COMMENTARY : Soviet Artists Skeptical After Historic Auction

The Soviet Union’s first international art auction captivated the art world last week as it catapulted a handful of contemporary artists to stardom and gifted its participants with hard-currency bank accounts that will allow them to travel to the West.

These are not trivial victories for artists who have a long history of struggling against an oppressive government, but few people in Moscow are ready to proclaim the $3.6-million sale a panacea. Glasnost is still too new and this glittering example of capitalistic openness is too foreign.

“I would feel more hopeful if the initiative for the auction had come from the Soviet Union and not from Sotheby’s,” said Vadim Zakharov, whose eight paintings sold for a total of $63,305.

At 29, Zakharov was the youngest artist represented in the auction and one of the most skeptical. His position is all of a piece with his artwork, however, which consists of conceptual performances and absurd self-portraits based on the persona of a one-eyed man and a raving monster who is part elephant.

Appearing tall, lean and fresh-scrubbed in his temporary studio on an upper floor of a Moscow high-rise that’s destined for refurbishment, Zakharov speculated about the effects of the auction.

“No one could imagine such a thing happening even a year and a half ago, but I think that only a few people will be promoted as a result of it. Some names will be thrown out into the world and they will earn some money, but the rest will land in a dead zone,” he said.

“The potential is great, but we have so far to go. There are very few private collectors in Moscow, and most Soviet people do not have enough money to buy art,” he concluded ruefully.

According to Elena Olikheyko, of the Soviet Ministry of Culture, the difficulty extends beyond economics. A fundamental change of attitude is needed if Soviet artists are to gain support at home.

“The problem for many years has been that people believe that real art is already in museums,” she said. “The process has been locked on itself. There was no place where people could go to see art and consider buying it. They are learning for the first time that art isn’t just something you look at in museums but that you can also live with it.”

Zakharov and other participating artists watched the sale with obvious excitement as Sotheby’s duplicated its American and European auctions in a profoundly foreign setting. Some of the artists might as well have been witnessing a visitation from outer space as they tried to sort out the significance of buy-ins, reserve prices, buyer’s premiums and why certain pieces skyrocketed past their estimates. One by one, artworks were introduced as objects of desire and quickly claimed by Western dealers and collectors waving numbered paddles.

A core of bidders had been enticed to visit Moscow by a deluxe nine-day tour, organized by Sotheby’s to provide a historical and sociological context for buying Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet contemporary art.

“I didn’t come here thinking I had to have something from the sale, but we became so immersed in the culture during the tour that I’m thrilled to have a permanent memory of it,” said New York collector Joan Quinones, who snagged a naively styled painting by Arkadi Petrov for $5,669. Her friend, Sally Goldreyer, said she made a “spur of the moment” decision to buy a painting by Ira Nakhova and another by Sergei Volkov for a total of about $17,000.

“I like to buy early,” before an artist is well known, said a Swiss woman, who identified herself as Mrs. James Levy. She came to Moscow to buy a painting by Edward Steinberg (for $41,575) and swept up several other works while she was at it.

Watching such enthusiastic spending was a heady experience for artists who haven’t been able to show their work--much less sell it at Western prices--until very recently. But some, fearing that Westerners were just buying a piece of Gorbachev’s popularity, are wary of predicting permanent improvements in the lives of artists.

Others are reluctant to cast off the positive aspects of a system that people in the West tend to see as thoroughly negative. “Though it may sound strange, I have had a chance to develop in a detached way” out of the limelight and without pressures of the marketplace, said Zakharov. Expressing an ambivalence that is not uncommon here, he mused, “I think it is best to just sit in your own dacha and to have the opportunity to visit the town.”

When the town took the dacha by storm, in the form of an auction, the process “disoriented me--and not only me,” he continued. “Almost all the artists were absolutely unknown in the West, and now they are commanding disproportionately high prices. A lot of people are very nervous. We hope that the auction will stimulate not only buying but the interest of museums and art experts.”

Though the auction put Soviet contemporary art in sharp focus, the event is only one aspect of a cultural thaw that has allowed artists a Western exposure. One participant, Ivan Chuikov, was abroad during the auction. Another, Ilya Kabakov, who has shown his work in New York, had recently returned from Italy. Edward Steinberg was just back from West Germany, and Grisha Bruskin was about to leave for Chicago for an exchange program.

Meanwhile, new exhibitions of Russian and Soviet art being organized for Western museums and galleries are announced almost daily. This summer in Moscow, visitors can see several exhibitions of art that would have been banned a few years ago.

The floodgates to the Soviet Union’s contemporary art are definitely open, but one major obstacle remains: The Soviet Artists’ Union, which has loosened its hold in recent years but still controls most exhibitions, artists’ employment and studio space.

A rift between the artists’ union and the Soviet Ministry of Culture--which sponsored the auction as a joint venture with Sotheby’s--has been the subject of much debate here. Union stalwarts have opposed the auction, arguing that it has turned art into a commodity and that future sales may rob the country of its cultural heritage.

Some artists, on the other hand, tell horror stories of how the union has tried to prevent them from traveling to other countries to see their own exhibitions. “I have never been spoken to so rudely as by union officials,” said Steinberg, who finally won his battle to go to West Germany.

Though many artists in the auction are union members, few are true believers, saying they joined young when their work wasn’t considered subversive or that membership is simply a means of earning a living so that they can pursue more personal expression.

What is needed, according to Pavel Horoshilov, director general of the Ministry of Culture, is a massive overhaul of the union. It should become “a more professional organization that serves artists’ best interests,” he said. Decrying the recalcitrance of those who benefit from the entrenched system, Horoshilov observed, “Sometimes artists are their own worst enemies.”

Art experts in the West also have their work cut out for them if this summer’s spectacle in Moscow is to lead to a more balanced, global view of contemporary art. Soviet work--which is sometimes brilliant, often uneven and generally cramped by a lack of materials, technical facilities and space to produce it--must be studied in the broadest perspective and assimilated into contemporary art history.

That educational process can happen without auctions but not without extensive critical and curatorial effort, many well-chosen exhibitions and sufficient time to get to know art that has only tentatively emerged from hiding.