Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby’s 1988 Auction in Moscow

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Preface to Sotheby&rsquo;s Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art auction catalogue for the sale held at Moscow&rsquo;s Sovincenter in 1988 written by Lord Gowrie, the-then Chairman of Sotheby's. You can find the printed copy of the catalogue at Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby&rsquo;s 1988 Auction in Moscow.'s.
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As we approach the millennial year 2000, we may be confident that for all its turmoil and tragedy the twentieth century is a great century in the history of painting. Russia, in the years immediately before and after the political Revolution, was a revolutionary country for artists as well. New ways of rendering the external world of emotion, led many to believe that Russia might soon rival in terms of the visual arts her long eminence in literature. The painters of the revolutionary period represented at this auction are among the greatest of their time. One of them, Rodchenko, was also a designer and photographer of genius.
<img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_img282_1_web.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1062" /> Pre-auction exhibition of Sotheby&rsquo;s Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art at Sovincentr, Moscow, July 2&ndash;7, 1988 Photo: Alexander Lavrentiev &copy; Alexander Lavrentiev
Fierce growing pains of the post-revolutionary years, to which were added the horror and heroism of world war, changed the course of painting in the Soviet Union to a considerable degree. A few artists whose talents were of the quiet, private kind (Ilya Tabenkin is a superb example) cultivated their own gardens but in general there was pressure to produce patriotic and official art. As well as the ordinary difficulties of communication, this divorced painters from developments in the West where modern art has in the main flourished as a kind of opposition to the norms and values of modern societies. In recent years, however, scholars and collectors both inside and outside the Soviet Union, have recognized the stirrings of a remarkable new period in Soviet art. Too diffuse to constitute a movement, the painters represented here have some qualities in common. They are mostly young. They are sophisticated, in that they are well aware of what is going on in painting in the West.&nbsp; They are Soviet, in the sense that they reject both imitation and the asocial content of the most contemporary Western art. They are strikingly immune, for instance, to the Western weakness for decorative introspection. There is also a special Russian wit, a satirical bite even, in the best of their paintings. They are, as painters should be, eye-openers. They say a great deal about this exciting period of Soviet history.
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Sotheby&rsquo;s is proud to conduct the first international art auction in the Soviet Union. We are confident that it will not be the last, because nothing could be better for the improvement of cultural relations than a free exchange of ideas and works of art, between young artists, collectors and students of art everywhere.&nbsp; We are profoundly grateful to the Soviet authorities, in particular to the Minister of Culture, Mr. Vassily Zakharov and his officials, for the tolerant and courteous way in which they have cooperated with a very different system for exchanging ideas and works of art. Above all, we are grateful to the artist themselves for submitting their property to open competition. We are confident that their originality and verve will find many who share our own enthusiasm.
The Rt. Hon. The Earl of Gowrie, P C Chairman, Sotheby&rsquo;s London
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Preface to Sotheby’s Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art auction catalogue

Sotheby&rsquo;s auction sale Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art, Sovincentr, Moscow, July 7, 1988
Videodocumentation, 130&rsquo; 47&rsquo;&rsquo;
Grisha Bruskin archive and Sergei Borisov archive
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Sotheby’s auction sale Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art

The curator of the exhibition Bidding for Glasnost, Andrey Misiano, spoke to artist Grisha Bruskin, whose work Fundamental Lexicon (1986) sold for a record &pound;242,000 at <a href="https://garagemca.org/en/exhibition/bidding-for-glasnost-sotheby-s-1988-auction-in-moscow">Sotheby's</a> in 1988.
Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby's 1988 Auction in Moscow at Garage Museum of Contemporary Art was a an exhibition exploring an event that forever changed the history of Soviet and Russian contemporary art.
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Curator Andrey Misiano in conversation with artist Grisha Bruskin

Telegram stickers for Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby’s 1988 Auction in Moscow

Listen to music inspired by the Russian avant-garde of the early 1920s and the zeitgeist of perestroika in the 1980s, the time when the most controversial art event of the Soviet era&mdash;Sotheby&rsquo;s 1988 Auction in Moscow&mdash;took place. Compiled by Denis Boyarinov, music journalist, editor at Colta.ru, and curator at Sound Up.
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A Playlist for Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby’s 1988 Auction in Moscow

Enjoy three animated stories about Sotheby's 1988 Auction in Moscow, featuring David Bowie, Alexander Rodchenko and Ilya Kabakov.
Elton John and David Bowie were among the buyers at Sotheby&rsquo;s 1988 Auction in Moscow. Although they didn&rsquo;t come to the auction in person, their representatives were on the phone to them from the auction room. Elton John bought Restored Painting No 5 by Igor Kopystiansky and a Landscape by Svetlana Kopystianskaya. Restored Painting No 7 by Igor Kopystiansky based at the work by Nicolas Poussin was bought by David Bowie.&nbsp;
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The highest-selling lot at Moscow&rsquo;s Sotheby&rsquo;s 1988 was Alexander Rodchenko&rsquo;s abstraction Line (1920), sold for &pound;330 000. All in all, &pound;586 000 was raised from three paintings, a poster and three photographs by the avant-garde artist.
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Ilya Kabakov&rsquo;s work It Is All About Him was acquired by Alfred Taubman, who owned Sotheby&rsquo;s at the time of the auction. Taubman donated the work to the Soviet Ministry of Culture in the hope that it would be included in the collection of a future Soviet Museum of Contemporary Art, which never opened.&nbsp;
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Sotheby's, 1988

Exhibit Russia: The New International Decade 1986–1996

An extract from &ldquo;Sotheby&rsquo;s Auction. Russian Avant-Garde and Soviet Contemporary Art&rdquo;, Chapter 2 in <a href="/en/publishing/exhibit-russia-the-new-international-decade-1986-1996">Exhibit Russia: The New International Decade. 1986&ndash;1996</a>, published by Garage Museum of Contemporary Art in 2015, memories of Simon de Pury, one of the main organizers and the auctioneer of the Moscow event in 1988.
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I was the curator of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection in Lugano, Switzerland, from 1979 to 1986, and it was through this role that I first went to the Soviet Union. Vladimir Semenov, the Soviet ambassador in West Germany, approached us to present the Collection in Moscow and Leningrad, which eventually led to four exhibitions. Between 1982 and 1986, I was constantly traveling back and forth for these projects, so I got to know many of the museum directors&mdash;Madame Antonova at the Pushkin, Piotrovsky&rsquo;s father<a href="#_ftn1" name="_ftnref1">[1]</a> at the Hermitage&mdash;and also the Minister of Culture.
When I started at Sotheby&rsquo;s in 1986 I was still advising Baron Thyssen one day a week and had occasion to accompany him on a trip, again to Moscow. In those days, the hotel would always keep your passport until you were leaving, and when we arrived at the airport I realized I&rsquo;d forgotten to collect it from reception: there was no choice other than to return to the city. An official from the Ministry of Culture accompanied me back to the hotel and then to the airport again, so I spent a decent amount of time with him. At one stage, I casually enquired if he thought there would be a chance that Sotheby&rsquo;s could organize an auction in Moscow. I was expecting him to laugh, but to my great surprise he was open to the idea and asked which artists I thought should be included, to which I responded that there should be partly pioneers of Russian art and partly unofficial artists, such as Ilya Kabakov, Erik Bulatov, and Oleg Vassiliev. He said he thought it was an interesting idea and remarked that my choice of artists was very similar to those Mr. Jolles liked.
Paul Jolles (1919&ndash;2000) used to be the Secretary of State for Commerce in the Swiss government and then the worldwide chairman of Nestl&eacute;. Wherever he went, he would spend his spare time in the evenings visiting artists. In Moscow I often accompanied him. I was fascinated. They didn&rsquo;t have support, barely any materials, or studios. They had no right to exhibit and no chance to travel, but there was a great solidarity and camaraderie between all of them. Later, when the official said that the Ministry would agree to work with these artists, I had to do something that was nearly as difficult, which was to convince people at Sotheby&rsquo;s that there was a point in organizing an auction in Moscow at that time.
I spoke with Lord Gowrie,2 and then to Michael Ainslie, who was the CEO of Sotheby&rsquo;s worldwide. These were the early days of perestroika and things were opening up, so there was a huge interest in what was happening after years of the Cold War, of witnessing the changes. I was happy that Sotheby&rsquo;s eventually decided that they would go ahead with the sale, which then meant several trips to select the works for auction.
We worked mainly with two people from the Ministry of Culture, Sergei Popov and Pavel Khoroshilov. We put together a list, and they got works from the artists, assembling them in a church in Moscow. We selected from this group and also made studio visits with people like Vladimir Nemukhin and Vladimir Yankilevsky, Dmitry Krasnopevtsev, and Vadim Zakharov, who was the youngest artist in the auction.
My motivation was to show to the world what was going on behind the Iron Curtain, because most of the artists were working in total isolation&mdash;let&rsquo;s not forget that this was pre-Internet. I felt an auction would be a great way of putting a spotlight on what was happening and increasing an appreciation of Russian art. Of course, I also worried that after having obtained the works, we had to sell them. It was clear that at that time there were no Russian collectors who would be candidates, so we organized a trip to Mos - cow for collectors from America and Europe, so they could see artists&rsquo; studios for them - selves and find out more about their work. This was about one week long. Peter Batkin, who was a sales clerk at Sotheby&rsquo;s at the time, was in charge of organizing the tour. He did a fantastic job, really thinking outside the box and making everything function behind the scenes.
There were many funny stories from this trip. One American collector, who visited the studio of Igor and Svetlana Kopystiansky, was offered a painting in exchange for his Nikon camera, which he refused. Two days later, during the auction, this work and another by Svetlana fetched huge prices. It was Elton John who bought them. The collector was so upset!
<img src="//cdn-ec-static.garagemca.org/storage/tinymce_asset/compressed_ER_2017_small-2.jpg" alt="" width="1600" height="1443" />Day of sale, July 7, 1988, Sovincentr, Moscow &copy; Sotheby&rsquo;s
The auction took place at Sovincentr in the Mezhdunarodnaya Hotel. TV stations came from all over Europe, and the auction room was packed. There were tensions up to the last minute, such as rumors that a member of the Politburo who was an adversary of Gor - bachev was exerting pressure for the whole thing to be canceled &mdash;even after all the collec - tors had flown in &mdash;but luckily nothing material - ized from that. The other total nightmare was that we needed people to be on the telephone during the auction but none were working on the day. We had this whole phone bank with my colleagues at the ready, but five minutes before the auction they were dead. That&rsquo;s the only time I was really nervous, because the top management of Sotheby&rsquo;s were all there, including Alfred Taubman, the owner. I thought, &ldquo;OK, well, this is it.&rdquo;
At that stage, Batkin saw that I was in a bad state and gave me a glass of vodka, which I took in one gulp and went out to the podium to start the auction. Then a total miracle happened. I suddenly saw all my colleagues eagerly dialing: the phone lines had started working. And so it began.
The first cycle was the Russian avant-garde, followed by the unofficial artists. The first lot went off like a bomb. People were bidding like crazy, and it reached three, four, five times more than we had expected. After every fall of the hammer the entire audience was applauding fanatically. It was like being at a football match each time a goal is scored. When it came to the unofficial artists, it was unbelievable, particularly with the record for Grisha Bruskin&rsquo;s painting, which was much more than we could have ever expected in our wildest dreams. It was funny, because after the auction he was in a state of shock, and he dropped his glasses, which broke on the floor. As he was worriedly trying to pick up the pieces, his wife said, &ldquo;Don&rsquo;t worry Grisha, you are a rich man now. I will get you new glasses,&rdquo; but he didn&rsquo;t seem to believe it was possible.
I think the auction was a pivotal moment because everybody who witnessed it saw the prices that these artists&rsquo; works could command, even when they were the so-called outcasts of society. The event was not without its contentious moments, however, even from the artists. The night of the auction, they did a parody of the whole thing, creating an impromptu performance: imitating me taking bids, imitating the crowd, and making com - ments about the absurdity that this art was suddenly worth money when it was worth nothing before. Nonetheless, the realization on the part of the Soviet officials that all these foreign collectors were paying such big prices for the works meant the beginning of the end of the Artists Union and the whole system that divided the opportunities for official and unofficial artists.
The most problematic issue that arose after the event was to do with payments. The agreement was that as soon as Sotheby&rsquo;s received funds from the purchasers they gave money to the Ministry, which was supposed to pay the artists. But week after week went by, and we would hear the artists had not been paid. The Ministry kept saying it was in pro - cess, but gradually the press started enquir - ing, and what had been a PR triumph risked turning into a PR nightmare. That&rsquo;s where Lord Gowrie played a very important role as Minister for the Arts in Thatcher&rsquo;s government: Mr. Gorbachev was coming to England on an official state visit, and Gowrie was able to get the problem onto the agenda. The day before Gorbachev was to leave for London, suddenly all the artists got paid.
Excerpted from an interview with Kate Fowle, April 8, 2015. Simon de Pury Chairman, Sotheby&rsquo;s Switzerland and later Sotheby&rsquo;s Europe (1986&ndash;1997).
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<hr />
<a href="#_ftnref1" name="_ftn1">[1]</a> Mikhail Piotrovsky has been director of the State Hermitage Museum since 1992. His father, Boris Piotrovsky (1908&ndash;1990), was director of the Hermitage from 1964 to 1990.

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A Playlist for Bidding for Glasnost: Sotheby’s 1988 Auction in Moscow

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