The political and cultural lethargy of the late Soviet Union gave rise to the Moscow Conceptualists, whose work today offers unexpected insights for our tempestuous times.
Komar and Melamid
Chimpanzee’s Polaroids Expected to Fetch Big Money at Auction
While staggering auction record peaks were summited this week by some talented human artists, a more amateur representative of an underrepresented artist species is expected to gain some auction attention of his own. Photographs by Mikki the chimpanzee are estimated to fetch between $75,000–100,000 at Sotheby’s.
Exploring Moscow’s Temple of Modernism
If someone were to tell me that I’d have to walk for an hour and a half down a number of unknown streets in the southern part of central Moscow to get from the main building of the State Tretyakov Gallery at 10 Lavrushinsky Lane to its 20th-century counterpart at 10 Krymsky Val, I’d still do it again in a heartbeat. That’s because the Tretyakov Gallery at 10 Krymsky Val houses what is arguably the best collection of 20th-century Russian art I have ever seen.