Tara McCormack
posted 9 January 2006

The RUSSIA! exhibition brings together paintings and other works of art, from the medieval period to the present day. The exhibition is displayed chronologically in the main gallery area of the Guggenheim, which follows a gently ascending ramp that spirals upwards for six floors round a central empty space. No doubt this can be awkward for some exhibitions, but for RUSSIA! the chronological journey of the viewer to the top of the gallery gives an overall clarity (certainly for those not overly familiar with the history of art) that a different arrangement would lack.

The exhibition begins on the first level of the gallery with icons, many elaborately wrought in gold, some showing the major saints, such as Saint Nicholas, and others showing the Virgin and Child. The exhibition then moves on to portraits of the aristocracy and other scenes painted under the patronage of Peter the Great, and Catherine the Great, both of whom actively sought to modernise Russia and secularise Russian art, establishing artistic academies along the French model and encouraging artists to study abroad.

During the early 19th century Russian artists, as in the rest of Europe, fell under the sway of Romanticism. Paintings of peasants, and also of the emerging bourgeoisie, and intellectuals appear. In the latter half of the century groups of artists, some influenced by socialist and anarchist writings, broke with the Imperially sanctioned Academy of Arts and began to paint scenes that attempted to critically and realistically represent contemporary Russian, and to pose moral questions about aspects of society. For example, the melancholy 'A Village Funeral', showing a poor peasant family on their way to bury the father, or a scene of priests feasting at an inn, beggars at their feet. There are also some stunning paintings from this period. Ivan Kramskoy's portrait of an unknown woman, who stares imperiously down at the viewer, or the gorgeous 'Portrait of Olga Nesterova' (painted by Mikhail Vasilievich Nesterov), in which not only the sheer technical brilliance and mastery of paint, but also the (seldom achieved in portraiture) clear representation of the very spirit of the models - we really seem to see them, not their portraits - takes the viewer's breath away.

As the viewer walks up through the gallery, following the chronological layout, it becomes apparent that the exhibition has achieved a kind of brief history of the development of human subjectivity, and its expression in art. From the medieval paintings of divine figures, to early portraits of the aristocracy, and the Tsars, expanding then to the burgeoning middle classes, and then into the lower classes. As this realisation dawns the visitor arrives at Ilya Repin's electrifying 'Barge Haulers on the Volga'. Painted in the early 1870s it depicts a group of filthy ragged men, tied together, pulling a barge as if they are beasts of burden. Some seem stupefied, or simple, apart from one man, who glares furiously straight at the viewer, and it is as if his shout echoes round the gallery, 'I am a man!' he rages.

Reeling under the impact of this painting the visitor moves on to the art created during and in the early years of the Bolshevik Revolution. One can only stare in wonder at the incredible dynamism and energy and sheer modernity of artists such as Liubov Popova, and Kazimir Malevich, and the explosion of art in those early years. Abstract expressionism, cubism, futurism, suprematism - all forms of contemporary art were explored by Bolshevik artists. The most awe-inspiring painting is Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin's 1917 'Morning - Bathers'. It shows a naked woman and young boy holding hands; other women are behind them, dressing. Their slightly impassive faces, and the flat style of painting suggest traditional iconography, but these are not divine figures that we look at, but human. They are calm, masters of themselves and of the world as they look into the dawn of a new beginning for humanity.

After this extraordinary painting, the visitor can only reluctantly go forward through the exhibition, knowing what must come next. It is difficult to enjoy the next section of Stalinist Socialist Realism, even ironically. Under Stalin abstraction was banned, and the permitted style seems to have been taken from Norman Rockwell's 'Morning Post' covers. Some of the paintings are beyond parody, with titles such as 'The Unforgettable Day' by V P Yefanov, showing a lucky female worker meeting Stalin. Others are more touching, Serguei Guevassimov's 'Harvest Celebration at the Collective Farm', and Alexander Laktionov's 'Letter from the Front', which depicts a rural family proudly and eagerly listening to a child reading a letter. However, even if sometimes effective, this is simple, propagandistic illustration. It is a dismal retreat from the intellectual and creative heights of early revolutionary art, it is not about what humanity can be or strive for, but like Norman Rockwell's covers, a piece of confectionery, created by a stagnant society. Under Khrushchev and successive Soviet leaders artistic controls were relaxed a little, though Socialist Realism was still the only permitted style. The exhibition closes with contemporary Russian art, which seems to have little to differentiate it from much contemporary Western art, although modern Russian artists are not so much concerned with the narrow personal present, as with the Soviet past.

RUSSIA! is one of the most thought-provoking, exciting, and affecting exhibitions that I have seen in years, it really should go on tour, rather than the 'blockbuster' exhibitions that have toured in recent years. The Guggenheim deserves congratulations.

RUSSIA! closes on 11 January 2006.