Russia's oligarchs snub vulgarity, eye fine art
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MOSCOW—Russia's yachting, partying, British football club-acquiring billionaires are, as they mature, refining their tastes, learning the fine art of collecting fine art and breathing new life into a once-struggling Russian market.
Roman Abramovich, Russia's 42-year-old uber-oligarch, jetted into Moscow this week for the opening of a new contemporary art space which he is funding as a pet project for his girlfriend, fashion designer Daria Zhukova.
"I've always thought that Moscow should have a place like this," Zhukova, 27, a former model and famed socialite, told The Associated Press in the cavernous center's cafe on Tuesday, before the opening.
Until recently, Russia's super-rich seemed to splurge on art only when it had the added benefit of pleasing the Kremlin.
Last year, billionaire Alisher Usmanov paid more than $40 million to save an art collection owned by the late Russian cellist Mstislav Rostropovich from being auctioned off at
He followed the lead of Norilsk Nickel-owning magnate Vladimir Potanin, who bought Malevich's avant-garde Black Square for the government in 2002 for $1 million, saving it from foreign ownership.
According to the summer 2008 edition of ARTnews magazine, Abramovich is one of the 200 top art collectors in the world. He is the only Russia-based collector in the list.
The one-time oil tycoon and owner of the Chelsea soccer club broke records in May when he acquired Francis Bacon's Triptych for $86.3 million and Lucian Freud's Benefits Supervisor Sleeping for $33.6 million.
Abramovich provided the startup costs for Zhukova's project, named the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture. The center, designed by Konstantin Melnikov, is housed in an 8,500-square-meter (91,500-sq. foot) tram shed built in 1927, and located in an old Jewish neighborhood on a northern fringe of central Moscow.
It opened to the public Thursday with the first retrospective of legendary artists Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
The 74-year-old Ilya Kabakov is considered the founder of the conceptualist art movement in Moscow, which developed during the 1970s in the Soviet Union. He and his wife moved to New York in 1992.
Los Angeles-based art critic Alexander Panov said that, while the gallery may have started life as a billionaire's vanity project, it has the potential for anchoring modern art in Russia.
"Are those in attendance mostly snobs and 'wannabes' who were there simply to show their
The center's retro-chic building, its polished wooden floors and lofty ceilings contrast with the far less glamorous gallery spaces at Moscow's renowned State Tretyakov Gallery.
Both Zhukova and Abramovich's spokesman John Mann refused to comment on the cost of the project.
Abramovich, treading the perilous tightrope of trying to show support for the new center without stealing the limelight, took a seat for Zhukova's ribbon-cutting press conference Wednesday and duly clapped as she declared the center open. He was surrounded by a formidable security entourage.
Russian art collecting has rapidly progressed through a series of fads, experts say. For a while decorative art was all the rage, and hit its apogee, perhaps, when magnate Viktor Vekselberg's $100 million bought the complete Faberge egg collection in 2004.
As Russia reasserted what it considers its birthright as a global power, collectors turned their attention to Russian art. Now, they're scouring the earth for anything in vogue, collecting impressionist and contemporary works at lightning speed, wielding devastating whim power that has led some critics to call them the biggest force in world art markets.
Philip Hoffmann, chief executive of The Fine Art Fund, told the Business Standard in August that only 20 individuals account for $2 billion to $4 billion worth of art sold worldwide each year out of a total art market as much as $50 billion.
But the Russian market isn't as hot as it seems, said Ivan Lindsay, a London-based dealer whose collection went on display at the summer's Moscow World Fine Arts Fair.
"The Moscow public is learning very fast but is a bit nervous. Only people like Abramovich are spending vast sums. In the Russian market, $3 million to $5 million is the limit of what a normal buyer will spend," Lindsay said, adding that the market still "has a lot of potential."
The art market here is also handicapped, he said, by Russia's complex customs rules and the high costs of exhibiting in Russia, which have turned many potential exhibitors away.
And forgery, a problem everywhere, may be more of an issue in Russia, where there are reports that experts are sometimes bribed or intimidated into declaring a forgery genuine.
As a result, Linsday said, many Russian buyers prefer to make their purchases in New York or London. "They are slightly suspicious of galleries which come to exhibit in Moscow," he said.
The opening of the Garage Center for Contemporary Culture could help dispel those fears.
Zhukova has no background in fine art, but she is no stranger to wealth. Her billionaire, London-based father, Alexander Zhukov, made his fortune by exporting oil in the turbulent 1990s.
Asked what drew her to contemporary art, she says she "kinda grew up with it."
"My father is really into architecture. Both of my best friends are artists, and I think it has always been around me," she said.
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Associated Press Writer Ayano Hodouchi contributed to this report.
