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Eastern block
As Russia’s 18th richest man, Alisher Usmanov, snaps up
the Rostropovich art collection ‘en bloc’ from Sotheby’s,
Russian
art expert, Ivan Lindsay, examines how President
Putin is
getting involved with the ‘great Russian art grab’
The Russian art market continues to accelerate with new records being set at every sale, for both turnover and individual prices
for artists. What started as an amusing distraction for art market professionals has now become one of the most vibrant areas of the
modern art market.
Sotheby’s, the current market leader, realised a total of £22m in the first of their biannual Russian sales in June this year, against a pre-sale high estimate of £18m. This brought their total for global Russian sales so far this year to £51m. Their June sale saw 12 new artists’ records achieved, the top lot falling to Mikhail Fedorovich Larionov’s (1881– 1964) Still Life with a Jug and Icon at £2.2m. The second place went to Boris Mikhailovich Kustodiev’s (1878–1927) Picnic, which achieved £1.25m from a Russian private buyer.
As the market continues to strengthen in tandem with Russia’s rising prosperity a significant development is the intervention of President Putin. In mid-September this year, Sotheby’s was due to sell the entire art collection of the late famed cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich which had been put on the block by his wife, the soprano Galina Vishnevskaya. Vishnevskaya initially said she was selling to help finance their family’s charitable foundations but, on the day of the sale, confessed that the upkeep and insurance had become too expensive.
The sale attracted enormous publicity because of Rostropovich’s fame and the depth and range of the collection. Rostropovich, who died in April at the age of 80, was a staunch critic of Soviet Russia and had fled the Soviet Union in the early 1970s after harbouring the dissident writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Rostropovich was still performing with great skill up until the age of 78 and will be remembered in particular for his passionate interpretations of Shostakovich and Prokofiev.
Sotheby’s formidable PR machine went into overdrive and claimed it was the finest private collection of Russian art outside the country. The range of the collection was indeed extensive, covering porcelain, objets d’art, glass and paintings. Sotheby’s produced a huge, glossy catalogue for the 450 items which included 22 works by Ilya Efimovich Repin and assorted works by Serov, Roerich and Grigoriev. The collection did, in fact, look impressive in the sumptuous catalogue and there were some fine objects, particularly among collections of Imperial glass, walrus ivory boxes and 17th century enamels. However, at the preview the general impression was one of disappointment and a consensus that many of the pictures were good but not great, as if they had been bought with too close an eye on price.
In the event, the viewing was a strange, lacklustre affair because earlier that day Sotheby’s had sold the entire collection to Alisher Usmanov, a Russian steel and oil billionaire. It lacked the frisson generated by potential buyers worrying over what to buy and how much to pay. Usmanov reputedly paid £40m for the collection (a figure significantly above the quoted value of the works) and, considering Sotheby’s must have been worried about some of the lesser objects in this sale finding a buyer at all, it represents a coup for their incredible marketing machine. Rumour has it that a catalogue of the sale had arrived on Putin’s desk the previous week and he decided these items should be returned to Russia. Allegedly he called up Usmanov and told him to buy the collection and give it back to Russia. Usmanov, who has previously never been a major player in the art world, duly obliged. He was quoted in the press as saying, ‘Such a collection of Russian art can’t be in the possession of one person even if he has a hypertrophied sense of narcissism. This must belong to the state.’ Hardly the words of an art lover, and words that wouldn’t make much sense to the scores of Russian collectors who are collecting on this scale with a vengeance.
According to Forbes’ 2007 rich list, Alisher Usmanov is Russia’s 18th richest man with an estimated fortune of £2.75bn. He is believed to be close to Putin and manages a subsidiary of the state-controlled gas monopoly OAO Gazprom amongst other extensive steel and gas interests. He is described in business circles as ‘the hard man of Russia’, a title for which, presumably, there is considerable competition. He spent six years in jail during the 1980s for various crimes committed in the USSR. Since August 2007 he has been the major shareholder in Arsenal Football Club.
In typical Russian-speak, Federal Culture Agency chief Mikhail Shvydkoi told reporters that the government ministry gave Sotheby’s guarantees that ‘the transaction would be in the interest of the Russian Federation’. He went on to say that the government would not be buying these objects because they did not have funds (what about their current published reserves of USD300 billion?) and then added,‘The Culture Ministry, and I personally, began to appeal to business representatives to buy the collection in its entirety.’
Buying art ‘en bloc’ is nothing new for the Russians and, in fact, can be seen as appealing to the Russians’ love of the grand gesture.Catherine the Great did exactly that on numerous occasions as she built up the Hermitage, keeping her ambassador Prince Golitsyn permanently on the art trail around Europe. When she bought the contents of Houghton Hall, built up by England’s first Prime Minister, Robert Walpole, it was debated in parliament whether she should be allowed to get away with it, and her successful purchase soured relations between Russia and England for a decade.
Stalin’s death in 1953 ushered in a period known as the‘Khrushchev thaw’ that allowed the emergence of the Moscow school and includes such great artists as Korzhev, Plastov and the Tkachev brothers, sometimes referred to in Russia as the second generation of Russian impressionists. This movement is virtually unknown in the West but contains some terrific paintings for the more intrepid collector.
Later Czars and the leading families of Russia such as the Demidovs, Worontsovs and Sheremetevs regularly hoovered up entire collections and Stalin himself ‘rescued’ an estimated three million art objects from Germany at the end of World War Two. More recently, in 2004, Viktor Vekselberg pre-empted the Sotheby’s sale of the Forbes collection of Fabergé eggs and bought the lot for a reputed £50m.
It seems that Putin is determined to build up Russia’s reputation abroad and he understands, like his predecessors, that repatriating art, one way or another, to build up Russia’s museums is one of the best ways of doing this. The message to Russia’s oligarchs is clear; either buy the art yourself or for the state, but bring it back to Russia. The most likely effect on Russia’s already overheated art market is that growth will continue at a clip.
Ivan Lindsay is a dealer in Old Masters and Russian paintings. For more information, visit www.oldmasters.net
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