Marat Gelman - about new cultural policy and protest art

“When politics and media degrade, artists come to the fore”

Marat Gelman - about new cultural policy and protest art

Anton Belitsky/Kommersant

The famous gallery owner and art manager Marat Gelman said in an interview that “during his collaboration, [he] understood a very important thing that no one except [him] can do - this is a new cultural policy. That is, how to work with culture, how to save the country with the help of culture.” What should this new cultural policy be like, how can it be implemented in Russia and what does the decision of the Ministry of Culture to make the NCCA a division of ROSIZO mean? These questions were answered on the site by the man who carried out the “cultural revolution” in Perm and is today creating the European Cultural Center in Montenegro.

“Pavlensky today occupies the place that Yeltsin occupied in the early nineties”

In one of the courses of the Open University project, you talk about the fact that there is no general cultural policy in Russia, but there are several cultural policies: this is the Ministry of Culture, which treats art from the position of the customer; this is the State Duma, for which the artist is a hooligan, and he needs to be legally limited; this is the Church, for which everything that was before is good, and everything that is today is bad; and the presidential administration, where art is perceived as opposition, which would be better not to exist, but since it exists, then it is necessary to fight it as opposition. Today, do you see trends indicating a change in the course of these policies?

If we talk about what is happening today, then we're talking about about a very important and unpleasant thing. As a result of all these policies, one entire artistic environment is divided into two - official and unofficial. All these listed difficulties (about treating an artist as a hooligan or as an oppositionist) are cast in two lists of names: people with whom state institutions should work, whom state media should show (those who can be relied on - they will always fulfill the state order), and people with whom to work and whom to show. After all, art is not an amorphous substance; it is realized through people. We are speaking - Russian art beginning of the XXI century, and this is, in fact, a specific list of people. The fact that they are now splitting this environment into two is very bad for both parts. Because those who are banned are deprived of the opportunity to show themselves, and those who are bought sell their talent. And this is the result of these policies. The second thing that is important: there are attempts to purely formally capture what I was doing, what the Moscow mayor’s office was doing recently - working with art as a way of developing the territory. Most often, this is done randomly in some specific places - in Samara, Yekaterinburg, Novosibirsk, some attempts to grow an image of a place from an artistic situation. That is, Yekaterinburg had the image of a gangster city, and after a while some other image appeared. And this happens despite cultural policies, that is, despite what the authorities are doing.

— What should the general cultural policy be and, most importantly, how can this be achieved in today’s conditions?

From my point of view, today there can be only one strategy - to preserve something, because it will not be possible to develop anything, nothing new, under the current government. A destructive process is underway, and when this happens, the only the right strategy- this is not trying to build, but trying to save something from destruction: to save a collection, a museum, an institution. In the current situation, we need to come together and understand what is dear to us and what we want to preserve from destruction.

Generally speaking, there are global processes (they are related to art and culture) in which we need to participate, and there are specific Russian processes that would be positive and could be realized, for example, under a different government. Let's start with specific things. In general, cultural policy can be implemented when it is part big politics. And in this sense, we must decide some big task. We have a problem that is three hundred years old, it is associated with over-centralization. Russia is a super-centralized country. Best shots, money, resources - everything is pulled into one place; the province, accordingly, is impoverished. And every new boss starts with the fact that we need to fight this - we need decentralization. But they are doing it wrong: they are trying to redistribute powers, capabilities, and resources from the center to the region, but many centers need to be created. And only then build connections between these centers.

That is, the country’s decentralization program can be solved through culture. It is clear that this is a process of modernization, and now there can be no modernization in Russia, but theoretically there could be such a program. And this is the first task (through culture we solve the country’s problems), the second is the treatment of the organism itself, the very body of the artistic environment.

At all times, as I have already said, culture is realized through people, through their individuality: through a person’s talent, his entrepreneurial gift, the passion of a collector, that is, always through a person. But everything that is being done in Russia is an attempt to prevent a person from coming into art: the first is to remove competition (and competition is the first sign of individuality), and the second is to prevent private capital from becoming active in the cultural space (but it is impossible to cultivate cultural diversity with, relatively speaking, one customer - the state; there must be thousands of customers). In fact, we need a serious program to involve individuals in culture. Yes, they adopted a law on philanthropy, but in it philanthropists are considered to be those who support only state institutions, while the philanthropist cannot influence the policy of this state institution. They offer him - please put the money here and move away. But it is necessary that the person who finances the institution has the opportunity, firstly, to choose who to finance (I like these, but I don’t like these), and secondly, to participate in the work of this chosen institution. As soon as it appears private person, competition will also be revived. After all, in principle, the cultural environment is the most competitive. Just in Soviet time this was decided voluntarily: here are our thirty artists who will go down in the history of art - keep the list. In reality, everything happens differently - there are ten thousand artists and fifty places in the history of art. There is no such fierce and intense competition in any other environment.

Alexander Petrosyan/Kommersant

If we talk seriously about cultural policy, we must keep in mind that what happens around us is sometimes much more more important than that what's going on inside. Let’s say that in the nineties in Russia people were doing something, and somewhere else people were creating the Internet. And, if we look at the two thousand years, it turns out that Russia has changed much more under the influence of this Internet than under the influence of what the Russian people did. Therefore, we must definitely look at what is happening in the world. And an amazing thing is happening in the world now - the humanitarian sphere is becoming key. To understand what I'm talking about, I'll give you this image. In the middle of the 20th century, those people who, for example, learned how to make movie cameras, earned money. That is, the company earns a lot of money by making movie cameras that are bought by everyone, otherwise by making some kind of universal technical miracle. In the 21st century, a director makes money by using this camera to shoot a brilliant movie that is watched by billions. This is the onset of the post-industrial world, when the universal becomes cheap, accessible, even free, and the unique is valued. The relationship between the universal and the unique is that between the scientist and the artist. That is, the 20th century, technical progress- the main figure is the scientist, 21st century, post-industrial revolution - the main figure is the artist. This process is happening right now. And when implementing Russian cultural policy, it is important to understand these current global processes. I believe that Russia, having lost the competition for the universal, now has another chance - to win in the production of the unique. But, apparently, this chance will not even be noticed. These people are looking the other way.

Returning to the conversation about these policies, aimed, in essence, at managing processes in art, at limiting them, at a kind of intimidation, what options does an artist have for responding to these conditions?

We are quite recent from the Soviet past, and therefore in this sense we have several very effective strategies. The first strategy, and probably the most effective, is to work at the table. Do something that, relatively speaking, will not become obsolete. What you’ve been doing for five years, you don’t show it to anyone, no one is interested in it, and then…. There are very illustrative example- this is Ilya Kabakov. Actually, this explains his fantastic success in the nineties (he was the number one artist in the world for two years). With what he had Notebook. And when the first success came (at this moment what happens is that dozens of museums offer you to do an exhibition; and an artist can really handle two or maximum three museum exhibitions a year), Kabakov had a notebook with installations: he tore out a piece of paper and turned it into project, sent it - and so I did 10-15 exhibitions a year. That is, what he did in these incomprehensible Soviet conditions worked twenty years later, when conditions changed. The first strategy is to believe that these conditions will not last forever, to do and accumulate.

The second strategy is to leave this context. The fact is that even the most apolitical artists have two political demands: they want to be open to the world, so that the cultural environment of no matter what city or country is part of the international environment, and they want to look into the future. This is exactly the opposite of what the government is doing today. She wants to close herself and look to the past. This means that we need to leave this context, and it is not necessary to emigrate. You can do like Oleg Kulik: despite the fact that he is physically located in Moscow, he implements his projects where this context does not work. This option is probably possible for successful artists. The third strategy, and it is the most striking, is to make protest art. Of course, we look at such artists with admiration and understand that this requires many different human qualities, not so much artistic. But this path is not for everyone. It is very difficult to advise him. True, we observe that there are people who have begun to engage in protest art. The fourth option is the “genius loci” strategy of varying degrees of success. This is when artists, such as Damir Muratov, Vasily Slonov, create some kind of space around themselves, this space, relatively speaking, is called Omsk or Krasnoyarsk, and become what is called a “person-attraction”.

Regarding protest art - how important is it in general? artistic process, can it change the situation in the sense of making the atmosphere a little freer, influencing the mood in society in general and in the artistic community in particular?

The worse the situation in the country, the more important the protest artist is. When Brener did almost exactly what Pussy Riot did in the nineties, the situation was more or less normal and it wasn't that important. He burst into the Yelokhovsky Cathedral, shouted “Chechnya!”, destroyed furniture - in general, he caused even more damage than Pussy Riot. He was taken out of there, taken to the police station, given a fine of 500 rubles and released. And Pussy Riot is a global scandal, two years in prison and so on. It turns out that it does not depend on the artist how important he is, but on the situation in which he acts. Therefore, now in Russia, the worse the situation, the more important such an artist is. Moreover, the political and media situations are degrading, which means that artists are coming to the fore. And Pavlensky today occupies the place that Yeltsin occupied in the early nineties. The artist occupies the most important place where the politician who spoke the truth used to occupy. Then, in the early nineties, the main thing was that they were hiding the truth from us. Now the situation is different - people have apathy, fear, nothing can be done, and in these conditions the artist says that even one person can do a lot. This is also very important for the artistic environment.

AP Photo/Sergey Ponomarev

In my life there was specific example, when everything was very good with the authorities. It is clear that this required some constant compromises. But the situation with Pussy Riot happened. And obviously I supported the girls after they started being misjudged. Because of this, all my relationships with the authorities began to collapse. Then I realized: thank God it was so, because the path I was following would, step by step, lead me to betraying the interests of the artistic environment itself for the sake of endless concessions and compromises. Also, radical artists do not allow the artistic environment to merge with business, to merge with commerce. Businessmen want everything to be very servile, but radicals interfere with this. They seem to have come to the auction in a Lamborghini to buy expensive art, but here some beggar and hooligan is violating the rules of decency. In this sense, it is good that it violates - it is necessary so that at some point art does not become just a service sector, even if it itself wants it. It turns out that radical artists are preventing this from happening.

“The closure of projects like the Ural Industrial Biennale is a matter of time”

By decision of the Ministry of Culture, the NCCA became a division of ROSIZO. In your opinion, is this a manifestation of cultural politics or artistic (ideological - editor's note)? And what could this lead to?

It seems to me that this is a form of destruction of the NCCA. That is, they could simply close the NCCA, but then they would be accused of not supporting modern Art, so this form was chosen - the merging form. This is a common thing for officials; they wouldn’t even understand your questions. Everything is clear to everyone: it must be destroyed, and how to destroy it is by merging. If you need to fire a person, reduce his position. The NCCA, even in the compromise form in which it was, was still part of the artistic environment, and no one needed that. All this precisely means the division of one artistic environment into official and unofficial art. After all, the NCCA was seemingly official, but communicated and worked with the unofficial, that is, it was a projection of the fact that there is a single artistic environment. In this unified environment, artists with different views on power and more acted simultaneously. But now everything is the end of a single artistic environment, now there will be unofficial and some kind of official art, and we already understand which one: at VDNKh there is the ROSIZO pavilion and there next to each other - Gerasimov, Galaktionov, Dubossarsky and Vinogradov, in such a meaningless combination. Regarding the NCCA, the only question can be how quickly they will actually intercept all this.

- Can the NCCA resist once inside this system?

When you lose your head, you don't cry over your hair. If our artistic environment had been solidary, it would have shown this solidarity much earlier. And what is happening with the NCCA is a consequence, not a cause of some events. And, frankly, I am skeptical about the ability of the artistic environment in Russia to resist. One person, the same Pavlensky, can resist, but the system has already shown that it has exhausted its resource.

How might this subordination affect regional centers and their projects? In particular, I am interested in the Yekaterinburg NCCA and the Ural industrial biennale.

I believe that the closure of these projects is only a matter of time.

- Are you seriously?

Certainly. And for this to happen, something has to happen, you just have to wait. The same as it happened to me. As soon as Chirkunov (former governor Perm region- approx. ed.) left, it was decided that it was necessary to get rid of Gelman. But you can’t just take it and get rid of it - you have to wait. They waited for the Slonov exhibition as an excellent occasion. They fired, people made some noise, however, no one was particularly indignant, only the media indicated this. So it is here: they will wait. Maybe this will be the case at the next biennale: they will walk, look and think about what would be the reason to ban this thing.

“But it seemed like a pretty successful project.”

The more successful, the more dangerous it is for them, because he is not successful in the direction they need. No, I think that either the project will “fall down”, that is, it will become neutral, servile, or the project will be closed. The only question is what is worse for the artistic environment: for it to be closed or for it to become toothless. It will be worse for the people who receive salaries from this if they close it. But for art in general, I think it would be better to close it.

I want to know your opinion about Ural Biennale in general about the project. I don’t know if you were at all three biennials or any of them.

I came to the very first one. Let me not answer this question. Overall, I am quite skeptical about this project. He's a child large quantity hardware compromise things. If we talk about the very task that a cultural institution or event can set for itself - to become that very genius of the place, such a collective one, then, rather, the Yeltsin Center is now coping with this task. It is clear that now it is like a splinter and something can come out of it - some kind of conflict or, conversely, revival, thanks to which, for example, interest in the city will increase.

The industrial biennials take on a very important topic for Russia - gentrification. This is a process of adaptation - the second life of a room, a building. For example, it was a palace - it became a museum, it was a factory - it also became a museum. So, for example, the building of the River Station in Perm became a museum. And this topic is indeed very relevant. But the Biennale does not provoke it, in best case scenario it somehow names it, as if it declares the existence of this task. At the same time, of course, this is better than doing nothing. And this is not at all a case where it would be better not to have this happen. I was at the first biennale because Katya Degot was there. She tried to say something, but, as it seemed to me, it was not comparable to the specific situation in Yekaterinburg. Perhaps it solved some of its problems, but overall, in my opinion, it was a failure. Because when you make a project and deliberately transfer it somewhere, you must answer the question why this happens not in an ordinary cultural center, but somewhere else (the site of the main project of the 1st Ural Industrial Biennale was in former building printing house "Ural Worker" - approx. ed.). Then there was a European left-wing discourse with intangible art, and fundamentally they made it so that many participants sent their works by fax - as if intangible. But this is not at all what the industrial biennale requires. After all, it is a physical thing: you take the body of a factory or something else and fill it with the body of art. Something must come from this... But I don’t want to talk about this topic.

01/03/2017
Pavel Gerasimenko

Marat Gelman, who flew to St. Petersburg from London for the opening day of the exhibition “Made in Montenegro” by Alexander, Olga and Katya Florensky Name Gallery, drew attention to the low northern sky, from which I managed to wean myself. A well-known gallerist and then director of the Museum of Contemporary Art in Perm, Gelman now heads the art residence he created in Kotor, Montenegro, and sees himself in the role of a “humanitarian engineer,” considering the figure of a mediator between the artist and society to be one of the main ones in both the 20th and 21st centuries. Answering questions Arterritory, Gelman outlined how he sees it now big picture the state of contemporary Russian art.

Work by Olga Florenskaya at the exhibition “Made in Montenegro”, which opened inName Gallery

I would like to start with one big one and general issue: What, in your opinion, is the reason for the failure of the “contemporary art” project in Russia?

I've been asked about this a lot lately, and every time I'm surprised: what needs to happen for there to be success in art, despite failures in politics, media and economics? The entire project, which began in the 90s, failed, and art is not in its worst situation yet. We declared that “we want it like in Europe”: for example, Marat Gelman’s gallery was the first to be named after the owner, because it is European. The imitation was not hidden and was even declared - moreover, for some time it worked, so that in 1998 and until 2004 it seemed that Moscow had become one of the European cultural centers. But the imitation strategy was a fiasco; in general, Russia was unable to become part of Europe. What is good for Europe with its short distances is not good for Russia. The cultural capitals of Europe change quite easily - Paris, Cologne or London, but it is always one city where the most interesting things happen. Given the Russian distances, it is impossible to build a system with one center; this disconnects part of the country from cultural life. Russia is so big that it simply does not fit into the simulation scenario. You can’t break out without dragging the whole country with you, and, probably, it was necessary to act more meaningfully; another question is - who needed it?

Work by Konstantin Benkovich at his exhibition Uniform V Dukley Art Center. June 2016. Photo: Dukley Art Center

And finally, what is happening now and what has completely undermined the artistic situation is conformism. Our creative intelligentsia, unfortunately, decided to embody Lenin’s formula “you are not the brain, but the shit of the nation.” When at the first stage Putin bought everyone, the artistic intelligentsia successfully sold out, but at the second stage they began to break things, and then everyone gave up and made every conceivable compromise. It is clear that people who went to art universities did not expect that they would have to fight and show courage, but at least to some extent perseverance should have manifested itself.

In Russia, if art is not at the forefront of society, then it is not needed at all. Unlike countries where art can play a decorative role, we have not been very successful in decorating life and are unlikely to succeed. And we ourselves refused the avant-garde role, although it was in our hands. There was a moment when people with different views - Belyaev-Gintovt, Osmolovsky, and I - were part of the same artistic environment. The current split into officialdom and non-officialdom is Medinsky’s policy, the situation of modern times. It’s sad, but it cannot be said that he came and ruined everything: even the most progressive figures made compromises - hence the result, because the authorities cannot stop and always want the next after one compromise. By and large, you can’t make complaints against people: they didn’t plan to be heroes. As it turns out, there is very little protest art - maybe now it’s just Pavlensky.

But art activism- art is tactical, there is no artist’s strategy, which is possessed by those very people from art departments who are not ready to be fighters. Can the distance between artists who create situations and artists who produce objects be bridged?

Sometimes these are the same people, for example Ai Weiwei is now the main political artist. He was the main artist of the Beijing Olympics, but at some point in his life it became more important than anything else for him to tell the truth about the Sichuan earthquake, which was hidden by the authorities. Pavlensky studied at Pro Art together with such artists as the absolute formalist Pavel Brat or the ironic Ivan Tuzov. The fact that he is a loner emphasizes the overall situation much more than it changes it.

Can an art activist become a successful selling artist?

Of course yes. The Museum of Modern Art today is a model buyer whose actions are copied by collectors. An exhibition is currently being prepared at the gallery. Saatchi, in which Pavlensky will participate. One very major museum asked us not to negotiate with anyone else regarding his works in which they are interested. If so, collectors will follow. While discussing the London project, I spent two evenings in Paris with Pavlensky and was convinced: this is a powerful, including plastic, artist with incredible intuition, telling him to avoid any hint of falsehood.

Why didn’t this happen, say, after the exhibition “Russian Lettrism”?

Now in Europe something has begun to happen that should have happened earlier - Russian money is helping to promote Russian art in London and Paris. Art, which was born in the 90s out of enthusiasm, is gradually being museumified. The Tate now has an Eastern European board of trustees, two-thirds of which are wealthy Russians, who fund programs related to Russian art. At the Pompidou Center, in agreement with the Potanin Foundation, a three-year program for the study of Russian art has been launched and the second exhibition of works is opening modern authors donated to the museum. The “Collection+” exhibition also includes works by actionists - Oleg Kulik and the Blue Noses group.

"The Suspects" by AES+F(1997) are also now on display in the Collection+ exhibition at the Pompidou Center

There is a struggle between representatives of several generations for the attention of museums and collectors. Will there be a new generation of artists whose work will be able to form an exhibition like The Collection in 20 years?

The situation in the country calls for the emergence of new authors, but it is quite possible that a generation will be skipped. Why did they become so noticeable? Pussy Riot(which, according to some, repeated what Alexander Brener did) or Pavlensky? Protest art sounded weak in the completely democratic situation in which Brener acted, and it worked now. The current cultural policy of the authorities is aimed at splitting creative environment, so the future artist is offered two options even during his apprenticeship - official or underground. It’s bad in both cases: in the underground you are deprived of resources, and the officialdom requires service from the artist. The economic crisis is also not conducive to the emergence of a new generation.

There's another one serious problem: those who are now opening new museums in Moscow in former palaces, factories, power plants are investing in the representation of art, but not in its production. Art that continues to be made in basements will not look good in these new palaces. It’s different in China, where almost all contemporary art is made for export: the galleries are small, but the studio of any decent artist is three times four hundred meters long: in the first he receives guests and hangs there finished works, in the second there is a working mess and unfinished things, the third is a warehouse and a nook where apprentices work according to his sketches. Such an artist can sometimes make an empty work, which will still be large and impressive. In Montenegro, I refused to create a museum, but created a new type of institution: Dukley European Art Community(DEAC) in Kotor - these are three floors of workshops, one commercial floor, and on one showroom and a small theater. If in Russian art If a balance between representation and production was maintained - roughly speaking, “three rubles for workshops, one ruble for galleries” - then, perhaps, after some time its quality changed. Everyone supports the representation of art as its most vibrant and public part, and real patronage in another. Russian law patronage was emasculated and destroyed, fearing that the state would not be able to control the private individual, who himself decided what culture to support. Therefore, those philanthropists who exist in Moscow today are such “patrons of the arts by appointment.”

Fragment of Vlad's exhibition Yurashko Literal sculpture V Dukley Art Center. May 2016. Photo:Dukley Art Center

Compared to Moscow, St. Petersburg is sorely lacking in art institutions-There are “little more than one” modern art schools and no patrons at all.

Cultural policy can help, it can hinder, but it cannot replace cultural processes. A lot depends on power and money, but still artists are more important, and the education system can play a big role here. We don't have those professional things that we have in medical or legal education. Probably nowhere, except for the St. Petersburg Pro Arte Institute, did they teach that an artist is a position. Even at the Rodchenko School or at the IPSI, an artist is a skill, an intellectual effort. And it is very important to understand that being an artist means standing your ground. Do what is interesting, and society funds you, but in return you are an artist, that is, a voice.

Pavel Brat's work at the exhibition Icons VDukley Art Center. October 2016. Photo:Dukley Art Center

As we have now found out, the artist- this is a long profession. Who will outlive whom? current situation - political power or an artist? And what opportunities remain for the artist?

When I was kicked out of the Perm Museum, I said: Meyerhold was the director of the theater for only a year and a half. Then he was killed, but we know who won in the end. The entire history of civilization shows that, of course, the artist wins - the one who does not compromise with his creative self. Some believe that “the worse the better,” but it is unknown how much we have missed due to the suppression of art and what flourishing there could have been. Now "new" Russian abroad"can not only play a role in promoting the culture of the 90s, but become a space and platform for the development of new Russian art outside the ideological control of the system. I think more and more that, having left Russia, I just came to it, because all the most interesting things in Russian art are now happening outside its borders. For example, now it is born new theater Pussy Riot Theater- in Montenegro they are rehearsing their first performance, and on March 5 there will be a premiere in Moscow. It's called "School of Resistance".

Marat Aleksandrovich Gelman (born December 24, 1960, Chisinau, USSR) - gallerist , art manager, publicist, former directorPerm Museum of Contemporary Art PERMM
Son famous writer and playwright Alexander Isaakovich Gelman. IN 1 In 977 he graduated from school No. 34 in Chisinau, in 1983 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Communications with a degree in engineering, and at the same time worked as a machinist and stagehand at the Moscow Art Theater, Sovremennik and the Mayakovsky Theater. Until 1986 he worked as an engineer in Chisinau. The day after the article on parasitism was canceled (March 1, 1986), he quit his job to write a novel and open his own business.

In 1987, Gelman, who had been interested in art, primarily contemporary, since his youth, held the first exhibition in his life, showing Moscow artists in Chisinau. She had big success, including commercial, and, having arrived in Moscow to give paintings to artists and money received from the sale of works, Gelman decided to stay in the Russian capital.

He began his professional life in art as a collector, but, due to inexperience, having collected an unsuccessful first collection, he was forced to master the skills of selling works of art and became, in fact, the first art dealer in the USSR. In 1990, having received a foreign education in the field of contemporary art, he collected a collection of Ukrainian art, which formed the basis for the exhibition “South Russian Wave”, shown in 1992and had a wide resonance. Gelman himself describes his path into art and in art as a series of accidents, but it is precisely this plasticity and openness to the accidental, according to the gallery owner, that is perhaps a more important guarantee of success than determination.

Gelman Gallery

In 1990, on the advice of Leonid Bazhanov, Gelman opened one of the first private contemporary art galleries in Russia. It existed until 2012, and over 20 years it changed several names (Gallery Guelman, M. Guelman Gallery, “Gallery of M. and Yu. Guelman”) and three addresses (1992-1995 - Center for Contemporary Art on Yakimanka; 1995-2007 years - Malaya Polyanka St., 7/7, building 5; 2007-2012 - Winzavod Center for Contemporary Art), but all this time it was widely known as the Gelman Gallery.

The history of the Gelman Gallery is actually the history of modern art post-Soviet Russia. IN different years Almost everyone collaborated with the galleries most important artists this era - from the classics of Moscow conceptualism (Yuri Albert, Igor Makarevich, Vadim Zakharov, Dmitry Aleksandrovich Prigov), social art (V. Komar & A. Melamid, Boris Orlov, Leonid Sokov) and postmodernism (P. Pepperstein, G. Ostretsov ) to the artists of the St. Petersburg “New Academy” (T. Novikov), the cult “Mitkov”, Moscow actionism (O. Kulik, A. Osmolovsky, A. Brener, O. Mavromati, A. Ter-Oganyan, RADEK Society), the South Russian wave (A. Sigutin, A. Savadov, A. Roytburd, O. Golosiy) and pioneers of media art (“Blue Soup”, AES+F, Olga Chernysheva, Vladislav Efimov & Aristarkh Chernyshev); from painters (Yu. Shabelnikov, V. Koshlyakov, A. Vinogradov & V. Dubosarsky, D. Vrubel) to photographers (B. Mikhailov, V. Mamyshev-Monroe), architects (A. Brodsky, A. Belyaev-Gintovt), sculptors (D. Gutov, G. Bruskin, Martynchiki) and artists working with installations and new media (I. Nakhova, V. Arkhipov, art group “Blue Noses” and others).

Besides Russian artists, Gelman showed in the gallery the art of Ukraine, with which he began his journey as a curator and gallerist (exhibition “South Russian Wave”, 1992) and which has always occupied and still occupies a significant part in his collection. From 2002 to 2004, a branch of the Gelman Gallery operated in Kyiv, headed by his friend and artist of the Moscow gallery Alexander Roitburd.

In addition, in the early 1990s, Gelman was actively involved in the inclusion of post-Soviet art in the international context. On the one hand, he established business contacts with leading New York galleries, thanks to which the world art community became acquainted with many of the artists of the Gelman gallery; on the other hand, he sought to show international stars in Russia - in particular, the gallery on Yakimanka hosted such important events for Moscow in those years as personal exhibitions of Andy Warhol (Alter Ego, 1994) and Joseph Beuys (Leonardo's Diary, 1994) .

Another significant aspect of the Gelman Gallery’s activities was the holding of large non-commercial exhibition projects at external venues. Among the most important are “Conversion” (Central House of Artists, 1993), “Dedicated to the 7th Congress of People’s Deputies of Russia” (Central House of Artists, 1993), “New Money” (State Tretyakov Gallery, 2006), “Dynamic Couples” (Manege Central Exhibition Hall, 2000), “South Russian Wave”, “Nostalgia” (State Russian Museum, 2000, for the 10th anniversary of the Gelman Gallery), “Russia 2” (Central House of Artists, 2005), “Petersburg: Contemporary Art of St. Petersburg” (Central House of Artists, 2005) and a number of others.

From the first years of its work, the gallery participated in international exhibition events, festivals and fairs, including, already in the 2000s, in such key international fairs as FIAC (Paris) and ARCO (Madrid). In 1999, the gallery presented a project for the Russian pavilion at the Venice Biennale.

In April 2012, Marat Gelman, together with two other leading Russian gallery owners Elena Selina and Aidan Salakhova, announced a reformatting of gallery activities. In the case of the Gelman gallery, this ended in its closure. Gelman named the main reason for this step as the collapse of the contemporary art market in Russia, associated in general with the general instability of political and economic situation in the country.

The latest event in the legendary Gelman Gallery was the exhibition of Alexey Kallima “Consider yourself lucky” (May-June 2012).

Cultural Alliance

In October 2012, on the site of a closed gallery at Winzavod, a new exhibition space for Marat Gelman was opened - the Cultural Alliance production center. The venue specializes in showing art from Russian regions and the CIS countries - exhibitions have already been held here, providing a current cross-section of the art of Kazakhstan, Izhevsk, and Perm.

Turning to regional art was not accidental for Gelman: starting from his first exhibitions in the 1990s, he was busy searching for new names for the Moscow scene. In particular, he is credited with “discovering” the Novosibirsk group “Blue Noses,” as well as many artists from St. Petersburg, Rostov-on-Don and Ukraine.

The gallery received its name and partly its concept from the Cultural Alliance association, created by Gelman in 2010 in collaboration with the party " United Russia" The Association was created as an association of cities in which there is an independent artistic life in the field modern culture. Over the course of 2 years, the association held two major festival and a dozen exhibitions, thanks to which it became clear that even far from Moscow “there are interesting artistic communities, that regional artists do not feel completely cut off from the capital and even international art scene“that they master the language of contemporary art, transcending both geography and biography.”

In 2012, Gelman broke off cooperation with the authorities.

I decided for myself not to participate in political projects anymore (big government, Cultural Alliance - new cultural policy) only professional activity, producing festivals, organizing art centers and curating exhibitions.

—http://magiq-polit.livejournal.com/20348.html

However, he did not stop working on cultural development regions. Its result and continuation was the “Cultural Alliance” gallery at Winzavod.

The exhibition “Art versus Geography”, held in 2011 as part of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art, was also a milestone for the formation of the gallery’s concept. She demonstrated a new situation in Russian art, in which regions begin to interact and collaborate with the Russian artistic community in order to overcome the depression of the territory on their own, without ministries of culture, state museums and other official institutions.

Now the Cultural Alliance gallery is a significant platform in Moscow, specializing in the presentation regional art in the capital, and in the future in the world - and therefore, on the transformation of essentially Moscow contemporary art into Russian. In one of the presentation texts, Gelman expressed the hope that new names will help speed up the exit from the deep crisis in which, by all accounts, the domestic art market is facing. However, one should expect from the “Cultural Alliance” not only material, but also, above all, artistic dividends: the impasse into which the Russian, and world art The modernist plague, if it can be overcome, is precisely through the infusion of fresh forces. In this sense, even now, as in the early 1990s, Marat Gelman acts not only and not so much in the market space, but in the history of art and Russia.

Perm Museum of Contemporary Art

In 2008, with the support of Sergei Gordeev, a representative in the Federation Council from the administration of the Perm Territory, Marat Gelman held in Perm a landmark exhibition for him as a curator, “Russian Poor,” which included works by the most important Russian artists of our time, both well-known (Albert, Arkhipov, Gutov, Polissky, Sokov, Makarevich, Brodsky, Shabelnikov, Shekhovtsov and others), and young ones (Recycle, Zhelud, Kadyrova, Trushevsky). The exhibition took place in the River Station building - at that time not in use and minimally restored for exhibition at Gordeev’s expense.

The exhibition “Russian Poor” and its success both at the city and at the all-Russian level (45,000 people visited the exhibition during the month of its operation, after which, at the request of citizens, it was extended for another month) laid the foundation for the large-scale project “Perm - the cultural capital” , within the framework of which the PERMM Museum of Contemporary Art was opened in the same building of the River Station, already completely restored and equipped.

Marat Gelman not only headed the museum as director, but also took a direct part in the formation of the museum collection, to which he donated dozens of works of contemporary art from his personal collection.

In addition, he acted as curator of most of the museum’s exhibition projects, including such important projects for the formation of the all-Russian artistic community as Dmitry Vrubel’s “Gospel Project” (2009), “Night at the Museum” (2010), “Anonymous” (2012), “ The Bride's Face" (2012) and "The Greater Caucasus" (2011), "Motherland" (2011), "Icons" (2012), etc.

The PERMM Museum became not only the first full-fledged museum of contemporary art in provincial town, but also an institution of federal and international significance. Exhibition projects museums are shown in cities of Russia and abroad. In particular, the exhibition “Vision” was presented in St. Petersburg in 2010 and in Tver in 2011, “Russian Poor” - in Milan in 2011, “Motherland” - in Novosibirsk and Krasnoyarsk in 2012.

An important achievement of the museum and Marat Gelman personally was participation in the development of the concept and implementation of the “Living Perm” festival, which was first organized with the support of former governor Perm region Oleg Chirkunov in 2009. He became key event in the cultural life of Perm and a prototype for the larger festival “White Nights in Perm”, held annually. In 2012, it was visited by more than 1,000,000 people.

On March 23, 2009, the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art received the status of a state regional institution.

In June 2013, after a series of scandals, Marat Gelman was fired from his post as director of PERMM. The legal commentary on the decision to dismiss emphasizes that the employer is not obliged to motivate the decision to dismiss; Gelman named censorship as the main reason for the dismissal. The reason for the dismissal of Marat Gelman from the post of director, according to journalists, was the personal exhibition of Krasnoyarsk artist Vasily Slonov “Welcome! Sochi 2014", opened as part of the White Nights festival.

IN last years my life and work are connected with Moscow as well as with Perm. And, being a member of the Moscow Union of Artists, I studied well the customs of Moscow gallery owners. Many of them work with artists on the principle: “You give me everything, and I’ll pay you. After. May be". So I’m no stranger to the cynicism of gallery owners. But the way Marat Gelman understands cooperation amazed even me.

My art object “Bi-square” was exhibited at the “Living Perm” festival. I discussed his plan with Marat Gelman and Boris Milgram. Both of them understood that an art object was expensive and, in general, of no use to anyone. necessary thing. I made “Bi-square” on the condition that it would be bought by the Gelman Gallery and that this gallery would continue to collaborate with me.

Marat Gelman paid me for a long time and sadly, all the time complaining that there was no money. Nevertheless, he paid me the agreed amount in full, and at the same time took a signature that I would not copy this object. He immediately invited me to participate in the exhibition “Night at the Museum” - to create a piece contemporary art on some topic of classical art. Essentially, I placed an order. I start work.

In my painting, I combined images from paintings by Alexander Deineka and Pablo Picasso - incompatible artists. It turned out paradoxically, but compositionally very harmonious.

Even during the period of my work on the painting, I shared its concept with one Perm political strategist. And he stunned me: “Gelman will not take this job from you. He no longer needs you, because you have already played your role in the division of Perm artists. I participated in “Living Perm,” which means I also participated in the split of Perm artists.” I didn't believe him then. But when he started calling Gelman to show him a sketch of the future painting, he didn’t pick up the phone, dropped the calls, and went into hiding. Finally, I managed to get on the phone, and Gelman answered me very rudely. Just being rude.

Well, now I understand that Marat Gelman came here to be paid, and not so that he would pay artists. Artists for him are just "blacks." But I don’t see any prospects for such activities. I don’t see a future for this “museum”, which is turning into a dump of unbought works by artists from the Gelman Gallery. After all, he collaborates with a very limited circle of artists.

When I was still hoping for joint work, I thought: “I have a Moscow Union of Artists membership card No. 7009. The Moscow branch of the Union of Artists consists of several thousand powerful artists who are ready to exhibit. Why not bring them to our Perm museum? After all, this is modern art!”

I went to the secretariat of the Union, and there they answered me: “For us, Gelman is an enemy. He buys works for pennies and destroys the unity of artists.”

I then tried to come from the other side and suggested that Gelman establish relations with the Moscow Union of Artists. But he responded with almost the same words: “I’m nothing to them!”

It turns out that what has already happened in Moscow is what is now happening in Perm: Marat Gelman chooses those who are ready to work with him for his handouts, and declares war on those who value themselves highly and try to maintain creative and financial independence.

All this will affect the level of the Perm Museum of Contemporary Art, because under Gelman it simply will not live up to its name. After all, contemporary art is broader than contemporary art, and contemporary art is broader than Gelman’s. And it’s already having an effect: I looked at the lineup of participants in the “Night at the Museum” exhibition, and I became bored - all the same names that were on “Russian Poor”. And, for example, the Chinese, with whom Gelman tried to negotiate an exhibition in Perm, refused his offer.

Art as a way to think

Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity today

The spirit of postmodernism hovers in everything here - every work is a quotation, an interpretation. Some paintings are like a new interpretation of the plots of the New Testament, others are a bold and sometimes caustic response to the seemingly sacred.

At first glance, the public protesting against the scandalous exhibition has something to be offended by. From a canvas quoting the Gospel last supper brushes by Leonardo Da Vinci, not ordinary apostles, but people with Down syndrome look at the viewer. This is one of those works that caused the most sharp criticism protesters.

“Aren’t all people equal? Where are Christian ethics? - Gelman is surprised. “In addition, such people are much more empathetic and kind than those we call ‘normal’.”

Another variation of “The Last Supper”, called Recycle, could not go unnoticed - the composition resembles a model of the future sculptural composition, with three-dimensional figures of the apostles covered with plastic mesh.

The work “Maria” by Konstantin Khudyakov also catches the eye. The Virgin Mary looks with modern eyes, full of pain and alienation. On the canvas there is a very young woman, whose lips are covered with ash, cracks on her bronze face are adjacent to living skin sprinkled with tears. “The artists tried to imagine what Maria would look like today if she lived with us,” explained Marat Gelman, walking around the exhibition.

The work of the artist Evgenia Maltseva “Trinity” is also interesting. On a black canvas with barely visible three silhouettes created oil paints, as if three golden halos are emerging from the darkness.

Gelman noted that the icons arrive to restorers in this form, uncleaned; dust, dirt, and the remains of time are removed from them layer by layer. This work reflects this symbolism. “It’s interesting for me to see both believers and non-believers here. This exhibition is for everyone. I am for dialogue between those arguing, come and share your impressions. This is very interesting for us,” added Marat Gelman.

You can see a photo report from the exhibition