[MSN] Fake Art and Patriotism in Russia

[MSN]

Fake Art and Patriotism in Russia
By Valentin Diaconov
Published: April 18, 2008

MOSCOW—Russian art-world headlines often boil down to corruption and
conflicts between state and individual interests, and the stories occupying
insiders right now are no exception. ARTINFO’s Moscow correspondent reports
on the opening of the first foreigner-owned gallery in the country, a
national museum owning up to its past transgressions, private citizens
taking matters into their own hands, and a group of patriots sinking their
claws into an artist.
First foreigner-owned gallery opens in Moscow 
On April 17, Berlin gallerist Volker Diehl opened Russia’s first
foreigner-owned exhibition space, Diehl + Gallery One, located in the first
floor of a lavish Stalin-era mansion facing the Moscow river and near the
Russian White House. Diehl has long-standing connections with Russia’s art
community: He’s a member of the selection committee of Russia’s biggest art
fair, Art Moscow, and frequently exhibits there, and his Berlin gallery
represents two Russian artists — Blue Noses and Alexey Kallima.

Diehl + Gallery One inaugurated the space with a solo show by Jenny Holzer,
put on in cooperation with Monica Spruth Philomene Magers gallery of
Cologne, Munich, and London. The exhibition features two large
installations, Monument (2008) and Curves (2007), and a half-dozen
semi-abstract prints based on declassified documents from the American
government. At the opening, the artist shocked some members of Moscow’s
glamorous art crowd by wearing sneakers.

While Diehl is the first foreign dealer to open a gallery in Russia, he is
not the first to consider such an option. During separate visits to the
country last year, gallerists Larry Gagosian and Jeffrey Deitch both
expressed interest in entering the Russian art market.

Tretyakov Gallery pleads guilty
Despite this international boost, the Russian art world is still dealing
with a bit of scandal. In the last week of March, Lydia Iovleva, deputy
director of the State Tretyakov Gallery, finally addressed an issue that has
been tarnishing the museum’s reputation for several years.

Three years ago, two art and antiquities dealers from Moscow, Igor and
Tatiana Preobrazhensky, were caught selling ten artworks that they claimed
were by Russian Realist painters from the 19th century. Prosecutors argued
that the dealers were connected to a group of forgers of Russian descent who
bought 19th-century works made in Sweden, Norway, and England, which can be
very close to their Russian counterparts in style and subject matter, then
added decidedly Russian details — a village here, a church there. The
forger’s technique was good enough to fool experts who conducted scientific
analyses on the paints and canvases in question. Court hearings for the
Preobrazhenskys started this January, with both dealers declaring their
innocence and claiming they are also victims of the situation.

It is believed that there are about 300 such forged artworks in circulation,
a number of them bearing certificates of authenticity issued by experts at
the Tretyakov, the largest institution in the country to exhibit and
research Russian art. The Tretyakov isn’t the only state organization to
authenticate works: the paintings in the Preobrazhensky case came with
certificates from Grabar Institute for Restoration and Expertise. When the
scope of the scam was discovered, attention turned to the Tretyakov experts,
as everyone hoped that they would assure the market that they hadn’t
authenticated any artworks involved in the massive forgery. Instead, the
gallery remained silent.

As a result of the scandal, in 2006 Russia’s Culture and Cinema Agency
forced all state museums and organizations to shut their authentication
services, including the Tretyakov’s, a big moneymaker that brought in up to
$10,000 per piece. It was only after this decision, and persistent prodding
from both dealers and the government, that the gallery started an internal
investigation.

The long awaited results were finally released at the end of March, with the
gallery admitting to 96 wrongly assigned certificates. Unfortunately, this
announcement is unlikely to put the question to rest. Many observers believe
that there are more fakes circulating with the Tretyakov’s certificate, with
rumors floating that blank documents with experts’ signatures were sold in
large quantities illegally before 2006.

Antique dealers vs. government structures
With forgeries high on dealers’ list of worries, the Antiques Salon,
Moscow’s oldest antiques fair, has chosen to address the matter at this
year’s edition, which runs April 12 to 20 in the Central House of Artists.

At a special press conference on Saturday, April 19, the International
Confederation of Antique and Art Dealers (ICAAD) — a network of dealers
spanning the territory of the former USSR — will present a new initiative,
announcing 12 experts anonymously selected by the confederation’s members to
serve as an alternative to the state-approved body of 400 specialists
currently licensed to issue certificates of authenticity. The experts will
be able to issue certificates backed by ICAAD. It is not known whether the
number of experts will differ in the years to come.

Rosokhrankultura (the Commission for Preserving Russian Culture) responded
to the initiative last week at a press conference by announcing a fourth
volume of the already extensive catalog of forged Russian artworks.
Rosokhrancultura’s deputy director Anatoly Vilkov said of ICAAD’s
initiative: “Our approved experts and ICAAD’s experts are like pupils in
state and private schools.” Vilkov’s viewpoint is clear, but given the state
of public education in Russia — schools are widely burdened with quality and
personnel problems — the analogy can be read to favor ICAAD.

Russian nationalists take on an artist
Meanwhile, another conflict between public and private spheres erupted last
Friday, when a group of Russian nationalists took an artist to court for two
paintings they believe to be inciting “racial or national animosity.”

Notably, the dispute unfolded not within a gallery or museum but in the
growing forum of the Internet. The plaintiffs had seen the “offending”
works, two paintings by Lena Hades, who is relatively well known in Moscow
but does not have gallery representation, only in the form of jpgs on her
blog on Livejournal.com. One, Welcome to Russia (1999), hangs in Igor
Markin’s private museum Art4.ru; the other, Chimera of the Mysterious
Russian Soul (1996) was exhibited only once, at a group exhibition in
Solyanka gallery in 2005.

The nationalists were offended by the artist’s depiction of the Russian soul
as a cartoonish creature with clichéd attributes of Russian everyday life —
a bottle of vodka, a model of Sputnik — and by the crudely painted text in
Welcome that indicts the Russian character as simultaneously overaggressive
and alarmingly God-fearing.

The works have also found few fans among the arts community — many view them
as kitschy and formulaic — but the nationalists’ criticism goes well beyond
aesthetics. After trying to get Hades to remove the works from her personal
blog and using increasingly obscene language, her critics — including
members of the DPNI (Movement Against Illegal Immigration) — started legal
action based on article 282 of the Russian criminal code, which prohibits
“excitation of racial or national animosity.”

The larger issue in this conflict is Russians’ struggle to have their voices
heard within an increasingly authoritarian state, which tends to cut various
political groups off the political radar screen. Because the nationalists,
like the members of Garry Kasparov’s ultra-liberal “Other Russia” party, are
banned from the decision-making process, their only chance to be heard is on
blogs. They are keen to show up in the news but afraid to tackle large
subjects. Lena Hades is an easy target. If indicted, she could face up to
five years in prison.

http://www.artinfo.com/