[Евгений]

As Mikhail Kamensky, went to Sotheby's
Tatiana Markina, Kommersant

"All my life I have been doing about the same" - says CEO of Sotheby's Russia and CIS Michael Kamensky. Replacing the last twenty years many roles - Fellow Institute of Art, director of Russia's first art auction "Alpha-Art", a correspondent for the newspaper Kommersant, deputy director of the Pushkin Museum. AS Pushkin, Adviser to the President of the Bank of Moscow - he had the opportunity to learn the art market from different sides, becoming one of the foremost experts in this field.

«My father was interested in the gift of the seer»

"I was born in a typical Moscow family, his grandfather on the father was shot in the 38-m 20 years old grandmother has been concluded, and then an exile at Kolyma. Maternally all is well: his grandfather - a famous architect, grandmother - a teacher. I spent a happy childhood under a lot of hospitable table, still remember his oak legs. For him, drinking vodka or Saperavi, sat and heated debate about art and paradoxes of Soviet life, wonderful people - artists and art historians, writers and doctors. Listening to the intelligent conversations, where I sometimes fall asleep in an embrace with the beloved Fox. Our apartment was on the first floor of the busy street near the Kremlin, according to which parent friends have been laid forever routes in the Pushkin Museum, Leninka, conservatory and university. Entrance to the father's room is often a window, where and from where many now famous classic of art and culture simply came and went very tipsy. Other pole of my universe was the home of the closest friends of the family Sarabyanovyh a ten-minute run. In their apartment, though it was impossible to enter from the street because it was located on the first floor, but with my eyes closed and you can not tell - similar conversations, the guests, and even smells. Discussed mainly moshovskie exhibitions, artists, political events. "

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about her father - the famous art critic Alexander Kamenka (1922-1992), disciple of Boris Vipper, coined the term "severe style", guru and proponent of this trend of painting the 1960's, the author of monographs on the largest Russian and Soviet painters - Mikhail Kamensky, can tell long and happy.
"My father worked at home, in the early morning published articles on your favorite" Underwood ", was ill for months, acutely experiencing censorship and persecution. He was not going to compromise with Soviet ideology of art. Active social position made it a dissenting critic. In the sixties and seventies in the entrance on duty periodically toptuny interested father and his visitors. Many years later, our neighbor at home repented that she was forced to soglyadataystvu the Moscow department of the KGB, and with great interest and pleasure, outlining the conversation through the wall, "often laughed at the jokes that are told your guests". The work of the father did not take, the family lived hard. Up until the eighties, when his books began to finally actively typing, its income consists of fees for lectures and art-critical essays. "

Financial support of the family was mom, an editor at the publishing house "Soviet Artist". With its undeniable literary and artistic gift, she would sit at the publishing house until late at night, giving a human face to other people's manuscripts. Her hundred-ruble salary allows the family to stay on the brink of poverty, but to sacrifice his own ambition and talent for talent, his father gave him the opportunity to blossom fully.

"My father was very active and in demand, daily rounds of showrooms and workshops of the Moscow artists, major addresses - Running, Maslovka ZHOLTOVSKOGO, Gorky, Vavilov, Kuznetsk Bridge, Arena, and later - CHA, and, of course, museums: the first Pushkin and the Tretyakov Gallery. I was lucky, since 10 years, he often took me with him, I knew many, many people knew me. The full range of his characters became close to me psychologically - from the Andronov, Elkonin, Tischler, Birger, Žilina, Nikonov, Popkov to Falk, Saryan, Konenkova, Golubkina, Tatlin and, of course, Chagall.

After his arrest and death of my grandfather's father developed claustrophobia in the war years were added dystrophy. Somewhere to sixty years it was different phenomenal thinness and the panic of suffocation in the subway. Therefore, all the art-exhibition race, we overcame the trolleybus and tram in conversation. Sometimes, some wealthy friends threw us to the house after the opening day. So I learned about the rare specimens of art of the forest - collectors, because basically they have something and were "Lada and Volga. Almost all of them collected the vanguard, and who often those who rarely, but came to talk. "

Thus Michael met Sanovich, Kostaki, Semenov, Torsuevym, Dudakova, Kievan Dychenko, Londoners Nina and Nikita Lobanov-Rostovsky.

"They discussed the purchase, exchange pictures. My father was interested in them and the gift of visionary artistic quality, and as a companion with whom they could be frank, because it was totally alien to the commerce and the intricacies of the collecting of intrigue. "
Young Kamensky well remembered lawyer David frog, who told incredible stories about the robbery of collectors of police raids and provocations in antique shops, the intricate division of the inheritance of prominent artists and collectors.
In the early eighties, Alexander Kamensky, overcame long-standing resistance to the Soviet archives, and bursting into spetskhran, began with gusto to gather material for a book about one of his main characters - Mark Chagall. Kamensky's first and most authoritative expert on the early period of Chagall in the Soviet Union at that time, he took upon himself the burden of watching an incredible number of works attributed to the famous master.

Michael says: "Almost all shows were held in my presence, and then listening to real and invented stories about the fate of an offering of works by 99 percent fake, I first realized the extent of the invisible art market."
For assistance, contact a variety of people: from Joseph Kobzon up to the colonels of the Moscow Moore, from the world of psychiatry to malotirazhki journalist from Belarus.

"Finnish citizen and the Lebanese Arab, in partnership bought the Chagall" Rooster Clock "Vitebsk period and asked his father to come to Paris for attribution. "Rooster" was a fake, as his father and wrote in his conclusion. After many years in London is a completely different Arab showed me a picture of the same name. When a solution of the safe deposit room door, I saw an addition of the "Rooster". The certificate in bad French with a forged signature of his father was accompanied by lengthy stories about the centuries-old friendship between Jews and Arabs, tainted Damn Yankees. "

A lot of adventurous fate of works of art Mikhail Kamensky recognize and during student vacations.

"My favorite vacation spot was a Pike, or rather, not the Pike, a small hamlet under the hill Alchak. There, as well as in Koktebel, where around the house Voloshin was born colony artistic intelligentsia around the house, mortgaged his daughter Nina Balmont Konstantinovna belonging to the clan Bruni, founded the Moscow-St. Petersburg's colony, populated by artists and art critics. There were many of all the public, including a very colorful fatties - large underground dealers and Oleg Manevich Leonid Popandopulo. Being in relationships, they traveled the country in search of masterpieces, buy and sell. The point was clearly profitable but dangerous, and they were both brave and adventurous peasants. Oleg loved art and worked in the Directorate of exhibitions of the Art Fund, his wife Natasha was an art critic, Leon was less heed. They both had the gift of storytelling - stories about different artistic twists and turns could form an alternative history of Russian art, especially in the old Russian section (as they could with the brilliance to optional for customs officers). "

«I have seen himself as a political consultant»

After graduating from the Faculty of English MSPI, Michael worked for four years, school teacher moonlighting as a translator in the Union of Cinematographers, State cinema, film festivals and summer residences of the Central Committee of the CPSU. In the early eighties began to write in the journal "Art" and "Decorative Arts".

"Then I discovered the books of the outstanding Canadian sociologist and art critic Herbert Marshall McLuhan. Videorevolyutsiya, new electronic media, social and aesthetic interpretation of the world's artistic and political process dragged me incredibly. Radical solution to go to graduate school launched a life to 180 degrees. Since Mikhail Kamensky was on the faculty of aesthetics GITISa and wrote a dissertation on the intersection theory of mass communications, sociology, art and political aesthetics. "In essence, the thesis has been on the political design on how the artist /art critic /curator may contribute to the construction of the state and public administration. I sincerely hope the professional relevance in the era of perestroika. Becoming a candidate of philosophy in 1988 with an unusual for our country theoretical training, I have seen himself as a political consultant in a team of Gorbachev's Reformers. But did not receive from me either, Vladislav Surkov, nor Marat Gelman, the coveted field while firmly holds consulting agency Saatchi & Saatchi, and his twenty-eight I could work there except by courier.
After graduation, Michael began working in the Foreign Commission of the Union of theatrical figures.

"In the late eighties border parted. Theaters began to drive, and excitement around this was terrible. Seasoned women - secretaries Inkomissii intrigued and podsizhivali each other for the sake of travel, I also had no chance. I do not even remember what I did there - translated and wrote reviews. The primary means of international communication was telex, telegraph and the symbiosis of a typewriter. Access is no control over, and I, exhausted from the boredom, came up with an innocent, I thought the rally. Seated behind the machine, I wrote a telex to invite two members of the Commission for an internship in New York on behalf of a nonexistent Rockefeller Center theater studies with full pay costs the American side. Condition was the ability to swim, drive and speak in English. Interest in the contemporary theater is implied. I subscribed to the director of the fictional philanthropic organization, honestly translating his surname into English. Happened - Michael Stounsky (stone - for England. Stone). I sincerely believed that the commission staff, constantly transforming texts from Russian into English and vice versa, they will bite and instantly appreciate the hoax. But the magic of Telex text in conjunction with the smell of unprecedented freebies plus fatty travel eclipsed their minds. In the women's team intensified intraspecific competition, the tears started and scandals. Engaged in a question by Chairman Michael Gershevich Khazanov and two deeply respected Secretary of the Board IPD Alexey V. Bartosiewicz and Mikhail Shvydkoi. Despite the apparent linguistic roughness telex, they too swallowed the bait. Since all the aunts in Inkomissii were thieves, a compromise was not possible. There were six, and the "Rockefeller Center of Theatre Research waited two. Commission's work arose.

Tormented by pangs of conscience, I repented and left the theater Foreign Ministry, going to work in an adjoining room - Centre for the Sociology CTD, which has traveled on assignment in the sociological expeditions to the most exotic theaters of the country - from Novosibirsk to the Pamirs.

Michael then worked as a researcher at the Institute of Fine Arts. From there, he invited the chief editor of the newly formed "Kommersant" Andrey Vasiliev joined the newspaper. The newspaper wrote about the problems of young capitalists and Mikhail Kamensky had great difficulty convincing even the chief editor of the bohemian as Vassiliev, that the theme of culture and arts can find a response from the beginning of cooperators. "I undertook to write about the crimes and scandals in the world of beauty, was to develop the theme of art and money, as the closest to a new Russian".

During this period the art world was a real revolution: More recently, in 1987, was the first almost uncensored exhibition - XVII youth at the Kuznetsk Bridge in 1988, Moscow hosted the first auction of Sotheby's, first art fair ART MIF, the first private gallery.

"I wrote about the life of galleries, has not yet struck the coup. In August night expected the attack, I went to the White House to join the company of fellow artists, and once there is only one edition, he rushed to dictate the text of the first booth phone booth, but rapidly lost visibility. Column BTR walked slowly into the tunnel through the crowd, pushed me right on track. Seeing the balcony of the house, from which was seen leaving the tunnel, I have to miss nothing, ran into the staircase from the courtyard. On the second floor of some frightened woman admitted me, and I grabbed the phone standing on the windowsill phone continued dictation, overhang from the balcony. Were terrible roar of the crowd and an angry roar of the engines. The view was mesmerizing beautiful and terrible. At this point, someone poured gasoline from the canister APCs and set on fire: the car got up and boomed explosion flashed to the second floor, the owner closed the balcony.

At dawn, all was quiet. It became clear that the attack would not be the people went home. On the way to the metro, I picked up a piece of skin APCs, torn to pieces by my fellow citizens. Keep this artifact in memory of the terrible night when I could easily die with those three guys. We must, perhaps, to mount it in a frame and hang on the wall.

Artists on the area I am in a huge crowd and did not find a published article "Tunnel in the blood", though did not have any relation to art criticism, but in my life has become one of the main creative results. "

«Macroeconomic imagination I do not have enough»

It was an amazing time: on the ruins of the Soviet Union rapidly germinate unseen colors of the new capitalism, and the art market is not left out. In November 1991, in an article in "Kommersant" Mikhail Kamensky talked about previously unseen innovations - the first in the history of modern Russian art fair ART MIF: «A number of commercial companies have expressed willingness to invest in the purchase of painting a lot of money. Incombank allocated for this 10 million rubles, similar amounts are planning to spend at the Fair Moscow Commodity Exchange, the bank "Muscovy", Stas Namin Centre. Prices for work ranging from two to two hundred thousand. Spread of currency prices from 500 to 11 000 dollars ... If before all the commercial gallery focused on the foreign buyer, it is now buying art rich domestic firms and only people with money. " The following year, the ideologist of ART MIF Yuri Nikich invited Mikhail Kamensky worked as the press attache of the fair. "It was already a real market, do not be shy of its goal - profit. Many people now seem naive, but for its time was revolutionary artmifovtsy were real pioneers. "

Working in ART MIF, Kamensky, continued to write reviews of the art market (in those days, the expression "conflict of interest" was not yet invented). "Wool is any newspaper in search of information, I came across in the newspaper" Evening Moscow "on a small ad for co-op Alpha-Art", which conducts pre-auction exhibition. And I go there. It was a real godsend for columnist, because such a concentration of ridiculous errors I have never come across. I poured in the paper, the soul, and they are all invited, yes invited. I wrote one article, two, three. And then someone rang Michael Bezelyansky, introduced a shareholder Alfa Group, "and asked: if I'm so smart, instead of ehidstvovat me if I try to do what is necessary. We met and I agreed. "

Co-op "Alpha-Art", soon became the auction house, was another unprecedented phenomenon of modern times. Idea of its creation belongs to Vladislav Surkov, already has an affinity for art projects and recommended the "Alpha" as an organizer of a major art collector Victor Magidsa.
"Things are up for auction Magids collected, but in 1991 the first attempt at private auctions in the recent Soviet /post-Soviet history has failed. Sumptuously published catalog was sent to the Minister of Culture Nikolai Gubenko, who spoke out strongly against it. "

It was a decent collection of thirty diverse works of art. On the cover adorned gorgeous "Lamb" Pirosmani (with an estimate of 1 million rubles, with its own rate 40:1), under a cover - works by Marc Chagall (400 thousand), Vasnetsov (100 thousand), Kustodiev (320 thousand rubles ), as well as silverware and Corinthian vase of porphyry. In 1992, the Alpha-Art "made a second attempt.




































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