0:00:04 > 0:00:09Imagine a shimmering city conjured out of thin air,
0:00:09 > 0:00:12rising in just a few decades
0:00:12 > 0:00:15where once there had been a wilderness of barren marshes.
0:00:15 > 0:00:20A place to rival the beauties of Venice and Paris...
0:00:21 > 0:00:22St Petersburg.
0:00:24 > 0:00:27St Petersburg was founded at the start of the 18th century
0:00:27 > 0:00:31in imitation of the great western European cities.
0:00:31 > 0:00:35Russia had never seen a place like this, with its elegant classical facades.
0:00:35 > 0:00:37It was part of a great cultural project
0:00:37 > 0:00:39to end centuries of isolation.
0:00:39 > 0:00:43But when Russia opened its doors to Europe, it didn't just let in
0:00:43 > 0:00:46new ideas about art and architecture,
0:00:46 > 0:00:50it let in a host of other, even more dangerous ideas.
0:00:50 > 0:00:55Ideas that would lead to bloodshed and, eventually, revolution.
0:00:58 > 0:01:02For the next two centuries, art was to be a battlefield,
0:01:02 > 0:01:06pitting the glories of the court...
0:01:08 > 0:01:11..against the anguish of its peasants.
0:01:11 > 0:01:14Showing the beauty of the landscape...
0:01:17 > 0:01:19..and the demons of the mind.
0:01:23 > 0:01:26From a crushing symbol of tyranny...
0:01:26 > 0:01:30to an art that would devour Russia itself.
0:01:32 > 0:01:36This is the story of Russia's journey from royal excess
0:01:36 > 0:01:39to mass rebellion, and of how art went from being
0:01:39 > 0:01:43the servant of the state to an agent of its destruction.
0:02:11 > 0:02:14For centuries, Russia had been cut off
0:02:14 > 0:02:17from the culture and ideas of the West.
0:02:17 > 0:02:19But in St Petersburg,
0:02:19 > 0:02:22you see a whole nation making up for lost time.
0:02:22 > 0:02:25Peter the Great began the immense project
0:02:25 > 0:02:30of Europeanising Russia by founding the city in 1703.
0:02:31 > 0:02:32But he never lived to see
0:02:32 > 0:02:35the imperial splendour of its architecture.
0:02:37 > 0:02:39Its brightly coloured palaces
0:02:39 > 0:02:43were created in the decades after Peter's death by his daughter.
0:02:44 > 0:02:46She would dress St Petersburg up
0:02:46 > 0:02:49in the colours of a thousand ball gowns.
0:02:49 > 0:02:52Her name was Tsarina Elizabeth I.
0:02:55 > 0:02:58Elizabeth's been rather written out of Russian history.
0:02:58 > 0:03:02Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, never Elizabeth the Great,
0:03:02 > 0:03:04but she was great in her own way,
0:03:04 > 0:03:07and she certainly left her mark on Russian culture.
0:03:07 > 0:03:09Because when we come to St Petersburg
0:03:09 > 0:03:12and we admire its wonderfully elegant architecture,
0:03:12 > 0:03:14what we're really admiring is her taste.
0:03:14 > 0:03:17Peter might've got St Petersburg built,
0:03:17 > 0:03:21but it was Elizabeth who really decided what it would look like.
0:03:27 > 0:03:29Elizabeth was positively bacchanalian
0:03:29 > 0:03:32in her pursuit of pleasure.
0:03:32 > 0:03:35She loved parties and masquerades and she was drawn
0:03:35 > 0:03:39to the grandiose European style of the baroque.
0:03:39 > 0:03:43In the 1740s, she employed an architect with Italian blood,
0:03:43 > 0:03:46Bartolomeo Rastrelli, but their buildings
0:03:46 > 0:03:50have a distinctly Russian feeling of excess.
0:03:50 > 0:03:51The Catherine Palace
0:03:51 > 0:03:58was Elizabeth's own Versailles, but on an even grander scale.
0:03:58 > 0:04:01The facade's nearly a quarter of a mile across.
0:04:03 > 0:04:05And this, the Smolny,
0:04:05 > 0:04:09was Elizabeth and Rastrelli's version of a convent.
0:04:11 > 0:04:14Their take on the baroque was an exotic hybrid.
0:04:14 > 0:04:18Painted in bright colours, like the churches of old Russia,
0:04:18 > 0:04:21and topped with glittering onion domes.
0:04:25 > 0:04:28Now, Elizabeth was no mere follower of fashion.
0:04:28 > 0:04:31She was one of the most dynamic and progressive
0:04:31 > 0:04:34patrons of art and architecture of the entire 18th century.
0:04:34 > 0:04:37And when you look at this wonderful wedding cake of a building,
0:04:37 > 0:04:41what you realise is that she brought into the world of Russian art
0:04:41 > 0:04:44a new spirit of panache and theatricality.
0:04:44 > 0:04:48And nowhere else in Europe was the baroque style
0:04:48 > 0:04:51pushed to this extreme level of fantasy.
0:04:56 > 0:04:59The most magnificent of all these creations
0:04:59 > 0:05:03is on the coastal fringes of St Petersburg, Peterhof.
0:05:11 > 0:05:15It was begun by Peter the Great as a modest affair,
0:05:15 > 0:05:18but in the 1740s, Elizabeth and Rastrelli
0:05:18 > 0:05:21waved their magic wands over it.
0:05:35 > 0:05:40With its grand staircases and its gilded water-pumping statues,
0:05:40 > 0:05:45Peterhof's a wonder of architecture and engineering,
0:05:45 > 0:05:48but it's also a miraculous survival.
0:05:50 > 0:05:54The Nazis tried to blow the palace up during the Second World War,
0:05:54 > 0:05:58and reduced large parts of it to a shell.
0:06:05 > 0:06:13It's taken more than 60 years to return Peterhof to its former glory,
0:06:13 > 0:06:16and the work still continues.
0:06:16 > 0:06:20This is Elizabeth's chapel, the very last section to be restored.
0:06:25 > 0:06:28A mind-boggling 200 pounds
0:06:28 > 0:06:32in weight of gold leaf will be needed to complete the job.
0:06:35 > 0:06:38Here, the finishing touches are being applied by an army
0:06:38 > 0:06:42of blue-suited architectural make-up artists.
0:06:46 > 0:06:49TRANSLATED FROM RUSSIAN:
0:07:02 > 0:07:07Don't you ever sometimes sort of look around and think to yourself,
0:07:07 > 0:07:09"Isn't it a little bit over the top?
0:07:12 > 0:07:15- So is your house at home like this? - HE CHUCKLES
0:07:22 > 0:07:26Thank you very much. I got the joke, even with my terrible Russian.
0:07:31 > 0:07:36If you want to experience the full baroque blast of Peterhof,
0:07:36 > 0:07:39you have to go to the grand state rooms of the main palace.
0:07:41 > 0:07:45It's almost as if Elizabeth had a Midas complex.
0:07:45 > 0:07:49She wanted everything she touched to turn to gold.
0:08:23 > 0:08:25This is Tsarina Elizabeth's ballroom,
0:08:25 > 0:08:27and it's the great set piece demonstration
0:08:27 > 0:08:31of the baroque style as SHE wanted it reincarnated in Russia.
0:08:31 > 0:08:35Absolutely dripping with giltwood decoration.
0:08:35 > 0:08:39You've got wonderful candelabra, you've got giltwood Cupids,
0:08:39 > 0:08:43you've got sexy mythological scenes set into little roundels.
0:08:43 > 0:08:47There's not a square inch of this room that isn't decorated.
0:08:47 > 0:08:50Now, the art history term for it is "Russian baroque",
0:08:50 > 0:08:52but I think of it as the baroque of bling.
0:08:52 > 0:08:56It's just fantastically excessive. And you have to also imagine
0:08:56 > 0:08:57that in Elizabeth's day,
0:08:57 > 0:09:00these rather ugly light bulbs wouldn't have been there,
0:09:00 > 0:09:03there would've been actual candles with flames.
0:09:03 > 0:09:07And then, if you imagine this whole space full of people dancing,
0:09:07 > 0:09:10the effect must've been positively hallucinogenic.
0:09:22 > 0:09:24Now above,
0:09:24 > 0:09:29as if to underscore her role as the great founder
0:09:29 > 0:09:33of Russian visual culture, Russian art and decoration and architecture,
0:09:33 > 0:09:36Elizabeth had herself painted as...
0:09:36 > 0:09:40almost as the patron saint of Russian art. There she is,
0:09:40 > 0:09:42hovering in the sky, holding aloft
0:09:42 > 0:09:46a sceptre of enlightenment. And she's above
0:09:46 > 0:09:51Mount Parnassus of classical legend, where Apollo and the muses -
0:09:51 > 0:09:54those who inspire artistic creativity - are to be found.
0:09:54 > 0:09:58There's the muse of music, the muse of theatre and there,
0:09:58 > 0:10:03with her compass, the muse of art and architecture.
0:10:09 > 0:10:13But for all the lofty myth-making, there's also a kind of mania
0:10:13 > 0:10:16to prove that Russians could do European culture
0:10:16 > 0:10:19even better than Europeans themselves.
0:10:21 > 0:10:24And nowhere more so than the portrait gallery...
0:10:26 > 0:10:31..a breathtakingly overloaded version of the galleries
0:10:31 > 0:10:34in grand European houses,
0:10:34 > 0:10:37with walls like pages of a stamp album.
0:10:40 > 0:10:44Like Rastrelli, the artist responsible was of Italian descent -
0:10:44 > 0:10:45Pietro Rotari.
0:10:52 > 0:10:57It's said that Elizabeth paid Rotari the sum of 1,000 gold roubles
0:10:57 > 0:11:01to come to Russia - a world record transfer fee for a portrait painter.
0:11:01 > 0:11:04And what she got in return, were some of the very first pictures
0:11:04 > 0:11:08of Russians seen through a European lens.
0:11:08 > 0:11:10Now, in this room there are 367 altogether
0:11:10 > 0:11:14and they're all in a well-established European tradition
0:11:14 > 0:11:16of painting so-called beauties.
0:11:16 > 0:11:19Innocent, rather coquettish young ladies. But the twist here
0:11:19 > 0:11:24is that each one of these individual girls is meant to represent
0:11:24 > 0:11:27a different region of Russia. You can tell by the different costumes
0:11:27 > 0:11:29and headdresses. So what this amounts to
0:11:29 > 0:11:35is a kind of ideal catalogue of Russian womanhood.
0:11:35 > 0:11:38But there's more to it than that too, because Rotari employed
0:11:38 > 0:11:42an army of Russian apprentices, and many of these pictures
0:11:42 > 0:11:44were painted by them.
0:11:44 > 0:11:47So what we've got here is a kind of extraordinary capsule
0:11:47 > 0:11:50of a particular moment. We've got Russians
0:11:50 > 0:11:53painted by a European but we've also got Russians
0:11:53 > 0:11:56painting in a European style.
0:12:02 > 0:12:06In the new St Petersburg, portraiture flourished.
0:12:07 > 0:12:11Russian artists became expert
0:12:11 > 0:12:14at capturing the glamour of an aristocracy
0:12:14 > 0:12:17in love with its own, fashionably European image.
0:12:21 > 0:12:24The city's elite made a cult of luxury,
0:12:24 > 0:12:28so even eating could become a kind of artistic performance.
0:12:31 > 0:12:35Consuming caviar became the ultimate symbol of one's nobility...
0:12:37 > 0:12:40..but one that might leave a bitter aftertaste.
0:12:44 > 0:12:47For all its glittering social rituals,
0:12:47 > 0:12:49Russia was essentially a feudal society.
0:12:49 > 0:12:53You have to remember that the aristocracy was a tiny elite,
0:12:53 > 0:12:56supported by a mountain of human misery.
0:12:56 > 0:13:00Their lifestyle were sustained by the existence of the serf class.
0:13:00 > 0:13:03Serfs were owned peasants, effectively slaves,
0:13:03 > 0:13:06and they made up half of the country's population.
0:13:06 > 0:13:08Among them, poverty was rife.
0:13:08 > 0:13:11They lived a hand-to-mouth existence.
0:13:14 > 0:13:17The treatment of the serfs might've improved
0:13:17 > 0:13:21when Catherine the Great came to the throne in 1762.
0:13:21 > 0:13:24Schooled by the European Enlightenment,
0:13:24 > 0:13:27a patron of both Diderot and Voltaire,
0:13:27 > 0:13:31she boasted of her benevolent treatment of Russia's peasants.
0:13:31 > 0:13:34And in the art created during her reign,
0:13:34 > 0:13:37the Russian peasant suddenly moved centre stage.
0:13:37 > 0:13:40Whether it's Shibanov's Peasant Wedding -
0:13:40 > 0:13:44a heart-warming celebration of rural life -
0:13:44 > 0:13:49or Argunov's Peasant Woman, beaming health and happiness
0:13:49 > 0:13:53with her smooth skin and perfectly plucked eyebrows.
0:13:56 > 0:13:59But such pictures were really just propaganda -
0:13:59 > 0:14:02the lot of the poor had worsened under Catherine's reign.
0:14:06 > 0:14:09And one truly monumental work of art
0:14:09 > 0:14:11shows the brutal reality
0:14:11 > 0:14:15behind the myth of Catherine's Enlightenment.
0:14:18 > 0:14:21In the 1760s, she commissioned a statue of Peter the Great,
0:14:21 > 0:14:25now known as "the Bronze Horseman".
0:14:27 > 0:14:31It shows the tsar as a dynamic Caesar.
0:14:32 > 0:14:37This was Catherine's way of claiming Peter's power as her own.
0:14:37 > 0:14:42She too would master the Russian people as Peter masters his horse.
0:14:50 > 0:14:53But for me, the most fascinating thing about the monument
0:14:53 > 0:14:58is not the statue itself, but the enormous plinth on which it stands,
0:14:58 > 0:14:59the so-called thunder rock.
0:14:59 > 0:15:02According to legend, it's the stone
0:15:02 > 0:15:06from the top of which Peter first surveyed the site of St Petersburg.
0:15:06 > 0:15:12Now, at Catherine's insistence, this enormous piece of granite -
0:15:12 > 0:15:14it weights 1,800 tonnes -
0:15:14 > 0:15:17was transported to this site several miles.
0:15:17 > 0:15:20It took hundreds of men nearly two years.
0:15:20 > 0:15:22No beasts of burden were used.
0:15:22 > 0:15:26It's quite possibly the single largest piece of stone
0:15:26 > 0:15:28ever moved by human force alone.
0:15:28 > 0:15:32Now, it's a crushingly powerful, overbearing symbol
0:15:32 > 0:15:37of the real relationship between ruler and ruled in Tsarist Russia.
0:15:37 > 0:15:40This was Catherine's way of saying to her people,
0:15:40 > 0:15:43"No matter how difficult it might seem,
0:15:43 > 0:15:45"no matter how mad it might appear,
0:15:45 > 0:15:48"whatever I tell you to do, you do it."
0:15:54 > 0:15:59And artists too had to endure their own form of servitude.
0:15:59 > 0:16:04The St Petersburg Academy was built as a Roman temple.
0:16:05 > 0:16:08It rigidly controlled the training of artists
0:16:08 > 0:16:12in the European classical tradition...
0:16:12 > 0:16:16emphasising the study of Greek and Roman art.
0:16:16 > 0:16:21This depiction of the studio of Venetsianov -
0:16:21 > 0:16:24the leading Russian artist of the early 19th century -
0:16:24 > 0:16:27is dutifully filled with casts of classical statues.
0:16:32 > 0:16:34In the Russian Museum,
0:16:34 > 0:16:37you can see how this overwhelmingly academic approach
0:16:37 > 0:16:41was to keep a tight leash on the development of the nation's art.
0:16:47 > 0:16:49Now, if you want to experience
0:16:49 > 0:16:53the Russian tradition of European style art, 100 years of art history,
0:16:53 > 0:16:57squeezed into just a few rooms, this is the best place to do it.
0:16:57 > 0:17:00Here, you might be in an English style portrait gallery,
0:17:00 > 0:17:02look at those two pictures of a young girl
0:17:02 > 0:17:03and young boy, like mannequins
0:17:03 > 0:17:07in the airless interior of some palace.
0:17:07 > 0:17:10They were determined to have everything in their palaces
0:17:10 > 0:17:13that you'd find in any of the great European palaces.
0:17:13 > 0:17:17Tapestries made at the newly founded in St Petersburg tapestry factory,
0:17:17 > 0:17:20great monumental bronzes - this time it's Empress Anna,
0:17:20 > 0:17:22attended by an Arab boy.
0:17:25 > 0:17:28They also quickly developed their own traditions
0:17:28 > 0:17:32of classically inspired art - heroic nudes, or scenes from Homer,
0:17:32 > 0:17:36designed for the moral contemplation of the Russian aristocracy.
0:17:36 > 0:17:40Now by the time you get to the end of the 18th century,
0:17:40 > 0:17:44Russian artists have really mastered most of the major European genres.
0:17:44 > 0:17:48And this room is devoted to the work of Dmitri Levitsky,
0:17:48 > 0:17:51who's the giant of late 18th century Russian portraiture.
0:17:51 > 0:17:54He's Russia's answer to Sir Joshua Reynolds.
0:17:54 > 0:17:57This great picture here, a wonderfully theatrical portrait
0:17:57 > 0:17:58of Catherine the Great,
0:17:58 > 0:18:01could almost have been painted by Reynolds himself.
0:18:01 > 0:18:05It's an utterly competent, completely derivative work of art.
0:18:05 > 0:18:07But that's the point, they didn't want originality.
0:18:07 > 0:18:10They wanted EXACTLY what the Europeans had.
0:18:12 > 0:18:17And Russia's tradition of grand, academic copycat painting
0:18:17 > 0:18:20would come to a wild crescendo with THIS picture.
0:18:20 > 0:18:22It's my favourite picture in the museum.
0:18:22 > 0:18:24It's not so bad it's good...
0:18:24 > 0:18:26it's so bad it's fantastic.
0:18:26 > 0:18:31It's Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii.
0:18:33 > 0:18:35Bryullov's painting gleefully captures
0:18:35 > 0:18:39the destruction of the ancient Roman city,
0:18:39 > 0:18:41but it's really an excuse to show off
0:18:41 > 0:18:45his mastery of European style and subject matter.
0:18:50 > 0:18:53Almost everything in the picture is second-hand.
0:18:53 > 0:18:56It's a wonderful collage of borrowings. The dead mother
0:18:56 > 0:19:00with her baby in the foreground is taken from a classical source.
0:19:00 > 0:19:03Those figures masked with the cloak are from the Italian Raphael.
0:19:03 > 0:19:06If you look up at the back the man on the rearing horse,
0:19:06 > 0:19:09he's nicked from Delacroix, the French Romantic painter.
0:19:09 > 0:19:12But the picture's more than the sum of its parts
0:19:12 > 0:19:15and once all of these elements have been whirled around
0:19:15 > 0:19:20in Bryullov's magic liquidiser, the result is an extraordinarily,
0:19:20 > 0:19:22theatrical, mad vision of apocalypse.
0:19:22 > 0:19:25And what it makes me think of, more than anything else,
0:19:25 > 0:19:28is the great Russian genius for theatre, for opera.
0:19:28 > 0:19:29In fact, I think it's a painting
0:19:29 > 0:19:32that really aspires to the condition of cinema.
0:19:32 > 0:19:35After all, it's painted in Cinemascope format.
0:19:35 > 0:19:38I think, in a way, the only thing that's missing
0:19:38 > 0:19:41is a little man coming up through the floor playing an organ!
0:20:03 > 0:20:05But by the start of the 1840s,
0:20:05 > 0:20:09Russian culture was on the brink of a momentous change.
0:20:09 > 0:20:12Writers like Gogol were beginning to show
0:20:12 > 0:20:14that the lives of ordinary Russians
0:20:14 > 0:20:17could be the stuff of great literature.
0:20:17 > 0:20:21And, after a century of academic repression, artists were desperate
0:20:21 > 0:20:24to follow their lead.
0:20:25 > 0:20:29There was a growing hunger for images of real day-to-day life.
0:20:29 > 0:20:31And by the middle of the 19th century,
0:20:31 > 0:20:34Russian art had reached a kind of tipping point.
0:20:34 > 0:20:38Artists were fed up with endlessly depicting the same tiny elite,
0:20:38 > 0:20:41or churning out huge classical melodramas.
0:20:41 > 0:20:44They wanted to paint what they saw as the real Russia -
0:20:44 > 0:20:46Russia in the here and now.
0:20:50 > 0:20:54The first painter really to peer beneath the surface
0:20:54 > 0:20:58of Russian society was Pavel Fedotov.
0:20:58 > 0:21:03From the 1840s, he caricatured the ruling classes.
0:21:05 > 0:21:08Russia had virtually no history of satirical art,
0:21:08 > 0:21:14so people were truly shocked by Fedotov's feckless young woman,
0:21:14 > 0:21:16his preening major
0:21:16 > 0:21:18and his penniless noble
0:21:18 > 0:21:20hiding a pauper's breakfast.
0:21:25 > 0:21:28This picture is called the Fresh Cavalier,
0:21:28 > 0:21:31and it's one of Fedotov's biggest hits.
0:21:31 > 0:21:33When he exhibited it at the 1846 exhibition,
0:21:33 > 0:21:37thousands of people crowded round to see this satire
0:21:37 > 0:21:41of a rather small-minded cavalry officer.
0:21:41 > 0:21:44He's been given a medal, and he's spent the whole night carousing
0:21:44 > 0:21:47and celebrating this honour that's been bestowed on him.
0:21:47 > 0:21:52He's a vain man, his hair is in curlers. He's also immoral,
0:21:52 > 0:21:55because he's spent the night with his mistress.
0:21:56 > 0:21:58Fedotov was a huge fan of Hogarth
0:21:58 > 0:22:02and of the European satirical tradition and you can see that
0:22:02 > 0:22:05in his love of incriminating details.
0:22:05 > 0:22:07Look at the drained champagne bottle,
0:22:07 > 0:22:11the broken crockery symbolising smashed virtue,
0:22:11 > 0:22:15the guitar without its strings, which is a symbol of discord...
0:22:15 > 0:22:20..and the cat, scratching away at the silk cover of the chair.
0:22:20 > 0:22:23And I think the cat, in some way, is a symbol of the man himself -
0:22:23 > 0:22:27a privileged person who's abusing his status.
0:22:29 > 0:22:33Fedotov's own life ended unhappily.
0:22:33 > 0:22:37He was brutally jumped on by the Russian censor,
0:22:37 > 0:22:40who prevented him from publishing his work in the form of engravings
0:22:40 > 0:22:43or lithographs, reaching out directly to the wider public
0:22:43 > 0:22:47because it was seen as simply too inflammatory.
0:22:47 > 0:22:52What happened was that the artist gradually retreated in on himself.
0:22:52 > 0:22:56He died at the age of 37 after a long depression.
0:22:56 > 0:22:59In fact, he ended his days in a lunatic asylum.
0:22:59 > 0:23:01And this picture,
0:23:01 > 0:23:06ironically entitled Encore Encore is one of his very, very last works.
0:23:06 > 0:23:11And it takes us to a far bleaker and darker place
0:23:11 > 0:23:15than anything seen in his earlier pictures.
0:23:15 > 0:23:19Here, we've got this image of a man,
0:23:19 > 0:23:24a military officer, somewhere at the rump end of the Russian Empire,
0:23:24 > 0:23:26perhaps in Siberia.
0:23:26 > 0:23:29There's a glimpse of snow and perhaps a rook or two
0:23:29 > 0:23:32in the murk outside that window.
0:23:34 > 0:23:39He's in a log cabin, he's on his own, the implication is that
0:23:39 > 0:23:41he's spent months here
0:23:41 > 0:23:44and he's passing the time
0:23:44 > 0:23:48by teaching his dog to jump over a stick.
0:23:50 > 0:23:56The dog is this blurred, strange form.
0:23:56 > 0:23:58And it's hard not to read it as a kind of metaphor
0:23:58 > 0:24:02for Fedotov's very bleak view of Russian society.
0:24:02 > 0:24:06In a sense, aren't we all doing something as pointless as this?
0:24:12 > 0:24:16But the trickles of discontent in Fedotov's work
0:24:16 > 0:24:18were about to become a tidal wave.
0:24:21 > 0:24:26The great rebellion had taken more than a century to arrive
0:24:26 > 0:24:29but it would revolutionise the course of Russian art.
0:24:33 > 0:24:38In 1863, the students at St Petersburg's rather stuffy academy
0:24:38 > 0:24:41started lobbying to be allowed to paint purely Russian subjects.
0:24:41 > 0:24:45But their professors said, "No," and the subject set
0:24:45 > 0:24:49for that year's final exam was Odin entering the gates of Valhalla.
0:24:49 > 0:24:52Fourteen students left in protest.
0:24:52 > 0:24:55They decided to turn their back on St Petersburg
0:24:55 > 0:24:59and take their art to the whole of this vast country.
0:24:59 > 0:25:03They were to be called the Peredvizhniki - The Wanderers.
0:25:12 > 0:25:16The Wanderers saw themselves as more than just artists.
0:25:16 > 0:25:19Acutely aware of Russia's lack of democracy,
0:25:19 > 0:25:24they believed it was the painter's duty to explore
0:25:24 > 0:25:28and expose every aspect of Russian life.
0:25:28 > 0:25:31They showed the bitter lives of the peasants.
0:25:33 > 0:25:36They celebrated the splendour of the landscape.
0:25:37 > 0:25:40They remembered Russia's tyrannical history,
0:25:40 > 0:25:43the blood-letting of mad Ivan the Terrible.
0:25:46 > 0:25:48They didn't paint the idle rich
0:25:48 > 0:25:51but kindred spirits wrestling with Russia's destiny.
0:25:52 > 0:25:55Writers like Ivan Turgenev
0:25:55 > 0:25:58and the brooding Fyodor Dostoyevsky.
0:25:59 > 0:26:03Above all, they painted the towering figure
0:26:03 > 0:26:06of 19th century Russian culture,
0:26:06 > 0:26:08Leo Tolstoy.
0:26:10 > 0:26:14The Wanderers regarded Tolstoy as their spiritual godfather.
0:26:14 > 0:26:17And for him, the purpose of writing novels
0:26:17 > 0:26:19was to point the way forward for Russia.
0:26:19 > 0:26:23So take a book like Anna Karenina. Yes, it's a great tragic love story
0:26:23 > 0:26:26but, at its heart, it's really a political tract,
0:26:26 > 0:26:30a great rejection of the values of the court and the city
0:26:30 > 0:26:32and an embrace of the values of the land.
0:26:32 > 0:26:36The central scene in the book has the male character Levin
0:26:36 > 0:26:39being taught to wield a scythe by his peasants.
0:26:39 > 0:26:42And suddenly, at this moment, he realises
0:26:42 > 0:26:46that he feels truly Russian, he feels at one with the world.
0:26:51 > 0:26:55Tolstoy was celebrated in a series of paintings by the Wanderers.
0:26:57 > 0:27:00Here by Nesterov, wearing peasant garb.
0:27:02 > 0:27:06Here by Repin, ploughing a field.
0:27:06 > 0:27:08But there was nothing twee or escapist
0:27:08 > 0:27:11about this retreat to the land.
0:27:11 > 0:27:14Tolstoy believed the nation could only be saved
0:27:14 > 0:27:17by reconnecting with her ancient traditions...
0:27:17 > 0:27:20and Russian artists followed his lead.
0:27:25 > 0:27:29The Wanderers were fascinated by documenting the Russian landscape.
0:27:29 > 0:27:32They were part of a broad movement towards landscape painting.
0:27:32 > 0:27:35Artists all over Europe were getting back to nature -
0:27:35 > 0:27:38most famously, the French Impressionists.
0:27:38 > 0:27:41But the Russians weren't interested
0:27:41 > 0:27:44in impressionistic effects of haze or blur
0:27:44 > 0:27:46because, for them,
0:27:46 > 0:27:49Mother Russia had the value almost of a spiritual absolute.
0:27:49 > 0:27:53They wanted to capture every leaf, every stalk, every cloud.
0:27:53 > 0:27:59So they opted for a style of almost hypnotic, photographic realism.
0:28:02 > 0:28:06The Wanderers' greatest landscape artist was Isaac Levitan.
0:28:06 > 0:28:12Regarded with suspicion by many Russians, Lithuanian and Jewish,
0:28:12 > 0:28:17he nonetheless set out to capture the essence of Russian nature.
0:28:20 > 0:28:23He painted the nation's great birch forests -
0:28:23 > 0:28:27a world of silver and green, dappled by sunlight.
0:28:35 > 0:28:39He said he painted to touch people's souls.
0:28:39 > 0:28:43And here you can see his positively religious sense
0:28:43 > 0:28:46of the vastness of the Russian landscape.
0:28:46 > 0:28:51He looks down, as if from God's point of view,
0:28:51 > 0:28:55to a tiny Orthodox church set within the greater cathedral of nature.
0:29:00 > 0:29:03But Levitan could chill the soul too.
0:29:03 > 0:29:08One of his most celebrated landscapes, Vladimirka,
0:29:08 > 0:29:11is shot through with a sense of morbidity and dread.
0:29:13 > 0:29:16You need to know this was the path political prisoners tramped down
0:29:16 > 0:29:18on their way to Siberia.
0:29:26 > 0:29:30Levitan had used landscape as a vehicle for protest.
0:29:30 > 0:29:34Political dissidence lay at the core of everything the Wanderers did.
0:29:36 > 0:29:40The most famous member of the group saw himself
0:29:40 > 0:29:42as Russia's conscience.
0:29:42 > 0:29:46His name? Ilya Repin.
0:29:54 > 0:29:59This is Ilya Repin's estate, and to Russians it's hallowed ground.
0:29:59 > 0:30:02He's not that well known outside Russia, but within Russia
0:30:02 > 0:30:08he's considered a giant, every bit as famous as Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy.
0:30:08 > 0:30:10And that's because he used painting
0:30:10 > 0:30:13to address the great issues of the day.
0:30:13 > 0:30:16In fact, during the course of his long career, there was hardly
0:30:16 > 0:30:19an aspect of Russian life that he didn't touch on.
0:30:24 > 0:30:28Repin's paintings are a panorama of Russian society.
0:30:31 > 0:30:33His Religious Procession in Kursk
0:30:33 > 0:30:36is on the scale of a great Russian novel.
0:30:36 > 0:30:39It's a piercing, pitiless image of a divided society,
0:30:39 > 0:30:43full of flawed figures of authority -
0:30:43 > 0:30:47the guard lashing out at the crowd,
0:30:47 > 0:30:51the vain priest primping his hair,
0:30:51 > 0:30:55the cruel father, beating his crippled son.
0:30:58 > 0:31:03Repin had his own wars with Tsarist authority, and the state censors.
0:31:03 > 0:31:10This picture, The Arrest of a Propagandist, shows a heroic revolutionary seized by the police.
0:31:10 > 0:31:18But Repin suppressed the image, knowing it was too inflammatory to show in public.
0:31:19 > 0:31:22He did plan to exhibit this even more shocking painting
0:31:22 > 0:31:27of a political prisoner spurning confession before his execution,
0:31:27 > 0:31:30but it was banned outright by the censor.
0:31:31 > 0:31:36Even in his portraiture, Repin was drawn to rebels and firebrands -
0:31:36 > 0:31:41this picture of the young, pallid Maxim Gorky emanates intellectual unrest.
0:31:45 > 0:31:51Elena Kirillina, the curator of the estate, has a particular love of Repin's portraits.
0:32:27 > 0:32:31If you had to name your favourite Repin painting, which one would it be?
0:32:45 > 0:32:47Repin lived in this dacha,
0:32:47 > 0:32:51which he designed himself in a simple, folksy style.
0:32:55 > 0:33:01But don't be fooled by appearances. This house, too, had an intensely political purpose.
0:33:09 > 0:33:13Repin's house embodies his values, and although he was rich enough to
0:33:13 > 0:33:17employ an army of servants, he prided himself on having none.
0:33:17 > 0:33:20In fact, visitors to the house were greeted by this sign...
0:33:20 > 0:33:24'Don't call for the butler, we haven't got one! Please announce yourself with a tam tam! '
0:33:26 > 0:33:33I think it was Repin's way of quietly banging a gong for his own democratic values.
0:33:37 > 0:33:42And this is his dining room. And because he didn't have any servants to wait on his guests,
0:33:42 > 0:33:48he devised this rather ingenious circular table, to make sure the plates got to each and every person.
0:33:48 > 0:33:49It was really quite revolutionary!
0:33:54 > 0:33:59You can see a smiling Repin on the left of the screen in this fragmentary home movie.
0:34:03 > 0:34:09And here he is, proudly shovelling away snow without a servant in sight.
0:34:09 > 0:34:13The living embodiment of the Wanderers' revolutionary ethos.
0:34:18 > 0:34:22I think the great thing about Repin was the breadth and the depth of his humanity.
0:34:22 > 0:34:26And unlike many other 19th century painters who depicted poor people,
0:34:26 > 0:34:30Repin didn't approach them in any patronising or sentimental way.
0:34:30 > 0:34:33He'd been brought up in poverty himself, as a peasant,
0:34:33 > 0:34:39and I think it was that background that gave him the ability to capture the harsh realities of Russian life
0:34:39 > 0:34:41like no other artist.
0:34:57 > 0:35:03In the 1870s, Repin created the most celebrated painting in the history of Russian art.
0:35:03 > 0:35:08It was to shock the nation with its unflinching depiction of peasant life.
0:35:14 > 0:35:17Barge-Haulers on the Volga is Repin's most famous picture.
0:35:17 > 0:35:20It's a great work of social protest.
0:35:20 > 0:35:23I'm not interested in painting light and colour, he said.
0:35:23 > 0:35:24I want to paint content.
0:35:24 > 0:35:29And the content here is unadulterated human misery.
0:35:29 > 0:35:3211 men hauling, with their own force,
0:35:32 > 0:35:38a great barge to the shore of the Volga river.
0:35:38 > 0:35:41They are human beings who have been reduced to the level of beasts.
0:35:41 > 0:35:43Now these figures draw the eye
0:35:43 > 0:35:45in so much that it's quite easy to miss
0:35:45 > 0:35:50a very important detail which is this little tugboat.
0:35:50 > 0:35:54And what it tells us, quite simply, is that there is another way of doing this.
0:35:54 > 0:35:57We've got steam power.
0:35:57 > 0:36:00But the fact is, that human labour is still so cheap,
0:36:00 > 0:36:04and our disregard for any sense of human rights is so enormous,
0:36:04 > 0:36:07that we're still prepared to treat people like this.
0:36:07 > 0:36:11Now, one of the things that's most interesting about this picture
0:36:11 > 0:36:16is that from the very moment it was painted, it was hugely popular,
0:36:16 > 0:36:19and its popularity has never diminished.
0:36:19 > 0:36:22It was, for example, Stalin's favourite painting.
0:36:22 > 0:36:26This was the picture that he held up to the artists of communist Russia
0:36:26 > 0:36:31as a model on which they should base their own work. And it's not hard to see why.
0:36:31 > 0:36:35because to a communist this would look like a depiction of
0:36:35 > 0:36:38the energies and the will that would lead to revolution.
0:36:38 > 0:36:42And the key figure of all, and this was said at the time when the picture was painted,
0:36:42 > 0:36:45the key figure, who's picked up by the light,
0:36:45 > 0:36:47is this boy in the middle.
0:36:47 > 0:36:54He's the only figure looking up, looking out as if to a better life, as if to a more optimistic future.
0:36:54 > 0:36:58And he even looks as if he's about to take off the shackles of slave labour.
0:37:03 > 0:37:05This was more than just a painting.
0:37:05 > 0:37:12This was an incendiary work of art, a manifesto for political change.
0:37:34 > 0:37:41So what was the Wanderers' alternative to this brutal world of oppression and servitude?
0:37:41 > 0:37:44You can glimpse it here at the estate of Abramtsevo,
0:37:44 > 0:37:50where they founded an artists' colony.
0:37:52 > 0:37:56Surrounded by buildings designed in homage to ancient folk architecture,
0:37:56 > 0:37:59they studied the arts and crafts of old Russia.
0:38:05 > 0:38:09Abramtsevo was to be a model society, taking Russia itself back to basics.
0:38:13 > 0:38:17At its centre they built an orthodox church,
0:38:17 > 0:38:21which still bears witness to their highly charged sense of mission.
0:38:24 > 0:38:28HE SAYS SOMETHING IN RUSSIAN
0:38:28 > 0:38:33I'm sorry my Russian is terrible but we'll get there in the end.
0:38:33 > 0:38:35The keeper to the church.
0:38:35 > 0:38:37That is a big key.
0:38:40 > 0:38:41Spasibo.
0:39:21 > 0:39:23This is the Church of the Holy Saviour.
0:39:23 > 0:39:29And it marks a very important moment, a point where the artists of the late 19th century here in Russia
0:39:29 > 0:39:33reconnect with the mysteries of orthodox Christianity.
0:39:33 > 0:39:37And a whole group of painters, craftsmen and sculptors
0:39:37 > 0:39:40collaborated to create the decoration for this church.
0:39:40 > 0:39:46An artist called Viktor Vasnetsov created this rather beautiful,
0:39:46 > 0:39:51naive style mosaic floor.
0:39:51 > 0:39:55But he real splendour of this little church is its iconostasis,
0:39:55 > 0:39:58the screen that separates the congregation from the altar.
0:39:58 > 0:40:03And here Repin himself, the greatest of the Wanderers,
0:40:03 > 0:40:09contributed the image of Christ as if imprinted on the veil, like the Turin shroud.
0:40:09 > 0:40:13I think what's fascinating about this is the solemnity of the gaze
0:40:13 > 0:40:17and the fact that Repin has made Christ look like an archetypal Russian.
0:40:17 > 0:40:25This could almost be an image of Russia itself as Christ, as the sacrificial victim.
0:40:25 > 0:40:29I think what this moment of reconnection with orthodox Christianity
0:40:29 > 0:40:34gave to the whole movement was a powerful, almost mystical sense of vocation.
0:40:47 > 0:40:52There was one artist who would bring together this heady mixture
0:40:52 > 0:40:59of ancient mysticism and folk motifs, and in doing so, push Russian art to its outer limits.
0:41:01 > 0:41:03Mikhail Vrubel.
0:41:11 > 0:41:14Unlike most of the other artists who came here to Abramtsevo,
0:41:14 > 0:41:18Vrubel didn't need to be taught the rudiments of Russian folk art.
0:41:18 > 0:41:20He understood it at a gut level.
0:41:20 > 0:41:25Very unusually, he had grown up painting icons, restoring murals in Russian churches.
0:41:25 > 0:41:31And here where they preserved his studio almost intact, you can see his homages to the folk tradition.
0:41:31 > 0:41:33These ceramics,
0:41:33 > 0:41:36depicting figures from myths and fairy story.
0:41:36 > 0:41:42But for me there's also something obsessive, strange, almost grotesque about some of these figures,
0:41:42 > 0:41:47and Vrubel himself was a deeply neurotic individual.
0:41:47 > 0:41:52In the end, his greatest achievement was to take this popular language of Russian folk art,
0:41:52 > 0:41:57and merge it together into a new form of Russian painting,
0:41:57 > 0:42:00a painting of dark prophecy.
0:42:00 > 0:42:06Vrubel's work always has a disturbing, decadent edge -
0:42:06 > 0:42:13an end of century fixation with dark forces, which he shared with many European artists.
0:42:13 > 0:42:17But he took it to an extreme, obsessed with a figure that was like
0:42:17 > 0:42:22the ghost of ancient Russia, bent on a terrible vengeance.
0:42:47 > 0:42:50During the last 20 years of his life,
0:42:50 > 0:42:54Vrubel became fascinated by a figure he simply called 'The Demon'.
0:42:54 > 0:42:58He painted picture after picture of this mythical creature.
0:42:58 > 0:43:05The series began as illustrations to a poem, but they developed into a strange private obsession.
0:43:05 > 0:43:09And you can sense that in a picture such as this,
0:43:09 > 0:43:12Vrubel is straining, almost self-consciously, to create
0:43:12 > 0:43:16a very Russian language., there's a vibrancy of colour.
0:43:16 > 0:43:21And over here on this side of the picture you've got this tremendously adventurous use of paint
0:43:21 > 0:43:26which seems almost to prefigure Cubism, these blocks of colour have been placed here like this.
0:43:26 > 0:43:32But I think they're actually meant to evoke the mosaic traditions of folk art and their ceramics.
0:43:32 > 0:43:36And in the centre we've got this figure of the demon,
0:43:36 > 0:43:40this brooding spirit of modern Russia, of Russia as the 20th century approaches,
0:43:40 > 0:43:46which I think is meant to be somehow pondering the great questions that face the nation -
0:43:46 > 0:43:47who are we, where are we going?
0:43:50 > 0:43:53But if you want to see just how far
0:43:53 > 0:44:00Vrubel would push the Russian folk traditions towards a kind of fin de siecle melancholia,
0:44:00 > 0:44:04you need to look at this picture, the very last of his demon paintings.
0:44:04 > 0:44:08- The Demon downcast. Now at first sight, it's a baffling image.
0:44:08 > 0:44:15Here at the centre you've got this elongated, strangely dislocated figure of the demon,
0:44:15 > 0:44:20who appears to have been wedged into some piece of hillside
0:44:20 > 0:44:26in the middle of a barren Siberian plain, cloud-capped, snow-capped mountain in the distance.
0:44:26 > 0:44:32And once again you've got, very much you've got the colours of the Russian orthodox church.
0:44:32 > 0:44:35You've got this gold everywhere.
0:44:35 > 0:44:39And yet the whole things been whipped up into a storm of almost total visual incoherence.
0:44:39 > 0:44:43This is figurative painting that's almost on the brink of abstraction.
0:44:43 > 0:44:48You've got the sense of almost as if the elements of your visual experience
0:44:48 > 0:44:53have been put into a kaleidoscope by the artist and whirled around.
0:44:58 > 0:45:04Like many another Russian artist and writer of his time, Vrubel ended up in a lunatic asylum.
0:45:04 > 0:45:08But I think there's a kind of passionate sanity about this image.
0:45:08 > 0:45:11I think he genuinely did feel
0:45:11 > 0:45:17that Russia at the start of the 20th century was on the brink of some kind of apocalypse.
0:45:17 > 0:45:22And this image of a world almost ripped to pieces by its own elemental energies
0:45:22 > 0:45:28was his way of saying what he thought perhaps lay ahead for his nation.
0:45:36 > 0:45:41Vrubel's sense of approaching apocalypse was shared by many Russians.
0:45:41 > 0:45:49And it was a feeling fuelled by new, radical strains of political thought from Europe.
0:45:49 > 0:45:55A book which would change the course of Russian history was published in the late 19th century,
0:45:55 > 0:46:00the work of a dangerous German revolutionary.
0:46:04 > 0:46:06Das Kapital got past the Tsar's censors
0:46:06 > 0:46:10on the grounds that nobody in Russia could possibly understand it!
0:46:10 > 0:46:15And although it is a dense and difficult book, it's also full of prophecies and Biblical metaphors
0:46:15 > 0:46:20that appealed very strongly to Russia's mystic, apocalyptically inclined thinkers.
0:46:20 > 0:46:25Marx compared the accumulation of capital to original sin,
0:46:25 > 0:46:31and described capitalism itself as a demonic force, hatching golden eggs.
0:46:31 > 0:46:38As Russia accelerated into the 20th century, this book became its new bible.
0:46:44 > 0:46:49While Marxists plotted, back in St Petersburg Russia's old tsarist regime
0:46:49 > 0:46:52was looking ever more out of touch.
0:46:54 > 0:46:57Ancient structures of power had barely changed in Russia
0:46:58 > 0:47:01since Peter the Great and the cracks were beginning to show.
0:47:06 > 0:47:10In 1894, Nicholas II took to the throne,
0:47:10 > 0:47:15a feeble ruler who resisted calls for democracy.
0:47:15 > 0:47:19The people were stirring into open revolt,
0:47:23 > 0:47:26but Nicholas chose to ignore the abyss opening before him.
0:47:37 > 0:47:44His own favourite art shows him disappearing into a darkly intoxicating dream world.
0:47:44 > 0:47:50The Tsar commissioned a series of eggs from the Faberge workshop.
0:47:50 > 0:47:55With the shimmering colours of silk, miraculously fixed in enamel,
0:47:55 > 0:47:58they're like Marx's golden eggs come to life.
0:48:11 > 0:48:16Housed behind bullet proof glass, these cold, glittering, brilliant objects of luxury
0:48:16 > 0:48:22are still the greatest symbol of the Tsarist regime in its last and most vulnerable years.
0:48:22 > 0:48:26And in fact, you can even see a tiny little portrait of Tsar Nicholas II
0:48:26 > 0:48:29embedded in the top of this particular Faberge egg.
0:48:29 > 0:48:32He looks as aloof and remote as ever.
0:48:32 > 0:48:39The timing of this weird imperial cult of mad extravagance could hardly have been worse.
0:48:39 > 0:48:43This egg was created in 1900, and just a few years earlier,
0:48:43 > 0:48:46half a million people in Russia had died of famine.
0:48:46 > 0:48:49Talk about obscene self indulgence.
0:48:53 > 0:48:56Nicolas' disconnection from the people was fanning the flames of revolution.
0:48:58 > 0:49:03And artists were growing so bold that even a royal commission
0:49:03 > 0:49:07could be used to undermine royal authority.
0:49:12 > 0:49:18This is the hippopotamus, as it was instantly nicknamed by the Russian people.
0:49:18 > 0:49:23A statue of Tsar Nicholas' late father, Alexander III,
0:49:23 > 0:49:28it's an outrageous parody of the heroic Bronze Horseman.
0:49:28 > 0:49:31This is the Obese Horseman.
0:49:31 > 0:49:33But so out of touch was Nicholas,
0:49:33 > 0:49:36he gave it the royal stamp of approval.
0:49:42 > 0:49:47The great Wanderer, Ilya Repin described the horse as an image of the Russian people,
0:49:47 > 0:49:52oppressed by the burden of the tsar, digging its heels in and refusing to go on.
0:49:52 > 0:49:57And even the sculptor responsible for it, Trubetskoy, who later fled to France,
0:49:57 > 0:50:00admitted that he'd intended the piece as a caricature.
0:50:00 > 0:50:04"I wanted to depict one animal on top of another." he said.
0:50:04 > 0:50:11So, ironically, what had been conceived as a grandiose celebration of the power of the Tsar,
0:50:11 > 0:50:15became a rallying point for those who wanted to overthrow his regime.
0:50:15 > 0:50:18And there were plenty of them.
0:50:21 > 0:50:28The Hippopotamus was the last gasp of the art of Imperial St Petersburg.
0:50:28 > 0:50:31An emblem of a culture about to be swept away.
0:50:37 > 0:50:39As the 20th century dawned,
0:50:39 > 0:50:43the energies of Russian culture shifted away from the capital
0:50:43 > 0:50:45and found a new home.
0:50:53 > 0:50:57A revolutionary centre for these revolutionary times.
0:50:57 > 0:51:00The City of Moscow!
0:51:05 > 0:51:10This great city had long been Russia's alternative centre of power,
0:51:10 > 0:51:14a place that defined itself in opposition to St Petersburg.
0:51:14 > 0:51:18And while the Tsar's city became ever more museum like and stultifying,
0:51:18 > 0:51:24Moscow embraced the spirit of a new age - bold, progressive, modern.
0:51:24 > 0:51:31At the start of the 20 century, this was one of the most exciting places in the whole world to be an artist.
0:51:36 > 0:51:40Moscow was a natural home for artists who wanted to combine radicalism
0:51:40 > 0:51:42with a renewal of Russian culture.
0:51:45 > 0:51:52Vrubel emblazoned Moscow's grandest hotel with figures from legend and fairytales.
0:51:52 > 0:51:54Languid spirits casting a spell on the city.
0:51:58 > 0:52:00Inspired by Cubism and Futurism,
0:52:00 > 0:52:05Natalia Goncharova celebrated Russian life,
0:52:05 > 0:52:07in pictures that also evoke icons and folk art.
0:52:15 > 0:52:22But one Moscow-born artist would catapult Russian modernism further than anything found in Europe,
0:52:22 > 0:52:26creating a completely new, revolutionary style of art.
0:52:33 > 0:52:38Wassily Kandinsky turned Moscow into a tapestry of colour.
0:52:40 > 0:52:48And he dissolved it into the swirling forms of a bewildering dream.
0:52:48 > 0:52:52It was the city's ancient forms that enthralled him.
0:52:52 > 0:52:56Above all, its exotic onion domes.
0:53:01 > 0:53:07Kandinsky said that Moscow itself was the catalyst for his new form of disorientating painting.
0:53:07 > 0:53:09He saw it as a kind of fairytale city
0:53:09 > 0:53:16and said that the music of its streets made his heart tremble and vibrate.
0:53:20 > 0:53:24Filled with these heady, intoxicating visions of old Russia,
0:53:24 > 0:53:27Kandinsky would leap into the unknown.
0:54:08 > 0:54:16Between 1909 and 1914, Kandinsky worked to untether his art
0:54:16 > 0:54:21from any reference at all to the visible world.
0:54:21 > 0:54:25And he created what have been remembered as the very first abstract paintings.
0:54:25 > 0:54:30This for me is the greatest of them all, Composition seven, which he created in 1913.
0:54:30 > 0:54:36Now, for all the importance of the French influence on Kandinsky, the influence of the Cubists, of Monet,
0:54:36 > 0:54:41the Impressionists, I think you can really see his Russian roots.
0:54:41 > 0:54:47This is almost like that extraordinary Vrubel painting of the demon cast down.
0:54:47 > 0:54:52This could almost be that picture seen through half closed eyes.
0:54:52 > 0:54:58Vrubel's kaleidoscope has become Kandinsky's vortex.
0:54:58 > 0:55:06A kind of whirlpool in which the last vestiges of representation float free.
0:55:06 > 0:55:10Kandinsky was also a mystic.
0:55:10 > 0:55:15He believed that we were on the brink of what he called the great epoch of spirituality,
0:55:15 > 0:55:17and that is what he was painting.
0:55:17 > 0:55:23He was tearing the veil from the over materialist eyes of mankind,
0:55:23 > 0:55:27I think that what this picture expresses, more than anything else,
0:55:27 > 0:55:35is his genuine belief that the world was on the brink of some kind of spiritual revolution.
0:55:41 > 0:55:46As Kandinsky launched Russian art into abstraction, Russia itself was degenerating into formless chaos.
0:55:50 > 0:55:57In 1915, in the throes of the first world war, the Tsar was losing all control over the country.
0:56:00 > 0:56:06As communists demanded revolution, the most radical Russian artist of all,
0:56:06 > 0:56:11Kazimir Malevich, created art for a new world to come.
0:56:11 > 0:56:15A series of stark geometrical shapes,
0:56:15 > 0:56:19thrusting away all the old conventions.
0:56:20 > 0:56:25He was marching towards one of the most shocking works of the 20th century...
0:56:28 > 0:56:29..the Black Square.
0:56:41 > 0:56:46This cracked and fading painting has the status of a holy relic,
0:56:46 > 0:56:52an icon touched not by God, but by revolution.
0:56:52 > 0:56:57It's an image of Russia itself as a blank space,
0:56:57 > 0:57:01ready for the great change to be written into it.
0:57:03 > 0:57:06Malevich was a revolutionary, in politics as well as in art.
0:57:06 > 0:57:09He had fought on the barricades against the Russian state.
0:57:09 > 0:57:12Here, he's followed Kandinsky into abstraction,
0:57:12 > 0:57:17but he's purged the image of all colour, all form.
0:57:17 > 0:57:21He's left you with nothing but a void.
0:57:25 > 0:57:29The traditionalists tried to laugh the picture off.
0:57:31 > 0:57:35They said Malevich had gone mad, he must've painted the black square in the dark.
0:57:35 > 0:57:37His response was straight forward.
0:57:37 > 0:57:39"I'm glad I'm not like you.
0:57:39 > 0:57:43"I can go further and further into the wilderness,
0:57:43 > 0:57:47"because it's only there that transformation will take place.
0:57:47 > 0:57:52"My black square is a bare and frameless icon for our times.
0:57:52 > 0:57:58"Arise, Comrades and free yourselves from the tyranny of objects."
0:58:09 > 0:58:12In the same year the Black Square went on display,
0:58:12 > 0:58:17Lenin was in Switzerland plotting the overthrow of the Tsar.
0:58:20 > 0:58:23Russian troops were retreating from German forces.
0:58:26 > 0:58:29Strikers were bringing the nation to a standstill.
0:58:32 > 0:58:34Revolution was coming.
0:58:34 > 0:58:37Russia had reached Year Zero.
0:58:50 > 0:58:54Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd
0:58:54 > 0:58:59E-mail subtitling@bbc.co.uk