From Russia With Art

Time Out reports that it could have been bigger and maybe even a little bit better, but at least it’s here and really shouldn’t be missed. ‘From Russia’ takes a while to warm up – as did the Russian art scene before the turn of the century – but, after gaining momentum, this art exhibition delivers its satisfying knockout blow in the final room. Pre-revolutionary Russia was torn between conflicting moods of traditional, rustic stoicism and of forward-facing citizenship, alternately captured by Ilya Repin in his peasant portrait of Tolstoy dressed as a backwoodsman and in his enormous canvas depicting the first faltering uprising of October 1905. The former represents old Mother Russia; the latter, the false hope of its progressives (indeed it was shown only once during state censorship but even so was probably hung better than it is here, horribly skied above the entrance to the second gallery). Hope comes in the form of bold, primitive and downright naughty pictures by Monet, Renoir, Cézanne and Van Gogh – in many ways the usual suspects when it comes to the story of how art was saved from terminal academicism. However, so glittering are these examples that it’s hard not to be impressed all over again, especially by Gauguin’s frank but dreamy Tahitian melodies and Matisse’s tube-fresh colour revelries. Two great pictures get lost in this visual feasting, so don’t walk past Bonnard’s hallucinogenic summer vista of gingerbread houses and peacock-coloured trees or Vuillard’s shadowy ‘In the Garden’, which perfectly captures two women at Pimms o’clock in 1898. Next, while preparing yourself for the shock of the old when returning back to Russian art, the RA surprises with a bright blue room devoted to the Ballet Russes protagonist Sergei Diaghilev, and his players. Sure enough the drudgery returns in Room Five, where pictures we don’t need show how Falk, Kuprin and Saryan all struggled to make sense of the French post-impressionist riches we’ve just witnessed. Bear with it, because beneath this blustering blockbuster lies not only the tale of how Parisian painters influenced their colleagues in Moscow by proxy (thanks to the purchases of two taste-making collectors, Shchukin and Morosov), but how – in a climactic twist – they were dramatically overtaken both stylistically and conceptually by a marauding wave of Russian modernists. This showdown begins with Chagall and some incredible female cubists including Popova, Exter and Rozonova and ends with Kandinsky and Malevich’s triumphant black square, cross and circle. Why didn’t the RA fling open its side galleries to accommodate all this more comfortably? It’s a small gripe considering the riches squeezed therein. (For full source and full article click the Headline). Irish Art