February 2012

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Two unconnected events in the art world last week set me thinking about the relationship between art and politics. The first was the opening of the V&A’s latest exhibition, ‘Cold War Modern: Design 1945-70’, which was followed by Bloomberg's report that almost 50 per cent of the Gagosian gallery’s global sales are buyers from Russia and other republics of the former Soviet Union.

According to the Bloomberg report, the Gagosian gallery had almost no Russian buyers four years ago but with Russia now the world’s second largest oil exporter, the country's number of billionaires has jumped from 36 in 2004 to 110 in 2008. The result is a moneyed elite that are evidently keen to acquire art.

Over the weekend, Marcel Theroux (son of writer Paul Theroux and brother of TV-presenter Louis) wrote in The Independent that the Russians are oft latecomers to global trends but belatedly make up for it with astonishing intensity: think of the lack of pre-19th century great Russian literature and then the onslaught of Pushkin, Tolstoy, Chekhov and Turgenev et al, he argued. On Sunday, Theroux’s documentary aired on Channel 4 showing Russians buying up Russian art (which has risen in price by 400 per cent over the last three years) at the Russian art sales in London this summer. Theroux’s point was that the Russians are buying their heritage in a fashion befitting the precedent set by Catherine the Great.

For anyone connected with the art world, this is no new thing. For some time Russian collectors have more than compensated for the weak dollar, sub-prime mortgage wobble and now undeniable credit crunch. And not just in the top-end markets of modern and contemporary art. Talk to dealers in almost any sector of the art market and they will all point to the rise of Russian interest. Quite simply, Russians enjoy collecting heritage and history, be it their own or of other cultures. And not only is art a gilt-edged investment, seemingly impervious to other market crashes, it’s an assertion of the return of Russia as a superpower.

For me, the real interest here, the point that isn’t made directly in media coverage but which very often carries a whiff of it, is that this intensity and new-found economic power is perceived as more than slightly threatening. Out of the blue, it is not simply that the Russians are coming, they’re already here, and, if you concur with Theroux, with an intensity that can’t be matched. The legacy of Cold War propaganda that portrayed Russia as the enemy and competitor in everything from landing on the moon, nuclear arms and political ideology means that a residue of fear still surrounds Russia. In politics, the tension surrounding the Kremlin’s refusal to extradite suspected assassin Andrei Lugovi and, this summer, Russia’s response to Georgia, revealed a political tension between Russia and the UK reminiscent of times that I, for one, thought long gone and resigned to the history books. Consequently, there could be no more fitting a moment for an exhibition devoted to the theme of superpower rivalry and its expression in art.

By contrast, in the art world the upper eschelons in both Russia and the West have forged ahead with glamorous displays of unity quite in contrast to any thorny political dialogue. Dasha Zhukova (girlfriend of Roman Abramovich), opened her Moscow contemporary art gallery (GCCC) in the company of Tate director Nicholas Serota, art guru Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst (interviewed in the July-Aug Apollo) and Samuel Keller, former director of Art Basel. Last week, Gagosian opened their second Moscow-based show, housed in the former Red October Chocolate Factory that the gallery spent $1 million renovating.

Of course, cynics are quick to point out the lack of Zhukova’s credentials (she failed to name her favourite artists during an interview) and point to her alignment with the British blue-chip art world through money – she was sponsor of the Serpentine summer party this year; Dent-Brocklehurst is a consultant on the GCCC project. Equally, gallerists and art officials are deemed to have made easy bed-fellows with the moneyed Russian ‘oligarts’. But put aside the cynicism, the whiff of distrust and snobbery, and it may just be that these new art relationships will have a significant role to play in healing a century of political distrust. They are, I think, part of the cultural diplomacy involved in arranging an exhibition like that at the V&A. The Gagosian show in Moscow is curiously titled ‘For What You are About to Receive' but it is achieving more than simply endowing a hungry Russian market with cultural goods for profit. As the role of cultural ambassadors grow as powerful as politicians, is it not possible that these new relationships may play a bigger role in our shared future than we currently imagine?

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