from russia

I dragged rob off to the From Russia exhibit on at the royal academy of arts. I don’t go to the royal academy enough, and yet every time I do I am pleased. The current show (which almost didn’t happen, since the Russian government apparently feared for the paintings safety in london) looks at French and Russian paintings from 1870-1925. It claims to “explore the interaction between Russian and French art.” I am not sure how well this supposed interaction is demonstrated, but it was a stunning set of works nonetheless. Large chunks of the expo are made up of the personal collections of Sergei Shukin and Ivan Morozov, both of whom were serious collectors of French art. Thus there was a good range of gaugin, matisse, monet, manet and pisarro alongside Russian masters like repin, malevich, petrov-vodkin and Chagall. I had seen all the paintings before (in Russia) but never assembled together in one place (as in Russia they are housed in different museums) and never in a context that put them together, which made me see them in a slightly different light.
The volume and range of the paintings were quite impressive indeed, but the same could not be said for the audience, I think rob and I were the only people there under 55! I guess that is what you get for going on a random Wednesday afternoon.