From Russia at The Royal Academy

Henri Matisse, The Dance, 1910. Oil on canvas, 260 x 391 cm. *

Art lover or not, if your head hasn’t been down a hole for the last month you will have heard about the ‘From Russia’ exhibition which opens at the Royal Academy this weekend.

You will have heard about James Purnell the Minister for Culture, fast tracking anti-seizure laws to allow the paintings - taken from the bourgeoisies during the Russian revolution - into the UK and returning them to Russia without relatives of the original owners claiming them back.

It became a state matter on both sides, and , at the time of writing the British Council offices in St Petersburgh and Yekaterinburgh remain closed.

But aside from the hype and political fallout,  does this blockbuster exhibition really stand up to the attention?

The show examines the influences of European art on Russian artists, from the early Impressionists to Cubism, and ends with a room showing how Russian artists came to the fore, all-be-it with the influences of the French, but with their own experimental edginess that even Picasso could not beat.
Russian artist Kandinsky was entering a world of pure abstraction when the Cubists where still in their early stages. Not to mention Tatlin and Constructivism.
Powerful stuff.

The RA highlights the efforts of the two Russian collectors who bought extensively and commissioned most of the French works in this exhibition.
All the big names are here, Monet, Gaugain, Matisse, Picasso along with a whole troop of other stars.

 The wealthy collectors, Shchukin and Morozov, who where notorious both in Russia and Paris at the time for collecting art like crazy, were (particularly Shchukin )   interested in art which seemed  a bit bonkers.
He collected Henry Rousseau,  the self-taught artist of ‘naïve’ childlike images, who was considered amateur by contemporaries.
He collected Gaugain. and once said of an early piece he had acquired, “a madman painted it and a madman bought it”.
Despite this he obviously had conviction in Gaugain’s work because he bought 19 of his paintings. And of course  he was right.

Schukin also acquired eight Cezanne’s, four Van Gogh’s, 16 Derain’s and an unbelievable 50 of Picasso’s works.

Today his collection, had it not been split up, would probably be the best in the world. I wonder if he drank Carlsberg?

The Dance one of Matisse’s most daring works was commissioned by Shchukin and has been given pride of place in this exhibition.
It was so controversial that he wrote to Matisse at one point to abort the project due to worries over the bad publicity it would have created in Russia.
This huge piece is so bold and simple; its effectiveness comes in both the flowing lines of the dancers’ bodies and the three pungent colours that make up the piece.
What is so explosive about this painting from a technical point of view is the bare canvas (as-in purposely unpainted parts to the canvas), which is used to bring out forms within the scene.
Yet ironically this gives the painting its freedom and sense of ‘looseness’.

The Red Room is also featured here as are several others of Matisse’s works.

Other delights in the main French room of the exhibition include the more conservative but delightful Summer Dance by Pierre Bonnard, a hazy deep summer image of life in the French mountains painted in Fauvist splendour.
Gaugain’s brilliant hues in his Landscape with Peacocks and some of Picasso’s most important works around the time of his primitive-African era and moving into his cubist period.
The Dryad, one of the best on show comes alive with its incredible tonal detail.
Basic but so intense, the figure, which is taken from African wood carving, has textured plains which make you want to reach out and touch them.

The direct link of Shchukin and Morozov’s collections to the flowering of the Russian Avant-Garde is also illustrated in this exhibition.
Russian artists looking for new directions were massively swayed by these audacious French men. Valentin Servov went through a Cubist period and others were taken by Fauvism.

Less influenced and most impressive is the work of Chagall with his strongly Russian subject matter and almost entirely original compositions. The Red Jew depicting a lonely figure of an Old Russian Jewish peasant with a background of triangles and Hebrew text, gives something of an idea of how Chagall felt at this time living in Russia through the years of turmoil before the final revolution.
Unsurprisingly he left for Europe the year after he painted this work.

Aristarkh Lentulov fabulously decorative work of Moscow is another highlight.

The penultimate room holds the work of Malevich and Kandinsky among others and serves to highlight those Russian artists who took the idea of the European Avant-Garde and made it a very Russian thing.

Where Picasso, Gaugan and Matisse looked to primitive, tribal art forms for a way to deconstruct art, and produced images with a simplification of foreground and background so the picture had flattened planes, Malevich and Kandandinsky threw away the book.
They pushed the limits of ‘flatness’ to a mind blowing extreme.

As the exhibition is hung chronologically you are walked through the development of painting,  and given a sense of how ‘culturally dangerous’ art had become by the end of the period exhibited here (the 1910’s).
This is important in the face of what was to be a hostile road to extreme Totalitarianism in Russia in a matter of a decade or so.

And just from an aesthetic sense,  it’s clear just how powerful art could be, art that was  beyond realism.
Matisse said when talking about his own work, “it took sheer nerve to paint in this manner."
Well, Kandinsky must have had a steady hand.


The exhibition roughly stops here, with a nod to the Constructivist movement which was starting to gather speed in the early 1910’s.
And it’s a shame because we are not given much in the way of context.
Hardly mentioned is the wider view, the social change Russia was going through during the early 20th century, lurching from revolutionary crisis to revolutionary disaster, and all whilst these exhibited paintings where being created.

The RA has also avoided the whole issue of the provenance of the paintings since the Russian revolution.
There is no literature in the exhibition on their incredible journey since they were seized and how they survived.
 The fact  that The Dance survived destruction by the Bolsheviks and was hidden in storage in Siberia for years is not mentioned.

But From Russia is worth a visit to see these modern masterpieces in the flesh.
Most importantly if you’ve never seen a large amount of Fauvist work  it’s important you visit.  No printed matter or reproduction could ever do the colours justice.

One last note on the crowds: it is advised to visit on a weekday, preferably at an hour other people will find inconvenient as this is set to possibly be one of the gallery's most popular exhibitions.

We all love a bit of controversy, but perhaps the hype created outside the exhibition was  more than enough.

Julie Pallot

From Russia, Royal Academy, Burlington House, Piccadilly, W1J 0BD
Opens 26th January until April  18th.  www.royalacademy.org.uk

*The State Hermitage Museum,
St Petersburg. Photo The State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg
© Succession H. Matisse/DACS 2007

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