State of the Art

In many parts of the former Soviet Union, artists are undergoing an identity crisis. Although censorship is gone, many artists face another problem - the ability to pay for the equipment they need. Alexei Shulgin, a Russian artist who runs a www art centre, means that Russian art is destroyed and that perhaps the web could be a possibility to reenforce it.

The nature of art has been rapidly following the technological revolution. A new genre of art has been evolving, utilizing the audio and graphic possibilities presented by multimedia and the web. Likewise, conventional art is profiting from these technological and telematic possibilities by transcending physical constraints and expanding to a much larger audience.

Unfortunately, in many parts of the former Soviet Union, artists are undergoing an identity crisis. Although censorship is gone (more or less), many artists face another problem -- the ability to pay for the equipment they need. Conventional artists complain that the price of items (such as paint) and the accessibility of material (such as paper) puts them in a difficult position; some, as a result, have resorted to what can be best termed as intellectual prostitution, selling their talents to the highest bidder. Others, meanwhile, make do with what they can, how they can. On top of all this comes the question of computer-based art forms: that is, is it really art?

The following commentary is from Alexei Shulgin, a Russian artist who runs a Moscow-based www art centre. It is an alternative view that seeks to define Russian art in the Digital Age.

Alexei Shulgin about the situation of artists in Russia

The Moscow art scene is getting destroyed. Career artists are escaping to the West. You can meet them in Berlin or Amsterdam.

Many of the artists who stay here are having to change their occupation since there is no longer any state support and it's practically impossible to find a part-time (and well-enough paid) job and have free time for art. Another problem is that art institutions are in deep crisis. Context is getting very blurred.

I personally like such situations.

I don't think that art is a middle-class domain. The contemporary art system - galleries, museums, magazines - has always been the only possible system for Russian artists, the only target. We have very shifted ideas about underground and left-wing activity here, in the country where Marxism-Leninism won. To be in the underground here means to be an amateur artist. To a certain extent, all Russian artists are underground artists simply because they are not a part of (the Russian) mainstream - even Kabakov.

Russian art is something that almost does not exist.

It actually exists only as a reflection in the Western art system's curved mirror.

That brings me a personally unique and delightful feeling of being in between: mainstream and underground, East and West.

The Internet helps me to enjoy such a situation; it brings more uncertainty in my state.

I am trying to involve more artists in the Internet, but most of them have the usual middle-class mentality and don't speak English. There is another problem - of culture differences. Russian art (even visual) is very much literature-based. Artists have problems with communication and don't believe that they can be resolved.

But things are changing little by little...

I have reached the word limit after which writing starts to pretend that it describes something. What can you describe with words?