Soviet union

‘It is no easier to make a good painting,’ wrote Vincent van Gogh to his brother Theo, than it is ‘to find a diamond or a pearl.’ He was quite correct. Truly marvellous pictures are extremely rare. To make one, Vincent went on, you have to ‘stake your life’ (as he, indeed, was doing). Well, there is just such a jewel of a painting — only one by my count — in Francis Bacon: Couplings, an exhibition at Gagosian, 20 Grosvenor Hill. In some cases, the title of the show is literal. Several pictures depict two naked men in a ferocious sexual tangle. As a subject, this is perhaps still

How many people do you think died at Chernobyl? 10,000? 50,000? 300,000? The correct answer, according to the never knowingly understated World Health Organisation — in a thorough report released nearly 20 years after the 1986 explosion — was ‘fewer than 50’. Ah, but what about all the mutant babies who ended up with two heads and webbed feet? What about the inevitable epidemic of cancers? Well, yes, it’s true that 4,000 more cases of thyroid cancer were loosely attributable to Chernobyl, mainly in children and adolescents. But the survival rate was 99 per cent. Because I’ve long been familiar with these facts — mainly as an antidote to all

The best booers, in my experience, are the Germans. There’s real purpose and thickness to their vocals. Italians hiss. The English grumble. The French? A bit of this, a bit of that. I approve of booing — or feedback, as I like to think of it. It’s galvanising and exhilarating, even when infuriating. Are you with them or not? One caveat: save it till after the performance, please. The French do not hold to such niceties. One piggy old Parisian thought it appropriate to shout at the stage during Sunday’s performance of Opéra Bastille’s new Troyens. And not once. But three times. On that third cry, he got on to

Dau is not so much a film as a document of a mass human experiment. The result is dark, brilliant and profoundly disturbing. For three years up to 400 people, only one a professional actor, lived for months at a time on a city-sized set specially built for the shoot near Kharkov, Ukraine. Modelled on the real Kharkov Institute of Experimental Physics between 1938 and 1968, every detail on the set was scrupulously in period, from the light fittings to the lavatory paper. The participants — who included a real-life Nobel Prize winner and famous orchestra conductor as well as real former KGB and prison officers — were required to

It’s hard to admire communist art with an entirely clear conscience. The centenary of the October revolution, which falls this month, marks a national calamity whose casualties are still being counted. When my father-in-law comes to visit, I have to hide my modest collection of Russian propaganda: he grew up under the Soviets and has few fond memories of the experience. He can’t work out why old agitprop is so popular today. But the simple fact is, for all the disaster they wrought, the Bolsheviks did leave a legacy of images so striking that, even now, they can draw thousands into a museum. As Tate Modern is about to demonstrate.

Armando Iannucci’s The Death of Stalin is nearly two hours of men in bad suits bickering, but if you have to sit through nearly two hours of men in bad suits bickering you would want it to be written (and directed) by Iannucci. So there’s that, but it’s still not up there with his previous film, In the Loop. It’s funny but not as funny, misfires in places, and by the end you are rather thinking: come on, one of you seize power, so we can all just get out of here. On this outing, Iannucci has substituted Whitehall and White House backbiting (The Thick of It, Veep) for Russia

Is Evgeny Kissin, born in Moscow in 1971, the most famous concert pianist in the world? Probably not, if you stretch the definition of ‘concert pianist’ to encompass the circus antics of Lang Lang, the 34-year-old Chinese virtuoso who — in the words of a lesser-known but outstandingly gifted colleague — ‘can play well but chooses not to’. But you could certainly argue that Kissin has been the world’s most enigmatic great pianist since the death of Sviatoslav Richter in 1997 – though, unlike the promiscuously gay Richter, his overwhelming concern with privacy does not conceal any exotic secrets. He has recently married for the first time, but chooses not

Vladimir Putin notoriously declared the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 to be one of the greatest disasters of the 20th century. However, as Revolution: Russian Art 1917–32 — an ambitious exhibition at the Royal Academy — helps to make clear, the true catastrophe had occurred 82 years earlier, in 1917. Like many of the tragedies of human history, the Russian revolution was accompanied, at least in the early stages, by energy, hope and creativity as well as by murderous cruelty and messianic delusion. The greatest symbol of the last was Vladimir Tatlin’s huge projected ‘Monument to the Third International’ (1920), a sort of communist successor to Bruegel’s ‘Tower

Who could resist School of Rock? For me it was a chance to see a heavy-metal musical written by the best-known headbanger in the House of Lords, Julian Fellowes. The movie features Jack Black as a failed rock guitarist who bluffs his way into a private school and turns a class of robotic snoots into a prize-winning band. It’s one of the most joyous stories ever filmed. This version, faithfully scripted by his lordship, rises to the same level and delivers a night of sheer rapture. The thing is like a drug. Every performance sends skyrockets of happiness zinging up and down your spine. David Flynn has an echo of