I Can Has Art?

Who said that blogging doesn't get you anywhere? In August, window blinds magnate, art collector and avid LiveJournalist Igor Markin opened a populist gallery in downtown Moscow. Art4.ru has late hours, furniture to lounge in and pretty girls on staff instead of ancient crones. People place stickers next to the pieces they like best.

Ich bin ein freewheeling arty playboy millionaire!

Markin has taste for noncomformist art, which means that Art4.ru is the kind of place you’re likely to find Oleg Kulik waving his naked butt in people’s faces. But he’s also a patriot: Art4.ru recently hosted a contest for a Yelstin monument, mostly to stop the much loathed Tsereteli, Mayor Yuri Luzhkov’s pet favorite, from doing it. (Markin has also set up a Fund for Dismantling Monuments created by Zurab Tsereteli.)


The Internet portal of Art4.ru is a great way to track where free champagne will be, and what's going on in the greater art world as it pertains to Russia. For instance "Moscopolis," an exhibit of Russian artists' representations of Moscow running at the Louis Vuitton space in Paris until Dec 31.

Cardboard Mausoleum

From a brilliant series: In Moscow of the Future, the Russian government is housed in the Malevich Building, a black monolith.

The Big Russian Soul is physically located! We always suspected this would happen eventually. It's a Huge, Flying Ball of Russian Spirituality (2416), which hovers above the city.

Had a suspicion about this as well. But where are all the Shokolodnitsas?

Photos: art4.ru

Art4.ru, 4 Khlynovsky Tupik, Metro: Arbatskaya, Tel. 660-1158