ABOVE: detail from Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov’s Fanta 1996. Paul Abelsky writes in the San Francisco Chronicle that Russian contemporary art has become just as strange and chaotic as Russia itself.

So, as the Guggenheim in New York prepares to look back over eight centuries of Russian art with its gooey, crowd-pleasing show RUSSIA!, Paul Abelsky, a writer for Russia Profile magazine in Moscow, peers into the murky present in an article yesterday in the San Francisco Chronicle. Russian art, he writes, is in a “predicament,” suffering from “derivative art discourse” borrowed from the west, and strangely disconnected from the realities of contemporary Russian life. The essay is a little strange, wandering off on odd tangents sometimes, but is useful reading for decadent ignorant westerners like us to whom Russia is a vast tundra of onion-dome Tetris backgrounds and cirrhotic 14 year-olds.

Current events in Russia, such as Vladimir Putin’s hardening military stance, interference with the press, and the trial of oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky, are pushing artists into new territory, Abelsky writes, and they are increasingly targeting the Orthodox church, state imagery, and political leaders. It sounds like it’s producing some profoundly bad art in many cases, but given the strange history of the Russian state and the artists it employs/imprisons, it’s definitely worth paying attention.

LINK: San Francisco Chronicle > Russian art mirrors discord