While, on the unenlightened fringes of the art world, voices are heard insisting that photography is not art because it can be produced in any edition size, major galleries and established artists are turning in their work to…

While, on the unenlightened fringes of the art world, voices are heard insisting that photography is not art because it can be produced in any edition size, major galleries and established artists are turning in their work to editioned techniques, without in the least diminishing the value of works of art issued in editions. The gallery Shaltai Editions has gone further still, and has prepared the third issue of its New Archive of Editioned Art, this time with the participation of the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts and nine outstanding conceptualists of our day: Nikita Alexeev, Boris Groys, “Where the Dogs Run” (Kuda Begut Sobaki), “MishMash”, Andrey Monastyrsky, Damir Muratov, Pavel Pepperstein, Victor Pivovarov and Anastasia Potemkina. I think the choice of names needs no further explanation: they scarcely ever vanish from the talk around Cosmoscow and the art crowd generally. Pepperstein’s graphic work, for instance, went at the Off-White auction the day before yesterday, I believe for 6,000 euros, and in the glass-and-metal case of NATI there are as many as five of his drawings at once.