He got started, just like everyone else in the nineties, with 19th century Russian realist paintings. His income allowed him to buy only the best: the biggest painters and only the largest pictures. Voziakov came up with a name for the exhibition, a simple and honest one: “Masterpieces”. There were seventeen canvases – from Aivazovsky to Roerich. With preparations for the exhibition underway, Voziakov decided to have the masterpieces checked out by the experts one last time. And he found out that he was the owner of seven choice forgeries, that fifteen years earlier he had spent millions on counterfeits. Usually one does not want to share this kind of thing with journalists. But he wants it to be published; he is determined to exhibit the forged masterpieces in order to help new collectors avoid repeating his tragic mistakes. And he means to force cultured society to discuss what it has preferred to remain silent about: that the market for Russian art has been inundated with legalized forgeries. 

A few years ago, in the room decorated in a deliberately old-fashioned way, Ilze Liepa, soloist of the Bolshoi theater and a People’s Artist of the Russian Federation, had an idea that radically changed her life. Ilze was lying on the carpet and doing her usual exercises. From here she had the thought of establishing a dance studio and school, and, what’s more important, the Ilze Liepa’s method. “From that time I started to think about what I would do after ballet. The Ilze Liepa’s method came out of my own collection of exercises that give me the necessary feeling of exhaustion and work. These are not yet ballet exercises, but a step towards them.” Ilze Liepa’s school-studios of dance have already become respected institutions. But there are no plans to go into mass-production. Each one is unique, and they do not exist to make money. 

The paparazzi are waiting by the glass doors of the sumptuous Victorian building for Naomi Campbell to finish her last sweet shrimp, for Kate Moss to pay the check, and for Christina Aguilera to sign her “thank you very much” in the guest book. Then, on Valentine’s Day, a certain lady tried to make a telephone reservation for a table at Sumosan. She had to be turned away, “no tables”. Later the owners found out that the caller had been none other than Madonna. Top European football teams celebrate their victories at London’s Sumosan, going all out. “Andrei, my son, loves soccer,” says Marina Volkova, “he once saw one of Arsenal’s forward here.” Usually her sister Janina does not allow celebrity guests to be disturbed, but she made an exception for her nephew: Andrei got his picture taken with the forward. “And what is your favorite team?” the star athlete asked. “I root for Chelsea,” the boy answered honestly. “What? Not for Arsenal? Hey, give me that picture back then!” 

The old Ritz was the scene of many myths and legends. There’s the one about the gift from America that Edward VIII received from the love of his life, Wallis Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor. A box was brought into the room and in it was his beloved, who had secretly traveled to Paris. There’s also a story about how Marcel Proust, who took refreshment at the restaurant when exhausted by searching for lost time, treated the members of the Académie Goncourt, who had awarded him their prize for literature. Now The Ritz is closing! This is unthinkable! This is no different than closing the Seine for renovations or maintenance work on Montmartre. What if nobody likes the newly refurbished hotel? What if neighboring “palaces” take all the Ritz’s regulars? What if the spirit of the old Ritz never returns to Number 15 Place Vendôme? And what if merely the next in a series of pretenders, some place that looks like every other new hotel in Paris, takes its place – irreproachable but lifeless and without a soul?