Moscow Art Auction--Color It Green : Sales Total $3.6 Million; 2 Rodchenko Works Are Among Top Moneymakers

The Soviet Union’s first international art auction totaled $3.6 million in sales, exceeding its organizers most optimistic expectations. The Thursday evening sale of Russian Avant-Garde and contemporary Soviet art was predicted to bring about $1 million, but bidding was fiercely competitive, and prices often soared above their estimates.

As expected, two paintings by Alexander Rodchenko brought the sale’s top prices. “Line,” a 1920 oil in which a white line cuts a zigzag path across a black canvas, brought $567,600 (more than twice its estimate) from London dealer Annely Juda. The sale set a record for the artist.

“Composition,” a tiny 1916 abstraction by the Avant-Garde master, tripled its estimate, selling for $340,200 to an anonymous buyer.

Among the contemporary artists, Grisha Bruskin was the runaway favorite. His “Fundamental Lexicon,” a 32-panel painting based on symbols of Soviet life, brought $378,400. Sale of his five works totalled $767,636, of which he will get $470,000.

“Three years ago, I could never have believed that his would happen,” said the 43-year-old artist, who is about to spend several months in Chicago on an exchange program. He plans to use some of his new-found wealth to produce sculpture that was impossible for him to make in Moscow.

Only six of the 120 lots failed to sell in the auction--a joint venture of Sotheby’s London and the Soviet Ministry of Culture. The sale room was packed with more than 1,000 spectators, eagerly watched by an international press corps.

Though few buyers were identified, Lord Gowrie, chairman of Sotheby’s London, said that about two-thirds of them were private collectors and the rest were dealers. “We had a tremendously interesting range of buyers--American, English, Swiss, French, Italian and Austrian,” he said.

Rock star Elton John, bidding by telephone, also got into the action by snapping up two works--a painting by Svetlana Kopystianskaya and another by her husband, Igor Kopystiansky, for a total of $151,360. Together, they will take home $196,390 from the sale of a dozen artworks.

Two works were bought as donations to “a future Soviet museum of contemporary art,” according to Gowrie. One, a conceptual painting with Russian text by Ilya Kabakov, is a privately funded gift from A. Alfred Taubman, chairman of Sotheby’s New York. The other, a painting by Serguei Shutov, was purchased by Audie Schoeller, of the Paris auction house Drouet.

(The proposed contemporary art museum is no where near a reality. It is now only in the earliest of talking stages.)

Though sequestered at the Sovincentr, a glitzy international trade and hotel complex that caters to foreign businessmen, the sale and preview exhibition have attracted considerable attention from Muscovites who were invited to the sale or wangled their way into the building. A Wednesday night reception was crammed with people who quickly devoured every caviar-topped hard-boiled egg in sight, leaving only the ubiquitous cucumbers.

The artists were excited if not overwhelmed by being the darlings of a brand-new market, but not all Soviets approve of this sample of Madison Avenue that has invaded their socialist country.

The highly publicized auction has incited controversy on at least four issues: selection of artists, estimated sale prices, compensation of the artists and the fact that the sale was set up for Western buyers who will take the work out of the country.

Answering charges that the roster of artists in the sale is not the best that the U.S.S.R. has to offer, Gowrie said: “We do not pretend that this is a definitive choice. We chose artists we felt very firmly we could back” and those who had already established “some following in the West.”

“We did not want to create a market from scratch,” said auctioneer Simon de Pury. “That remains the role of galleries.”

According to De Pury, estimated sale prices for the contemporary works were set by information on private sales since there are no auction precedents. This meant that estimates for works by Ilya Glazunov, a popular painter of traditional Russian subjects who had eager collectors before the auction, ranged up to $60,000 while most others were less than $10,000.

Some Western dealers and collectors have judged the estimates too low, while participating artists generally thought they were high. But Edward Steinberg, a 51-year-old veteran who has sold his paintings for $35,000 apiece at the Claude Bernard Gallery in Paris, was offended that his works were estimated at about a fraction of their established value. His opinion was correct in one case. A buyer who identified herself as Mrs. James Levy of Lausanne, Switzerland, paid $41,624 for one of Steinberg’s canvases, estimated at about $6,000.

Artists will receive 60% of the hammer price, 10% in hard currency and the rest in so-called gold rubles (said to be worth three times as much as standard rubles). The Soviet Ministry of Culture will get 32% of the hammer price, with 2% of that going to a new cultural foundation. Sotheby’s will take the remaining 8% of the hammer price, plus the standard 10% buyer’s commission.

The formula for compensating the artists set off a round of conflicting protests. Most of the artists in the sale belong to the Soviet Artists’ Union, which has long controlled exhibitions, employment, salaries and studio space and doled out privileges to obedient members. But, apparently fearing a threat to its power, the union has opposed the auction--particularly hard-currency payment, which allows the artists to travel out of the country.

A more liberal element has argued that compensation should be entirely in hard currency. Others have objected to paying artists partly in gold rubles, calling it a black-market rate or currency for the privileged.

“There is a social injustice in this system of payment,” said Pavel Horoshilov, director general of the Ministry of Culture, noting that other Soviet citizens are compensated for their labors in standard rubles.

“But art is a human issue as well as a national issue,” Gowrie said. “Artists need hard currency to travel.”

As for organizing an auction exclusively for foreigners, Horoshilov said, “It was psychologically difficult to part with the works selected, but if you sell you will also have a chance to buy.”

The Ministry of Culture will use part of its auction proceeds to purchase works by other artists, he explained at a press conference.

During a private interview, Horoshilov confided that the unprecedented affair had set off a storm of jealousy in the art community. “If you want to lose all your friends, get involved in an auction,” he said, rolling his eyes and throwing up his hands to emphasize his embattled position.

On opening day of the preview exhibition, at least one artist who hadn’t been included appeared with his work hoping to squeeze in at the last minute. The tactic didn’t work, but he may have another chance.

While Sotheby’s officials have expressed only guarded hope that the auction experiment will become a regular event, Horoshilov has no reservations.

“If we were not planning others, we wouldn’t have gone to all this trouble,” he said. “It is not just a case of the rich relative coming to the village before we die.”