Russian Contemporary Art: between delay and emancipation Silvia Franceschini Contemporary Art is a major tool for twenty-first century cities to compete and to connect at the global scale. Enormous public investments are made all over the world in order to position cities on the map of the main international cultural geographies. Museums and art institutions become universal landmarks; arts schools become platforms of international exchange and cross-contamination; fairs and biennials are occasions for global tourism. Moscow's field of contemporary art represents a singularity within this global phenomenon. Despite huge potential in terms of cultural and economic resources, the Russian capital in the last twenty years refused to adapt to the hyper-modernity at the same speed as the other post-communist cities of Europe or Asia and is constantly in danger of becoming a "provincial megalopolis" (1). Reinforcing its barriers against the outside, instead of opening to cross-cultural exchanges, the city lost at the moment of the collapse of the USSR, the opportunity to become a relevant artistic hub for the Eurasian block. It passed up the chance to create a new and unique formulation of the contemporary based on the experience of the post-Soviet space. On the contrary, the main actors in the art system have chosen to become a "reproduction of the west" by providing the city with an index of cultural institutions that were not locally produced [MMoma, Biennales, Art Fairs]. These institutions did not merged with the existing layer of the Soviet public cultural infrastructure. The government did not envisioned contemporary art either as a tool of international soft power, or as an instrument to raise the level of civil society. This left a significant gap between art and society, art and public, art and the market but especially between artists and the system to which they belong. Twenty years later, in this moment of "global chaos", when art is becoming internationally an open-ground for political and social expression, a territory where everything is allowed and where all the other disciplines converge, Russian artists and their peculiar attachment to politics and reality have become relevant. The artist’s isolation and resistance to adapt to the wave of the neo-liberal market economy now makes them at the forefront of the reconfiguration of the future . This research has been an attempt to understand Russian contemporary art between delay and avant-garde. I have looked at how the field of contemporary art has developed and become institutionalized in the last 20 years since the opening to the market economy. I strived to understand how this "system" revealed the unique relationship between society and the art of the post-Soviet city. A multidimensional analysis of the system with all its actors has allowed me to observe the main causes and dynamics and to formulate a few statements and a hypothesis. A comparative analysis with other realities (Berlin, Beijing, the other countries ofmaking up BRIC and the United States) has served as a confirmation of these. The fieldwork investigation also included a collection of a series of outtakes from interviews from different professionals in the sector. 28
1. Auditorium Moscow. A Sketch for a Public Space, September 16 - October 16, 2011, Bielie Palaty, Prechistenka 1/2, Moscow
Sergey Sapozhnikov / Albert Pogorelkin, Halabuda, 2010. C-type print. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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A system in transition
The seeds for the development of contemporary art infrastructure started to appear during the last period of the Soviet Union. Gorbatchev's Glasnost and Perestro誰ka alleviated the socio-cultural situation in 1986, conveying alternative and humanists values. Artists not registered within the Union of Artists could, at last, come out of clandestine creativity and pretend to possess the right to form associations and clubs and to exhibit in communal exhibition halls. In that period of time, the first independent organizations started to appear like Furmanny Lane Workshop, Amateur association Hermitage, Avanguardist club Klava as well as the first traces of existence of a so-called "Art Market"(2). At the turn of the '90s, when the infrastructure collapsed and the new commercial infrastructure didn't appear, the art field was driven by intellect and experimentation. The artistic environment was characterized by what Viktor Misiano called "Tusovka" (3), an informal network of collective imitational praxis. Artists performed in public spaces, founded artistdriven schools (Avdej Ter Oganian founded a School for Contemporary Art). The financier George Soros appeared on the Moscow scene in 1992 and provided funding for the opening of the first infrastructure for contemporary art like the CAC (Center for Contemporary Art), the Media Art Lab on Yakimanka Street (both were closed in 1995) and the ICA (Institute for Contemporary Art), the first educational program in Contemporary Art directed by Joseph Backstain. After some years of creative confusion and multi-polarity, new polarities started to emerge. At the end of the 1990s, a few powerful individuals started to think about how to organize an "art system". Inspired by the western model and thanks to connections with the authorities, they were able to establish an index of art institutions. Leonid Bazhanov, the director of the Department of Contemporary Art in the Moscow government, created the NCCA (the National Center of Contemporary Art); Zurab Tseretely, the director of the Academy of Art, created the MMOMA (Moscow Museum of Modern Art) and Joseph Backstain created the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art.
Stained glass window from Presnya historical museum, Moscow. Photo courtesy of V-A-C Foundation.
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2. In 1986, at the 17th exhibition of Youth in Moscow artists were allowed to sell art. The first galleries started to appear in 1989 and 1990 saw the opening of the first International Art fair "Art Mif, Ideal project for a Soviet Art Market." From Georgy Nikich, interview with the author. 3. Misiano, Viktor, The Cultural Contradictions of the Tusovka, The Moscow Art Magazin, 1998
At the beginning of the new century, oligarchs, moving between philanthropic action and use of the arts to legitimate their business activities, gave birth to numerous foundations for the promotion of Contemporary Art. With strong economic power, foundations became the managers of the art system: they commissioned works, financed exhibitions and purchased artwork. With the power to select, evaluate and export, they turned out to be the only thing connecting the system with the global network of contemporary art.
4. At the State level the “Committee for Connection of Republic of Union of Independent States” didn't stipulate any corridor of privileged exchange with the former Soviet countries. In the '90 Viktor Misiano and Marat Guelman were the only to work on the re-elaboration of a "Post-Soviet space". 5. Misiano, Viktor, Il sistema dell’arte dell’autoritarismo glamour in Scotini, Marco, No-Order, Art
Although the emergence of the private sector was what was most desired by the government, according to the famous Basic Law of Culture in 1992, where the government shrugged off responsibility for cultural activities, any decision was made to create a medium for communication between the public and private sectors. In contrast with what happened in the United States or Germany, the Russian government did not introduce any significant tax breaks for donations and fund raising. That is why in Moscow it is possible to count just 12 private foundations and that is also why some oligarchs prefer to support foreign institutions for contemporary art over local institutions. The absence of a set of clear policies for almost 20 years has obstructed the flow of capital and allowed for the creation of a system with inevitable polarities that is dominated by inequality, competition and frustration for all creative workers that cannot access the network of private foundations. In writing the law code, the government removed the country's cultural relationship with the former Soviet Republics. No agreement was stipulated to maintain corridors of privileged exchange with the former Soviet Countries (4).
in a Post-Fordist society, Archive Books, Berlin, 2011
Moreover, accent was placed on “preservation” and not on “modernization” of the existing cultural infrastructure. For this reason, the Soviet cultural infrastructure, which was characterized by training and research institutes, academic museums and exhibition centers, after the moment of disintegration, did not move towards modernization. Some organizations like the Academy of the Arts and the Union of Artists were dissolved but soon reconstituted in a similar fashion (5).
Arseniy Zhilyaev, Readymade save us, 2011. Mixed media. Photo courtesy of the artist.
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Art vs. Production
The number of artists in Moscow oscillates between 200 to 300 contemporary artists (6) (small number if compared with the 20,000 artists of Berlin (7) ) and approximately 1,500 traditional artists who are part of the different Artists Unions (8).
6. Count effectuated on the base of different on-line databases. 7. Straka, Barbara, Berlin - a place to be for art and artists - a place to
The Main Union of Artists has maintained a structure similar to that during Soviet times, with its specific system of grants, pensions, and properties. The artists' studios are the most impressive of those properties: a network of more than 100 very luminous studios are disseminated around the city center in historical buildings from pre-revolutionary and Soviet times (9). These spaces are enviable for artists who do not have access to the Unions and need to adapt to the conditions of the so-called post-industrial "Creative Clusters"(10) or to work without a studio.
stay?, carried forward as part of the visit of a delegation of the Strelka, Institute for Media, Architecture and Design 8. Moscow Union of Artists, Artists Trade Union of Russia, Creative Union of Artists, Union of artists of Arbat.
The lack of space for production is just one of the many conditions of precariousness that has affected artists following the collapse of the USSR. The state has not updated social support system as happened, for example in Berlin, where the unions of East Germany dissolved and merged with the governmental western system of the Artists' Social Insurance Act (KSVG)(11), a form of special state protection for self-employed artists.
9. Properties overcome 60.000 m2. Moscow Union of Artists (http:// artanum.ru/). 10. The average price for a studio in the clusters oscillates is 20.000 rubles for m2 for year.
The small number of artists in Moscow is also strictly connected to the educational system. Nowadays, the Academy of Arts still supports the most conservative schools and institutions of art and design; they do not give enough attention to contemporary art practices. Therefore, among the young artists, there is a perception that such disciplines as philosophy and psychology may substitute for an education in an art institute (12). The only two schools really devoted to Contemporary Art (The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia and the ICA, which is directed by Dr. Joseph Backstein) graduate in total just 120 students per year. Both of the schools are very underfunded (13). Moreover, not one of the educational institutions includes bilateral exchange programs: students can live abroad but foreign students cannot come to Russia. Artists have been emigrating since the 1980s, but hardly any foreign artists have immigrated to Russia. The current infrastructure does not allow for the integration of foreign professionals in the art system, that inevitably remain local. The condition of the educational system seems to be the most visible sign of Russia's delay to modernize the arts and the biggest lost value from the Soviet era where education was at the base of the cultural infrastructure.
11. The Artists' Social Insurance Act (KSVG) came into force on August 2nd, 1981 and encompasses statutory health, long-term or old age care and pension insurance. Like employees, the artists and journalists / authors must only pay half of the social insurance contribution. Council of Europe, Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, Germany, 13RU - 8 th edition, 2011. 12. Minaev, Roman in Academia IV, 2010 13. Backstain school declares to have a budget of about 3000 dollars a year (Joseph Backstein, Interview
Other actors who contribute to the production of artists are private foundations that provide artists with studios, money for the realization of projects and scholarships to go abroad. Galleries play a very secondary role in the system of production. Two prizes, Innovation, which is supported by the state, and the Kandinsky, which is supported by the ArtChronika Foundation, are considered to be equal to international prizes such as the Turner Prize or Prix Marcel Duchamp. However, they are not powerful enough to promote artists in the long term and on the international scene.
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with the author, 14/05/2012) while The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia depends on the small budget of The Moscow Museum of Multimedia.
STATE BUDGET FINANCING OF CULTURE
PI
ICI
15 miliards
0,35%
0,26% 12,5 miliards
0,17%
2,5 miliards RUSSIA
GERMANY
CHINA
ICI [Intensity Cultural Index] = Cultural Investment in percent of GDP PI [Public Investment]
BRICS CONTEMPORARY ART MARKET
[CAI] 0,15
CHINA BRASIL
0,06
INDIA 0,04 0,02
RUSSIA
1,5
1,6
2,1
5,9
GDP [Trilions Dollars]
RUSSIA/ $ 30 mill _ INDIA/ $ 60 mill BRASIL/ $ 120 mil _ CHINA / $ 900 mill CAI [Contemporary Art Market Index] = Contemporary Art Market in percent of GDP*
* Art Market data elaborated on the source of Artnet, Phillips De Pury, Sotheby's and Christies. * GDP from World Bank.
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Art vs. Mediation
The word "mediation" describes something quite unrelated to Russia, a society characterised by climatic and political extremes. While a program of public art has never been initiated by the Russian government, whenever art goes public, it does so in the form of a scandal or of a political manifesto. If production seems to be the part of the system that is more underfunded and in danger of disappearing, mediation is definitely an aspect that is overfunded but in danger of shifting towards simple strategies of promotion. As Viktor Misiano explained well in his articles about the transformation of cultural infrastructure in the transitional period, the Soviet cultural intelligentsia disappeared over the course of a few years (14). The cultural industry is being constructed on the dismantling of the expert community and on the hiring of the entrepreneurial one: critics, historians and scientists who gravitated to the art field have been soon replaced by managers and developers. The consequences have been the creation of a "positive mediation" (15) not based on criticism or intellectualism but just worried about the building of the infrastructure itself. The figure of the "curator", one of the most powerful actors in the western model of art societies, took some time to appear and to be organically integrated into the system. For this reason, exhibition practices were not consolidated as an act of construction of the artists or the creation of discourse. Instead, it has often oscillated between an act of self-affirmation and political commentary.
14. Misiano, Viktor, Il sistema dell’arte dell’autoritarismo glamour in Scotini, Marco, No-Order, Art in a Post-Fordist society, Archive Books, Berlin, 2011 15. David Riff in Misiano, Viktor
To survive with such a weak system of mediation, on the one hand, artists have continued their practice of self promotion, becoming their own curator and in many cases acting as curators for their friends. On the other hand, private foundations have filled the gap left by the nearly inconsistent actions of art institutions. Private foundations have positioned themselves as the main entity responsible for the exhibition and promotion of artists in Russia as well as abroad. Thanks to big capital, oligarchs are able to overcome the bureaucratic barriers and to take to Moscow International exhibitions, artists and curators; they are also able to send abroad Russian artists in international exhibitions. Even thought necessary for the recognition of Russian artists (that still happen in the west), this manipulated system of import/ export has appeared sometimes aggressive and criticized by the artists themselves. The creation of a public art community and the enlargement of the principal art community has not been considered a priority on art institutions' agendas for a long time. They simply have not been interested in creating forums and engaging audiences. Wealthy Russian patrons for their part have not justified their support for the arts by invoking a larger objective of bringing contemporary art to the masses (as it happened, for example, in the U.S. at the beginning of the twentieth century). Public interest in contemporary art does not even come near competing with public interest in traditional art. (In 2011 the Tretyakov Gallery registered 1,283,401 visitors while the Moscow Museum of Modern Art registered 526,115 ). Just in 2009, for the first time the exhibition "Un Certain Etat du Monde?" at the Garage Center for Contemporary art at the occasion of the Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art attracted three times the number of visitors per day than the Tretyakov did with a thematic exhibition of flowers in Russian art (16). Garage seems to be the only institution that has adapted to contemporary standards of communication and marketing of culture and the only one able to become a raw model and create a trickle down effect towards a new class of people who dream to participate in the new culture of "cultivated consumption". 34
/ Riff, David, Suspending Criticism: Criticism in Suspense, Chto Delat magazin (http://www.chtodelat. org) 16. THE ART NEWSPAPER, No. 212, APRIL 2012. Exhibition and Museum Attendance figure 2011.
Art vs. Market
Nikolay Ridnyi, Zero, Memorial plague, 2012, granite. Photo courtesy of the artist.
17. http://www.culturalexchangecn.nl/mapping-china/visual-arts 18. Open Gallery / Paperwork Gallery, Interview with the author, 26/05/2012 19. ART MOSCOW, International Art Fair, Project History, 2011 20. Svetlana Marich, Interview with the author, 1/03/2012 21. Pierre Brochet, Interview with the author
The closed nature of Russia still remains a problem for the development of the art market. The art market in Russia has for twenty years been a sort of phantasm on the wave of the new Russian economy that never bloomed. The market was at its zenith at the end of the 1980s. In 1983-84, competition was rather strong between German and American collectors, who where the first to discover the nonconformist art. In 1988, the Ministry of Culture partnered with Sotheby in a famous auction that generated more than GBP2 million. At this moment of international attention, the government lost an opportunity to set up a platform of international exchange for art (as happened in Spain after Franco, for example). After that a new wave of market appeared in 2006, but this was soon stifled by economic crises. Nowadays, the market seems to be in danger once again. Russia is the most undeveloped art market within the BRIC countries. Moscow presents a portfolio of approximately 20 galleries (compared to the 600 galleries of Berlin and 400 of Beijing (17)) that have almost no turnover (more than one gallery reports declare to have three to four stable collectors and the gallery supports its activity with parallel businesses(18) ). Three of the main galleries of the city (Guelman, XL Gallery and the Aidan Gallery) have recently announced their decision to reorient their commercial activity towards a non-profit model. The Moscow Art fair is small in size and still very local and closed to the international market. With revenues of just over 4 million euro (4.465 million euro) and 25,000 visitors (19), the fair pales in comparison with the Basel Art Fair, which generates of tens of millions of euros in revenue and has around 100,000 visitors. Phillips De Pury claims to have 100 clients in Russia (20) who buy contemporary art (compared with 10,000 in New York) . According to Pierre Brochet (21), the reasons for the backwardness of art markets are different: the absence of the figure of the president supporting arts and fairs, the fact that collectors see permanently exhibited in Moscow Museums art from the twentieth and twenty-first centuries and not contemporary art and the claim that in such a materialistic culture, art often based on concepts, words and institutional and political critique is hardly appreciated . 35
Fast-forward
Things now seem to be moving very fast in Moscow. A lot of upcoming private and government megaprojects include the contemporary arts in their agendas. The NCCA, the National Center for Contemporary Art, is waiting for an investment of $5 billion dollars from the state for his new building; The Garage Center for Contemporary Art will move by 2013 to Gorky Park in a newly renovated building designed by Rem Koolhaas. Shalva Breus, the director of the ArtChronika Foundation, has recently declared that he is attempting to open a Museum of Contemporary Russian Art in an abandoned Soviet cinema. The Moscow Department of Culture is forming a branch dedicated to Contemporary Art that is supposed to establish polices to regulate the field. Will this new "ultra-rapid" turnover of the project-economy leave some time for reflection upon the choice of the management class? And will there be enough art to fill these spaces? Without any significant investment in the production of new artists these spaces will be forced to import art from abroad or to turn their activities into other kind of commercial businesses. How will be possible for Moscow to evolve a Contemporary Art System without producing artists and without generating any sustainable economy?
22. David Riff, Interview with the author, 15/02/2012 23. Arseniy Zhilyaev about the Art Workers Union, Interview with
The art community is trying to find its answer to this question. The political turn of Putin's re-election seems to have generated a situation of new "potential chaos" and a clamor for change. As David Riff (22) said, in this time of re-politicization of Russian society some artists are gaining new sensibility, finding a new way of fighting in the situation to make their art relevant in a social way and they will be able to find their own context, forced to create a new system of values. Artists, moreover, understand that what is happening here is not so local but it connects with the major changes that are affecting the global art system and this gives them a new awareness and the potential for wider regard. Creative workers are feeling the necessity to fill the gap between the arts and the society and between the new and the old cultural infrastructure that for 20 years remained in suspension. Art workers are formulating new "corridors" to move dynamically into the system. Few professionals are thinking about how to create new workers' unions to discuss new rules of communication with the authorities about studios, grants, pensions and social care (23). Other professionals are organizing mobile educational platforms between art schools of traditional art and schools of contemporary art to promote mobility and exchange (24). A new young generation of artists is collaborating with the old state museums to energize them with new initiatives and content (25). At this turn, (which is different from the '90s) they are not alone but in some cases supported by private foundations, whose activity has also shifted towards the knowledge industry and educational projects. Now that even the private sector has finally engaged in a dialogue with the art community, the only missing agent of changes in the field is the Russian government. Will the authorities take advantage of this moment of chaos to make some structural changes to the cultural policies in support of the arts? It would be crucial at this point to invest in the system, strengthening the main structural knots that are currently weak, in order to not lose the opportunity for rebirth as happened 20 years ago. Reinforcing the potential and the quality of art production is the main priority. This is followed by the need to demolish the barriers to the outside world and cultural exchanges. And finally, it will be important To provide the separate realities with a ground to operate and share: this will be maybe the beginning of a new era when the "private" and the "public" will merge and collaborate on the "common" . 36
author. 24. Roman Minaev about the project of Open Studio, Interview with the author, 11/05/2012 25. See the project of The Pedagogical Poem at the Museum of Revolution curated by Arseniy Zhilyaev (2012) and the exhibition The false calculation presidium, at the Museum of Business and Philantropy (2011) curated by Anastasia Ryabova. Both the events have been realised thanks to the support of the V.A.C. Foundation.
Bibliography Arts education in the Russian Federation: building creative capacities in 21st century, Analytical Paper, Russian Institute for Cultural Research in collaboration with the Institute of Arts Education, Moscow 2011 ART MOSCOW, International Art Fair, Project History, Moscow, 2011 Council of Europe, Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, Russia, 13RU-8”, 2011 Council of Europe, Compendium of Cultural Policies and Trends in Europe, Germany, 13RU-8”, 2011 Ioffe, Julia, Letter From Moscow, Garage Mechanics, The New Yorker, New York, September 27, 2010 Messana, Shannon, Russian Cultural Regulations, European University in Saint Petersburg, Saint Petersburg, Imares, 2012 Misiano, Viktor / Riff, David, Suspending Criticism: Criticism in Suspense, Chto Delat magazin (http://www.chtodelat.org) Misiano, Viktor, The Cultural Contradictions of the Tusovka, The Moscow Art Magazin, Moscow, 1998 Ruutu, Katia, New Cultural Art Center in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, PhD Thesis, Helsinki School of Economic, Helsinki, 2010 Scotini, Marco, No-Order. Art in a Post-Fordist society, Berlin, Archive Books, 2010 Shekova, Ekaterina, Changes in Russian museum attendance: 1980–2008, Department of Cultural Sciences, The National Research University Higher School of Economics (HSE), Moscow,2012 The Manifesta Decade: Debates on Contemporary Art Exhibitions and Biennials in Post-Wall Europe, Edited by Barbara Vanderlinden and Elena Filipovic, Boston, MIT Press, 2006 Tupitsyn, Viktor, The Museological Unconscious: Communal (Post) Modernism in Russia, Boston, The MIT Press, 2009
Experts Joseph Backstein, Director of the ICA (Institute for Contemporary Art) Leonid Bazhanov, Director of the NCCA National Center of Contemporary Art Pierre Brochet, Collector Ekaterina Degot, Art Critic and Curator, Editor of the Art column of Openspace.ru Antonio Geusa, Art critic and Professor at the The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia Svetlana Marich, Head of Phillips De Pury Teresa Mavika, Director of the V-A-C Foundation Roman Minaev, Professor at the The Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia Viktor Misiano, Curator and writer, Director of the Moscow Art Journal Nikolai Molok, Director of Development of Stella Art Foundation Georgy Nikich, Art historian and curator David Riff, Curator writer and professor, member of the art group Chto Delat Vladimir Smirnov, Partner of the Vladimir Smirnov and Konstantin Sorokin Foundation Arseniy Zhilyaev, Artist
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