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Going Everywhere and Nowhere from Moscow to the Urals – How Curatorial Delusions of Global Grandeur Betray Russian Art

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Going Everywhere and Nowhere from Moscow to the Urals – How Curatorial Delusions of Global Grandeur Betray Russian Art GOING EVERYWHERE AND NOWHERE FROM MOSCOW TO THE URALS – HOW CURATORIAL DELUSIONS OF GLOBAL GRANDEUR BETRAY RUSSIAN ART BY SIMON HEWITT I : A MOSCOW MIRED IN MEMORIES A BANNER was dangling from the giant triumphal portico of VDNKh, beneath the two collective farmworkers brandishing their bale of straw. It advertised the 6th Moscow Biennale – the number 6 allotted spiralling arms to resemble a Catherine Wheel. But the banner was challenged by a bigger hoarding wheeled on to the piazza below, blowing the trumpet of a separate festival called Circle of Light . The Biennale’s main show was taking place just behind Lenin in VDNKh’s Central Pavilion (also known as Pavilion N°1), erected in 1954 and topped by a 350-foot spire modelled on the St Petersburg Admiralty. The Biennale was meant to open at noon. I tried to find the entrance but couldn’t. There were no signs. No information about where and when the Biennale could be visited. Yuri Albert’s immortal line breezed through my mind: The Biennale cannot and will not take place . The 6 th Moscow Biennale had been having well-publicized financial problems. Was it so bankrupt that it had ceased to exist, morphing instead into a Conceptualist joke? VDNKh, six miles north of Red Square, was the sixth venue for the Moscow Biennale’s main exhibition. It had previously been held in the former Lenin Museum near Red Square; the under-construction Federation Tower at Moscow City; the newly restored Garage (now Jewish) Museum during its brief Abramovich/Zhukova tenancy; the renovated ArtPlay cultural and commercial complex; and, in 2013, the Manezh. The choice of the vast, swanky Manezh, central Moscow’s leading venue for glitzy art shows and (increasingly political) blockbuster exhibitions, was a sign that the Moscow Biennale had lost its rough-and-ready cutting-edge and settled into smooth-production routine. In fact, the Biennale has been on the slide since 2009 and the decision to shift it from the depths of Winter – when it was tough, off-the-cuff and utterly Russian – to late September, when it became just another event on the overcrowded artworld treadmill. Many things make Russia appealing, but trying to be mainstream isn’t one of them. VDNKh was conceived as an exhibition park either side of World War II, and extends over an area the size of Monaco, hosting seventy palatial buildings (modestly dubbed ‘Pavilions’) in an eclectic neo-classical style. Many were originally devoted to the Soviet Union’s constituent republics, with ‘indigenous’ architecture to match. The result is an effete photogenic time-warp, freshly restored to shimmering glory. Until two years ago the pavilions hosted tacky stalls peddling merchandise that had fallen off lorries – cheap mobiles, bootleg CDs etc. Now the merchants have been swept from its wedding-cake temples to be replaced by bars, restaurants and hi-tec exhibitions. The spacious alleys, lined with trees, fountains and golden statues, have become Moscovites’ favourite weekend destination and, on a sunny afternoon, as patriotic 1950s songs blare from the tannoy and summer frocks flutter in the breeze, you could easily imagine yourself back in the USSR. It is charming, and a little spooky. On this late September Sunday, with the Biennale’s main show having vanished into thin air, I visited VDNKh’s Pavilion N°13 to inspect a whimsical exhibition staged under the Biennale’s umbrella, East / Deconstruction : columns clothed in coloured cellophane, patterns made from upside-down piala bowls, and Anastasia Kachalova’s dangling cylinders of black fabric evoking stylized hijab veils. The yellow-walled Grain Pavilion, opened in 1939 but granted an Art Deco tower in 1954, was housing a twee photo exhibition entitled Friendship of Nations – all the nations, coincidentally, being former members of the USSR. I was more impressed by the intricately painted flowers and plants on the pavilion’s frosted glass windows (below left) . The cathedral-sized Cosmos Pavilion at the far end of the park with its majestic iron- and-glass dome (below centre) was housing a parade of vintage automobiles that seemed designed to prove that anything the Yanks could do, the Commies did better. By now, back at Central Pavilion, Alexander Kutovoy (above centre) was busy at the top of the steps on a half-finished clay effigy entitled The End of Modernism in Russia , and the Moscow Biennale had finally opened its doors. Inside, a ballerina was practising in front of mirrors-on-wheels; an artist was dashing off monochrome portraits of visitors; Els Dietvorst’s assistants were putting the finishing teeth (roughly-hewn wooden figures) to her sackcloth Skull (below left) ; and a poster- like image entitled Centre of Eurasia by Almagul Menlibayeva, one of the world’s most sophisticated video artists, had been strung up on scaffolding 15 feet off the ground, like some sort of advertisement (above right) . Scaffolding was everywhere you looked. I reached for the Biennale’s 384-page catalogue to try and make sense of it all. Russian Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, in his Welcome Address, announced that it had ‘been decided to significantly expand the scope of the Biennale.’ Really? Commissioner Joseph Backstein placed that remark in context. ‘The curators’ he declared in his Foreword ‘have made a considered decision to place the accent on the Discussion section of the programme.’ In other words: Less Art, More Waffle. Next up was a 12-page spiel from the Biennale’s trio of international curators. Then one of them, Bart de Baere, director of the arid contemporary art museum in Antwerp, was let loose for another 16 pages to pontificate about ‘Eurasia.’ Then there was an essay on ‘Moon Time’ (sic) by someone I had never heard of, inanely concluding that ‘the kinds of activity and process proposed for VDNKh have their own logic.’ The Catalogue did not get around to Art until Page 120. It was, like the Biennale’s central show, entitled How to Gather? Acting in a Centre in a City in the Heart of the Island of Eurasia. Rarely has such a torrent of drivel been spouted in 20 words. Now 70, Commissioner Backstein – the name and title trill off the tongue like Sergeant Bilko or Inspector Maigret – has become the dinosaur of Russian contemporary art. He has run out of money, run out of ideas, and is running out of credibility. This convivial cove deserves an honourable retirement, with loads of medals for decades of stalwart and, in olden times, inspired service. The Moscow Biennale ran – blink and you’d missed it – from September 22-October 1. Ten days that did not shake the artworld. But I was not unduly dismayed by my encounter with Central Pavilion. One of the worst things about any Moscow Biennale is the pick-and-mix smorgasbord internationalism of its main exhibition. The best thing about the Moscow Biennale is the plethora of side-shows that happen in its wake, for which the Biennale tries to steal the credit by assigning them to such vacuous categories as Special Projects , Parallel Programme or Collateral Events . The Biennale catalogue listed 70 satellite shows in all. These shows happen all across Moscow, often in places far from any Metro or even bus stop. But there were two just around the corner from the Central Pavilion, down an alley along which I had failed to venture on any of my previous half-dozen visits to VDNKh. The venue was the Kinopanorama, a circular cinema built in 1959. The main show here – a tidy but drab array of dull-toned photos and paintings – failed to exploit the spectacular architecture, unlike Svetlana Shuvayeva’s subtle display of dummies in chintz dresses, inspired by the 1996 Czech film Margaritki . These dummies were placed at regular intervals along the glass-windowed corridor around the hall’s circumference. The dresses, sewn by Shuvayeva herself and embroidered with her own neo-Constructivist designs, hovered between flimsy vulgarity and Soviet chic – uncannily in sync with the mood of VDNKh. A star, in Shuvayeva, is born, but who can save the Moscow Biennale? Probably only Dasha Zhukova – but she has kept her distance since 2009, when she hosted the main show at the Garage but was not asked to co-curate. Meanwhile she has had other priorities, like revamping Gorky Park. I headed there next. Zhukova’s latest Garage opened in June, 600 yards from its temporary predecessor. It is abundantly sign-posted, just as well because the rectangular blockhaus conjured up by Rotterdam’s Rem Koolhaas is so austerely minimalist you could pass right in front of it without noticing (especially as the entrance is round the back). SPIDER OUTSIDE THE GARAGE SPIDER INSIDE THE KREMLIN (courtesy The Moscow Times ) The New Garage began life as a 1960s restaurant called Времена Года (The Seasons). Koolhaas has ignored the original ground-floor arcades and panoramic upper windows to clad the whole shebang in silvery polycarbonate – creating a sleek, monotonous, anaemic contrast to the flashy ostentation of today’s new Moscow buildings. The best thing about the New Garage is the restaurant. For just over a fiver you can enjoy humus with peppers, cucumber, pitta bread and a glass of Russian white. This is a nice surprise. Russian bars and restaurants rarely sell Russian wine or beer, even though Russia has admirable vineyards and excellent breweries. Fancy a Baltika or a Nevskoye ? No chance. All they serve in ‘smart places’ is eurodrizzle like Heineken or Carlsberg. Upstairs was Vadim Zakharov’s Postscript After RIP: A Video Archive of Moscow Artists ’ Exhibitions 1989-2014 , consisting of 26 plastic coffins (one per year) arranged in rows, each containing a screen showing grainy video footage of Moscow artists arriving at exhibitions, talking to each other at exhibitions, and drinking together at exhibitions.
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