*image courtesy of exhibition website

On the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, a new exhibition of Russian art is drawing attention to a marginalized, controversial movement which has been hiding for two decades in “basements and corners” across Russia. That movement, oddly enough, is Soviet Realism. “Behind the Iron Curtain – The Art of Socialist Realism” at the Jeschke-Van Vliet Gallery in Berlin re-examines Soviet Realism at a time when avant-garde and dissident art commands most of the art world’s attention regarding the Soviet period.

Gaia Fusai, one of the collectors involved in the exhibition told the New York Times that after Gorbachev came to power, “The paintings were put into basements or corners, or thrown aside as if that part of the past had no meaning. But that art is part of the former Soviet Union’s history. You can’t just blot it out. So a group of collectors decided to go about trying to find these paintings. It is about saving the art of Socialist Realism.”

The exhibition aims to draw attention to this fading piece of Soviet culture for its historical value, but also to restore the movement’s artistic legitimacy. Socialist Realism is often condemned as an oppressive style, useful only for expressing surreal visions of a socialist utopia; the words “Socialist Realism” conjure images of monumental works depicting Lenin and Stalin – but this is only a side – albeit, the most visible side, of Soviet Realism. An excellent article by Judy Dempsey in the New York Times discusses some ways in which work included in the show works around the restrictiveness of the Socialist Realist style:

“Inevitably there are the paintings of the big, collectivized farms. But not all show contented tractor drivers. “Wheat Harvest,” painted in the late ’70s by Kodev Petr Ivanov, a Ukrainian born in 1899, shows a combine harvester, but well in the background. In the foreground, the wheat with all its texture and colors is where the artistic freedom shines through.

A painting by another Ukrainian, Vosnyuk Petr Stepanovich, shows a teacher observing young students in a woodworking class. The boys wear the scarves of the Young Pioneers, or young Communists. But the eye focuses more upon the wood carvings and details in the painting that was completed between 1968 and 1970.”

Dempsey picks up on an important, but often overlooked pillar of the Socialist Realist genre – academic study. As much as the movement emphasized “political consciousness,” it demanded an intensity of observational drawing and painting not seen in many other 20th century styles. This aspect of the movement had strong ties to pre-revolutionary Russian Realism, and the beauty of careful observation is undeniable in much of Soviet Realist art. Just as there are works which focus chiefly on the political goals of the movement, and tend towards pure propaganda, there are works which focus on the movement’s academic side. Perhaps more than the monumental works of Russia’s leaders, it is these landscapes and portraits – memories from almost a century of Russia’s past – which are in danger of being forgotten.

Ms. Fusai responded to Dempsey’s analysis of these largely a-political works saying, “That is what this exhibition is about. It is more than just propaganda. It is about a time in the Soviet Union. That is why we want to show these paintings to a wider audience. We want to fill the black holes of history. “

The organizers have a complete exhibition catalog and a press release with a brief outline their goals, as well as interesting background on the restoration process available for download in English here, on the exhibition website. The show will run through November 30th.

A snow-covered village – Issak Levitan 1888

On October 12 and 13 in New York Christie’s International auctioned $31 million worth of 18th and 19th century Russian paintings, porcelain, textiles, silver and gold. The 550 lots came from “Galerie Popoff,” a well-known Russian art gallery in Paris. The gallery was founded by Aleksandr Popoff, who according to an article by the Russian Times, “started his collection in Paris in the 1920s, buying porcelain and watercolors from Russian émigrés who went through hard times.” Sales totaled about $9 million. Typically, Christie’s holds all of its Fall auctions at once, near the end of November. The uniqueness of the Popoff collection, however, prompted them to auction it separately. Christie’s next sales of Russian art will be held in early December, in London.

Costume Design for the Rite of Spring – Igor Stravinsky 1910-1913

The Ana Tzarev Gallery in New York is holding an exhibition of theatrical design to celebrate the 100th anniversary of Sergei Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

“Sergey Diaghilev was the driving creative mind behind the Ballets Russes (1909-1929), the first international performing company whose sets were designed by artists, primarily the most innovative Russian and international artists of his day. Diaghilev was a visionary and innovator, who always set his sights on the cutting edge of the art world. By integrating fine art, music, dance, and theater, he raised theater to a new creative and artistic level.

The Ballets Russes attained an unprecedented level of success and influence throughout the world and is recognized as one of the first signs of the new age of cultural globalization. It was Diaghilev who first introduced Russia as a major player in the greater art world, and that exposure opened new windows of expression for Russian artists.”

The show opened on September 17th and will run until October 7th.

For more information, visit the gallery’s website here.

Sale dates have been announced for Sotheby’s fall auctions. Because the major auction houses repeat the same sales each year near the same time – it’s possible to gauge changes in the Russian art market by comparing results year to year. Not only how much art is being sold, but also which artists and periods. We’ll follow developments as the sale dates approach.

Update 9/27:

Sotheby’s will hold their Russian Art Evening sale on November 30th, their Russian Paintings Sale on December first, and their Russian Art sale on November second.

Christie’s will hold their Russian Works of Art sale on December first, their Russian Pictures sale on December second and another sale of Russian Works of Art and Pictures together on December third.

Update 10/27

Art Daily has published an article on Sotheby’s upcoming Fall sales.

Matthew Bown is a gallery owner and author of four books on Soviet art. He was born in London where he received an art degree before he began traveling to Russia in the 1980’s. His books on Socialist Realism are indispensable to the student of 20th century Russian art; they are among the few books, in English or any language, which take on the challenge of understanding and appreciating Soviet Realist art, often dismissed outright as morally and aesthetically bankrupt propaganda. Below are reviews, excerpts, and synopses of these four important books, which are becoming harder and harder to find these days.

Art of the Soviets: Painting, Sculpture and Architecture in a One-Party State, 1917-1992

Maybe the best introduction to Art of the Soviets is, well, the actual introduction, lifted from Google Books. (Only some sections of the text are available online.)

In Art of the Soviets, Bown proposes “a shift of emphasis away from the work of the ‘avant-garde’ which has long preoccupied western art historians, in favor of a broader, more inclusive scheme that recognizes the existence of many types of art, some modernist but some deeply anti-modernist, but each to a greater or lesser extent guided by (sometimes coerced by) the apparatus of the overarching state.”

He goes on to explain how, “According to one long-standing Western orthodoxy, Soviet history – and, give or take a year or two, culture – can be divided into just two opposing periods: the ‘revolutionary’ period of 1917 to 1924 ( the date of Lenin’s death), deemed a period of classic revolutionary struggle and utopian aspirations, and the period of  ‘corrupted communism’ which succeeded it, in which the great ideals of democracy, emancipation, and the ‘withering away of the state’ ( Lenin’s phrase from his 1924 book State and Revolution) became grotesquely inverted. This inversion – Stalinism – is generally held to have given birth to the cultural dogmas of  Socialist Realism, and it is still the conventional view that Socialist Realism dominated Soviet art and culture right up to 1985 and the beginnings of perestroika (reconstruction) – despite the heroic resistance of the artistic ‘underground’ – and moreover the art produced under this doctrine was stylistically monotonous and aesthetically inferior.

This book advances the idea that Soviet culture was less monolithic, more heterogeneous, and, quite simply, more interesting and important than this simple stereotype suggests.”

Art Under Stalin

Here’s a brief synopsis of the book from the publisher’s website:

“Bown’s analysis focuses on the art of the Stalin era, from 1932 to 1953, and includes discussion of the pre- and post-Stalin years. The author illuminates the political and social framework of the time and provides an expose of Stalinist aesthetics, socialist realism in art and neo-classicism in architecture, the Cult of Personality, art-world debates, and isolationism.”

A Dictionary of Twentieth Century Russian and Soviet Painters 1900-80’s

This book compiles information on about 13,000 20th century Russian painters. It is 327 pages, has 350 plates ( over 300 in color) and as of June 6 this year, the distributor had 8 copies left.

Socialist Realist Painting

Here’s an excerpt from a 1998 review in Artforum International:

“The last uncharted territory in twentieth-century painting, Soviet Socialist Realism has something for everyone – historical pathos, political minimalism, modernist hubris, postmodernist irony, mixed-media extravaganzas, pop iconography, mad conceptualism, proto-photorealism (among fifty-six other varieties of figurative art), and a host of unknown masters. It’s an altogether underleveraged franchise – although Matthew Cullerne Bown’s massive Socialist Realist Painting makes a strong bid for a friendly takeover.

Socialist Realist Painting is a lavish, albeit physically unwieldy, amalgam of scholarly history and deluxe picture book. If the text exudes a sense of mission, it may be because Socialist Realism has been doubly repressed
Being subjected to or characterized by repression. . Almost from its inception, the mode was ridiculed throughout the non-Soviet world as an egregious form of soul-destroying, Stalin-worshipping kitsch. Even in the Soviet Union, classical Socialist Realism became, as Boris Groys wrote in The Total Art of Stalinism, ultimately and officially “no less taboo than the art of the avant-garde” it had supplanted. Indeed, during the thirty-five years between the death of Stalin and perestroika, the two tendencies might well have been crated up and hidden together in Soviet museum basements.”

(full text here)

These books can be found used on Amazon and Ebay, and, more inexpensively, through interlibrary loan services. Matthew Bown is also the author of an excellent blog on Russian culture -  IZO - featuring posts on everything from museum exhibitions and global politics to the most everyday trivia about Russian life.

Since June 16th Collecting Russian Art has been in Russia – visiting museums and brushing up on Russian. In Moscow, we met up with one of Lazare Gallery’s most talented young artists, Ilya Yatsenko. (Below, you can see Ilya in front of his church in Moscow.)

In 1990, Ilya started attending at the Surikov institute in Moscow. There, he studied under Nikolai Kozlov, Alexanderliech Fomkin, Alexander Danilichev, and Vyacheslav Zabelin. He graduated in 1999 with rarely given perfect grades.

Ilya is a profoundly gifted painter. His ability to create solid, deep, harmonious space in his landscapes is incredible. At his home in Moscow, I was able to see some of his most recent landscapes from this summer. He has been making frequent trips to his dacha in the country and has finished several beautiful paintings of the lilacs that are so prevalent across Russia.

Later, I was lucky enough to spend a day touring the Tretyakov Gallery with him; he is able to bring paintings to life with his observations. Talking over the importance of harmony in painting, Ilya made a point that struck me – that harmony in painting is simply the result of a strong connection to nature. If a painter is willing to look humbly and carefully into nature harmony will come naturally. Painting that is dissonant, on the other hand, stems from a broken and fragmented relationship with nature. Much of the art in our world today indulges in this broken connection to nature, using it to comment on the unhealthy structure and pace of the modern world. In painters like Ilya, however, I take heart that it is still possible, with care, to maintain this relationship with nature. His work attests to this.

You can see some of his most recent works here, and a more complete gallery of his work here.

The results of the Russian auctions earlier this month were in line with predictions for a year of economic decline. Total sales between all of the auction houses came to $48 million, less than half of last summer’s $105, but within pre-sale estimates. Falling oil prices and a weak ruble meant Russians were timid this year, though a number of Ukrainians made big purchases. Alina Aivazova, the wife of Kiev’s mayor, set records for artists Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin and Ilya Repin, buying works for $1.8 million and $2.3 million respectively. Alexandre and Sergei Tabalov, owners of the Art Kapital auction house in Kiev were also reported to have been “active bidders*”. The top lot at auction was Boris Kustodiev’s “The Village Fair” sold for $4.5 million, a record for the  artist, at Sotheby’s.  Contemporary works did poorly at the sales, but nearly seventy percent of lots in traditional categories found buyers. Overall, the June auctions have been declared a success within the standards of a weakened market.

William MacDougall (of MacDougall’s) said after the sales that, “Though it has not yet reached its peak of a year ago, the market is in recovery from its winter blues, and some better works are even surpassing their pre-crisis peaks.”

*For details see the Telegraph’s article on the sales

A painting sold by Christie’s for $3 million as Boris Kustodiev’s Odalisque was recently identified as a fake. Odalisque, unfortunately, is just one of a large number of fakes infiltrating the Russian art market. James Butterwick, a Russian art dealer in London, told Bloomberg News, “Every month, I’m asked to look at 10 paintings, and nine are fakes. Many Russian collectors buy without asking competent experts. If a work is credible, then it has a provenance that can be easily checked out.” Thankfully, “The Catalog of Fraudulent Artworks,” a guide to 900 fakes, has been published by the Russian government. The fifth volume of the set, which contains 100 paintings, including Odalisque, was released last month.

For more information see Bloomberg’s recent article on the issue

From June 6 till June 8, Lazare Gallery will be participating in the Russian Art Fair in London. The fair will be running simultaneously with auctions of Russian art by Christies (June 9), Sotheby’s (June 8), Bonham’s (June 8), and MacDougall’s (June 8-11). The June auctions are the largest Russian art event of the year after the Fall auction season, and with over 200,000 Russians living in London,  1000 of them multi milliares, the fair is well timed and placed for success.

Russian Art Week wrapped up in New York  last Friday very successfully. Christie’s sold 69% of it’s 390 lots for a total of $13.2 million, just over it’s high estimate of $13 million. The top lot at the auction, Svetoslav Roerich’s Portrait of Nicholas Roerich in a Tibetan Robe sold for $2,994,500 nearly three times its high estimate of $1.1 million. The sale broke the previous record for the artist, set earlier in the week at Sotheby’s sale. The success of the sale is in part the result of reformed expectations. After a disappointing turnout at November’s auction, Christie’s, “had to readjust,” said the head of Christie’s Russian department, Alexis de Tiesenhausen, “The estimates now are about 20 percent less than in November.”

Sotheby’s held their sale before Christie’s on Wednesday. About 65 % of their 308 lots sold for a total of $13.8 million, within their estimates for the auction. The top lot was Ivan Aivazovsky’s Columbus Sailing from Palos, which sold for $1,594,000 million, well over its high estimate of $1.1 million. Svetoslav Roerich’s Three Boddisatvas sold for $262,500, more than triple it’s estimate. In fact, all but one of the ten top lots exceeded their estimates.

Sotheby’s Sonya Bekkerman and Gerard Hill called the sale, “the first test of the season,” and expressed optimism about Sotheby’s performance: “If you consider these results alongside the more than $12 million we achieved for Russian works in last November’s Impressionist and Modern sales in New York, and the nearly $38 million brought in in London in December, it’s clear that the market for Russian art remains buoyant.”