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One Russian man's naked ambition
An entrepreneur with a passion for images of female nudes plans to
launch a museum of Russian erotica.
By Anna Malpas
May 30, 2005
Alexander Metyolkin is a man with a mission: to free Russians from their sexual
hang-ups. After 15 years of publishing magazines with an emphasis on topless
girls, he plans to open the country's first museum of erotic art.
Walking into the offices of Rasputin and Znakomstva magazines on Tsvetnoi
Bulvar, it's hard to miss the blow-up doll slung on a coat stand. "It's that
kind of place," a security guard said with a smile.
The two glossy monthlies published by Metyolkin intersperse ads for strip clubs
with racy photo shoots. Some of the photo shoots have a patriotic twist; the
May issue of Rasputin features a girl dressed as an army typist getting out of
her uniform to celebrate Victory Day.
In an interview last week, Metyolkin called the magazines "my safety valve, my
hobby," saying that he makes his money from "finance deals, shares, securities
and property." His office is decorated with three paintings by socialite
painter Nikas Safronov, and more are stacked by the desk in the artist's own
line of carrier bags. The publisher has bought more than 25 of Safronov's
paintings altogether.
These paintings will go on display alongside sculptures and photographs at the
Museum of Russian Erotica, which Metyolkin plans to open by the end of this
year. He has already bought the premises: a 300-square-meter building on Ulitsa
Krasnaya Presnya, which he is currently renovating.
He has plans to meet artists favored by Russian officialdom, such as painter
Alexander Shilov -- who has "two or three" erotic works -- and sculptor Zurab
Tsereteli, to discuss buying or commissioning their work. A photograph on the
publisher's desk shows the painter Ilya Glazunov in his studio, standing next
to a canvas featuring a female nude against a background of birch trees.
"That's his only erotic work," Metyolkin said of Glazunov, a painter best known
for his Russian nationalist views. "It's a little bit too chaste, so we agreed
that he might do something modern. Because this work was painted in Soviet
times, of course, it gives off something cold, as if it were hanging in the
Tretyakov Gallery."
Besides the famous names, the museum will be a showcase for work by provincial
artists, the publisher said. Metyolkin explained that this would help such
artists gain visibility, even if erotica wasn't their main area of work.
"If you start collecting landscapes, they don't interest many people. Erotica
interests everyone, always. That is a law of nature, a basic instinct," he
said.
Metyolkin has bought a directory which lists more than 28,000 Russian artists
and sculptors, rating them from one to seven, where one means world-famous and
seven is a beginner -- Safronov gets two -- and is going through it, searching
for hidden talents.
According to Metyolkin's plan, the museum will include both a permanent
collection and a selection of works on sale. "It will be a very good deal for
artists who are completely unknown," he said.
The publisher first became interested in photography at a club for Young
Pioneers, and he held his first erotic photo shoots as a teenager; one of his
earliest models later became his wife. Now he takes "practically all" of the
cover photographs for the magazines, he said.
Metyolkin, the son of a diplomat, got the idea to open a museum of erotic art
in part because of his stays abroad, when he visited similar museums in
Amsterdam, Paris and Berlin. But the main stimulus was his own collection of
nude statuettes and paintings, which he has built up over the years.
"When people asked me what they should give me for my birthday, I said that I
didn't want cologne or a shirt," he recalled. "Give me anything connected with
nudes and erotica."
Metyolkin realizes, however, that his museum may not be to everyone's taste.
"Our museum will fight the sanctimonious ideas and attitudes of bureaucrats,"
he said. "Maybe some bureaucrat from the Culture Ministry will come and say
that, 'You know, this isn't erotica, it's pornography, and we're going to close
you down.'"
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