Canvas: Blood, Sweat and Tears for Art

One of the side effects of working in Russian art is that whenever you stray out into the wider art world, you are constantly tempted to interpret everything you see within the peculiar Russian context. This has its pros and its cons. It’s all too easy, for one, to come across as a strange visitor from afar eager to drone on about the myriad talented but unknown artists from your marginal region, and thus find it hard to integrate yourself into the international contemporary art context. But that skewed perspective also allows both what the art world takes for granted — and what it largely ignores — to be appreciated afresh.

Take last week, for instance. I spent most of it at Momentum, the 5th Nordic Biennial of Contemporary Art, which wasn’t a huge amount to write home about — think “group exhibition of Scandinavian artists in a Norwegian village” — until I started to appreciate it like a Russian.

Large amounts of government funding allow the organizers to operate relatively free of budgetary constraints and reliance on sponsors. The main venue, for instance, is a slightly run-down former brewery. There, the director has to fight local authorities to prevent it from being turned into yet another white-wall kunsthalle and thus robbing it of its industrial charm.

In Moscow, those who manage to convince landlords to let art into spaces like the Red October factory usually do so making the point that it will eventually raise the real estate value when they turn it into luxury flats, or, in the best case, run the whole thing as a commercial enterprise from the get-go (see Winzavod).

Living in Russia, you’ve above all got to envy the Norwegians their security simply in terms of putting the show together. Look at the 3rd Moscow Biennale, light years ahead of Momentum in status and set to swamp the city with over 200 exhibitions later this month. Last week it was announced that three of those won’t be going ahead, for reasons that speak volumes about how contemporary art has to be organized in Russia.

Antony Gormley’s “Event Horizon,” a public sculpture project made up of 27 statues to be placed around Moscow’s city center, has been pushed back until next year for lack of permission from the relevant authorities. French artist Bertrand Lavier’s “Aftermoon” exhibition has also been postponed for lack of a suitable venue. And in a highly ironic twist of fate, an exhibition in the Manezh of 1960s Italian arte povera — art that celebrated its own cheapness — was cancelled because the Multimedia Art Museum couldn’t come up with the necessary funds.

Bureaucratic problems are one thing, of course — but the fact that basic issues Western institutions settle months or years in advance all came to light weeks before the shows were scheduled to open are stark proof of how far away Russian art is even from common organizational standards. Norwegians can take contemporary art for granted; Russians have to fight tooth and claw for it. When the Moscow Biennale hits, it may be Dasha Zhukova and assorted oligarchs that get the press, but the exhibitions are built on blood, sweat, and tears. Next time you go to one, remember that.