Russia in the art-space race
This is part one in a series of images I’m posting of Russian works that went on the block at a pair of Sotheby’s auctions earlier this month, for which I’ve added a new category to the Dali House menu. They’re the ones I would have bought, given enough roubles, and they’re all quite extraordinary, for quite different reasons.
The sales, both held in London, were “Russian Paintings” on June 10 and “Russian Works of Art” on June 12.
Possibly the timing was off for the porcelain Easter egg above. The holy day had long passed by the time of the sale (and the name Faberge was nowhere in sight), so the 19th-century coastal scene from the Imperial Porcelain Manufactory failed to find a buyer. The vendor had hoped to earn between £3,000 and £5,000.
And it was too late for the more whimsical age of the tsars. Soon after, the only art you could look at in the Soviet Union had to have a picture of Stalin on it, a time recalled with unambiguous intent in Vagrich Bakhchanyan’s “Stalin Test”, two details below.
Bakhchanyan was born in 1938, so he’d remember those days well enough. His “computer print and collage on paper” from 2005, an example of Russia’s so-called “Sots art”, was up for as much as £20,000, though there are prints of it online for far less.
Bakhchanyan has shown no patience for American popular culture/propaganda either, even if he borrows its pop style. One day in November 1977 he had a picture of himself taken at each of 30 New York City galleries, in every case holding a sign that read “Save Time”. These were welded together for a piece called “Save Time! 30 Exhibitions on the Same Day”, and did indeed make people wonder about the point of art.
