What is the Cause of Anatoly Osmolovsky’s Inner Imperative? The Unrest of Relatives and Friends: Grundrisse Presents

Oh ye, the ones who were expected
The ones who never came, oh ye!
Alexander Gutov

This text has a long story. About a year ago, at the Venice Biennale, I met my friend Dmitry Gutov and his pals David Riff and Lesha Penzin. We dined at a good seafood restaurant and Gutov was especially enjoying the vintage wine, as he emphasized the difference (from bad wine) both in price and quality. Due to our late dinner, Lesha Penzin was late for a meeting with Giorgio Agamben, at whose house he was staying, and was especially nervous and outraged. He asked how a real left-winger (artist and/or philosopher) could remark upon such things as wine and fine cuisine at all. Riff and Gutov tried to persuade him that this was an integral part of culture and civilization, but Penzin remained firm in his aversion of this bourgeois style, of which he accused his friends. I forgot about that funny talk on bourgeois values and left-winger dignity, but a year later, a new wave of events made me return to that episode.
In March 2008, I was in Moscow and visited Marat Guelman’s gallery to meet my friends and see what was going on there. The walls were covered with dark and restrained art-products by Anatoly Osmolovsky. Natasha Milovzorova remarked wittily that everyone liked Osmolovsky's Breads, which were “selling like hot cakes.”
At the same time, at The_Grundrisse Yahoo discussion group, a heated discussion flared up about that same Osmolovsky, with his own participation. The forum was created by a group of philosophers, contemporary artists, writers, and political activists who live in Russia and abroad. Their aims are articulating the positions and discussing the vital questions of the theory and practice of the left-wing movement. They place an emphasis on discussing theoretical issues such as autonomy/pretended egalitarity (elitism for the elite and closed off to the majority) in philosophy and art; contemporary issues of the inheritance of Marxism; interrelations between Marxism and modern philosophy; and the status of international and local cultural productions. Since July 22, 2005, when the mail-list was organized, the number of its subscribers has grown to 127 members. Many times, I have attempted to publish excerpts from the mail-list, which I read regularly. The “case of Osmolovsky” was the clincher. To my mind, a section of the Grundrisse discussion is the best, most refined and spiciest reflection of the situation in contemporary Russian society—above all, its artistic and philosophic circles. Simultaneously, it demonstrates that there is no boundary between “artistic” and “non-artistic” life. The process that takes place in art constitutes the best possible, though a sometimes exaggerated, reflection of the changes in society as a whole.
With the authority of Dmitry Gutov, mail-list moderator, I reproduce excerpts from this correspondence, splendid in its nervous tension and content.

THE CASE OF OSMOLOVSKY

A heated discussion, which was later called “the case of Osmolovsky,” began with a letter written by AO (Anatoly Osmolovsky) in reaction to Igor Chubarov’s article published in Moscow Art Magazine.

Main participants of the discussion:
Anatoly Osmolovsky was born in Moscow in 1969. Osmolovsky is an artist, a theorist and a curator, ideological inspirer of the Radek left-wing radical society and magazine of the same name (both closed down in the late 1990s). He is one of the most outstanding intellectuals and rebels of the political art of the 1990s, a media star on the contemporary art scene.
Dmitry Gutov was born in Moscow in 1960. He is an artist, a Marxist, a refined intellectual with academic knowledge and a founder of the Lifshitz Institute and Grundrisse mail-list. Gutov is one of the most famous Russian artists.
Igor Chubarov was born in 1956 in Kursk. A research fellow of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, Marxist, director of Logos Altera publishing house. Chubarov lives in Moscow.
Pavel Mikitenko was born in 1977. Mikitenko is an artist, a contemporary art theorist and a member of Avdei Ter-Oganian’s Contemporary Art School and the seminars of Anatoly Osmolovsky. He is an active participant of the Radek group and I Wanna Kiss You musical group. He resides in Moscow.
Alexei Penzin was born in Novgorod in 1974. A member of the Chto Delat? (What Should Be Done?) group, Penzin is a candidate of the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. The spheres of his research interests are philosophic anthropology, political philosophy and critical analysis of post-structuralism. Penzin lives in Moscow.
Keti Chukhrov was born in 1970. A philosopher and a candidate for a doctorate at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences. Editor of Nomer magazine and Logos Altera publishing house. Resides in Moscow.
David Riff was born in London in 1975. A contemporary art critic and a member of Chto Delat?, he lives in Berlin and Moscow.

Anatoly Osmolovsky. April 25, 2008. Subject: Chubarov
A day or two ago, Miziano showed me a text by Chubarov “about me.” I’m putting it in quotes because my surname was not mentioned, but it is obvious that he was describing me. The text is really extraordinary. The genre is a denunciation of the higher “western” authorities. The piece attacks bourgeois Russian artists “who even cannot draw” (here remembering the short, but apparently very important past of Chubarov as a tractor driver, I’d like to add, “cannot even draw a naked woman”).

Below are the excerpts from the article written for the Art Magazine, which made Osmolovsky so indignant:

Igor Chubarov, “Political Technology of the Form or Mimesis of the Political. On the Degeneration of the Moscow Actionism of the 1990s.”
The case in point is not artists, but contemporary artists; not art, but contemporary art, comfortably hidden-out in a few galleries and private apartments in Moscow, where those same artists live. Who, having no sufficient art education or ability to draw or sculpt, in some fantastic way managed to migrate from pseudo-Soviet Russia to pseudo-perestroika, from perestroika to the pseudo-liberal 1990s, and from the 1990s to the real ‘sovereign democracy’ of the 2000s—and did all that riding high in the saddle. Moreover, they learned to control their horse very well. What is most interesting is that, in the process, they turned from left-wing street activists into a right-wing, middle-class bourgeoisie, people who consume haute-cuisine and enjoy luxury automobiles.

AB: The article’s basic statement accuses contemporary artists of turning their past radicalism and extremism from a gesture of art into a means of personal and commercial promotion, i.e. the gesture as a brand. It is true that this subject has long been absorbing my thoughts and, in many respects, I agree with the statements expressed by Chubarov, even if he did so in a deliberately exaggerated manner. For example, “today, many participants of such projects of the unsettled Yeltsin years (e.g. those involved in Radek magazine) have ceased to mock themselves and contemporary art. Without any false modesty, they have switched from subversion to affirmation, proclaimed themselves creators and decided to gain the maximum from their media names earned in the ‘heroic’ 1990s...

“Instead of inventing new forms of resistance, uncorrupted by the discourse of the authorities, our artists have decided to apply political technologies to the territory of art itself. From the political use of art, they’ve switched to the skilled use of politics, not at the level of some formal innovations (as usual, the forms were borrowed from the West), but at the level of a banal political content, a mixture of popular national stereotypes and quasi-religious clichés. Their creative evolution moved in the opposite direction from the course of global art development, i.e. from the exposition of nipples and cunts to situationism, abstractionism, and then to commercial figurative art. The mass media provided a linkage of performative and figurative forms similar to Kant’s schematics of time. ...
“The mass media form merged with the artistic form and even replaced it with the popularity of the artist’s name. The deeds or words of artists were no longer important, but their names were. Gradually, this empty form ... was filled with every possible ideological kitsch, ranging from talk of national roots of art to a search for an non-ecclesiastical belief system. All that lay successfully on the rhetoric of the contemporary Russian authorities, with their search for ideology and legitimization of the ‘national project’ and general logic of capitalist development in Russia.
“The central issue became an unconcealed strategy to appease the higher stratas of society. This aggressive formula implied the a deliberate disavowal of the political and critical functions of art or, rather, its substitution with ‘resistance’ to mass taste (pop, mainstream and entertainment) from the position of a new elitism.
“Our new aristocrats originated from the biased idea that artists can only communicate to the masses through popular art or propaganda, i.e. only by being disloyal to themselves or to art. The masses cannot comprehend fine demonstrations of artistic taste. As though they are easily understood by the nouveau riche and their wives, glamorous whores and city bureaucrats, for whom these artists now ‘work.’ Consequently they try to disavothe opportunity of art, which nobody ever removed the possibility of resisting the ruling class, however hopeless that may seem.
“Finally, the artists who used to be cutting-edge in the 1990s have become the designers and the very image of the bourgeois way of life—models for the new oligarchs, and their bored and conceited wives who have opened ‘contemporary art’ galleries in Moscow. Their role has come down to the cultural legitimization (if not ‘laundering’) of the capital earned during the privatizations and criminal activities of the 1990s and to meeting the ideological demands of the authorities.”

AB: I considered it important to cite these fragments of Chubarov’s article that accurately summarize the arguments of those who oppose leftist artists' decline to the bourgeois, as Osmolovsky has been charged with doing. But here, it's appropriate to return to Osmolovsky's letter, from which a heated debate ensued, resulting in a evident division into two opposing camps.

Anatoly Osmolovsky continued:
I consider my commercial success to be the victory of leftist discourse. This text is not related to any criticism, aside from a single comment, saying that art has no independent content. It's as if all art were politics. The remainder of the text is partly excerpts from Chubarov’s thesis about the literature of the 1920s. On the other hand, there are complaints about Russian nouveau-riche artists who sold themselves to whores and now “eat exotic food and drive expensive cars.” And there is one more complaint (addressed to the higher authority too): Russian artists failed to come to terms with the complicated discourse of the Western left, and decided to earn money!
Eight years of my incredible efforts aimed at the political radicalization of Russian philosophy begat such a stillborn fetus!
For total idiots, I announce:
1. My political views have not changed.
2. I believe that left discourse, in all its forms, is the most important intellectual property of mankind (the most important for me are Adorno, Deleuze and Badiou; I haven’t read Agamben, understand that there's a lot there as well).
3. My commercial success is the victory of leftist discourse and it is my personal achievement. What I promised to do five years ago in my correspondence, I have done. I hope that my increased financial resources will provide a new incentive for the development of left-wing discourse in Russia (however few there are).
Gutov attributes Chubarov's case to common envy (which he calls class hatred), just as all our philosophers see reality through the prism of PR and pecuniary interest...

AB: This letter generated a surge of reactions, with opinion split into two camps: for and against—and not only regarding Osmolovsky, but the substance of leftist discourse in general. Pavel Mikitenko was among the first to react to the letter.

Pavel Mikitenko. April 26, 2008
I didn’t read Igor’s text but, based on the previous message, I conclude that he understands art very well and is by no means a fool. However,I find inadmissable his enthusiasm for denouncing, and by linking art with political technology. He wrote a good critical text about the I Believe exhibition(see Umelec 2/2007). I thought the exhibition's idea was interesting and productive but, because it was implemented by Kulik, it turned into a mass media nothing, and the rise of the symbolic capital of Winzavod (AB: main headquarters of contemporary art in Moscow – see Umelec 2/2007).
The situation is indeed one of double meaning. On the one hand, a cultural center drawing the public to contemporary art is remarkable. On the other hand, Winzavod is a place where dandies and fashionable women gather and expensive cars are parked. It is great that there are studios where people can work. But, at the same time, art is swiftly absorbed by entertainment, services and capital investment. I realize it isn't so simple. Nevertheless, I attended a speech made by some American chick who organized MyArtinfo. Sviblova found that American lady somewhere. (AB: Olga Sviblova is one of the most popular figures of the Moscow art community, creator and director of the Moscow House of Photography, curator of the Russian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2007, a brilliant and ageless woman of the world, whose name Avdei Ter-Oganian and Zoya Cherkasskaya used to title their latest exhibition at the Guelman Gallery—”Olga Sviblova Is Shit!"). This American came to put the Russian art business in order. She said, “If America had got acquainted with the culture of Iraq, the war probably wouldn’t have happened...” adding immediately after that, “Now I’ve come to Russia to arrange business for you.”
I’d like to say that the problem is that contemporary art in Russia has become codified through entertainment and, thus, is commodified. So you (AO), as one of the major participants in this process, should answer certain questions, which, unfortunately, you don’t. Your boasting on Grundrisse after receiving the Kandinsky Prize looked like insanity. (AB: AO won the prestigious Kandinsky Prize in autumn 2007).

AB: A new riposte to Anatoly Osmolovsky’s letter was in the form of a photo sent by Alexei Penzin. He posted it writing only, “The photo belongs to Gutov, the hand belongs to Osmolovsky.” In the picture, one can see a well-manicured hand protruding from the sleeve of an expensive outfit and a cigarette held by short, fat fingers. This is one of Gutov’s old photos from his Uryupinsk series, which had nothing to do with Osmolovsky’s hands, other than that the photo appeared on the cover of the second issue of Radek magazine, once published by people in Osmolovsky's circle. The photo is an ironic illustration of the first tentative sprouts of the bourgeoisie—the Russian nouveau-riche of the 1990s, whose visual form and behavior tended to seem rather comical despite all the criminal banditry.

David Riff. April 30, 2008
Penzin aspires to be witty and artistic in Radek's trashy style. His inversion turns Gutov’s photo into pure nonsense. Osmolovsky used to be avant-garde, along with Gutov and the others. And today he has fat hands. And, as Chubarov has persuaded us, he does nothing with these hands. Ha, ha... it is all pretty petty. What a great reason to criticize a conceptual artist! You could find something real to criticize...

In response Osmolovsky accused Chubarov of falsifying his intention:
Chubarov voiced his disagreement about my unlimited surplus consumption (“eats exotic food and drives an expensive car”). He seems to base his fantasy on an ideal intellectual asceticism—an ideal with which he shows the best correlation only due to his ordinary stupidity, misfortune and slowness. Over the eight years I have known him, I have never noticed Chubarov wittingly refuse the level of consumption provided by his class... For me (as well as for Pimenov, by the way), this issue was of primary importance over the entire twenty years of our creative activity (this is why we took an interest in the Situationists, for whom the issue of the validity of consumption and the naturalness of public representation was most important). This is why, my sweet, Gutov’s photo was published on the cover of Radek!
From its very first performances, our group protested against banal leftist representation (originating from the early twentieth century). If you are left-wing, then you are an ascetic, your design is in a black-and-red spectrum, and so on and so forth. As the Situationists and De Boite magazine people protested, so did many other, real left-wingers, who were busy with the creation of new ideas, experiments and riddles—but not with performing a “gag” on the “leftist” subject.
This is why speaking from the ascetic, pure, “left-wing” toilet, from which Chubarov’s gurgling comes, is unconvincing. Such speaking we “wash off.”
Who said that a left-winger should not eat exotic food or know anything about wine?
As I have always believed, a true left-winger should be an expert on such matters! (I am not the only one who thinks so; so do most western cultural left-wingers).
A real left-winger knows what he can eat and what he should not. I experiment with food. For example, I know about exotic fruits; I don’t eat Nestle products (all left-wingers in the West do the same as a protest) and I am very discerning about everything that I eat.
I don’t drive expensive cars, but I am very scrupulous when choosing a car (I’m going to buy a car at last).
One need not endure poverty and asceticism to speak as a left-winger. That's for losers, sluggards and obscurants.
Both Penzin and Chubarov know this very well, yet knowing it, they can’t speak from a different place. Besides, it is not necessary to be rich to speak from a position of excess and refinement. For fifteen of my twenty-year activities, I lived in comparative poverty, but I was still speaking from a position of excess, not of want. In order to speak from such a position, you only have to be curious, mobile and ready to experiment (every minute).

AB: Finally, returning from a trip and congratulating everyone on May Day, Dmitry Gutov, the main organizer of and inspiration for the mailing list, joined the discussion. Having spoken enthusiastically about how exhilarating such active discussions are, he critiqued Chubarov’s article.

Dmitry Gutov. May 1, 2008
... A long time ago, I used to say that our young philosophers believed that they wrote about art, yet in fact they were writing about something else. They may discuss the social order of the authorities, the tastes of oligarchs’ girls, political resistance, means of appropriating somebody else’s labor, and a thousand other interesting things—and be convinced that the subject of their discourse is art.
The main thing, however, is lost to them: none of them has anything in common with art.
Osmolovsky, who lost megatons of energy communicating with these fellows, is a bit upset that it all amounted to nothing.
As I have always been skeptical about this, it was more difficult to be upset by some of the absurd passages in Chubarov’s text. Take for example this one: “left-wing critical thought cannot be linked to the idea of servicing high society and searching for national identity. This is why ideological preference was given to dogmatic Marxist-Leninist aesthetics (a la Mikhail Lifshitz).” Another word, another masterpiece.
Or the idea that artists need (philosophers’) academic legitimatization. Where did they get this from?
Or the other thought that the artists from the Radek circle (I also belong there) “stopped mocking themselves and contemporary art.” When did we do that?
Forget about “cutting-edge artists” for a moment and try to apply your absurd idea that art should “invent new forms of resistance, uncorrupted by the power discourse” to something else. For example, to Verrocchio’s sculptures, Mozart’s music, Tyutchev’s poems, Levitan or Giotto’s paintings. To anything! You’ll see what you get.

AB: From Igor Chubarov’s reaction to Gutov’s criticism, I’ll only quote a few excerpts, to show the flow of events.


Igor Chubarov. May 1, 2008
Philosophers are indeed not engaged in “art.” Even though I am engaged in art, it is only part of an anthropological and social experience... That is why I agree that the article in the latest copy of AM does not bear any direct relation to the discussion of art problems, which I wrote at the very beginning of the article.
But what is the connection with Osmolovsky and the townsfolk who copy him? This fellow, in the misery of being a “contemporary artist,” calls himself a modern-day Malevich without any false modesty. And now, as I see, you’ve decided to elevate both him and yourself to “Verrocchio and Giotto.” This is pure misunderstanding, my dear sir. My article is dedicated to the proof of this observation, to the degeneration of Actionism as “non-art” (which, however, had the potential to become art!) into the creation of the papier-mâché exotic fruits and other products so beloved by Osmolovsky and the members of his circle; products created by somebody else’s hands. Forgive me, but I cannot write about such art in any other way.
In my previous communications, I only regarded Osmolovsky as a left-wing art critic. I never took him seriously as an artist. I just didn’t say anything about it, as I didn’t want to offend him and thought that at some point he would laugh at himself and, like Bulgakov’s Voland, unmask all those who now recognize him as an artist. But this never happened, and so this story, i.e. this confrontation, emerged. Now Osmolovsky equates himself with art. This is hilarious—as though breaking off relations with him would mean forgetting or throwing away art, and so forth. In reality, I throw away only what Mr. Osmolovsky is doing now. It is only called “art” by laymen and Osmolovsky’s analogues—political technologists and dealers (whether they are engaged in philosophy, art or politics). You probably failed to notice that Osmolovsky doesn’t talk about art either, just as he never quotes or refers to Marx or Lenin. The reason is that he only knows some mottos, aphorisms and slogans used by others.
He speaks about art only in terms of himself, his exhibitions, his jobs – “unskillful hands” and so on. What do you call this if not political technology or PR? Oh, don’t talk to me about Malevich, for God’s sake. When studying the left-wing art of the 1920s, I realized what making left-wing art really meant. This led me to reevaluate Osmolovsky’s activities in general. I always defended him, but his latest statements and his attitude toward the works that he exhibits as an “artist” are just too much.
By the way, I only communicated with Osmolovsky because of the left-wing art project presented on pages 1-2 of Radek. When I realized (recently, basically after his turnaround over these two years) that he had completely betrayed this project, further contact with him became unacceptable, especially as he can’t be a real friend and we never shared any personal private tastes (I don’t like haute cuisine or hunting).
No “friendship,” with or without quotes, ever restrained me. But if a person turns before your very eyes from an anarchist and left-winger into a bourgeois and fascist, then there is no reason to control yourself. Either you stop communicating with him or you yourself become the same unpleasant creature. Sorry, Dima, but I don’t have any wish to communicate with rich cattle, to drone on about proximity to Deleuze and Badiou, to visit exclusive restaurants, or to go hunting in north Russia with similarly narrow-minded people. This is not the “asceticism” invented by Osmolovsky or the eating of low-quality food. Unlike Osmolovsky, I find it unnecessary to expound upon my piece in Afisha. In my mind, a left-wing critic should be simply indifferent toward such themes. Conceptual interest to them is only possible as part of a fetishist perception of a petty bourgeois, liberal cult of consumption. At any rate, I don’t see anything left here.

AB: Alexei Penzin could not remain indifferent to Gutov’s critical remarks on Chubarov’s article. Penzin’s answer is so interesting that it merits being reproduced it in its entirety.


ALEXEY PENZIN: REACTION TO GUTOV‘S COMMENTING CHUBAROV‘S ARTICLE
AESTHETICS OF STABILITY

Dima,

This is why I am confused: if you suggest that art should be comprehended exclusively “in itself,” then why do you need Marx, Lifshitz, Hegel, Deleuze, or Adorno, to whom you and Tolya refer while interpreting them in a very peculiar way? You can easily do without them.
“Plastic art” and fine art expertise are approaches that have their disciplined frames (fine art, history of art). They are fully valid, academically recognized, and so on.
Talk to art critics then! Don’t discuss the universal semantic ambitions of art. Be modest, be real, quiet professionals. Then art is just a trade (even if as part of contemporary art it is a kind of industry).
Why do you need philosophy in your affair? To read it in bed? To liberalize your mental outlook? I can turn your reproaches for underestimation of plastics as compared with art to a different field. For example, Gutov’s amateurish “interpretation” of Marx probably has a right to exist, but only in the field of private art and emotional passions, or in the sphere of leisurely “consumption” of philosophy.
How did it become possible to pray to Marx? To serve a cake with candles and no ceremony? Why do they treat Marx with such familiarity? Because after the collapse of the USSR, Marxism was de-academized, depoliticized and banished from all intellectual thought. Well, why can’t an artist take what is scattered around? Not for inserting it into sensible frames, no! But to aestheticize it, to make it an “object of contemplation.” In order to enrich one’s own works.
Our artists represent a return to the early modernist paradigm (what Peter Burger, leftist Hegelian art philosopher, calls aestheticism in his book Theory of Avant-Garde). For example, Gutov says in the manner of Shelling’s romantic art philosophy that the work is an “absolute” and depends “on nothing” (ab-solutum means separate, separated from everything). Congratulations, you’ve invented the wheel! Now, Dima, try to base it on contemporary art in a big academic article, using references—and we’ll see. What was the reason for this irresponsible, pseudo-theoretical idle talk? You can’t just sit on two chairs like that.
This paradigm of art comprehension, isolated from any outward intervention, corresponds nicely with recent developments in the market economy (of local nouveau riches) in relation to art. This is modernism that has turned into ideology, like Fredric Jameson's “ideology of modernism”. Any critics and any call to critical and political responsibility are forced out from this sphere because they can hamper some of the transactions within this small but “elite” sector of cultural industry. Around this system gathers a circle of loyal “experts” and “critics” (in reality, apologists) who are completely conformal with it. It is the same with artists who sing each other's praises, like Gutov and Tolya. It reminds one of a fable by Krylov about a “cuckoo” and a “cock”. In general, it is disgusting.
Here, business is business and theory is silent. Political and activist art are taboo under this ruling regime. It is not because of their “discrepancy with the times” (look at what Alfredo Jarre does now, like many other artists who do not all live in our country, alas), but because these types of art do not conform with the present pragmatic rationality of the art-system.
This art-system is absolutely “in Putin’s manner.” It suits the general logic of “freezing” contradictions and criticism. It is “stable” and equally “supported” (J. Ranciere) by our “politics” and “aesthetics.” This is why, in our situation, a move to any sensible universal context is impossible. So you live in this Uryupinsk and walk along your small Zarechnaya street stepping in pot-holes and cold puddles. And the “thaw” is still a long way off.
Do you remember any interesting and general public dispute, discussion about this or that subject and its development, situation, etc? Or just discussion of small icons in a basement at I Believe?
Then I’m much more satisfied with the current XZ (Moscow Art Magazine). There you can read (if not see) something interesting “about art.” But against the general background, XZ now reminds one of an underground Iskra.
It does happen in other places, and the level is good. Look at the sharp criticism (not referring to “plastic” issues) that emerged around the latest Documenta (see, for example, magazines Multitude or Brumeria). Independent left artists and critics invited by Multitude jeered at the “leitmotifs” of Documenta (e.g. a questionnaire with such questions as, “Do you believe that “naked life” is an extremely apocalyptic measurement of our present?”). These are what I call really independent and radical people who need theory and philosophy not just for appearances but because they want to understand. It is different for our weighers from Winzavod.
I write this because I am “not indifferent” to local art and want it to become interesting not only to a circle of art dealers, wives and tusovka of the 90s, but to us, too. Well, I believe that the situation is going to change soon.

Good luck in your plastic search.

AP

AB: That same day, the mail-list readers received yet another brilliant letter, this time from Keti Chukhrov, entitled Mozart and Salieri.


KETI CHUKHROV, MAY 2, 2008
MOZART AND SALIERI

Dear friends and companions,
I was not interested in reacting to Osmolovsky’s letters, but because of the involvement of Gutov, whose understanding of art is better, and because he can’t avoid making mistakes, I will get involved—but only for art’s sake.
The first thing that struck me was the reference to Giotto and Mozart. As if contemporary artists can lay any claim to be linked to such names. According to Lifshitz
(Mikhail Alexandrovich Lifshitz (1905-1983) was one of the most enigmatic and paradoxical phenomena of the Soviet epoch. A philosopher, aesthete and publicist, he obtained a wide and scandalous reputation as an obscurant and persecutor of progress in art, following the publication of his pamphlet against contemporary art “Why I Am Not a Modernist” in Literaturnaya Gazeta on 8 October 1966. The effects of that publication were enormous, yet paled before his book The Crisis of Ugliness, published two years later (Moscow, 1968). This anti-modernist bible brought Lifshitz even more fame. For more information see www.gutov.ru/lifshitz/institut/klyazma/bio.html),
this is not possible because modernism (the contemporary art system is still present in this modernist paradigm, notwithstanding all postmodern and other deviations) refuses to understand life and reality. Hence, Gutov repudiates his own criticism of contemporary art as the "heart of a heartless world."
Osmolovsky has always worked in quasi-modernist aesthetics, i.e. individualistic declarations of his own, personal sovereignty as the meaning of art. The left-wing discourse, as we now see, was only a stylish decoration.
The real thrust of modernism ended along with conceptualism, followed by the postmodernist games. Over the last ten years, modernism has turned into a fine art. This was demonstrated at Documenta, which was, in general, a failure. I'm not referring to the works, just the ideology.
That is why it is so strange to hear Dima spouting this spiessig ideology, which is based on turning the formal dribs and drabs of modernism into fine art, i.e. a canon of the mainstream and global art industry. Nowadays, this industry is not only subject to criticism, but has long been the talk of the town for any thinking person.
As a stronghold of art, Russia latched onto this mainstream paradigm practiced in the West. Thanks to its maturity, it became a place of entertainment and investments. That is, it became an elite show business.
This all bears little direct relationship to Giotto, Mozart, the avant-garde, or even the beginnings of modernism. Being an expert on Marx and Lifshitz, you understand this, I believe.
All you write is a demonstration of bourgeois expertise, the gourmandize of an expert, which was so despised by Lifshitz.
As you remember, according to Lifshitz, the nature of art is neither form nor object and is not the territory of contemporary art, but of life and reality. In your ideology, there is some connoisseurship of art criticism, which is equally distant from the revolutionary forms of early modernism and the deep, humanistic foundations of classical art.
Let’s turn for a minute to Pushkin’s Mozart and Salieri. What is Salieri afraid of? It is not simply a fear of Mozart’s genius, but his easy attitude towards it. Salieri is an expert and a connoisseur, a technologist of art. Mozart does not love art, he makes art, he is the nature of art himself. That is why Mozart could sneer at himself and not be afraid when a street musician performed a distorted interpretation of his work. It was such fun for him, he was laughing. Mozart is risible and is not afraid of mocking himself. That is what frightens Salieri. You and Osmolovsky produce the ideology of Salieri. His task is to shut Mozart up. He wants to be a priest of art, as of some religion. Mozart shows that art is a way of life. Art derives strength from everywhere and not only from its own history or canon. When Mozart is Mozart, what is present is not a canon, but an event. As for the canon, it is for Salieri.
Who can know better than you about Lifshitz’s notion of "uncertain goodwill"? It is what shines from the greatest art. It gives art the moment of truth. It is the most profound and often unconscious humanism. Because art belongs to all people, we as people, and not as philosophers, would like to feel this “uncertain goodwill” or at least feel close to it.
Contemporary art—especially in its present state of crisis in the West and its “ugly cargo” (as Penzin likes to say) variant in Russia—completely ignores aspects of reality and of life. So the matter lies not in demanding some criticism, but in the lack of attention given by contemporary artists to aspects lying outside contemporary art.
You have probably also fallen into this trap and are now seeking group solidarity using the knowledge that somebody allegedly doesn’t have.
If you believe that there is no difference between your ready-mades and Giotto, and that you are a realist according to Lifshitz’s concept, then you are demonstrating a radically post-modernist point of view, which continually eliminates differences and focuses on small gourmandize details.

About the Hand
As for the photo of the hand, any fool can see that Lesha Penzin was not referring to plastics or the obvious signs, but the gentrification of the art community, which the artists discussed so much, yet which they themselves were a part of. They not only failed to notice that moment, but now accuse some poor, imaginary philosophers of class hatred and envy.
So, this is what I’d like to say: the artists should take it easy. They will have to wait a long time for real world stardom, riches (in accordance with contemporary world art standards) or refinement. None of them represents a really important gallery, such as Gladstone, Haus und Wirth or Monika Sprut. None of them sell any works for large sums of money. So don’t boast about what you don’t have. All you have is a modest local context. The goys and neophytes of the business side of the art world are Stella (AB: One of the first independent Moscow galleries, named after its director, Stella Kei), Markin (Igor Markin—a collector and founder of the ART4.RU Moscow Contemporary Art Museum), Semenikhin (Vladimir Semenikhin -- a collector and patron of art, who now lives in Monaco; founder of the Ekaterina Foundation and Gallery, named after his wife), Tsereteli (either Zurab Tsereteli or his son Vasily. Zurab is the president of the Russian Academy of Art and founder of the Moscow Museum of Modern Art, famous mostly for his numerous, often aesthetically amusing sculptures. Vasily is a successor to his father’s traditions: he is an artist and the museum’s executive director. Both have made efforts to return the Russian avant-garde to its homeland). These characters look comical, even from the point of view of the high western bourgeois, not to mention intellectuals. They are merchants who aim at being bourgeois, but fail. In spite of their cars and restaurants, the bourgeois manner is still far from our artists and their patrons. The superstructure is still shaking.
So they are neither here nor there. They are not with the left, nor with the right; not with the poor, nor with the rich; not with the intellectuals, nor with the media. They are somewhere in a zone of parvenu with a disoriented consciousness. Choosing the bourgeois ideology, you find yourself in a difficult position. You only can avoid this position if you choose a direct, critical analysis of the surrounding reality. As for the Actionism of the 1990s, it could only be important as a permanent conviction and conceptual continuation. Otherwise, judging from what its characters turned into, it is just the “sigh of the oppressed creature.”

Finally, About the Poor
Basically, Tolya does not require any criticism. He signs signs the verdict on himself: both as a former and, as it turned out, false left-winger, and simply as a person. He himself chose to abandon his “leftism” in his article published in Post-Communist Condition. In it, he describes the entire basis of Actionism as the resentment of those who were not admitted upstairs. He describes the performance “Against All” not as a protest, but as an attempt to beg the authorities for engagement (Tolya believes that such an engagement was crucial for avant-garde artists).
As far as the subject of the poor is concerned, he is passing the same capital sentence on himself. It coincides exactly with the rhetoric of a petty bourgeois who tries to make his way into the upper bourgeoisie and repudiates poverty, as if it were a congenital malformation, rather than a social problem inherent in capitalism. By the way, a bourgeois never speaks about either his material success or his dislike for the disadvantaged and oppressed. Neither does a contemporary artist, who is traditionally silent about his commercial achievements. Others speak about them. Even here, Osmolovsky is less left-wing than any blasé bourgeois.
In an interview on Radio Free Europe, Osmolovsky expressed extremely reactionary ideas about the situation of the petty-bourgeois, in which we are all involved in, saying that it is not even worth the trouble trying to launch a real labour movement. No one besides Oksana Timofeyeva (a philosopher, critic and participant of the Chto Delat? work group) and, to a certain extent, Budraitskis (Ilya Budraitskis, a political and cultural activist, participant of Avdei Ter-Oganian’s Contemporary Art School and the seminars of Anatoly Osmolovsky)disputed such a disgusting, conciliatory remark.
So I recommend remembering nineteenth-century Russian literature. It was not only critical, but self-critical as well, and this led to understanding life and the quest for a person’s place in this world. A revolutionary character does not only move upwards from below, but also downwards from above, through the solidarity movements of the upper class. In Russian literature, Italian Neo-Realism and the year 1968, the movement of “downwards from above” does not mean governing and manipulating the masses, but deliberate, intellectual and generic (i.e. human) political support of violations of justice and the generic and genetic mutation of the fate of a human being. (By the way, Pasolini was by no means a poor man, yet he made his Accattone. Not to mention Visconti, who came from a well-known aristocratic family.)
These themes are described perfectly by many authors, including Marx, Lifshitz and Badiou. Gutov knows them. He himself participated in the Thinking Realism exhibitions.
And, finally, the last subject. I was at an exhibition on Krymsky Val, the one dedicated to the Zolotoe Runo (Golden Fleece) magazine, with which members of the pre-avant-garde collaborated: Goncharova, Blok, Bely and Petrov-Vodkin. The exhibition was probably entitled “Precursors of the Avant-Garde.” Though modernist, the event's aesthetics and ethics were deeply reactionary, bourgeois, decadent, and anti-avant-garde, as the title and design show. There were all kinds of references to the cult of the sun, pagan mythology, “beauty,” etc. But the case and point was beauty as understood by Ryabushinsky, a merchant who became a bourgeois and was forced to emigrate to Paris in the early 1920s. The magazine was founded after the revolution of 1905 and reflected the quasi-revolutionary disillusionment and fixation of the artistic community with the issues of aesthetics, the cult of beauty, religion, and their withdrawal from modern reality.
This seems to remind me very much of our own turn of the century, that is, the pseudo-revolutionary character of the 1990s and the decadent aestheticism and sugary interest in religious practices of the same personages who acted as actionists in the early 2000s (Kulik, Osmolovsky). In reality, both then and now, it results in a cult-combining perversion, trash and luxury (for example, at Ryabushinky’s salon). In your case, it was reflected in all its glory in the aesthetics of a den at the I Believe exhibition. As I recall, the avant-garde nullified all these rotting aesthetics. This is how it will end now.
No doubt, each country has its own idiosyncrasies related to contemporary art. However, as a general conclusion, thinking people should be able to understand the logic and hierarchy of this dry territory bear less and less relation to both art and life. This is why the activation of the art industry should not pull the wool over your eyes.

PS

Tolya used to say that the intelligentsia betrayed the revolution. A pity that these were merely fine words. I am a descendant of the intelligentsia who did just that. My ancestors from my father’s side were bourgeois and aristocrats: Princess Elizaveta Marshania married Erast Makatsaria, an officer of the Russian tsarist okhranka (the Russian secret police before the 1917 revolution); Princess Varvara Vashakidze and her husband Alex Chukhrukidze, a successful factory owner. The revolution expropriated their property, houses, factory, grocery stores, etc. My father, a professor at Tbilisi Conservatory, composer, pianist, successful Soviet official, former director of the Tbilisi Philharmonic, and vice-chairman of the Union of Composers of the Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic taught me to hate Marx, Lenin, socialism, communism, and revolution.
Fortunately, contacts first of all with Igor Chubarov, studies of philosophy and a love of art, followed by collective meetings with Gutov, Osmolovsky and others, changed my awareness by the late 1990s. Still, I didn’t know that such emancipated views could be changed back to reactionary and bourgeois ones.
I find this inadmissible. I believe that one should be consistent in criticism of the liberal bourgeois, anti-Soviet intelligentsia. A petty-bourgeois ethic is not possible after a belief in revolution. If it does appear, then everything that went before was false. As for bragging about tastes and scrupulousness in food and goods, leave that to Ksenia Sobchak. That is why, to cut a long story short, the duty of any progressive person is to fight against both petty-bourgeois ethics and the ethics of the upper bourgeoisie, because they are the end of art and thought.

AB: As the main character and subject of the discussion, Osmolovsky was the first to react to Keti’s cutting letter. First, he stated that the basic problem of Russian art is the “complete absence of elementary ideas of the value of an artistic form.”

Anatoly Osmolovsky. May 2, 2008
... Somehow, they can evaluate the concept of a work (hardly), but nothing more than that. Sofronov (Vladislav Sofronov-Antomony, a philosopher, art critic and member of the Art Magazine editorial board) dropped in recently. He said, “I don’t understand fine art," (adding "and probably never will") and his position is at least honest. However, he does understand the concept. He understands what the reason was for making Breads. Yet he sees new works from the same series and shrugs his shoulders, asking, “Why do the same things?” These were completely new works, with the same motive, only made with a different technique.
Where is the misunderstanding here? It is a misunderstanding of the fact that the symmetrical coupling of different forms can generate interesting effects. It is not only the technique that is important in Breads, but their plastic component, too. There can be good and bad series.
As for the connection with Giotto, I believe that contemporary art (and also all kinds of modernism) is, in different forms, directly connected to classical art. The myth of the break, supported by the avant-gardists, is nothing more than a myth. Grinberg wrote about this repeatedly.
That is why I consider my own works to be in the tradition of Russian art. Gutov aptly compared my Breads to folk wood engravings (gingerbread boards, etc.).
Something else I’d like to say about “left-wing” art: a real artist does not work from the head—the ideas themselves come into the head and demand realization. The idea for Breads came to me in 2004 and I spent three years figuring out how to implement it. Even if I wanted to make “left-wing” art, continue performances or anything like that, I couldn’t do it anymore. If anybody else could, then I’d think that was exclusively my problem. But nobody can.
That is why it is necessary to listen to artistic honesty and the internal imperative. Every minute I am working, I aim to follow them to the fullest.

AB: In the afternoon, a reply came in from Dmitry Gutov, entitled In the Name of Art. Because it was as brilliantly argued as Keti’s letter, which provoked it, it is necessary to quote it in full.


DMITRY GUTOV: IN THE NAME OF ART

I reiterate that I liked Keti’s letter very much and will try to answer several questions, which I regard more as misunderstandings, in order to proceed to the principal disagreements.
Keti was struck by my appeal to Giotto and Mozart. “As if artists belonging to contemporary art may have pretensions of being united with such names.” I should say that I’m the last person who’d pretend so. My thought was completely different. In our heart-to-heart talks, critics always impose the task of “inventing new forms of resistance, which have not yet been corrupted by the discourse of power” as a duty of art. Moreover, implementation of this requirement acts as the sole criterion of the quality of the work. At this point, I’d like to raise a question: from what historical moment has this criterion come to dominance? Or is it universal for art in general? Does it work for nothing at all? Or only for the twentieth century? Or only the last fifteen years? This is where I took Giotto and Mozart. It is not that Osmolovsky is Giotto and I am Mozart. The point is that there should be a criterion that would make any claims of union with them very difficult.
Here we approach a strategically important moment. Since the start of the twentieth century, have we really dealt with art? Three discussions of late 2003 and early 2004 were dedicated to this question. Osmolovsky always believed in succession and defeated the modernist myth about the beginning of a fundamentally new epoch. I was closer to Malevich and Lifshitz, thinking that an element of something previously unheard-of had been put to use. I was also talking of modernism when I was talking of art, as art is single and indivisible. My mistake was that I concentrated too much on the subject and could not understand how one could experience aesthetic delight watching Manzoni’s canned goods (at that time it was called “Gutov’s Garbage Theory”). However, the story of pushing these cans into the museum is aesthetically pleasing.
Keti wrote beautifully about art being turned into an elite show business. Nobody would argue against this. Another question is: what can combat this? Anyway, it can’t be solved with just an examination of the artist’s compliance with leftist ideas.
And here is Keti’s direct accusation, which concerns me: “all you wrote about is bourgeois expertise, the gourmandize of an expert, which was so despised by Lifshitz.” I don’t remember even thinking this to myself, let alone sending anything of the kind to the mail-list. Though what can be called gourmandize of an expert? For example, there are people who do not grasp the subtleties of Watteau’s paintings, i.e. who do not understand what elevates this great artist above the general Rococo level, which is quite low. I hope that Keti did not mean that. The meaning of art is enclosed in this fine art connoisseurship, as are those elements of life and reality, about which Keti also wrote wonderfully.
Mozart, Salieri, uncertain goodwill, and attention to aspects of life were also written about very well. If I do not live up to all this, it is not malicious intent for sure; it is because of a lack of talent and wit. It is quite another matter when an artist initially chooses a dead-end track.
Another subject is actionism. I can't understand the reason for Keti’s and many others’ (who know about this by hearsay) devotion to it. This is what beautifully fits in with the bourgeois style. Look at the latest issue of WAM. If Tolik indeed wrote an article, where “the entire basis of actionism is described as the resentment of those who were not admitted upstairs,” then I wouldn't call it a bad analysis.
“Finally, about the Poor”
I don’t remember Gutov or Osmolovsky writing anywhere about any successes or, moreover, about “their dislike for the disadvantaged and oppressed.” As for Osmolovsky’s gourmandize, it is not related to money, I should say. When he was as poor as a church mouse, on our way to Lake Teletskoye via Novosibirsk, somewhere along the way he found some beans, the rotten egg of a Peking duck, bartered tinned stewed meat for a grayling with local fishermen, and fed us with the food he cooked on a fire, which was quite tasty. This argument about food reminded me of a well-known excerpt from the manuscripts of the year 1844, in which Marx wrote critically that the brute Communism knows nothing about the wealth of needs, comes from the idea of some minimum and returns to the “unnatural simplicity of a human being who, poor and lacking in needs, not only failed to rise above private property, but has not yet reached it.”
However, I don’t consider all this conflict. It is just a small misunderstanding. But the subject of the Zolotoe Runo (Golden Fleece) is important. Keti compared our aesthetics to the “deeply reactionary bourgeois, decadent and anti-avant-garde” aesthetics, which appeared in Russia between 1905 and 1914. This again raises the question about the development of criteria in artistic evaluation. I base my argument on a well-known idea: art, in principle, cannot be reactionary. It brings in itself the potential for liberation, which is directly proportional to its artistic merit. Passéism, aestheticism, leaving reality behind, and other peculiarities of the World of Art helped to create an outstanding artistic phenomenon (its limited characteristics did also). Neglecting this art, comparing it to the taste of the merchant Ryabushinsky, calling it “rotting aesthetics,” and not seeing its achievements constitutes a truly reactionary position. If we begin with dislike of these decadents, where do we end? At least those who replaced them were logical when they wanted to bury all classical culture along with its humanism. Keti, you should change your view of the Zolotoe Runo (Golden Fleece), and Gutov and Osmolovsky, too (don’t think that I'm now comparing myself to Borisov-Musatov). All art has some value while it continues to be art. That is where Keti’s and my views radically diverge. From this, her attitude mutates into what some former actionists believe. At this point, I find her position internally contradictory and disintegrating.

I embrace you,

Dima Gutov.

AB: Of course, Igor Chubarov could not help reacting to the new attacks from Team Osmolovsky-Gutov. First of all, he was interested in the question “why did the artists get involved with left-wing philosophers?” Outraged at Osmolovsky’s statements and Gutov’s less reserved but more precise and consequently weightier statements, Chubarov shifted the blame onto Radek’s unsuccessful undertaking and its attempt to find a way out of false left-wing radicalism.

Igor Chubarov. May 2, 2008
... The third trash of Radek was a stunning failure. The authors had nothing to say or to show, except their regular “shit in cellophane,” of course. A serious “creative” crisis overtook Osmolovsky. He began talking to us while under its influence. At first, all was well. Publishing Guy Debord, preparing a magazine, well, I won't repeat everything here. But gradually I began to feel that something was wrong. Only the general left-wing aims declared by Osmolovsky and his keen interest in left-wing philosophers prevented others from understanding what it was about. I thought that left-wing considerations would drag Osmolovsky out of the slough of his brutal Moscow mood, just like a religious belief.
Only a long time after that did I realize that Osmolovsky was only interested in intellectual grandstanding and his own legitimatization as a left-wing theorist. He wanted us to explain “fashionable tendencies” to him in simple language: Deleuze, Boulez, Foucault, Adorno, dodecaphony aesthetics, a comparison of it with non-spectacularity, and so on. So we did. When he writes today that he has infected somebody with the left-wing discourse, this is simply untrue. He is confusing us with his “disciples” from Avdei’s group.
Quite the reverse, it is only because of Keti and me that Osmolovsky graduated in the early 2000s from his decadent past with dead old ladies in morgues to his so-called “non-spectacular” art, which resists “the appeal of the mass media” (to quote from one of Ekaterina Degot’s articles, which he borrowed in his usual manner). We offered his project active support, though we did have some questions, since there was some media interest.
However, as they say, “spot the difference” with the present habitué of Afisha.

AB: I venture to interrupt Igor Chubarov for a second to quote Ksenia Sobchak, a prominent media figure, outstanding sample of the height of glamour and habitué of fashionable parties, exhibitions and other social events. Ksenia usually attends them accompanied by a couple of young people, enjoying the opportunity to express her opinions about this or that work, waving her hands and batting her eyelashes. The interest of Ksenia Sobchak in a “product of art” is a kind of verdict. Regarding Anatoly Osmolovsky’s works, Ksenia kindly remarked, “Such interestingly cut breads. Before that, he made nuts. They were very textural. Pink Pita is a remarkable series of works. These are very unusual three-dimensional works... I like the genre of mocking our reality. I also work in this genre. I like it very much when our art reflects the sometimes funny and sometimes strange phenomena of life today...”
Ksenia Sobchak’s interest in the works of Anatoly Osmolovsky did not pass the Grundrisse community unnoticed, and the participants reacted with joyful delight. But let’s get back to Chubarov.
This is what O. recently said in the interview that he and I did with Red Magazine in St Petersburg:

“Presence in the media field is, by itself, a shockingly frustrating thing. There is no place for art in the mass media at all. A person who enters this field turns into an idiot. Kulik is the best example. As soon as he became a media persona, the quality of his work immediately diminished. Yet they sell very well.” What is the difference now between Osmolovsky and Kulik?
O. is lying when he writes that all that “was true” yesterday turned out to be “false” for me today. We sincerely hoped that he would publicly unmask himself, just like Bulgakov’s Voland did—that he would become a political artist or that he would show in the manner of Avdei that “contemporary art” is all lies or a toy of the elites. But it all came out wrong. It all turned out to be within a literary frame, just like Bulgakov. O. began to pose seriously as a “painter” and “sculptor.” It was important that the transformation of ideas and consequently the works of our former comrade was gradual. We noticed that too late. We had to stop his lies at the level of Stella. We failed to understand. Osmolovsky is a cunning fellow and an experienced political technologist. He would not say too much if it was not necessary. I read the recent conversation on Svoboda, where he manages to hypnotize even our Trotskyites like hedgehogs, as he only reveals half of his historical and political “discoveries.” I am talking about understanding the meaning of art as “existence for masters” and his present idea of the “bourgeois revolution,” which has come true and renders senseless the idea of social revolution or any efforts to implement one.
... My and Keti’s main discovery is that Osmolovsky has always been Osmolovsky, i.e. he wants money, glory and power. Before, he didn’t have it all, and now, as part of the cesspit going by the name of contemporary art in Russia, they have come to him. I mean that he has never been left-wing. That is why it is not correct to speak about his degeneration. It is a systematic, deliberate evolution. As for his interpretation of left-wing discourse, which is limited to resentment and revolutionary violence, it has always been an operational fig leaf used when convenient (remember the photo on the cover of the first issue of Radek, where O. was the only one to cover his manhood?). His recent interpretation of the cover of the second issue of Radek confirms this. Gutov is correct when he writes, “When did we mock?” That’s just the point: you did not. It was Avdei who mocked you.

AB: After several more comments from Pavel Mikitenko and a new participant, Yulia Volfson, discussion of the “case of Osmolovsky” petered out. I would like to finish my story with a photo taken during the celebrations marking the 190th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, to which Dmitry Gutov invited all his companions. All the guests were ecstatic about the cake with Marx’s portrait and 190 candles. However, nobody dared to cut into the chocolate portrait of the birthday boy. The participants reverently scraped the cake out from under his portrait. Nobody assumed the responsibility for the idea or the creation of the cake.
... Another occasion soon appeared: the sacking of Andrei Erofeev, infamous curator and head of the department of contemporary art at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow. But this is a whole new story, even though it re

01.01.2009