Russia TodayBy John Varoli
Published: September 1, 2008
 
The fair featured works from 45 galleries, more than half of which were Russian. Eleven hailed from other countries, including Berlin’s Volker Diehl Gallery, which this past April opened a Moscow outpost, Diehl + Gallery One. While the 2007 edition reported $4.5 million in sales, with $4.8 million reserved, Art Moscow officials have said they will no longer release totals. Judging from participants’ figures, however, 2008 results were mixed. None sold out, and prices for individual works rarely exceeded $150,000. Still, nearly all those canvassed agreed that this year’s event had better attendance than past ones and more new faces among the primarily Russian visitors. “Art Moscow is increasingly important for its educational value and as a platform for communication between art lovers and professionals,” says Sabina Orudjeva, director of the RuArts gallery, in Moscow. RuArts sold the Russian artist Alexander Zakharov’s Oh machine guns, Oh revolvers, 2007, a series of miniature oils on board depicting Barbie dolls and teddy bears in combat, for $150,000. The M&J Guelman Gallery, also of Moscow, says it sold Music Box, 2008, a singing outhouse by the Russian artist Yuri Shabelnikov, for €90,000 ($142,000) and the last two prints of the Siberian art duo Blue Noses’ 2005 photo Era of Mercy (known as the “Kissing Policemen”) for €16,000 ($25,000) each. The highest price reported was for a marble sculpture by the British artist Tony Cragg, which a Moscow collector bought from Vienna’s Hans Knoll gallery for €180,000 ($283,000). This purchase is indicative of the changing taste of Russian collectors, who appear willing to pay great sums for international contemporary art but remain tepid about Russian contemporary art. "Russia Today" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.
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