Konstantin Ernst's "Matador"

A junior alumnus of the team behind Vzgliad/ViD, Konstantin Ernst (1961-) would go on to become the most important figure in Putin-era media as the head of the state’s main propaganda network, Channel 1. As such, he epitomizes the self-described “liberal” of perestroika and Yeltsin era who, through a series of compromises, came to serve an outright genocidal dictator in the 2020s (a sadly typical trajectory). A look at Ernst’s 1990s projects, including the art show “Matador,” sheds light on the origins of this dramatic transformation.

Released between 1991 and 1995, at first by ViD (until 1992) and then by Ernst’s own company, MasterTV, Matador was a highbrow show—the brainchild of an aesthete interested in both celebrated arthouse filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard (1930-2022) and “scandalous” writers like Eduard Limonov (1943-2020). At the same time, Ernst, who sought to reach a broad cross-section of TV viewers, understood that post-Soviet mass television needed to keep up with the times. His sense of timeliness and knack for innovation propelled him to the head of ORT (the future Channel 1) in 1995—shortly after the murder of Vladislav Listyev, ORT’s previous head and Ernst’s old boss at ViD .

The excerpted clip dates to sometime between 1993 and1995 and centers on contemporary art. It is exemplary of Matador’s style, but also offers clues as to why an arthouse connoisseur like Ernst felt called to lead Russia’s most important TV channel. First, the show is deeply invested in its own aesthetics, boasting more carefully thought-through framing, color contrast, and shot composition than other offerings in ViD ’s portfolio. Of course, a serious commitment to aesthetics aligns with the show’s topic, art—but it also expresses Ernst’s ambitions as a director and producer of high-grade TV.

The episode’s content, which centers on possible definitions of contemporary art, further testifies to these ambitions. One guest opines that management and business in post-Soviet Russia can be considered artforms in their own right because they are called upon to carry out ridiculous, grand, demiurgic projects of a type accessible only to artists. The tools necessary for this work can come from anywhere, including the Soviet past—thus, both speakers in the clip speak in terms of postmodern play as the language of the contemporary artist. For both guests, however, postmodern play has a telos: social reconstruction, rather than the deconstructive critique we might expect. This conservative form of reconstruction and re-mythologization through playful postmodern means turns out to be the crux of Ernst’s subsequent work, including works from 1995-1997 like Old Songs About What Matters Most and The Russian Project. This conservative pivot, expressed by means of savvy, up-to-date, Western-inspired aesthetics also anticipates the ideological messaging of the early Putin regime, which elevated Ernst to prominence within Russian state television.