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Author Topic: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine  (Read 124214 times)

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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #75 on: May 07, 2020, 02:19:59 PM »
Below is an interesting article regarding a trove of Russian/Soviet Avant-Garde paintings that have been rediscovered.

From: https://www.theartnewspaper.com/


Cache of Russian avant-garde works surfaces in regional museum's basement

Art historian Andrey Sarabyanov is planning a new exhibition of forgotten pieces by Kandinsky, Rodchenko and Stepanova

SOPHIA KISHKOVSKY


4th May 2020 12:11 BST

A leading Russian avant-garde expert says he has identified dozens of works by artists such as Wassily Kandinsky, Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova languishing in an obscure history museum in the Kirov region, 800km away from Moscow.

Andrey Sarabyanov says he was “astounded” at what he found in the basement store of the Yaransk Museum of Local Lore, in a town of fewer than 16,000 people. Discoveries included three watercolours by Kandinsky, a gouache by Stepanova and a “completely unknown” work by Rodchenko from 1915—a painting on cardboard that is now being restored.

Sarabyanov, the editor of a Russian avant-garde encyclopaedia that will be published in English in 2022, believes the works were abruptly abandoned after featuring in an early Soviet travelling exhibition in 1921. Having fought against the prevalence of Russian avant-garde forgeries, he defends the authenticity of the Yaransk trove and says he is open to technical analysis.

The Kandinskys were already known to specialists and had been “shown but not emphasised” in a 2005 show at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, he says, but “no one had revealed the history of the appearance of these works”.

Art historian Andrey Sarabyanov at the Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum in Kirov, which will lend works to a new exhibition recreating a 1921 travelling show
Sarabyanov learned of Yaransk’s hidden treasures from a local cultural official, Anna Shakina, during a 2017 visit to the regional capital Kirov, where the Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum holds a rich avant-garde collection. Shakina’s 2008 dissertation research had unearthed the catalogue of the 1921 exhibition, for which the early Bolshevik government transported more than 350 works by 20th-century artists around the region by horse-drawn cart.

According to records, 85 of the works remained in Yaransk. Around half were transferred to Kirov in the 1960s for restoration and hidden in storage due to censorship from the Soviet authorities, which had long since banned avant-garde art. They are now openly displayed as part of the Vasnetsov Brothers Art Museum’s collection. Sarabyanov knew those pieces from visits in the late Soviet era and in 2015, when he was preparing a Moscow exhibition of forgotten avant-garde art from provincial museums.

Together with Shakina—now the Kirov museum’s director—and Natalia Murray, a lecturer at London’s Courtauld Institute of Art, Sarabyanov plans to reconstruct the 1921 exhibition at the Yeltsin Center in Yekaterinburg, reuniting the works divided between Kirov and Yaransk. The show is currently scheduled to open in September. The whereabouts of the 250-plus other works are still unknown but alternative pieces will be lent by the Slobodskoy Museum and Exhibition Center.

“It is rare to find unknown works by such important artists,” Murray says. “It is a very important discovery which will not only bring new works to light but will also tell the fascinating story of the travelling exhibitions in Russia in the first years after the October Revolution.”
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #76 on: February 07, 2021, 01:51:36 PM »
There is a lively debate going on regarding a recently assembled collection of Fabergé now on view at the Hermitage in St. Petersburg.

I am not an expert on Fabergé but with art there is a rule of thumb that the longer the story the more unlikely it is true.


In an Explosive Claim, an Art Dealer Says the Hermitage’s Fabergé Exhibition Is Full of ‘Tawdry Fakes’ From a Single Oligarch’s Collection.

Art dealer Andre Ruzhnikov says that more than 20 works in the show are forgeries.


A leading London-based art dealer has accused the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg of mounting a Fabergé exhibition featuring more than 20 “tawdry fakes” from the collection of Alexander Ivanov, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin.

The explosive claim was made in an open letter to Hermitage boss Mikhail Piotrovsky by Andre Ruzhnikov, who has been buying and selling Fabergé for 40 years. In it, he accuses Piotrovsky of “insulting the good name of Fabergé, betraying your visitors’ trust, operating under false pretences, and destroying the authority of the museum you have been appointed to lead.”

“The Hermitage is the pride of Russia and belongs to the world’s cultural heritage,” Ruzhnikov wrote. “Your ‘Fabergé’ exhibition is dragging it through the gutter.”


https://news.artnet.com/market/faberge-ivanov-hermitage-museum-1940514#:~:text=The%20allegations%20concern%20objects%20from,that%20Ruzhnikov%20says%20are%20fake.&text=Ivanov%20tells%20Artnet%20News%20that,museum%20restorers%20and%20other%20staff.%E2%80%9D

Here is another famous scene involving a Fabergé egg from 007.

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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #77 on: March 03, 2021, 03:14:07 PM »
This seems to be a surprising exhibition. The Conceptual and Kinetic movements were as I understand largely ignored and disdained in the Soviet period. Some assertions seem quite rather generous but I am observer from a distance. Worth noting the one geometric black and white images is reminiscent of B. Riley.

https://www.russianartandculture.com/story-of-the-future-tretyakov-gallerys-take-on-the-avant-garde-and-kinetic-art-in-russia/
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #78 on: March 11, 2021, 11:14:48 PM »
This seems to be a surprising exhibition. The Conceptual and Kinetic movements were as I understand largely ignored and disdained in the Soviet period. Some assertions seem quite rather generous but I am observer from a distance. Worth noting the one geometric black and white images is reminiscent of B. Riley.

https://www.russianartandculture.com/story-of-the-future-tretyakov-gallerys-take-on-the-avant-garde-and-kinetic-art-in-russia/

Very cool works! I've never had the capacity to appreciate art like a true aesthete but work like this is 'infinitely' more fascinating to me than some landscape.
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #79 on: August 22, 2021, 01:19:55 PM »
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #80 on: January 21, 2022, 04:34:43 PM »
OOPSY POOPSY

A Russian Artist Left a Giant Poop Sculpture on a Hallowed St. Petersburg Burial Ground—and Now He’s in Deep, Er… Poop

Ivan Volkov is facing criminal charges for laying a 15-foot-long turd in the historic Field of Mars.

Some artworks are clever; others are just plain shit. The newest effort by Russian artist Ivan Volkov is sort of both.

Last week, the Moscow-based artist traveled to St. Petersburg where he laid a 15-foot-long snow sculpture shaped like a pile of poop at the Field of Mars, a historic square that once served as a burial for Bolsheviks who died in Russia’s 1917 revolution and ensuing civil war.

“It’s so beautiful that I pooped myself,” the artist said of the square in a since-deleted Facebook post with a picture of his creation.

Unfortunately for Volkov, local authorities didn’t find his toilet humor amusing—and now he’s in deep.

Citing article 244 of Russia’s criminal code, which bars the “desecration of bodies of the dead and their burial places,” police have filed a criminal case against the artist.

“Intentionally, cynically, immorally, out of hooligan motives, and disregarding the generally accepted rules and norms of behavior established in society, he placed an art object made of snow in the form of giant feces in a yellow puddle,” the report reads, according to a local news outlet.

Volkov was arrested while trying to board a train back to Moscow. He now faces up to five years in prison for the stunt, should authorities determine that his motives were political. The minimum punishment is a fine of 40,000 rubles (roughly $520).

Some Russian media reports characterized the artwork as a statement on the lack of municipal street maintenance in St. Petersburg. Volkov, for his part, told a Russian news outlet that he “did not put any particular meaning” into the work.

A graduate of Moscow’s Institute of Contemporary Art and the Stroganoff Academy of Design and Applied Arts, Volkov has a habit of erecting macabre snow sculptures in public places and sharing images of them across his social media accounts. He explained that brown and yellow food coloring was used to make his latest ephemeral work.

The artist was released from detention shortly after his arrest, and his sculpture has since been removed from the Field of Mars.

The turd, you could say, has been flushed.

The “artist” is neither intelligent or original. The above is from ArtNet.
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #81 on: March 01, 2022, 08:37:26 AM »
The below is from a subscription site. When A. Hitler wanted to rid Europe of certain minorities he destroyed there heritage, such as language and art. Seems V. Putin is following this strategy.

Russian Forces Burned Down a Museum Home to Dozens of Works by Ukrainian Folk Artist Maria Prymachenko

Invading Russian forces destroyed a museum in Ivankiv, a city northwest of the capital Kiev, that was home to dozens of works by the Ukrainian folk artist Maria Prymachenko on Sunday.

The Ivankiv Historical and Local History Museum, located northwest of the capital city Kiev was burnt to the ground, along with 25 works by Prymachenko, according to the Kiev Independent.

Vlada Litovchenko, director of the Vyshhorod Historical and Cultural Reserve, confirmed the “irreparable loss.”

“Numerous historical and architectural monuments and archaeological sites are under threat of artillery shelling and uncontrolled movement of heavy military trucks,” Litovchenko wrote in a statement on Facebook that was translated into English.

“Another one of the irreparable losses of the historical-cultural authority of Ukraine is the destruction of the Ivankiv Historical-Cultural Museum by the aggressor in these hellish days for our country,” she wrote, adding that the museum was home to not only the works of Prymachenko, but other artists and exhibitions as well.

The self-taught artist was born in 1909 in the region and was buried there when she died in 1997. Her colorful folk art paintings were widely exhibited in the country and appeared on the country’s stamps during the 1970s. She was honored with the 1966 Taras Shevchenko National Prize of Ukraine. UNESCO declared that 2009 was the year of Maria Prymachenko.

Since the Russian forces destroyed the museum during the ongoing war, Ukraine has called for UNESCO to strip Russia of its membership in the organization.

“The idea of creating an international movement to protect historical monuments in case of armed conflict was laid into the basic principles of UNESCO activities,” Litovchenko said. “Since 2014, the Russian Federation has been systematically violating international humanitarian law and international conventions for the protection of cultural heritage, especially on the Crimea Peninsula.”

Tweets condemning Russia’s destruction of the museum and images of Prymachenko’s works flooded Twitter.

“A sign of Putin’s barbarity to destroy a museum in #Ukraine. Especially one which celebrates the joyous art of Maria Prymachenko,” wrote Irish artist Robert Bohan. “@UNESCO must intervene with Putin.”
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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #82 on: December 18, 2023, 01:13:56 AM »
This is an interesting story for numerous reasons but I will let those who care to read it decide there own opinions.

A Rubens Painting, Allegedly Stolen During World War II, Remains Embroiled in a Decades-Long Dispute
The painting once hung in the Rheinsberg Palace


A battle over the ownership of a painting by the Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens, which disappeared during World War II, continues to wind its way through court.

The oil painting, Tarquinius and Lucretia (1610–11), was likely acquired by King Frederick I of Prussia and had hung in a gallery at the Sanssouci Palace in Potsdam, Germany, before the war. It was moved to Rheinsberg Palace in 1942 to protect it from damage but was taken from the palace in 1945. The painting depicts the mythological rape of a Roman noblewoman before her subsequent suicide and is considered to be one of the most significant works still missing from the Sanssouci gallery.

In 1999, a Russian businessman Vladimir Logvinenko acquired the painting and had it restored, Deutsche Welle reported. The work was seized in 2003 in Moscow after an official request for legal assistance and with top-level diplomacy with Russia, according to a news release from the Stiftung Preussische Schlösser und Gärten (SPSG), a public foundation created after the reunification of Germany in 1994 that administers historic buildings in the area.

“This is the first step towards recovering this highly important masterpiece not only for the Prussian palaces, but also for the entire art world,” the foundation’s director-general Hartmut Dorgerloh said in a statement at the time

The standoff between Logvinenko and the German foundation had began, according the Chicago Tribune, when a Russian man sent an email asking the SPSG if it would like the painting back. The Russian dealer allegedly hoped to secure 25 percent of the painting’s value, estimated at the time around $90 million, wired to a Swiss bank account.

“When we got the e-mail, it came as a big surprise because we had no idea that the painting still existed,” Dorgerloh said at the time. “Our first answer was that we were really, really interested.”

Russian authorities had reportedly seized the work then but did not hand it over to their German counterparts. The following year, the Guardian reported that the Office of the Prosecutor-General of the Russian Federation ruled that Logvinenko was the rightful owner because he didn’t break any Russian law in acquiring it.

However, on a 2021 appeal to have his rights to the artwork recognized, Logvinenko was told by the Potsdam Regional Court in Germany that he “is not the owner of the painting.”

The German court said the legal dispute was subject to Russian law, not German law, but made its determination based on “the relevant Russian law,” noting that Logvinenko did not acquire it through a legal or good-faith transaction, and did not inherit it.

According to DW, the ownership dispute could embroil the courts for another two decades.


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Re: Culture and Arts in Russia & Ukraine
« Reply #83 on: December 18, 2023, 03:19:41 AM »
The German court said the legal dispute was subject to Russian law, not German law, but made its determination based on “the relevant Russian law,” noting that Logvinenko did not acquire it through a legal or good-faith transaction, and did not inherit it.

According to DW, the ownership dispute could embroil the courts for another two decades.
This is the part I don't get. First they dereference to the Russian law, but then when it rules Logvinenko its rightful owner, they don't follow the ruling.

Do or don't .... but now its stuck in the middle.

And the man doesn't even want it sold full-price, but only a far cry of that. Means he knew the paintings owner was disputed I think, but he also had it restored, who knows how much that cost him. May even be that he's not profiting that much.

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