By John Helmer, Moscow If seated in the dark at the Bolshoi Theatre, even a man of consuming narcissism as Boris Yeltsin was could tell the tights from the tutus. But Yeltsin saw himself as the prima donna, battementing and glissading into the old tsar’s box, Dress Circle centre front. At the Bolshoi, Stalin preferred […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, March 24th, 2013
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By John Helmer, Moscow The value difference and profit opportunity between a genuine piece of art and a fake are so large, there’s no deterring entrepreneurial forgers. Until now, the cleverest schemes have, ethnically speaking, been the specialty of Englishmen, Americans, and well-known art auction houses, museum curators and experts in connoisseurship. That last term […]

by John Helmer - Tuesday, November 13th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Never was a Russian design more nobly intended for the edification of London’s upper class since Karl Marx scribbled away at the British Museum Library. Never were the fetish of the object and the alienation of labor more artfully combined. Had Mr Bean done it, the Prime Minister and the Mayor […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, October 10th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Victor Vekselberg won a major UK High Court action on Friday, and the presiding judge, Justice Guy Newey, has ordered that he should get his money’s worth returned. No ruling of fraud was allowed. The amount may turn out to be less than Vekselberg has spent on lawyers and experts over […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, July 29th, 2012
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By John Helmer, Moscow Now we move on from the lesson of how to be victorious over big people and bullies when still small —that’s for getting through the daytimes with ВЛАДИМИР ВИЗАНТИЙСКИЙ – to the lesson of how to write a short sentence and say everything that must be said at the same time. […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, March 28th, 2012
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My beloved Russian died on December 9. When he needed breath and his heart was failing, there were five who prevented me from reaching him. I grieve for him. For them, another reckoning. If you will take to the mountain road, it is possible to breathe and sing this song.

by John Helmer - Friday, December 30th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow Constructivism, that combination of industrial design ideas applied to post-revolutionary Russian urban growth requirements, has been struggling to survive the assault of commercial real estate development since 1991. The current exhibition at London’s Royal Academy of Art, entitled “Building the Revolution” reveals how many of the buildings of the Constructivist era […]

by John Helmer - Sunday, December 25th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow The relationship between taste and power is what Karl Marx would have called dialectical; for today’s Russian oligarchs that’s a red flag – in the race track, not the Marxist sense of the term. The oligarchs don’t mind showing off their taste in foreign places and foreign newspapers; inside Russia they […]

by John Helmer - Wednesday, December 7th, 2011
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By John Helmer, Moscow It was just five weeks ago that First Deputy Prime Minister Igor Shuvalov was pledging his allegiance to President Dmitry Medvedev and his unswerving compliance with the April 2 presidential decree ordering ministers of state to vacate their seats on state company boards. In Shuvalov’s case, he insisted that under no […]

by John Helmer - Friday, May 20th, 2011
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by John Helmer - Sunday, December 20th, 2009
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