Art N'about

Author: JOYCE MAN

New York is seeing a lot of action these days. Fashion Week just blazed through Bryant Park. World leaders have descended upon the United Nations Building for the 60th General Assembly Summit. And in the Upper East Side's Museum Mile, another monumental exhibit of 275 pieces spanning nine centuries of Russian art, reductively packaged into the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, opened on Sept. 16.

Although Frank Lloyd Wright's inverted ziggurat building usually houses a body of work seemingly small for the museum's size, "Russia!" has critics wondering if Museum Director Thomas Krens and his team's ambition has shot through the bulging Guggenheim walls.

"Russia!" unfolds chronologically in nine sections, beginning in the Gallery rotunda and extending to Annex Level 7. Opening with Russian Orthodox iconostases of the 13th to 17th centuries, the exhibit presents pieces from the Imperial Collections as well as artwork of the pre-revolutionary 20th century symbolist and constructivist eras, the war period, the Soviet movement and the present. Between displaying the most holy icon, the "Virgin of Vladimir," and Kasimir Malevich's radical "Black Square," the curators also showcase Sergei Shchukin's and Ivan Morozov's impressive collections, which include works by Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso and Vincent van Gogh.

Having lived amongst the Moscow arts hubbub and become very familiar with the Russian disdain for foreign ignorance of their culture, I was doubtful of even the Guggenheim's ability to live up to their self-appointed task of presenting the "most comprehensive exhibition of Russian Art." But as Alexander Osipovich, arts editor of The Moscow Times, said in email commentary, the foreigners may have gotten it right.

"[This] is definitely one of the biggest events [in] Russian-American cultural exchange within the past few years," wrote Osipovich. In his opinion, works by lesser-known artists, like Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin, could inspire a new understanding of Russian art.

"For most Americans, Russian art basically means two things - icons and the avant-garde," he wrote, "so it'll be interesting to see if this exhibition helps fill in the gap." Valentina Trufanova, professor of Russian Art History at the Russian State University for Humanities, agrees, saying in a telephone interview that the Guggenheim's exhibit is a "very big, grand event [that] shows the real value of Russian art." From what Trufanova has seen of the pieces, she is enthusiastic. "All that native Russians recognize in their society - their mentality and ideals - it's all there," she explains.

Krens seems to have managed to crop the wide angle into a manageable mouthful for Museum Mile, and the Guggenheim looks set to continue the Russian adventure.