MAGAZINE ABOUT PEOPLE, IDEAS, FINANCES

MERCURY CITY TOWER IS THE TALLEST BUILDING IN EUROPE. IT IS JUST ANOTHER IMAGE OF THE ANCIENT AND EVERGREEN CITY

ON THE OCCASION OF HIS TWO YEARS IN OFFICE AS THE MOSCOW MAYOR, SERGEY SOBYANIN MET A LARGE GROUP OF JOURNALISTS. HERE ARE THE PRINCIPAL POINTS OF THE MAYOR’S SPEECH THAT AROUSED GREAT INTEREST BOTH IN MOSCOW AND FAR BEYOND ITS BORDERS.

ABOUT MAYORAL ELECTIONS

“Going to the elections does not make any sense without the support of Muscovites. According to the results of recent polls, there are still problems. We conduct polls regarding such is-sues as municipal housing economy and education, and their results pro-vide insight into positive moments as well as areas for further improvement. A lot of problems in Moscow just can-not be solved by using the carrot ap-proach only. We also have to take un-popular measures. However, in the first place we are focused on the positive responses by Muscovites to all of our activities.”

THE FUTURE OF METRO IN MOSCOW

“Our goal is to build metro stations within walking distance for millions of Muscovites. It is one of the most am-bitious metro development projects in the world. To achieve this goal, enor-mous resources of all sorts are needed including building, engineering and, to be sure, financial ones. We are going to implement the project in full. Eve-rything that is needed to implement it

Sergey Sobyanin:

including land plots are at our disposal. If there are funding-related problems, we are ready to draw upon credits but keep building.”

WHETHER MOSCOW NEEDS NEW MOSQUES

“We have introduced certain chang-es in the legislation. From now on, a decision by the local self-govern-ment and public discussion are need-ed to build a mosque or church. The final decision about such a construc-tion is to be taken only upon approval by the local authorities. Issues regard-ing the construction sites need to be taken on a case-by-case basis. Quite a lot of Muslims get together in the central mosque in the Olimpiyskiy Ave-nue every Friday. According to the poll results, two thirds of them are migrants without official registration. If only peo-ple living in Moscow on a regular basis visited the mosque, there would not be such a crowd.”

HYDE PARK IN MOSCOW

“We are going to open something like a Hyde Park in the territory of the Gorky Park. I think it is going to happen in early 2013. It is up to the park admin-istration to decide what events will be held there. At the same time, this does not mean such events cannot be held anywhere else in the city.”

THE ARMY OF BUREAUCRATS IS TO BE REDUCED

“The number of state officials hold-ing offices has been reduced by 8% over the past two years. Such dynam-ics is quite good. At the same time, this does not mean we strive for reductions just for the sake of reductions. Taking into consideration the scope of tasks

the Moscow authorities have to solve, their magnitude and volume of the city finances, it turns out the Moscow ap-paratus is one of the smallest in the country. Establishing multi-purpose centers in charge of rendering state services to the population is one of the top-priority objectives for 2013. As a result, numerous officials currently holding their offices behind closed doors in the urban districts and areas will be dismissed. As a part of the mul-ti-purpose centers, work efficacy and level of documents preparation are higher than on the local level. There-fore, we will not need so many employ-ees anymore. Today we are dismissing personnel in charge of issuing all sorts of extracts and endless references.”

DRUNK DRIVERS WILL BE STRICTLY PUNISHED

“If a driver is arrested several times for driving while drunk now, he or she is simply deprived of their driving li-cense. It is not right. There must not be such things. If a driver is caught drunk for the second time while driving, he must go to prison because drunk driv-ing is a source of increased danger for Muscovites. We are going to introduce proposals regarding the abrupt tight-ening of the legislation which will be examined by the State Duma in the nearest future. We are going to back up such steps. By the way, state in-spectors for traffic safety can control only 2% of such violations. Mounting photo and video surveillance cameras everywhere is a way out of this situa-tion. Today cameras record as much as 95% of such violations. We intend to increase the number of such cameras. In a word, we must put the situation on the roads in order.”

MOSCOW IS NOT JUST THE CAPITAL OF RUSSIA. IT IS SOMETHING MORE FOR RUSSIA. IT IS THE HEART OF THE NATION, AND SIGNALS TRAVELS FROM THE HEART TO THE REMOTEST PARTS OF THE RUSSIAN COUNTRY.

“ I AM READY FOR ELECTIONS”

M a g a z i n e a b o u t p e o p l e , i d e a s , f i n a n c e s

Zhanna AVYAZOVA

The new Moscow authorities are selling the city’s largest assets, revising the lists of people expecting housing, and restoring order to property rights on Moscow’s new territoryIn 2012, the Moscow budget is to get over 100 billion rubles from sales of the city’s assets. The authorities are successfully achieving their goals – increasing profi ts from the sales of Moscow’s assets.

HOTELS TO RECEIVE NEW OWNERS

The Moscow authorities plan to sell shares owned by the city in the amount of 49 billion rubles in 2012. This was reported by Deputy Mayor of Property and Land Relations Nataliya Sergunina. According to the Sergunina, this is an unprecedented amount.

The city also expects to receive 39 billion rubles from real estate sales. In addition, land plots are to yield more than 30 billion rubles in revenues from sales, leases, and rental fees. Further-more, an additional 11 billion rubles will

from real estate leases. The city will also get approximately 1.5 billion ru-bles from selling its share in investment contracts. On the whole, city authorities expect more than 100 billion rubles to be added to the budget.

According to Sergunina, “you should not eat or drunk anything un-til you pay taxes to the budget.” This

“strict diet” was prescribed to the real estate sector because of an expected lack of tax revenue (a number of tax-payers will switch to paying profi t tax on a consolidated basis this year, and Moscow will lose around 100 billion ru-bles in taxes because of this). The city plans to use real estate to compensate for the underpaid taxes.

A number of deals have already been made. In particular, the Metropol Hotel was sold for 8 billion rubles. Spe-cial regulations apply to properties that are culturally signifi cant (the Metropol is a federally important monument). In-vestors are not allowed to change the use of such properties, and they must undertake a number of conservation measures that demand substantial in-vestment.

The Radisson Slavyanskaya Hotel will be off ered up for sale by the end of this year. Nataliya Sergunina explains:

“This property belongs to the city. It is encumbered by a company on the basis of a lease contract, and the city owns 50% of that company. Thus, it

IN A NEW WAY

EXACT CALCULATIONS AND COMMON SENSE

MANAGEMENT

The Metropol Hotel will be off ered for sale, which means

a substantial amount for

is a question of selling both the city’s share of the company that is the tenant and the property itself.” According to her, the total amount of the deal will be around 8 billion rubles.

The city will also sell its share in the Budapest Hotel. As the hotel business is well developed in Moscow, the Mos-cow government does not think that it requires any involvement on the part of the city. Additionally, the most skilled managers are employed, as a rule, by private companies; therefore, hotels will benefit from changes in ownership.

MONUMENTS AT THE PRICE OF ONLY ONE RUBLE

The Moscow Government has re-cently made a decision to lease some culturally important monuments at the nominal value of one ruble per square meter. This decision will apply to build-ings that require substantial investment in their reconstruction. The state will lease out the Gusev Merchant Manor located at 65/74 Bolshaya Polyanka, Building 3, to a private investor. The building, with its total area of 300 square meters, was built in the first part of the nineteenth century. Investors will also be able to lease 1,000 square meters of a manor that used to belong to the Cherntsova, Varginys and Baranovs that is located at 14 Pyatnitskaya Street, Building 13, for the same price of one ruble per square meter.

Four Moscow markets, including the Danilovsky market, will be sold for a total amount of 8 billion rubles. Ac-cording to authorities, they will not al-

low any major changes to the sold mar-kets and the markets must continue to sell agricultural products.

KINDERGARTENS UNDER CONCESSION

Moscow will soon launch a pilot project aimed at concluding conces-sion contracts for individual projects in the fields of health care and education. According to Nataliya Sergunina, the contracts will be signed for a term of 49 years. The exact amount of investment, the terms for implementing the projects and the requirements of city authorities have yet to be specified. A similar pro-ject involving four child care centers and a hospital on Durova Street has already been developed. The sites and the city’s development plan for the land plots are ready. The investor that wins the bid must provide a place for 20%-30% of children from the general list of those waiting for a kindergarten, and some patients in the hospital on Duro-va will be treated using funds from the

budget.“We need to minimize expenses from

the city budget and attract more inves-tors in the field of health care and edu-cation,” says Nataliya Sergunina.

THE QUEUE HAS BECOME SHORTER

The system for providing city sub-sidies to people waiting for municipal housing has recently undergone sever-al changes. The changes are confirmed by the fact that the Housing Depart-ment is not a part of the social complex and has joined the real estate complex within the city’s executive authority. The city housing policy does not render so-cial support to only the population. First, this change will apply to subsidies is-sued to people who wish to invest their own funds in purchasing an apartment if the city pays a part of their expenses. According to the deputy mayor, such subsidies are not provided anymore, starting this year, because the city has depleted the funds allocated for this purpose.

According to Nataliya Sergunina, there are 100,000 families waiting for housing assistance, and approximately 9,000 people will see their housing con-ditions improve as a part of the resettle-ment and other programs. The status of those waiting line will be checked thor-oughly.

New districts in Moscow will be developed

along with respective

Muscovites that like the Danilovsky Market will see it become more

Victor SEMYONOV

The formation of a new brand for Moscow has come into the lime-light as changes are taking place in the capital that include a boost in economic and cultural activities, the attraction of more tourists, and the modernization of the city’s in-frastructure. All of these new trends need to be summarized in the form of a symbol, and the new logo must completely suit this objective.

The world’s largest cities – from New York to Paris – have adopted unique identities long ago to diff er-entiate themselves from one anoth-er. It is clear that not just a symbol is required, but a tangible item that

can be successfully commercialized. Therefore, as Moscow is planning to become an international fi nancial center, and one of the world’s largest travel destinations, it cannot ignore this need.

The Moscow government adopted 14 key state programs aimed at the development of Moscow until 2016 that involve all of the crucial aspects of city life. The objectives formulated in the programs need to fi nd a wor-thy conceptual embodiment in a sin-gle idea or strategy and need to be understandable and acceptable for Muscovites. The goal is to fundamen-tally amend the image of Moscow, increase its status, and improve its appeal in terms of economics and communication in the eyes of its resi-dents, Russians and foreign people.

Therefore, the Moscow govern-ment established a workgroup head-ed by Alexander Gorbenko, deputy mayor of Moscow that comprises the heads of special-profi le structures of the city government to coordinate the activities of creating, implementing, positioning and promoting the city’s brand. In addition to the professional and expert community, Muscovites will also be engaged in professional and public discussions at diff erent stages of the development of the new brand.

However, let’s hear what the work-group’s Head Alexander Gorbenko has to say: “The brand of Moscow, one of the largest and fastest chang-

ing cities in Europe, is to refl ect its history, spirit, ideology and its development goals. The city is alive. It is evolving, changing and preserving its traditions all at the same time. We must remember that present-day Moscow is seen in a positive light by not just by Muscovites. The conceptual

SearchingFOR AN IMAGE

Therefore, the Moscow govern-ment established a workgroup head-ed by Alexander Gorbenko, deputy mayor of Moscow that comprises the heads of special-profi le structures of the city government to coordinate the activities of creating, implementing, positioning and promoting the city’s brand. In addition to the professional and expert community, Muscovites will also be engaged in professional and public discussions at diff erent stages of the development of the new brand.

However, let’s hear what the work-group’s Head Alexander Gorbenko has to say: “The brand of Moscow, one of the largest and fastest chang-

ing cities in Europe, is to refl ect its history, spirit, ideology and its development goals. The city is alive. It is evolving, changing and preserving its traditions all at the same time. We must remember that present-day Moscow is seen in a positive light by not just by Muscovites. The conceptual

VI O p e n C i t y • N o . 4 • 2 0 1 2

c i t y / i m a g e

MOSCOW’S NEW BRAND WILL REFLECT THE DYNAMICS

OF THE CITY’S DEVELOPMENT

and symbolic identifiers of the Rus-sian capital need to be reinvented on a serious and all-round basis as the city’s brand is developed. At the same time, we want to focus people’s attention on the ongoing changes, broaden the perception of Moscow, make it more flexible, cause interest and a positive perception of the city, as well as change the attitude toward our city.”

It seems impossible to explain the concept in greater detail. In fact, the principal challenge related to the work to be done lies in the need to re-flect the complexity of the enormous changes the city is undergoing, e.g., the city abruptly increased its terri-tory by almost 2.5 times. Creating the city’s identity to represent it on a global scale, to be liked by Mus-covites and to be viewed positively in the rest of the world is a real chal-lenge. As Muscovites say, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a sin-gle step. The decision was taken and work has been initiated.

There are several stages for this project:

Organizing a contest among pro-fessionals to develop marketing foundations for the branding strategy of Moscow (late 2012).

Organizing an absolutely trans-parent creative contest of ideas on how to develop the brand of Moscow to engage the general public.

Implementing and positioning the creative brand, managing it and achieving its capitalization.

Maintaining and developing the brand as well as assessing its devel-opment and efficiency.

As a part of the approved plan of action, the international experience in the area of city branding has been studied in detail, and professional consultation has been provided. Based on the collected materials, the Moscow Department for Media and Advertising has announced two con-tests:

A contest among professional organizations to develop the funda-mentals of the marketing strategy of the Moscow brand (Stage 1). The contest’s details are published on the official portal for information regard-ing bids: www.zakupki.gov.ru.

A creative contest for the general public to create the idea and con-cept of the brand. Regulations on the public creative contest are pub-lished on the website of the Moscow Department for Media and Advertis-ing at www.dsmir.mos.ru. Offers and applications are to be prepared ac-cording to the respective form pro-

vided in the appendix to the contest’s regulations and are to be filed from October 19 to November 20, 2012 at mosbrand2012@gmail.com.

When the official results of the ac-tivities aimed at the development and improvement of the brand of Moscow are summarized, work will begin in 2013. Another difficult step is to fol-low – the actual trial of the brand and its positioning for guests to see when they are in Moscow.

A workgroup headed by Alexander Gorbenko, Moscow

Mayor’s Deputy in the Moscow Government, is to solve a

complicated problem: to select the best brand of Moscow from

among thousands of options. Maybe, it must feature the

city founder Yuri Dolgorukiy, Ostankino Tower, or building of

the Moscow State University?

M a g a z i n e a b o u t p e o p l e , i d e a s , f i n a n c e s

Boris AGAFONOV

– Are there any achievements in the fi eld of trade in Moscow that you, as head of Moscow’s department, are particularly proud of?

– Of course. I took offi ce quite re-cently. So my forerunners laid the basis for these achievements but there is one I am proud of. First, Moscow now has its own agricultural enterprises as the city has expanded and added new ter-ritories. There are 29 farms that pro-duce meat and milk and grow grain and vegetables. Financial support in the amount of 58.9 million rubles has been granted to them to produce agricultural products amounting to 6.44 billion rubles.

Second, the number of fairs in the city has increased. There were 124 sites as of early 2012. This June, there were 140 weekend fairs with 7,000

sales outlets. Their number increased further to 160 this August.

Third, as many as 1,948 new mod-ular small-scale retail trade facilities were created. We currently cooperate with the Our City portal. All mobile trade facilities are mapped, and any Musco-vite can share his or her ideas concern-ing their operation.

– As far as I understand, you are a very busy person. I doubt you have any free time for shopping but I wonder where your family prefers to buy food.

– My wife buys most of our family’s food. She often orders food products from Utkonos where you can preorder food online. I can say my family pre-fers buying food online. But, if we need something quickly, we buy it at a nearby store. We don’t have a preference when buying small things.

– As we are discussing shopping, can you tell us how to tell a good vendor from a bad one? Are there any signs to help us decide wheth-

er it is worth buying vegetables from a certain place?– In fact, without thinking about

it you never notice a diff erence. How-ever, if a point of sale or a store is lo-cated close to where you live and you

often buy food there, you understand

OF TRADE

HEAD OF THE MOSCOW DEPARTMENT OF TRADE AND SERVICES ALEXEY NEMERYUK ANSWERES OUR CORRESPONDENT’S QUESTIONS

A new level

I am proud of. First, Moscow now has its own agricultural enterprises as the city has expanded and added new ter-ritories. There are 29 farms that pro-duce meat and milk and grow grain and vegetables. Financial support in the amount of 58.9 million rubles has been granted to them to produce agricultural products amounting to 6.44 billion rubles.

Second, the number of fairs in the city has increased. There were 124 sites as of early 2012. This June, there were 140 weekend fairs with 7,000

something quickly, we buy it at a nearby store. We don’t have a preference when buying small things.

– As we are discussing shopping, can you tell us how to tell a good vendor from a bad one? Are there any signs to help us decide wheth-

er it is worth buying vegetables from a certain place?– In fact, without thinking about

it you never notice a diff erence. How-ever, if a point of sale or a store is lo-cated close to where you live and you

often buy food there, you understand

what vendors are good. It is like going to a restaurant: you can be pleased once but another time there are differ-ent waiters or cooks, and you will regret going there altogether. So it is difficult to give any advice concerning this issue but I think things such as the seller’s politeness, benevolence, friendliness, product awareness and complaisance deserve your attention. Anyway, the participants of a recent contest for the best vendor demonstrated these char-acteristics. In the course of the contest, I made sure that there were very literate young people taking part, and that they did what they could in order to demon-strate their professional skills.

– In a decent restaurant in Mos-cow, the chef is usually French or Italian…

– You are wrong. Mainly Russians are employed nowadays. There are very many gifted and literate Russian people with a lot of imagination. For example, when eating something at a famous restaurant such as Turandot, many visi-tors think the chef comes from abroad. However, he is just a Russian guy with experience working in Europe.

– Being the head of the depart-ment, have you ever bought any de-fective goods in stores?

– I have, just like many other people. There were cases I had to bring some-thing back to the store. To tell the truth, the situation in the field of trade has im-proved considerably as of late.

– If we take the professional holi-

day of trade employees as a sort of an annual reference point, can you tell me about the department’s plans for the next year? Is there anything new Muscovites should ex-pect?

– We have lots of plans. For starters, we are going to launch a project aimed at establishing a wholesale food market, like France’s Rungis, to supply fresh and high-quality products to Moscow. We have been developing this concept at an accelerated rate.

– Is it going to be a hypermarket or a large-scale wholesale base for stores?

– It is going to be a giant base with an area of 300-400 hectares. It will feature enterprises and manufactur-ers on the basis of a state and private partnership. Middle and large-scale wholesale traders will arrive there at night and deliver freshly grown and prepared food products directly to stores in Moscow. We also plan to take a serious approach to developing the vending trade; I mean trade using au-tomatic machines.

– Also, can we expect any new formats in the field of public cater-ing?

– Today we are making attempts to adapt a new European concept in

Moscow – single ingredient restau-rants. These are restaurants that pro-vide a menu based on a single ingre-dient. Speaking about this issue on a broader scale, Moscow lacks pub-lic catering enterprises. We ordered a survey be conducted to find out ex-actly where such enterprises are miss-ing and where there are too many of them. For example, such services are usually in low demand in the suburbs because residents there are used to preparing food and eating at home. Residents in the suburbs find it easier to come to the center of the city to cel-ebrate a special event. However, there are districts where such public cater-ing enterprises are needed but there are none what so ever. This problem needs to be corrected.

A shopping cart full of goods was a kind of

utopia for Soviet people only two decades ago.

t o u r s / n a m e s

They came to say: “Farewell, guys.” It is understandable why they came to Moscow: there is no other country in the world where the audi-ence would treat the band Nazareth

with such respect, bordering on adoration. Strictly speaking, Naza-reth has never been among the world’s leading rock bands except for in the USSR and now Russia, where it has been extremely pop-ular for some unknown reason. The band members understand this and schedule their tours taking this fact into consideration. There is no other Western rock band that has performed in Russia as often as Nazareth.

Now they came to say goodbye. Forty-fi ve years on stage is enough. The rock veterans played a solo concert at Crocus City Hall, with songs from their latest album Big Dogz and their time-proven hits.

Drummer Lee Agnew opened the show. Then the band performed Silver Dollar Forger, as the fi rst song of the night. The audience wel-comed their favorite songs Razamanaz, This Month’s Messiah and Sunshine singing together with the band. Then Dan McCaff erty, the lead vocalist, said to the audience: “Hello, Moscow! This year, we cel-ebrate our anniversary, and it is our farewell tour. Let’s remember the best we have written over the years.”

The rock veterans could not resist performing such songs as This Flight Tonight, My White Bicycle and Dream On. The audience was made up of the group’s real fans, who welcomed almost every song with a thunderous applause. Prior to singing their fi nal songs, McCaff erty gave way to bassist Pete Agnew, who conducted a sort of master class in the form of a three-minute guitar solo. Then solo guitarist Jimmy Mur-

rison began playing the immortal hit Hair of the Dog, which crowned the concert.The musicians said goodbye by playing an encore – the audience wanted the

show to go on! The band performed Love Leads to Madness, Love Hurts and Ani-mals. Then they said goodbye and left the stage for the last time.

Sergey BORISOV

A long farewell

HARLEM GOSPEL СHOIR

NAZARETH

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Four amazing men

Guests from HarlemThey have performed for Pope John Paul II, produced records with Paul McCartney and Harry Belafonte, performed

with Diana Ross and U2, and played concerts in the most beautiful temples and secular auditoriums in the world igniting audiences from the very fi rst note to the fi nal bar. Only the best gospel choir in the world can do this.

This was not the fi rst concert in Moscow given by the amazing Harlem-based choir, whose performers sing with pow-erful energy and an outstanding sense of humor. This time, they sang a program comprised of Michael Jackson’s songs to commemorate their deceased compatriot.

Each performance of the choir is a storm of positive emotions, and heartfelt and bright melodies that go to the bot-tom of one’s heart, a live dialogue between the performers and the audience. The audience understood this and re-sponded warmly. It is impossible to imagine it could be any other way, even though this was not the fi rst time the Harlem Gospel Choir performed in the Russian capital.

The choir captured the hearts of the audience from the very beginning until the end. Every fan knows every note of the King of Pop’s music perfectly, but the Harlem-based performers gave Michael Jackson’s songs something new, fresh and clean instilling a new and parallel life into them so that the songs did not seem to have been lost to the casual odor of show business. It was a genuine tribute to the great artist, who was gifted from above and not just a moonwalker.

Thomas A. Dorsey coined the term “gospel music” back in the 1920s. He was one of the fi rst to transcribe church songs and hymns and turn them into popular hits. Moscow is far from Harlem but the audience at the Moscow Interna-tional House of Music greeted the Harlem Gospel Choir as if they had known them for ages!

Boris DENISOV

Il Divo, an international quartet of pop singers, who are conserva-tory graduates and sing opera, gave two solo concerts in Moscow. At fi rst, the quartet was going to give only one concert but tickets were sold out so fast that the organizers persuaded the stars to give an-other. Spanish baritone Carlos Marín, Swiss tenor Urs Bühler, French pop singer Sébastien Izambard and US tenor David Miller make up

Il Divo. The audience was mainly comprised of slightly-older intelligent people that really love the group.

The lights went down and the orchestra appeared on the stage. The au-dience welcomed the conductor with a standing ovation. The bright lights come on again and the splendid quartet could be seen in evening wear.

Each of the four had something special about his outfi t: one was actually wearing a tie, the second – a bow tie, and the third was wearing no tie at all.

Ti amerò, a song from their debut album, opened the show. Each of the singers sang a couplet showing off his vocal talent. Having sung Dov’é

l’amore, the singers begin performing Santa Esmeralda and went on with Don’t Cry for Me Argentina to complete the fi rst part of the show, fi nishing with

a cover version of Frank Sinatra’s My Way to the audience’s utter delight.Senza Parole was the fi rst composition of the second part of the show. Then

Il Divo sang Mama, which is greatly loved by so many fans. The singers devoted the song to all of the mothers in the hall as well as to their own moms, who are the

most important women in their lives, they confessed.Several minutes later, chairs were brought to the stage, and the acapella part of

the show began. The group sang Hallelujah (Alelujah) and Ding Dong, Ding Dong.“Thank you so much for this evening. We never received so many fl owers before

in any other country. Such a warm welcome and such a great audience,” Il Divo’s members said as they left the stage.

However, the audience wished to hear the group’s main hit. They began crying out the name of the band and applauding until the singers came back to perform Time to Say Goodbye, which they sang in several lan-guages.

The singers received tons of fl owers.Sergey GLEBOV

IL DIVO

Anna CHEPURNOVA

Even people who are light years away from art know Vera Mukhina’s name. It has been glorifi ed by her mon-ument Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, a symbol of the Soviet State. For years, her name was almost a synonym for the two words: sculpture and offi cious, which is no wonder taking into consid-eration the fact that Mukhina won the Stalin Prize fi ve times.

The Moscow Museum of Modern Art (MMMA) on 25 Petrovka Street has recently reopened the long forgotten pages from the life of the legendary woman shedding a diff erent light on her creative work. The exhibition entitled Theater of Vera Mukhina informs visi-tors that in addition to monuments to Soviet public fi gures, she also created remarkable sketches of knights wear-ing golden cloaks as well as heralds playing trumpets.

But strangely enough Vera Mukhina, who took part in the implementation of Vladimir Lenin’s plan aimed at monu-mental propaganda, also cooperated with the sophisticated, refi ned and af-terward disgraced Alexander Tairov’s Chamber Theater prior to the October Revolution. Taking a look at the offi -cious works by Mukhina during the Soviet period through the prism of her

theater experiments, it is easy to notice a lot of interesting things.

HIGH EXPECTATIONS

Mukhina’s sketches for such theat-er productions of the Chamber Theat-er as Alexander Blok’s The Rose and the Cross and Sem Benelli’s La cena delle beffe (The Jesters’ Supper) are displayed in the fi rst two halls of the exhibition. Her friend, Alexandra Ex-ter, brought Mukhina to the Chamber

Theater in 1916. She asked her proté-gé to create a sculptural portal for the stage. The artist also used Mukhina’s help with making up the actors’ bodies for Famira Kifared because her skills were of high importance.

Of course, Mukhina immediately set her sights on creating designs for theater productions. Judging by the exhibits, her works are beautiful. Her sketches for costumes for The Rose and the Cross and La cena delle beffe are distinguished by refi ned beauty.

Unknown

SHE WANTED TO WORK

IN THEATER

VERA MUKHINA

Vera Mukhina was always considered a strong

t h e a t e r / e x h i b i t i o n

Drawings for La cena delle beffe recreate the atmosphere of a splendid holiday in Florence. A woman in a long dress, a runner, a swordsman, a herald and a young man with a cup dance and twirl. Their fi gures are depicted with coats, scarves and plumes twisting around their bodies.

Almost all drawings for The Rose and the Cross are made in the Cubo-Futurism style. The costume sketches are bright and colorful. The characters are personalized even more than in La cena delle beffe. The sad knight Ber-trand is particularly nice – the costume sketch seems to be a work of art in itself.

UNREALIZED DREAMS

Mukhina’s sketches were not mate-rialized into costumes. When she was working on the sketches for La cena delle beffe, the performance used costumes designed by another artist whose work was quite poor. Alexander Tairov then ended the performance and never resumed it.

Tairov had wanted to perform The Rose and the Cross since he fi rst heard about the play. However, Alexander Blok wanted to see his play staged at the Moscow Art Theater with Stan-islavski playing the leading part. The latter did not like the play and did not want to perform in it. Tairov hoped that Blok would allow him to perform

the play at the Chamber Theater. He started preparatory work and engaged Mukhina as the designer. However, the performance never made it on stage.

In February 1917, the Chamber Theater’s lease ended and the troupe scattered in all directions. This caused Vera Mukhina much anxiety as she had really begun to love working in theater. If the works she had designed had been used in performances, Vera Mukhina might have stayed in theater design in-stead of becoming a sculptor.

However, things took a diff erent turn. Vera Mukhina said farewell to the theater in the summer of 1917 and be-gan to create a series of sketches (for herself) for a ballet she planned to de-velop based on the Indian epic – Nal and Damayanti. Perhaps, the ancient Indian sculptures she saw during her studies in Paris inspired her. Costume sketches and sets featuring blue ele-

phants are displayed in a separate sec-tion of the exhibition.

There is a small but very interesting post-revolutionary graphical series – A Fight between a Red and Black Man – dated 1918. It was not designed for any theater. In spite of this, the series will remind the present-day audience of avant-garde ballets, for example those by Maurice Béjart or Martha Graham.

UNBLEACHED LINEN AND EXTRAVAGANCES

Hard times followed the revolu-tion and Vera Mukhina had to design clothes for food. She and famous fashion designer Nadezhda Lamanova published an album entitled Art and Household in 1925. Pages from the album are displayed in the Moscow Museum of Modern Art. They featured ideas for clothes that housewives could sew on their own. Just by looking at the models designed by Lamanova and Mukhina it is easy to understand that times were not easy, some of the designs include: a housedress made from a handkerchief, a kaftan made of two Vladimir towels, and a summer dress made of unbleached linen. The clothes are very simple and decorated with modest stripe patterns only. In spite of their simplicity, the models look elegant due to the eff orts made by the designer and artist.

The exhibition’s designer Vyache-slav Koleichuk and his daughter Anna reconstructed models of the clothes that are featured as another part of the

Her work in theater

causes us

You could hardly expect

such elegance, delicacy,

passion

XIIIM a g a z i n e a b o u t p e o p l e , i d e a s , f i n a n c e s

of Pierrette in 1916 looks extrava-gant after the starkly simple clothes featured in the album. For some rea-son, and contrary to chronology, the drawings are displayed in the same hall as the last works by Mukhina, which include a wonderful marble bust of Galina Ulanova, created in 1947, and a porcelain statue of dancer Sergey Koren as Mercutio dated 1949. Mean-while, the costume featured here is the only one created by Mukhina that was actually worn in the Chamber Theater. Alisa Koonen, the prima donna of the Tairov’s troupe, wore the costume in The Veil of Pierrette. The first dress for this performance was designed by artist Andrei Arapov. However, Alisa Koonen did not feel comfortable in the dress he designed so Tairov asked Vera Mukhina to design a new dress, and she coped with the task brilliantly.

THE SCARF YOU HAVE SEEN BEFORE

After the 1910s, Vera Mukhina re-turned to working for the theater only once, in 1944. She designed Sopho-cles’s Electra at the Vakhtangov Theat-er. A separate hall at the MMMA is de-voted to photos of the performance and sketches from Mukhina. It is obvious that antiquity was the main theme of the sketches. It is interesting that Vera Mukhina designed a sculpture of an avenging Apollo holding an arrow in his hand as a part of the set. She brought her passion for sculpture to the theat-er. Is it that she also took her passion of theater to sculpture? This becomes a question when looking at a small bronze model of her statue Worker and Kolkhoz Woman, which is also dis-played as a part of the exposition. The wind-shaken scarf around the worker’s torso closely resembles the scarf in the Mukhina’s sketches for Sem Benelli’s La cena delle beffe.

The Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts celebrated its 100 anniversary this year. The best exhibits are always featured during the holidays and if this holds true the best exhibits will be here soon. The exhibition entitled Under the Sign of Rembrandt. The Mosolovs’ Art Collection is no exception. It will be on display until January 13, 2013.

Anna CHEPURNOVA

The exhibition is being held at the Museum of Private Collections, an inte-gral part of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and about fifty of Rem-brandt’s etchings are exhibited there. Even with Rembrandt’s etchings, it is the Mosolovs, a dynasty of collectors, that are at the center of attention at the exhibition. The exhibition is devoted to a collection featuring works by the best Dutch painters of the seventeenth cen-tury (including Jan Lievens, Adriaen van Ostade, Jacob van Ruisdael and Nico-laes Berchem), a bronze and netsuke collection and a number of paintings by Russian and foreign artists.

Semen Nikolayevich Mosolov, who bought a collection of Rembrandt’s etchings in 1853, was nearly the same age as writer Ivan Turgenev. Fortunate-ly, the conflict between fathers and sons, as so vividly described by Tur-genev, was safely spared. Apparently this was because Semen Nikolayevich Mosolov shared the same passion with his father and son – collecting works of art.

Nikolay Semenovich Mosolov laid the foundation for his family’s hobby. He gathered a collection of valuable works by old Italian, Dutch and Flemish painters in his estate in the Tula region. His collection features works previously owned by such royals as Charles I of England and Christina, Queen of Swe-den.

In addition to collecting works of art, Semen Nikolayevich also painted and etched, along with writing an es-say about art and his favorite paint-er – Rembrandt. He collected over 360 etchings by the great Dutch artist as well as engravings by his followers.

Vera Mukhina in her workshop

A cozy and touching part

n a m e / e x h i b i t i o n

In his turn, Nikolay Semenovich Mosolov Jr. added to the collection gathered by his grandfather and father and signed over the family’s collection to the state. The collection went to the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, Tretyakov State Gallery and State Mu-seum of Oriental Art. The current exhi-bition reunites the Mosolovs’ collection.

The exhibition is quite diverse but very interesting. Of course, Rem-brandt’s etchings are the real gems of the collection. Featured works include such masterpieces as The Hundred Guilder Print (or Christ Healing the Sick – the artist spent seven years work-

ing on this etching), Six’s Bridge, Christ Presented to the People and The Three Crosses. Many of the exhibited works were printed during Rembrandt’s life-time. Some of them diff er in print qual-ity, however. Rembrandt created etch-

ings all his life and when he was alive he was better known beyond the borders of the Netherlands as an etcher than as a painter.

AS A GIFT

Rembrandt Harmenszo-on van Rijn. The Return of the Prodigal Son. Etching

Rembrandt Harmens-

zoon van Rijn. Descent

Rembrandt Harmens-zoon van Rijn. Portrait of Remonstrant Minister

Philips Pauwelsz Wouwerman.

FROM A PRIVATE COLLECTION TO MUSEUMS

Rembrandt

n a m e / e x h i b i t i o n

Igor NIKITIN

The Second International Circle of Light Festival, held this fall, ended up being a re-markable event. The key theme of the festival, the Energy of Life, is a response to the chal-lenges of time that demand impetuous chang-es in all spheres of life for all of our planet’s countries and nations. Changes in opinions about the world, art, beauty and culture are taking place, and the festival off ered its vi-sion of what is happening and the forthcoming changes.

The professional international jury com-prised Russian and European experts in the fi eld of art and design as well as representa-tives of four international professional asso-ciations in the fi eld of light and environment design: LUCI, PLDA, IALD and ELKA.

The program for the Circle of Light was interesting, full and entertaining. This year’s festival featured the Event Diary, a kind navi-

gator that informed the audience of future events so they can plan their paths for the fu-ture in advance.

The Circle of Light’s opening ceremony was held on Red Square, and ECА-2 (France) prepared the ceremony. It addition to the ar-chitectural objects involved in the show, there were large-scale objects such as a pool of wa-ter and a giant sphere.

Manezhnaya Square hosted two programs including the Art Vision International Video Mapping Contest that was displayed on the fa-cade of the Manezh Exhibition Hall.

The festival’s program on the Crimean Em-bankment was also diverse, and the key theme was the Energy of Art. The Light Lab contest took place on the embankment, and young professionals presented their projects to a jury in seven diff erent categories. The Light of the Soviet Avant-Garde, a bright video mapping performance created on the basis of materials from the Tretyakov State Gallery, was present-ed on one of the facades. The Light Relay Race

MO

SCOW

WAS PART OF A FAIRYTA

LE

XVI O p e n C i t y • N o . 4 • 2 0 1 2

A giant

luminous

sphere

next to the

Kremlin

wall… It

was spec-

tacular,

a special

event, and

In the circleIn the circleOF LIGHT

f e s t i v a l / l i g h t

M a g a z i n e a b o u t p e o p l e , i d e a s , f i n a n c e s XVII

program was also shown, and it covered light festivals in France, Germany, the United King-dom, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Israel, Singapore, UAE, Canada and the United States. The Music Box interactive audio and visual show, which refl ected the present-day rhythms of the Russian capital, was the highlight of the event.

The program developed for Gorky Park fea-tured a range of light design tricks as a part of the wonderful Nature of Light program.

The closing ceremony was held on the Push-kinskaya Embankment and became the con-ceptual result of the festival. It was a reflection of the light of beauty, love, creativity and the human soul. Moscow became a part of a fair-ytale for several days, and this fairytale was made of light.

The fantastic pictures made of light

were mesmerizing. It was impossible

For several days the facade of the

Moskva Hotel was used as a big screen

to display the movement of time in the