Commercial art galleries as canon-makers: the Moscow art scene in the early 1990s

ABSTRACT

This article explores the emergence of private art galleries in Moscow in the early 1990s. It argues that instead of being driven by commercial objectives, these institutions took on the functions of the still-absent museums of contemporary art. It was the galleries of the early 1990s that were responsible for commissioning and preserving works, supporting artists and creating public awareness of the latest trends in young Russian art. They were ready to take the risk of showing unorthodox and radical artistic practices which were often not even offered for sale. This article discusses the role of the first private galleries in developing the infrastructure for contemporary Russian art.

KEYWORDS:

• Art market
• commercial galleries
• exhibition history
• Moscow art scene
• Russian art

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Marina Maximova is a historian of late-Soviet and post-Soviet art and culture. She is currently a lecturer in Art Business at Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Previously she taught at Loughborough University’s School of Art. Marina’s research focuses on Russian and Eastern European art and markets, collecting and exhibition histories. Her doctoral thesis explored experimental curatorial practices in late-Soviet Moscow. Outside academia Marina has worked in a variety of cultural organisations in Moscow and in London, including Garage Museum of Contemporary Art, Tate Modern and Gazelli Art House.

Notes

1 While the commercial art galleries appeared not only in Moscow, but also in Leningrad and other cities, the article focuses on the Moscow art scene as it had the higher concentration of both new art enterprises and non-art related business.

2 In case of the most important exhibitions, representatives of the Ministry of Culture were also involved in the process.

3 This was projected through the reviews and responses of the press. Throughout the first years of Gorbachev’s rule the response of the state-run art publications to the alternative art practices remained hostile. A vivid example was the article ‘Rybki v mutnoi vode [Fish in murky water]’ published in Sovetskaia Kultura on 5 July 1986. The article offered an abrasive criticism of several alternative artists. It referred to their works as and as a ‘terrible violation of the feelings of the Soviet people’ and ‘senseless exercises on the canvas’ and denied any connections between them and true Soviet culture.

4 It developed through apartment seminars, amateur studios, or adult education clubs.

5 It included both exhibitions in the artists’ apartments and studios and exhibitions in the state-sponsored venues which became more widespread following the infamous 1974 Bulldozer Exhibition.

6 This included samizdat and, for example, A-Ya Magazine, published by Igor Shelkovsky in Paris between 1979 and 1986.

7 It is important to highlight that while alternative artists often wanted to withdraw themselves from the state-sponsored art world, they did not aim to overthrow it. Moreover, the examples of numerous artists, such as Ilya Kabakov, demonstrate that it was perfectly acceptable to accept state commissions and to develop one’s reputation on the alternative art scene and the international art market. The state-sponsored art world in its turn was consciously and unconsciously supporting the existence of alternative art and, as early as in the 1970s, started to explore its commercial potential.

8 The gallery held exhibitions with Eric Bulatov, Ivan Chuikov, Semion Faibisovich, Ilya Kabakov as well as Robert Rauschenberg, Helmut Newton and Francisco Clemente. For the full list of exhibitions and participating artists see: Selina and Obukhova (2013).

9 Aidan Salakhova is the daughter of the then Deputy Chairman of the USSR Artists’ Union Tair Salakhov; Evgenii Mitta is the son of a well-acclaimed director and screenwriter Alexander Mitta; and Aleksandr Yakut is the son of the People’s Artists of the USSR and Stalin award winner actor Vsevolod Yakut.

10 For the documentation of the works and the pavilion see: Fowle and Addison (2016).

11 For example, in 1988 the artist Vadim Zakharov produced a number of questionnaires, which were distributed among the visitors to the exhibition of Moscow conceptualism and asked to share their opinions on what they saw in the show. As he claimed, they provided him with a palette of worldviews of average Soviet people and their hostility was something new and shocking. As Zakharov described ‘getting out of one’s private zone into society, especially an aggressive one, was an unpleasant endeavour’ (Zakharov 2017).