Moscow Notebook

03 June 2009

Before boarding the flight to Moscow, it dawned on me that I might have somehow contracted swine flu from Michael Nyman.

The result of exchanging several emails with Dasha Zhukova came in the shape of an event at her gallery, the Garage Centre for Contemporary Culture. The conceptual artist and teacher Michael Craig-Martin and YBA Gavin Turk took part in a discussion chaired by Danny Moynihan. Moynihan’s new film Boogie Woogie, starring Charlotte Rampling, about the New York and London art worlds will be released soon. At an earlier discussion on film with filmmakers Martha Fiennes and Andrei Konchalovsky at the Sergei Eisenstein Film Library, Moynihan revealed that before getting involved in the film business, he was a happy man. He slept well, and he ate well. Now his whole life has been consumed by the production. And sadly more sleepless nights must have followed as the Russian backer of his film was assassinated. The film director Stephen Frears later asked the Eisenstein audience, ‘Russians own England. They own English newspapers, football teams, real estate, so why not film? Why is Abramovich wasting so much money on art?’

Zhukova’s gallery provided the ideal venue for the art talk immediately after the film discussion. Gavin Turk proclaimed, ‘The most important artwork is the one that is misunderstood by the most amount of people.’ Not sure if the audience understood this as much of it seemed lost in translation. Or perhaps the Russians don’t smile much. Craig-Martin spoke in a relaxed tone. ‘It is exciting to do something other than the orthodox. It is exciting to be resistant. So many ways to make art that people had not considered.’

The final event took place at a restaurant called Chocolate. The dinner menu featured numerous dishes but there was no chocolate in sight. The milliner Stephen Jones and fashion designer Henry Holland were joined by Russian designers for a discussion that seemed to go on for the entire evening. Riveting though. Jones exclaimed that he had rarely refused a commission. Someone renowned from the audience shouted out ‘Tart!’, to which he responded, ‘The fashion business is full of tarts!’ As for me, I was still waiting for a piece of chocolate tart — but no such luck.