From the introduction to the catalogue of Art4.ru, a contemporary-art museum in Moscow owned by Igor Markin. The museum, in which Markin, a forty-one-year-old plastics magnate, invested $10 million, houses hundreds of works by modern and contemporary Russian artists.
If anybody thinks he can draw a square better than Malevich, he can come on and fucking do it. Don’t worry if people underestimate you—it’s not because you’re an asshole, but just because there are losers and assholes all around who will not live to see winter. Why should you worry about winter if you permanently live in summer, have a positive attitude, and jump about the minefield certain there are no mines, only harmless piles of accurately placed squat? Maybe you are not in your miserable apartment in some Asshole City but in Switzerland.
Well, why talk so much about this shit? Shouldn’t we change the subject? For example, let’s speak about drooling. Drooling is everything to us. If it weren’t for drooling, there wouldn’t be shit. How many people are drooling about other people being successful, gifted, or in demand? As many as have read this article, plus a couple more. Come on, moisten abundantly. Saliva is the best lubricant for tight-assed hypocrites who turn pale and puke hearing the word prick.
We wanted to tell you about the world of art, modern art, and collecting in particular. In this case, the museum is just storage space. If it seems to somebody that the museum is a way to immortalize one’s name in the annals (God save us) of culture, that is, mildly speaking, a mistake. And if we would not speak mildly, just look at it, almost for free, and don’t fucking talk about some topical aspect of the exhibition.
Igor Markin is just a dude whose significance to the history of art is evident regardless of what parts of him bitter tongues are licking. Instead of engaging in entertainment, waiting like a normal commie for cocaine, whores, and work, he gathered this collection. There were almost no competitors, and a clear business field is any huckster’s dream. Markin has the right to send all who aren’t satisfied to hell, including those dissatisfied with this introduction.
Let us continue speaking about the museum. Is it possible to appreciate a three- by four-meter picture if it hangs in an office corridor and you stand touching the canvas with your beak? When the soul calls for the feast to continue in the form of a museum, the museum will appear—surely, not the greatest museum, but, whoopee, sometimes size matters. To buy 600 meters in the center of Moscow is not as easy as pissing in doorways. It is fucking difficult!
And artists need appraisal and appreciation, preferably in cash. It is not comme il faut to be widely acknowledged on a massive scale post-mortem. We should admit that for a museum, for a collector, a good artist is a dead artist. But modem art also needs support, or else it will perish. The underground is as dead as rock’n’roll. The system of good old alcoholic values has crashed. Don’t shoot altruists—they are playing the best they can. If you can play better—no fucking problem! Come on, go and paint a Malevich square, set up a museum, or reread this article from the beginning and try to write it better.
