I’ve never met Dasha Zhukova. Just want to get that out of the way, lest we run into sticky ground. All of the following information has been culled directly from hearsay, slander, and libel (not mine, of course), as well as the odd interview and fact. I’ve seen her in a bunch of places. Galas and such. The camera trains on her—snap, snap—while I down wine and pretend there’s art involved. Dasha’s a few months older than me.
     Our age isn’t the only thing that links us. Zhukova’s father, Alexander Zhukov, was an illegal arms dealer who, according to Wikipedia, funneled a shipment of 30,000 AK-47s, 400 guided missles, 10,000 anti-tank missles, and 32 million rounds of ammunition to the Balkans in 1991 through his oil company. Similarly, my father, according to him, once funneled a shipment of rubber bands into the hands of his eighth-grade classmates. Zhukova’s mother, Elena Zhukova, is a retired professor of molecular biology. My mother is a retired first-grade teacher. Crazy we haven’t met yet, isn’t it?
     Dasha grew up in Moscow and moved to Houston, where she landed and ate a bowl of Fruit Loops. “I was like, ‘What is this? We do not eat colorful circles for breakfast,’” she told her friend Derek Blasberg in an interview with Interview. After Fruit Loops, she began a pre-med tract at UC Santa Barbara before studying alternative medicine and homeopathic therapies in London, where she met her current boyfriend and baby daddy Roman Abramovich. Somewhere along the line, she started a T-shirt company.
      In the Interview piece, she was quoted as saying, regards the gossip surrounding her ubiquity in ArtForum’s Scene and Herd section, and the dreaded “socialite” tag: “They doubted my credibility as an art connoisseur. But I don’t have a background in art, so I get that. And, yeah, I do go to parties. I like a good party. So I understand where it all comes from.” I have nothing snarky to say about that.
      Things Dasha Zhukova has done: Started The Garage Center for Contemporary Culture (GCCC) in Moscow in 2008. Become the face of Russian contemporary art where there was none. Blogged for Style.com (with Blasberg). Co-chaired a MOCA gala. Dated a number one-ranked tennis player. Edited Pop Magazine for a stint. Been a dartboard for the British press—in an interview with T: The New York Times Style Magazine Editor Horacio Silva in 2010, she explained her rag appeal: “The reader always loves a bit of a jab, so I understand the impulse. It’s a better story. I’m young, Russian, I come from money, and I date a very well-known person.”
     Roman Abramovich is indeed very well known. He’s the 53rd richest person in the world, according to the Forbes barometer. Just two years ago, he was number 15. He owns the Chelsea Football Club, as well as the largest privately-owned yacht in the world. He has a 40-person security staff, dubbed his “private army.” Around the same time he began to date Dasha, Abramovich sponsored an exhibition of Belarusian photographer Max Penson. He bought Francis Bacon’s “Triptych 1976” for $86.3MM—a record for a post-war piece—and Lucien Freud’s “Benefits Supervisor Sleeping” for $33.6MM—a record for a work by a living artist. It is rumored Abramovich and Zhukova own “Nude, Green Leaves and Bust,” the Picasso also known as the world’s most expensive piece of art. As Zhukova tells Silva: “Let’s face it, I think that money has definitely eased the transition into the art world because we’re collectors. But not everyone is a dealer and not everyone is benefiting from the fact that we’re collecting art. I did find, though, that the art world is slightly more kind than others, especially fashion.”
    Still, she hasn’t forsaken her affinity for the fashion spectacle. Late last year, Zhukova’s GCCC exhibited DYSFASHIONAL, an exhibit featuring work by Raf Simons, Hussein Chalayan, and Maison Martin Margiela. (Currently on view is Cuba in Revolution, a photographic exploration of the 1959 Cuban Revolution, and Christian Marclay’s video “Clock,” two decidedly serious and unfashionable exhibitions, but then again, GCCC is mainly run by independent curator Mollie Dent-Brocklehurst.) Moreover, Zhukova was seen in the front row of Valentino’s Milan show. As well, there are snaps of her in front of the step-and-repeat at Dior’s Oscar Dinner, and of course, if you’re on Patrick McMullan’s website, you’ll notice that she shows up in the same outfit to the MOCA opening of Rodarte’s States of Matter exhibition, another conflation of art with fashionista.
    There are 11 pages dedicated to Miss Zhukova on McMullan’s party photography website. It’s hard to not question her intent. Many in the art world let it slide, because she brings the monetary A-game. But, prior to 2008, Zhukova hadn’t really been a part of the conversation. Which is why it’s so weird to see her interviewed in Interview and T, so bizarre to see her trouncing around L.A.’s art world like the Tasmanian Devil. (Silva, in T, writes, “Zhukova has been known to attend the opening of a wound.”) It’s why it’s so weird to know she’s the one who’s responsible for the transliteration between the art world and Russia’s lack of. She’s come a long way since 2008 when she was asked by The Guardian’s Viv Groskop to list her favorite artists. Her reply—“I’m, like, really bad at remembering names”—reading like a cautionary tale on how to not answer interview questions if you want to be taken seriously.
    You have to respect her for trying, though, for making things happen. I suppose, if our fated stars finally align, I’d ask her what her current plans were, what the long-term goal was, what she loves about art aside from hosting extravagant parties. I like to imagine that she’s scheming to start a major sculpture garden in the permafrosted steppes of Siberia, an artist-in-residence program at Moscow State University, a retrospective of Russian painting at PS1. I’d like to know what business it is of her’s, in fact, being the subject of this column.