RAJI: On Location in Rostov, Russia (Year 4)

I tagged along with Ella and Julia when they went to interview the director of the Union at his office on Turgenevskaya Street. The interview will be part of a story they are writing about artists who are being evicted from their Pushkinskaya Street apartments as of August 1.

In the past few years, Rostov artists have been deprived slowly but surely of their studios and exhibit halls in some of the prime areas of the city, including main street Bolshaya Sadovaya and the lively Embankment area. In some ways, it sounds like a classic New York tale - artists being pushed out of prime real estate for commercial reasons. But in this case, the artists, who historically have been supported by the government, are being pushed out by the local administration, which says that the painters don’t own their studios and can’t stay in them any longer.

The Turgenevskaya Street building is at times austere, with dramatic paintings lining the marble stairwell, and at times in a typical state of Russian disrepair (we waited near an odd, unsturdy set of old theatre seats that none of us were quite ready to sit on). The director of the Union was a little too tan, with a Euro tank and expensive jeans (think “China Girl”-era David Bowie). The two artists both seemed round and jolly - the first with a handlebar mustache (think dockside chanteys and the smell of the sea) and the second burly and bearded (think village dacha with fresh garden vegetables and vodka).

All three described the pre-perestroika era in rosy terms: artists were supported by the government, valued by the community, and free to paint and create without pressure (they claim that they never had to deal with government censorship). But the post-perestroika era, in their eyes, has left them on the other side of the looking glass: the government is dismantling their support system, public interest in art is dwindling, and they have to spend time pandering to the rich clients who can pay for their work.

Rostov artists aren’t the only ones who have expressed these sentiments. Douglas Birch found a similar story in St. Petersburg in a 2003 article for the Baltimore Sun (via Johnson’s Russia list)

Now the centuries-old paternalistic tradition that produced Tchaikovsky the composer, Pavlova the dancer and Kandinsky the painter is gone. The czars who once nourished the arts and the Soviet Communists who lavishly financed them - within strict creative boundaries - have been relegated to history.

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia inherited a badly damaged economy, few resources to finance the arts and little will to control them. Culture was cast upon the marketplace.

Now, a new generation of artists is trying to adjust to the uncompromising demands of that market

According to one of the Rostov Union artists, Russia, on its current path, is on its way to becoming “a country without culture.” Julia and Ella have been researching this story in depth and we’ll post follow-ups on the eviction when they are available.