contemporary art is product of gladiators,
lance-knights, legionaries, mercenaries, soldiers of fortune, pilgrims,
conquistadors, double agents.
However, the actual state of international contemporary art is not that
pitiable. Yinka Shonibare (Gallantry and Criminal Conversation), a British
artist, exhibited a work that inspired some optimism — headless dummies in
18th century costumes making love in every imaginable position. What is really
required of modern art is a good sight and positive emotions.
Big Politics in Moscow. - Artnet.com
http://www.artnet.com/magazine/news/kovalev/kovalev6-4-02.asp
By all accounts, the group spent only about an hour at the Hermitage. The
brevity of the trip was wryly noted by local commentators, as the Hermitage is
huge and it takes at least 15 minutes to cover the distance between the entrance
and the nearest painting. Thus, observers calculated, the Bushes spent less than
30 minutes with the masterpieces of the Hermitage.
Nevertheless, George W. clearly saw at least two paintings and had a chance to
demonstrate his IQ. When the portrait of Catherine the Great was shown to him,
he asked cunningly, "And where is Potemkin?"
So, perhaps missing the Malevich wasn't that much of a loss for Mr. Bush -- he
will probably be able to see it at Guggenheim on Fifth Avenue, eventually,
should he care to appear in that alarmingly modernist structure.
Andrey Kovalev. Maria
Serebryakova. Regina, Moscow. - Flash Art International
n° 225 July- September 2002
http://www.flashartonline.com/issues/225international/singlesections/reviews225int.asp
Serebryakova has had a classical art education, i.e., sometime ago she was
involved in the teleology of painting as absolute creation, an idea which was
renounced by the art of the last century. So the desire to create a painting can
be described in this cold intellectual work dealing with the “painting of
desire.” The desire for that very form of painting which kicked the bucket
long ago resembles the phantom pain of amputated limbs.
The trivial maxim that “painting is a window onto the world” is
strangely inverted into a statement like “windows are paintings of the
world.”
The answer to the question of why one of the most radical Moscow galleries moved
from raging social performances to dry discussions of the essence of art may be
found in Lenin’s The Development of Capitalism in Russia.
Blackest Square. - Studio international website
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/painting/malevich.htm
However, the former owners of the ‘Black Square’, the bankers
belonging to the epoch of primary accumulation, were not fully conscious of the
value of the items they possessed.
Finally, as long as it is owned by the state, the ‘Black Square’ is
eligible to be transported across the borders and be exhibited at any affiliate
branch of Guggenheim all around the world. Or, for example, in the Hermitage
rooms at Somerset House.
Andrey Kovalev. Skythian baba’s: A painting
counter-revolution. - Studio international website
Natalia Goncharova: The Russian Years. Russian Museum, Benois Wing, St.
Petersburg. From 25 April to 15 July, 2002.
http://www.studio-international.co.uk/painting/kovalev.htm
Goncharova, who had never accepted ‘the great denial of art’, was
nevertheless a very determined woman.
But anti-modernist and anti-western words said by a European intellectual
secretly refer to the critique of European culture practised by Gaugin, Picasso
and German expressionists.
If one tries to interpret neoprimitivism in the manner of Eduard Said, as a
specific form of colonialism, it seems obvious that German and French artists
had to carry out their predatory expeditions in faraway lands (such as Africa
and Tahiti). Russians, according to local imperial tradition, developed domestic
artistic spaces.
Andrey Kovalev. Aidan Salakhova. Ka’bah. XL
Gallery. - Flash Art, May 2002
Russian Azerbaijani Aidan sent a hard and clear message about the danger of both
feminine and oriental discourses. Let me just remind that Sufis were not only
ethnic dancers, but are directly associated with assassins, the mysterious sect
of poets-terrorists. But Sufis and assassins are definitely not examples of
orthodox Islam, while Moscow embraces non-typical kind of political correctness.
Painting
at a Price. The Moscow Arts Center is launching the Knave of Diamonds Moscow
news, N16 2002
The most amusing thing was that the breakthrough had been achieved by the
very artists who were vehemently opposed to culture in general and to Western
culture in particular. The mammoth 1994 show called Great Utopia (New
York-Berlin-Moscow), that summed up the Russian contribution to world culture,
began with the Donkey's Tail, not with the Knave of Diamonds. The attempt to
catch up with the winners was dismissed out of hand. The 20th century pantheon
accepted Marc Chagall's blue Jews soaring high over Vitebsk; Kazimir Malevich's
heavy Suprematist other-worldliness; and Wassily Kandinsky's paranoid
theory-backed abstract shapes.
On
the nature of illusion and the illusion of nature.(Francisco Infante,
Nonna Goryunova. “Between sky and earth”, Krokin-gallery, Moscow).
Boris Groys, the cunning historiographer of “the second avant-garde”
included Infante in the golden roster of “Moscow romantic conceptualism”,
although the latter leaned towards manipulating with languages and always seemed
to operate visual images recalled from his own memory. Besides that Infante also
had his own audience, the supporters of the technocratic utopia, which was quite
a popular thing back in the sixties and was gently smothered later in the
seventies. The annihilation of that utopia resulted in escaping to the realm of
Nature a la Henry Thoreau.
Spectre of Warholl Wanders through Russia
The principal impression from the visit to the Pushkin Museum
is that Warhol was ultimately unable to become a machine of desire in the epoch
of total mechanical reproduction. For that the surface of the canvas is too
hand-made and exciting, the whole is put together too roughly and incongruously.
It all breathes, but the breath is somewhat hard and smothered... A curious
observation: at the Hermitage, among the Scythian chariots, Warhol looked quite
natural and at home, but at the Pushkin Museum he turned out to be an unwanted
guest.
Die russische Aktionskunst in: Elisabeth
Jappe. Perfomance, Ritual, Prozes. Handbuch der Aktionenkunst in Europa. -
Munchen - New York: Prestel, 1993, SS. 61-63
Die russische Aktionskunst seit futuristischen Zeiten eine ganz eigene
Tradition. 1914 gingen Kasimir Malewitsch und Alexej Morgunow in der eleganten
Moskauer Kuznetzky Most spazieren, einen bemalten Holzlöffel im Knopfloch. Die
typisch russischen Elemente dieser Aktion: sie wird von Randfiguren der
Gesellschaft aus geführt, und zwar meist von einer Gruppe, zumindest von zwei
Künstlern. Performances wie die der Wiener Aktionisten, die sich auf den
Künstler und seinen Körper konzentrieren, fanden in Rußland nie Anklang.
Russische Performance galt immer als >sozialkritisch<, obwohl dieses
Soziale in Wirklichkeit eher die Ausnahme war.
Meta-Tinguely,
Or Pandora's Box on the Bank of the Moscow River - Parkett. Zurich. No. 25,
Sept. 1990
To compare the apotheosis of the dump in
Tinguely's works with the aesthetics of garbage which is so popular among Moscow conceptualists in the circle of Ilya
Kabakov, and which is now seen in the West as a prime example of cultural
convergence. Tinguely's social criticism is based on the rhetorical gesture of
pointing at the phantoms looming on the fringes of comfortable existence in a
post-industrial society, whereas the aesthetic speculations of Kabakov and his
followers focus on the solid layer of communal waste surrounding every Soviet
person as the only observable reality
AFFLUENCE AND TOTALITARIAN MERCANTILISM.
Swiss artist Jean TINGUELY is interviewed by
art critic Andrei KOVALEV - Moscow news weekly. No 10, 1990, October.
I had the impression that the maestro was playing a trick on me, especially
about the Stalinist conception of arts, and I think that the reader might have
the impression that my interviewee was a boring advocate of Critical Realism in
art or some kind of Eurocommunism fundamentalist. But those who choose to visit
the exhibition on Krymsky Val St. will believe the opposite and will really be
enchanted by the fantastic, cosmic, moving, terrific constructions from old
wheels, rusty metal, discarded masks and real human skulls.
Brener: Street Fighter and His Limits.
- "Urbanaria", Soros Center for CContemporary Arts,
Ljubljana 1994 - 1995
Brener attained his objective in a masterly manner: he managed to enrage
everybody quite enough. On the other hand, his end in no way justifies his
means - the artistic society tries to be indifferent to the memories of cyclic
and disgusting repetitions of gestures and to the historical perspective. In
this case the effect is reminiscent of the impact of hard-core pornography -
it stirs up the intellectual as much as the truck driver.
Does
Ilya Kabakov exists?
Ilya Kabakov, the bard of Soviet Atlantida which has sunk to the Time
ocean bottom, sings it anywhere but Russia for here his "total
installation" theory may well be taken with a smirk, which seems to prevent
the master from returning to the present constantly changing context of this
reincarnated country.
The "new" Kabakov has nothing to do there after he won the world's
best museums by deliberately stylizing all such shabbiness and garbage. The real
Kabakov, if only he deigns to return, will alight at the Tretyakov Gallery of
the Pushkin Museum. As long as this has not come to pass, the only cure for
Oedipus perversion is to tell each other stories of what Daddy would do.
Avalakiteshvara's Mantra and its Revolutionary
Essence.
However one cannot but admit that the scene for
social activity has been chosen correctiy. On semantic fields of new Russia
advertising has replaced political agitation and Propaganda , though during the
past decades of the Soviet regime political agitation and Propaganda clearly
demonstrated a degenerated and utterly automated structure in the zone of
complete indistingtion. A specific feature of modern Russian advertising is that
it can in no way become an automated method , but arouses vital human feelings
as political agitation and propaganda did
this before. In worldly aspect our artists shall be bound to give up elite
alienation and enter advertising and design business.
Alexei Shulgin / Sergei Leontiev "Let God save the beggars".
The mental and physical body of Moscow is schizophrenized as a result of the capitalist invasion. The pathetic text of the capital of the empire of evil is illustrated with symbols of consumerism and post-industrial economics - coca cola advertising is placed on a Stalinist house in former Gorky-street, along which luxurious cars carry the russian
nouveau riche. This nouveau riche has changed their numenklatura black volga's for a mercedeses recently.
SHINING
PROSTHESES. Vladislav Efimov & Aristarkh Chernyshov. TV-gallery.
September 16 - October 10, 1998
In the 80s, first in the West and then in our country,
exhibitions and museums filled with dissected, virtualized and therefore
extremely unhappy bodies. It seems that this bacchanalia withstands an elevated
balance of the Heavenly and the Earthly, which was discovered by the artists of
Renaissance. However, in its harmony one can feel a stinking smell of a
dissecting room, as it leans on the possibility to examine a human body in its
material aspects. To get a harmonious man, it was necessary to dissect a
body-monad-vessel Creator’s idea cast into. Thus, David of Michelangelo is a
straight forefather of Frankenstein and Terminator.
Andrey
Monastyrsky. «Gosagroprom». - «Vecherniaya
Moskva» magazine. June 22- July 5, 1998)
Russian art once had the Golden Age of reflexive art – the «Collective
actions» group, that existed in the 70s, guided by the brilliant and mysterious
Andrey Monastyrsky
Thus, after shock therapy and searches of the empty center, a simple statement
is made - that the art message could do without a word of explanation. The True
Truth always looks trivial and revolutionary. Still, the explanatory note could
be hidden within a closed case, though this text might not help to understand
what is not intended to be understood. It’s that simple: Conceptualism never
speaks of decoding the message, only about possibility of communication.
Certainly, the windbag critic will unmask the tricky artist, and inform the
whole world that combination of Stalinist decorum and private stuff (the
cigarette-holder) is just about the time of opposition between Power and
intellectuals. Jupiter may do whatever he wants, while a poor bull can’t say a
word.
"Sacrifice" - Oleg
Kulik performans at "Rigina gallery
The provocation took place at the level of the mass consciousness and it gratefully responded to it. Mass media, which is generally quite indifferent to the occupations of artists, got unexpectedly excited and rumors concerning the developments at the Regina Art Gallery acquired the range of a well - planned scandal. What made everything especially poignant was the fact that it was a private gallery, and it belonged to the world of brokers and joint ventures.
The strategy was a smart shot, and 0. Kulik happened to be the first to publicly tear off the slippery mask of an augur and teacher of life and engaged himself in that very thing the contemporary artist is to engage himself in, i.e. in provocation, in tickling public consciousness which is always prepared to take a well-fed nap.
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Art
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The
True Malevich. - Artchronika, 2, 2002
He sketched out the scenario for all the subsequent histories of his life,
appointing himself a prophet of new worlds. Hence, whenever someone writes about
Malevich they come under the powerful influence of his off-beat,
multidimensional rhetoric and turn from a researcher into an acolyte who creates
apocrypha, following his behests and outline plans. Hence, despite the fact that
Kazimir the Great has been studied most thoroughly, no critical examination has
been applied to the most substantial element in his creative legacy — the myth
of Malevich the artist.
Letters from the Red Star or A Brief Reflection on the
Quickest Ways to Improve Human Nature through Properly Organized Structures
- International Colloquium TOTALITARIANNISMS AND TRADITIONS - Ars 2-3 /
1993, http://www.dejum.sav.sk/OBSAH/Ars9323.htm
The
avant-gardists Paradox/ New realities in Soviet Art and Art Research. AICARC
(AICA ARCHIVES), 1&2. 1989, pp. 11-13
The Whole World of Violence. Applied Victimology of
Russian Art - International conference "Body in kommunism",
Berlin, 1995
It is worth noting, that the policy of the body, the attitude towards
physicality, as well as many important performances and happenings, done in 1910
- 1916, are still the problems waiting to bbe researched and reflected. Here one
can recall Mikhail Larionov's painting of his body, wotty and shocking
performances, which accompanyied almost all exhibitions of the russian futurists
and so on. The most radical of the known episodes id the futuristic funeral of
their own mother, which was organised by two sisters-futurist in Kharkov. In
fact, the last performance was the funeral of Kasimir Malevich in a futurist
coffin. By that time physicality had been entirely appropriated by the power,
and the rejected had to do with the domain of the spirit.
Today
will never come. Virtual Revolution project.
Garbage is the only place where such a wonderful, global and total democracy (shitocracy,
which is more to the point) is possible. Though, the main excuse of the Internet
is in the great Pornography, new courtly lyrics which dominates over horror of
dimmed eyes and sweatened palms. Call-girls are the only ones that understand
love. The reality is realized by virtual addicts hooked on games. The private
and the individual haven't survived but in the junkyard, among read-out
newspapers, used-out condoms and fast-food packages.
Chardzjijev
case
Nicolas V. Iljine
My
name is Andrey
Kovalev, I am an art critic from Moscow. I’m a Ph.D. in Art History. (Moscow State
University, Historical Faculty, Art History Department). Thesis: Soviet
art criticism of the 1920s).
For the last 15 years I've been working as art critic for different newspapers and
magazines. Present position - art critic in daily newspaper
"Vremja
- Moskovskije Novosti" ("Mosccow news"). Author of
three books, now write a book “Russian art of XX century” for
“Galart Publishing House”, Moscow.
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