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Issue 17

April 2020

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NEWSLETTER ON RUSSIAN ART








#stayhome

#readRussianArtFocus




CONTENTS

 

№ 17





INTERVIEW

Dmitry Kovalenko:

A COLLECTION THAT FORMED ITSELF






BACKGROUND

GEORGE COSTAKIS


PROFILE


ZIPPING INTO THE FUTURE



EDITOR'S LETTER

A LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR


 

MUSEUM NEWS

VIRTUALLY
THERE







FEATURED ARTISTS

Newsmakers

of the month







CLOSE-UP

MOSCOW’S METRO: A DECORATED CATACOMB

MEMOIR

A VANISHED SOVIET COLLECTION




OPINION


AN EPIDEMIC

OF RUSSIAN FAKES





IN PICTURES

LIVING WITH LENIN




UNSEEN

Taus Makhacheva




PREVIEW

LOOKING BACK ANEW







Advisory Board

 

Contacts

 






Dmitry Aksenov

President of the Aksenov Family Foundation,

Co-founder of Russian Art Focus

 

Inna Bazhenova

Owner of The Art Newspaper international network,

founder of the In Artibus Foundation, Co-founder of

Russian Art Focus

 

Anna Somers Cocks

Non-executive Director, The Art Newspaper

 

Nicolas V. Iljine

Advisor to the Director of the State Hermitage

 

Samuel Keller

Director of Fondation Beyeler

 

Jean-Hubert Martin

Art historian, heritage conservator and curator

 

Hans-Ulrich Obrist

Artistic Director at the Serpentine Galleries

 

Mikhail Piotrovsky

Director of the State Hermitage

 

Zelfira Tregulova

Director of the State Tretyakov Gallery

 

russianartfocus.com

 

info@russianartfocus.com

 

Facebook

 

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Twitter

 

YouTube

 

Publishers

Dmitry Aksenov,

Inna Bazhenova

 

Editor-in-chief

Richard Wallis

 

Deputy Publisher

Maria Savostyanova

 

Art Director

Vladimir Pavlikov

 

Deputy Editor

Ekaterina Wagner

 

Coordinator

Anna Grositskaya

 

Digital and

Distribution Manager

Anna Drozhzhina








On the cover:

Аlisa Yoffe. Masked Emoticon Icon, 2020. Digital pic

 

 

 

 

 

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Editor's letter >




A LETTER FROM
THE EDITOR


As I write, a kilometre-long convoy of buses is bringing members of Russia’s
(National) Guard to Moscow, a city of 20 million people. Russian media say the
Guard’s mission will be to enforce a night-time curfew from eight in the evening
to five o’clock in the morning. However, the Guard, supposed to act as a kind of
riot police, denies it. Whoever is right, the lockdown now being enforced in
France with military precision by the “Gendarmerie” has already changed that
country’s face and turned charming hamlets into ghost towns. The world is
changing, but gloom and doom won’t help. Religion is traditionally a refuge in
times of trouble, but so is art. The first museum to close in Russia was
Moscow’s Garage on March 14, but that private institution has certainly not
stopped working. Instead, its staff has emigrated to the world of virtual
reality and is working from home.

 

The April issue of Russian Art Focus includes Ariadne Arendt’s guide to Russia’s
virtual reality museums that not only makes up for the closure of the real ones,
but also uncovers other little-known provincial gems. The Russian Ministry of
Culture’s initial plan was to ban all foreigners from entering museums. In
addition, it decreed that no more than three Russian visitors would be allowed
to move in each 10 square metres of museum space. However, this quirky solution
luckily never came into force. However, the lockdown has not been entirely
negative. The director of Moscow’s Pushkin Museum of Fine Art, Marina Loshak,
inaugurated a show called ‘From Durer to Matisse’ soon after the museum’s
closure and said that she never had so many people attending an exhibition
opening at her museum, thanks again to virtual reality. Loshak greeted the
invisible crowd on a podium, flanked by two of the museum’s curators. “I can’t
see your eyes, but I know that there are far more of you than ever before,” she
said.

 

All Moscovites over 65 have been ordered to stay at home. That includes me. We
are living through an upheaval and no one knows how it will end, but an
invisible virus turns out to be as potentially destructive as the world’s
deadliest arsenals. What is it that matters in a world that has thus been turned
upside down? As a schoolboy, I loved Keats and one of the few quotations I
remember is his line from his poem ‘Endymion’: “A thing of beauty is a joy
forever.” Never forget it.

 

 

Richard Wallis

Editor-in-chief



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