GOING RUSSIAN in BRUSSELS BRAFA Art Fair Makes Late January a Cool Time to Visit the Belgian Capital
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GOING RUSSIAN IN BRUSSELS BRAFA art fair makes late January a cool time to visit the Belgian capital BY SIMON HEWITT THERE WAS PLENTY to entice Russians and Russophiles to Brussels this January – starting with BRAFA, the Brussels Art & Antiques Fair (January 23-31). There are ‘more and more Russian-speakers at BRAFA,’ reports Katya de Rochambeau, the fair’s Moscow representative. Easy access helps: three planes a day from Moscow – two from Sheremetyevo (Aeroflot) and one from Domodyedovo (Brussels Airlines) – and seven trains a day from London. Flights take 3½ hours, the Eurostar just over two. Countess de Rochambeau – resplendent in a slinky cocktail-dress at the Gala Dinner – told me that Russian visitors to BRAFA include both ‘important collectors’ and ‘an increasing number of Russian decorators.’ Some come to western Europe specifically for BRAFA; others combine their trip with a visit to the Maison & Objet Interior Design trade show that runs concurrently just outside Paris. Paris-based Brigitte Saby, who has been designing interiors for Russian clients since the early 1990s, thought this year’s BRAFA ‘as interesting as ever’ – although she felt its suspended-twig décor lacked elegance. What many Russians find irresistible about BRAFA is its relaxed mood, eclectic choice and attractive prices, when compared to TEFAF Maastricht and the big London fairs. Although the shock absence of former BRAFA President Bernard de Leye deprived the Fair of its usual gleamorama of European silver, the 137 galleries – most of them from Belgium and France – offered everything from pre-Columbian pottery and Ancient Egyptian sculpture to Chinese bronzes, Sèvres porcelain, Flemish tapestries, Japanese armour and African masks. François Léage proposed two Russian items from the late 18 th century: a two-drawered/ two-doored mahogany cupboard, adorned with painted lozenge plaques; and a handsome pair of ormolu-mounted bluejohn vases with gilt lion-mask ring-handles. Striking a more contemporary note was the 12-piece glass composition Norwegian Wood by St Petersburg’s Maria Koshenkova ( born 1981), dangling like translucent chimes at the far end of the Clara Scremini stand . The title nodded to The Beatles, but also reflected the physical source of the work’s inspiration: the glass elements were based on pieces of wood in a derelict house in Bergen on Norway’s west coast. ‘I wanted to transform this vanishing wood into new objects with a different destiny’ explains Koshenkova, who combined clear and grey glass to ‘give the feeling of something on the border between existing and non-existing’ – then adding silver highlights to ‘show that apparent pieces of rubbish can be treasure.’ Koshenkova graduated from the Stieglitz Academy of Art & Design before moving to Scandinavia to study glass-blowing in 2004. She has since had solo shows in France, Germany, Sweden, Norway and her adopted Denmark, but retains strong links with Russia – taking part at in the 2008 Moscow Young Biennale and the 2013 Moscow Biennale. Her work was also shown at St Petersburg’s now sadly defunct AL Gallery in 2012, and she was artist in residence at the ZIP experimental art space in Krasnodar in 2014. ‘Working with glass is always a game and a fight’ declares Koshenkova. ‘You are never totally in control, and you never end up with what you expect. Unfortunately, glass is not yet fully accepted in the field of fine arts.’ Oh no? Norwegian Wood found acceptance all right. It sold for around €50,000 on the first night of the fair. Pictures dominate many fairs, but BRAFA cannot rival TEFAF (March 11-20) for Old Masters, or Art Brussels (April 22-24) for Contemporary Art. This year Art Brussels is relocating to the same venue as BRAFA: the converted Thurn & Taxis warehousing complex near Bruxelles-Nord train station, with the number of galleries reduced from 190 to 140 as a result. THE THURN & TAXIS COMPLEX: HOME TO BRAFA – AND SOON ART BRUSSELS BRAFA is, however, the world’s top fair for late 19th and early 20 th century Belgian pictures. This golden age for the country’s art is embodied by the landscape school of Sint Martens Latem – superbly promoted by two local galleries, Oscar De Vos and Francis Maere – and by the Symbolist genius of Belgium’s greatest artist, Léon Spilliaert (1881- 1946), who was handsomely represented by Antwerp’s Galerie Jamar . Another outstanding display of Belgian Art can be found in the Belfius Collection , spectacularly housed since last September at the top of the 32-storey Rogier Tour just a mile from Thurn & Taxis. One of its most powerful works, Rik Wouters’ 2-metre bronze La Folle Danseuse (1912), pays homage to the American dancer who inspired the Ballets Russes : Isadora Duncan, who first performed in St Petersburg in 1904 – wowing Diaghilev, Nijinsky and Fomin with her daringly unfettered style. Isadora became a keen Russophile, Communist sympathizer, and later married the poet Sergey Yesenin. BRAFA also featured a selection of works by Russian-born émigré artists, including Leopold Survage, Serge Poliakoff, Nicolas de Stäel, Ossip Zadkine, Vera Rocklin and Serge Charchoune. A less familiar name to add to that list was Lev Tchistovsky (1902-69) – represented at Ary Jan of Paris by two sizable works: one a painting, Nu au Drapé ; the other a watercolour, The Birth of Ganesh , featuring three characters from Hindu mythology: the god Shiva, with a snake around his arm; his wife Parvati, daughter of the Himalayas; and their eldest son Ganesh, who was reborn with an elephant’s head after being accidentally killed by his father. LEOPOLD SURVAGE: THE STREETS (1913) LEV TCHISTOVSKY: BIRTH OF GANESH AKTIS GALLERY GALERIE ARY JAN Tchistovsky was born in Pskov and studied at the St Petersburg Academy before leaving the USSR in 1925. He headed first to Italy – where he met his future wife Irena Klestova (1907-89), another Academy graduate – then to Paris, rubbing shoulders with André Breton and Tamara de Lempicka in Montparnasse, and exhibiting portraits and nudes at the Salon des Indépendants in an anachronistically polished academic style that would one day count press robber-baron Robert Maxwell among its devotees. Tchistovsky retired to a village near Cahors in south-west France, where he died in 1969. His wife donated many of his paintings to the Musée Urbain Cabrol in Villefranche-de- Rouergue – where they now, sadly, languish in the reserves. FIVE COPIES OF RADIO SLUSHATYEL (1929) – PRICED €3,000 AT CHAMBRE DES LIBRAIRES BELGES Other works with Russian appeal at BRAFA ranged from magazines with Rodchenko artwork to multicoloured busts of Mr J. Stalin wearing a bow-tie. SAM HAVADTOY: STALIN BUSTS AT BUDAPEST'S KALMAN MAKLARY THE RUSSIAN ARTIST WHO CROSSED THE PACIFIC Another little-known Russian émigré artist to be admired in Brussels this January is Evsa Model (1901-76), whose paintings warrant a detour from the city centre to the Keitelman Gallery , where they are on display until February 6 alongside photographs by his more famous wife, Lisette. Evsa Model was born in Vladivostok in 1899, fled Russia during World War One and, after a tortuous journey via China and Japan, settled in Paris in 1922. In 1926 he opened L’Esthétique , a bookshop-cum-gallery on Boulevard Montparnasse whose Constructivist design derived from El Lissitzky. The gallery became an Avant-Garde stomping-ground for the likes of Hungarian photographer André Kertész and Dutch artist Piet Mondrian – subject of an exhibition here in 1927 – before closing in 1932. Model then embarked on a new career as an artist, before fleeing to the United States in 1938, accompanied by his new wife, an aspiring photographer from Vienna née Lisette Seybert. Evsa Model’s first solo show took place in 1942, in New York, where his career developed in parallel to that of Lisette’s (who worked for Harper’s Bazaar from 1941-55). The MoMA purchased works by them both. During the 1940s Evsa’s paintings were exhibited at the Arts Club of Chicago and the Rose Fried and Sidney Janis Galleries in New York: Janis included Evsa in his influential Abstract & Surrealist Art in America , published in 1944. Model’s paintings at Keitelman date from the 1950s and ’60s, and are underpinned by bright-coloured minimalism and a mood of big city solitude. Their geometric abstraction recalls Malevich and Mondrian, their matchstick figures evoke L.S. Lowry, their strident palette is redolent of Pop Art. One work, divided horizontally between plain grounds of red and yellow, and peopled only by a circle and a lampost, seems uneerily prescient of Timur Novikov. The work of his namesake Igor Novikov also comes to mind. Keitelman are now agents for Evsa Model’s estate, and clearly believe they are on a winner – they are also showing his works at this year ’s Art Genève (January 27-31). ARMENIAN DISSIDENT INVADES EX-RUSSIAN EMBASSY Even further from central Brussels – along graceful Avenue Roosevelt that showcases many of the city’s grandest 20 th century buildings – is the magnificent Villa Empain: an Art Deco mansion used as the Soviet Embassy from 1947-63. After years of neglect it was restored to glory by the Boghossian Foundation, reopening as a culture centre in 2010. Through January 31 the Villa Empain is hosting a tribute to Sergei Parajanov (1924-90), best known as a dissident film-maker who spent four years in labour camp under Brezhnev – during which he devised intricate collages he dubbed ‘condensed movies.’ Several of these were lent to the Villa Empain show by the Parajanov Museum in Erevan. The exhibition was designed by the Armenian conceptual artist Sarkis, and included a number of TV monitors playing Parajanov’s films – often surrounded by carpets and textiles reflecting their joint Caucasian heritage.