Counterpoint: Contemporary Russian Art. Musée du Louvre, through 31 January
Without a shadow of a doubt, the Counterpoint exhibition of Russian contemporary art at Louvre, a museum without a Slavic art department of its own, is noteworthy event. It continues the relatively recently born tradition of allowing contemporary art break into the fortress that has been closed to it for such a long time. The conceptual summary of the show, emphasising the desire to create a portrait of Russian contemporary art, seems promising. So does the list of the represented artists, featuring names that belong to different generations and movements: Ilya and Emilia Kabakov; Erik Bulatov; Pavel Pepperstein; Alexei Kalima; Valery Koshlyakov; Komar and Melamid; The Blue Noses, et al. However, not even in their wildest nightmarish fantasies could the Louvre administration and curator Marie-Laure Bernadac imagine the row that has now been kicked up because of their decision to include some works by the Prague-based Russian artist Avdei Ter-Oganyan who has been living abroad as a political refugee for a decade now. The Russian Ministry of Culture stopped the examples of Ter-Oganyan's Radical Abstractionism series (four of them, including one of the most provocative pieces), openly critical of the Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, from being taken out of Russia. This caused a genuine uproar in the Western media; the involved parties were quoted left and right. On 26 September, Ter-Oganyan in his personal blog (http://teroganian.livejournal.com) posted an open letter to the curator, declining an offer to print the duplicable work in question in France and providing a detailed description of the last decade's conflicts between the Russian art world and official power. Despite the firm resolution, the artist finally succumbed to the entreaties of his colleagues and agreed to exhibit his works.
Another row followed on 14 October when the opening day's press conference was aborted as Avdei Ter-Oganyan walked into the auditorium. On 15 October a post appeared in the artist's blog, demanding that the curator call a new press conference in which he would publicly withdraw from the show and demand for his works to be taken down.
It seems that the West has been given another essential insight into the Russian art scene. Many still recall the fracas surrounding the 2007 Sots Art: Political Art in Russia From 1972 to Today exhibition at Maison Rouge when the Russian Ministry of Culture banned 17 works from being shown. The art dealer Marat Gelman had this to say at the time: „Today, there are four taboo subjects in Russian art: the government, [Russian] Orthodox Church, Chechnya and Putin."
99 Rue de Rivoli
www.louvre.fr
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