Authors

Discussion

This presentation examines the role of agents within the official Soviet art economy of the 1960s. Art agents were entrepreneurs who sought potential commissioners for artists employed at the Art Fund. Traveling across the country and visiting enterprises, kolkhozy, and resorts, they showed samples of art, negotiated prices, and persuaded commissioners to sign contracts. Archival documents reveal that these agents were mostly concerned with securing high income overpricing works, making unreasistic promises and cheating were the essential methods of their work. 

Within the Union of Artists, agents were treated with ambivalence. On the one hand, their practices were labeled “non-socialist”; on the other, their communication skills secured commissions and income for artists. Agents were not officially employed but worked for a percentage of each deal, which made them eager to increase commercial profit and brought them closer to the role of art agents in capitalist economies.

Although problematic for socialist ethics, their methods remained essential for providing artists with stable income. My presentation will analyze attempts by the Union of Artists to regulate agents’ work and align it with socialist principles. It argues that the profit motive and cheating were quietly integrated into the official art system, showing how the planned economy relied on these ambiguous figures and how their commercial skills helped provide artists with both social and material security.