The chronicle

Pablo Picasso may have adored the stage, but Tate Modern’s Theatre Picasso too often leaves his pictures standing still. Independent British writer and art curator Alistair Hicks argues that curators drown vitality in concept—summoning “performativity” and Carmen while sidelining the Ballets Russes—and that the show’s joy evaporates under its own thesis. Haunting it all is Olga Khokhlova: the Ukrainian dancer who stopped dancing, and whose shadow, for Hicks, exposes a museum production that mistakes staging for life.

by Alistair Hicks

What a dance! What a performance! Sorry, that is too clear cut. In their introduction, Tate’s in-house directors congratulate the guest curators. They declare that ‘With Theatre Picasso they have created a stage for our collection of works to dance.’ The show is about Picasso’s love of theatre, mythmaking and dance, yet it is hardly a celebration, as Picasso was a misogynist, who bullied a succession of women. So just like Picasso’s love for his first wife, the dancing Olga Khokhlova, soured, the Tate have produced an exhibition that has sadly sucked the joy off the stage that Picasso shared with Sergei Diaghilev. Without joy the pictures refuse to dance. The memory of Olga haunts the show: she hurt her leg just before she was married to the great artist and never danced again, except in his pictures.

The curators conjure up Carmen. They even show Man Ray’s images of Picasso dressed as Carmen – and let’s be honest these images record one of the most satirically hammed Carmens of all time! Where’s the vitality? Where’s the Bizet beat? Where’s the joy? The filmmaker guest curator, Wu Tsang, and her partner-in-crime, Enrique Fuenteblanca, seem to be claiming that they have found the Carmen in Picasso. They write: ‘Just as we had tried to stage Carmen in order to understand the ways in which myth had been constructed, it was now a question of staging nothing more and nothing less than the myth of Picasso.’ If only they had delivered!

The crux of the problem with this show may stem in part with the Tate’s relationship with Russia. The Tate appointed two Russian curators in recent years, ostensibly to appeal to wealthy Russian donors, and hopefully a genuine desire for us all to learn more about Russian art. Most people when they think of theatre and Picasso think of the Ballet Russes. There are photographs and sketches referring to this, but it is far from a central theme.

Picasso was a myth maker on a par with the worst dictators and best storytellers, so it is totally understandable that there should be a warning shot across our bows so we can understand Picasso in context. The curators write that ‘approaching Picasso from our times – informed by the perspectives of feminism, decoloniality, ecologies and so on – it may not be possible to critique Picasso without inevitably ‘redeeming’ him simply by updating the discourse. However, we find the concept of performativity to be valuable here …’ They decided to judge him by an ugly word that is already outdated. They go on to ‘explain’ that ‘The word ‘performativity’ can mean a lot of things and is often misunderstood. Perhaps most elementally, it refers to how words and actions can effect change, transform or undo states of being. We find performativity in many aspects of Picasso’s work: as theatricality; as situating gestures in time and space; as ‘doing things with words’, as ‘staging’; to cultivate persona; and as an attention to the performativity of marginalised or ‘marked’ bodies.’  Please! What are they talking about?

But let’s try and forget for a moment the curators and their cramped factory-farming approach to staging. The paintings and photographs do dance when they are given the space in our minds. The exhibition is a success even if it only makes us celebrate the centenary of the Tate’s own ´The Three Dancers´, 1925, which can be read as a monument to the male artist’s infidelity. It was painted as the relationship with Olga was curdling. He had once fallen in love with this ‘beauty’ watching her dance. The naked dancer performs like a central pole around which the others weave their ‘sinful’ ways. Is it Picasso’s hand reaching out to his next lover behind her back? The fleshiest carnal painting in the show is certainly of the next main lover, Marie-Therese, ´Nude Woman in an Armchair´, 1932. The Tate itself had already connived with his promiscuity when they had acquired this picture in 1953. They did not obtain ´The Three Dancers´ until 1965. One of the highpoints of the exhibition catalogue is a photograph recording the culmination of the five-year acquisition process. It shows Lee Miller and Jacqueline Roque playfully hiding behind the canvas, while Roland Penrose, the Trustee who negotiated the deal, and Picasso stand at the side, giving the nudes their respective male gazes.

Of course, an essential part of mythmaking is encouraging others to spread the myth.  As Françoise Gilot recounts in ´Life with Picasso´, he sowed his own seeds of pretension. ‘You see, for me a painting is a dramatic action in the course of which reality finds itself split apart. For me, that dramatic action takes precedence over all other considerations … What counts is the drama of that plastic act, the moment at which the universe comes out of itself and meets its own destruction.’

Let’s conclude with a drawing that Picasso gave to Joanna Drew, who worked for the British Arts Council for forty years and became the Director of the Art Hayward. She was a trailblazing powerful woman in the British art world. She was extremely good looking when Picasso gave her the drawing in the Swinging Sixties. It hardly needs its title, The Kiss, as it is graphic as well as in graphite. The woman´s head is thrown back with her eyes looking up to heaven, just bypassing the massive male Picasso nose. 

The catalogue, complete with its expensive shiny gold cover, informs us that ‘Mercedes Comaposada – co-founder of the libertarian feminist association ´Mujeres Libres´ that campaigned against brothels in the midst of the Spanish Civil War and who worked as Picasso’s secretary to make ends meet while she was in exile – once described Picasso as a feminist.’ Certainly, Picasso helped radically change attitudes. To their credit, through the confusion, the organisers reveal the contradictions in Picasso’s character, but then they make ridiculous claims talking of ‘our own position as legitimisers or de-legitimisers of that which we see.’ If we were to continue in this purely judgemental vein, we could ask why as late as 2006 did Tate accept Picasso’s rapacious kiss? Earlier was it appropriate for an extremely attractive State-appointed young curator to accept this from an 88-year-old lothario? But then the organisers of this show have done enough agonising for all of us, so shall we just toss back our heads and think of the background music, As Time Goes By, in the closing scene of Casablanca.

‘You must remember this
A kiss is just a kiss …’

ver the past few years, a quiet but decisive shift has been unfolding in the geography of the global art market. As traditional centres of cultural power in Europe and the United States contend with saturation, new regions are emerging with confidence, vision and funding. Among them, Central Asia and the Caucasus have become unlikely but potent frontiers. Here, the forces of history, private wealth, and cultural diplomacy are converging to create a new kind of art ecosystem—one that blends heritage with ambition, and local traditions with international reach. Collectors, curators, and institutions are reimagining what it means to participate in the global conversation from places once considered the periphery.

The inaugural Bukhara Biennial, running this autumn under the poetic title Recipes for Broken Hearts, captures this transformation vividly. Spread across restored madrasas and courtyards, the biennial brings together international artists and Uzbek craftspeople, blurring the distinction between art, architecture, and ritual. The city itself becomes a medium—its tiled domes and narrow lanes framing contemporary installations that speak to continuity rather than rupture. For Uzbekistan, the biennial is more than a cultural event: it is a statement of belonging on the global stage, and of pride in the local imagination. Visitors encounter not a polished export of “Central Asian art,” but a living, breathing sense of place.

If Bukhara represents a state-backed gesture of soft power, Almaty exemplifies the private initiative driving much of the region’s artistic renewal. Two major new museums have just opened there, both privately funded yet publicly minded. The Almaty Museum of Arts (AMA), founded by collector Nurlan Smagulov, houses hundreds of works from Kazakhstan and its neighbours, presented in a gleaming building that gestures toward the mountains beyond. Across town, the Tselinny Center of Contemporary Culture occupies a restored Soviet cinema, redesigned by British architect Asif Khan. Its dynamic programme of exhibitions, performances, and talks gives Almaty the kind of contemporary platform long missing from the region. For a generation of Kazakh artists, this represents not just space but legitimacy—a sign that their work belongs within an international conversation.

Further west, in Tbilisi, Shalva Breus is building a museum to house a growing collection of Georgian and international modern and contemporary art. Still under construction, it already carries symbolic weight: a statement of confidence from a country whose cultural scene has often thrived in the shadows of larger neighbours. Breus’s project joins a broader wave of private patronage across the region, where collectors are stepping into roles once reserved for the state. Together, these new museums form an emerging network that could, in time, reshape the cultural map of the post-Soviet world.

This renewal is not limited to new buildings—it is also a rediscovery of art history itself. The extraordinary collection of Russian avant-garde art at the Nukus Museum in Karakalpakstan—long a legend among specialists in the subject —has returned to international prominence. Following its celebrated showing at the 2024 Venice Biennale, discussions are underway to send further parts of the collection abroad. The story of Nukus, where banned or neglected art works found sanctury in the Uzbek desert, feels almost mythical today. It repositions Central Asia not as a backdrop to Russian modernism, but as one of its vital sources—a place where the greatest examples of artistic experimentation survived political repression and geographic isolation.

That rediscovery finds an uncanny echo in the historical literature that once shaped the Western imagination of the region. In the 19th century many intrepid travellers from Europe ventured East to Russia and beyond, publishing their accounts in books which piqued the public’s curiosity in other cultures like Leitch Ritchie’s Voyage Pittoresque, Curieux et Intéressant en Russie a richly illustrated travelogue published in 1846 that delighted nineteenth-century European readers with visions of Russia’s “Oriental” frontier. Ritchie’s descriptions of Samarkand and the steppes—filtered through equal parts wonder and misunderstanding—offer a revealing mirror to today’s global curiosity. Where Ritchie’s travellers approached Central Asia as an exotic landscape to be decoded, the artists of the Bukhara Biennial invite viewers to see it from within.

Russian artist Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s own writings on Samarkand, published in the Soviet period, form a poetic bridge between historical eras. His 1921 journey to Central Asia transformed not only his palette but his philosophy of art. The resulting works—most notably his Samarkand series—are steeped in the city’s light and geometry, turning the blue domes and ochre courtyards of Uzbekistan into modern icons. Petrov-Vodkin’s reflections, when placed alongside the ancient manuscripts and travel diaries in your collection, reveal how art and travel have long been intertwined in this part of the world: the eye of the traveller and the eye of the artist as two halves of the same curiosity.

The renewed interest in such cross-cultural histories has market consequences. With Russian collectors constrained by sanctions, attention and capital have shifted naturally toward the Caucasus and Central Asia. Wealthy patrons in Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Azerbaijan, and Georgia are busy on the international stage, networking, acquiring works and building institutions. As a result, art associated with these regions has become increasingly sought after—whether by Armenian and Georgian masters like Martiros Saryan and Lado Gudiashvili, by Uzbek avant-garde painter Alexander Volkov, or by Russian artists such as Alexander Yakovlev, who travelled through the region in the early twentieth century. What was once considered marginal or ethnographic now stands as an important chapter in the story of 20th century modernism.

This evolution is mixed in with initiatives in London with a substantial diaspora and international collector base which has long attracted contemporary artists from the region, and sold historical works by artists from Central Asia and the Caucasus in the Russian auctions. Sotheby’s “At the Crossroads” exhibitions a decade ago introduced many Western audiences to this art for the first time, while the Saatchi Gallery gave prominence to Russian- Azeri artist Aidan Salakhova and Georgian Zurab Tsereteli. Yet what distinguishes the current moment is that the energy is flowing homeward. The collectors who once may have staged exhibitions in London are now building museums in Almaty and Tbilisi; the curators who once looked westwards are now engaging with the local scene with biennials and residencies.

Meanwhile, in Uzbekistan, state policy has recognised the strategic value of culture. New public funds are supporting contemporary artists, while international exhibitions are reintroducing Uzbek collections to global audiences. In Russia, the “Light Between Worlds” exhibition in Istra—bringing together works from two major Uzbek museums—serves as both historical bridge and symbolic gesture. The state’s backing of the Bukhara Biennial further underscores how art and diplomacy now move in tandem.

For the global art market, this convergence of cultural rediscovery and financial freedom represents both promise and complexity. There is genuine curiosity about the art histories of these regions, but also the temptation to simplify—to turn the depth of their traditions into marketable narratives of “rediscovery.” The challenge for new institutions will be to balance international visibility with local resonance, to ensure that art serves as a bridge rather than an export.

Still, it is hard not to feel excitement. After decades in which the art of Central Asia and the Caucasus was subsumed under the Soviet label or ignored altogether, the region is asserting its own voice. The biennial in Bukhara, the museums in Almaty and (in future) Tbilisi, the renewed fascination with Nukus—all signal a tectonic cultural awakening. The same roads that once carried merchants and manuscripts across the steppe are alive again—only now, they carry art.

With the rapid global rise of private museums—more than eighty percent of which have been founded since the turn of the millennium—these privately funded yet publicly oriented institutions have become powerful agents in shaping how we encounter and interpret art. They also serve as platforms for broader sociopolitical messaging, often reflecting the personal values of their founders. Whereas major state museums once stood as the sole arbiters of cultural taste, today the guardianship of heritage and influence has been, in many ways, democratized by individual voices.

When we think of museums, we usually imagine something monumental and enduring, as if carved in stone. White walls, labels under exhibits, silence, and academic distance. It often seems as though the museum defines the canon and shapes public taste, while collectors merely align their collections to these standards, checking their choices against an established benchmark. But in reality, things are not so clear-cut. Very often, the opposite happens: private collections become a source of new life, and museums look at them as in a mirror, borrowing themes, names, and ideas for the future.

In this sense, the collector becomes a kind of invisible curator. His or her choices are driven not only by logic and academic knowledge but also by personal passion, intuition, and sometimes even whim. Private collectors can afford to take risks: to purchase a work by an artist whose name has not yet appeared in catalogues, to assemble a series that may seem random or overly subjective, to favor trends that are not yet considered mainstream. And it is precisely this freedom that becomes a kind of laboratory in which new perspectives on art are developed. The museum, by virtue of its institutional nature, is more cautious and slow-moving, but by observing private collectors, it often adopts their boldness.

History provides many examples where private collections changed the rules of the game. In Russia, one only needs to recall Sergei Shchukin (1854–1936) and Ivan Morozov (1871–1921). Their collections of French modernism initially provoked scandal, ridicule, and confusion. But thanks to their personal passion, artists like Henri Matisse (1869–1954), Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), and the Impressionists entered Russian cultural space — artists whose works today seem like official symbols of twentieth-century art. It is hard to imagine that there was once a time when the public rejected them as "incomprehensible experiments." But it all started with private risk, with intuition, and a willingness to go against public opinion.

The same story played out in the West. Peggy Guggenheim (1898–1979), with her passionate interest in the avant-garde, or Gertrude Stein (1874–1946), surrounded by the Parisian artistic circle, made choices that official museums did not dare to support. In their salons, works were first shown that would later enter the history of world art. Only afterwards did institutions catch up, institutionalizing what had already been discovered and tested by collectors.

Other examples can be found in more recent history. In the 1960s, George Costakis (1913–1990) collected Russian avant-garde works that were practically banned in the USSR. His apartment in Moscow became a real unofficial museum, home to works by Kazimir Malevich (1879–1935), Alexander Rodchenko (1891–1956), and Lyubov Popova (1889–1924). Later, a significant portion of this collection went to the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow, and it was precisely this that enabled us to see the avant-garde as a key part of Russian art history. Again, the same pattern played out: the collector took the risk, invested time and money into something considered "dangerous" and unpromising, and the museum later preserved and legitimized that choice for society.

Our greatest museums owe a great deal to private collections for the emergence of new themes and fresh subjects for exhibitions. In recent decades, exhibitions based on temporary loans from private collections have become common practice. This is not just an addition to museum holdings, but an opportunity to tell stories from a different perspective. Sometimes it is about “second-tier” artists, those who did not make it into major textbooks but caught the collector’s eye because they saw intrinsic value in them. This happened, for instance, with the renewed interest in the Russian diaspora: collectors were the first to begin assembling works by artists who emigrated after the Revolution, and through those collections, we are now rediscovering whole layers of art — from Alexander Benois (1870–1960) to Nikolai Fechin (1881–1955).

It is important to remember that a collector’s choices are never neutral. They are always coloured by individual passion and subjectivity. Sometimes it is a love for a particular artist, sometimes — an obsession with an entire era or even a detail, such as works on paper, rare publications, or the decorative arts. For years, such areas were considered secondary by museums and remained on the periphery of attention. But collectors showed that these held tremendous energy. One only has to recall how, in the early twentieth century, philanthropists became fascinated by Russian icons at a time when the Church was stepping away from them, and museum curators were still hesitant to undertake serious studies. Or how Western collectors in the mid-twentieth century were collecting Russian avant-garde works when they were banned in Russia itself. These private efforts preserved threads that museums would later pick up and turn into recognized exhibitions.

Museums not only acquire works from collectors but also adopt their tone, their approach. This influence can even be seen in how institutions now present exhibitions. Today, it is increasingly common to build exhibitions as personal narratives, where the focus shifts from chronology and “schools” to the story of a single collection. This subjective, “alive” approach clearly comes from the world of private collections. It allows the viewer to see not “art history as a whole” but a history of vision, a history of choice. And that is what makes exhibitions warmer and closer to human experience.

At a certain point, we start to ask: is the museum a mirror of the collector, or a co-author of their vision? The answer is likely that it is always a dialogue. Museums find in private collections a fresh perspective that allows them to step outside the confines of the established canon. They fill gaps with what collectors have preserved and valued — things the institution may have overlooked or underestimated. They gain the opportunity to tell a new story — one that is less official and more alive. And this makes the collector not just a donor whose works adorn museum halls, but a full-fledged participant in the creation of cultural narrative.

This interaction is not a competition. On the contrary, it is more of a partnership, where each side plays its own role. The collector takes risks and chooses with his or her heart. The museum, with its authority, solidifies and institutionalizes this choice, turning it into part of the grand history of art. Without the collector, the museum risks becoming frozen in the canon. And without the museum, the private collection remains just a personal story, lacking public recognition. Together, they form a system in which the personal gradually becomes universal.

There is also a subtle psychological dimension. The collector often acts as someone who wants to “preserve” something for the future — sometimes not even for a museum, but simply for the sake of its continued existence. The museum becomes the place where this personal effort meets the public. It is at this intersection that the living history of art is born — not an abstract canon, but a history of choices, risks, and passions. That is why in museum halls, we often feel the presence of a personality: even if the label says “gift” or “collection of so-and-so,” behind that is always a living hand, a human choice.

So, when we leave a museum, it is worth asking: whose mirror did we just look into? Perhaps we encountered not just the canon but the reflection of one person — a collector whose choice influenced an entire layer of culture. And maybe that is why a museum is never just a stone monument — in its halls, there always echoes the quiet but persistent voice of private passion.

Shakespeare famously said all the world is a stage, but perhaps this was a stroke of great artisic licence and what he could have said was that all the world is a market place. And we are all not players but traders or marketeers. Some of the greatest artists have been talented marketeers, knowing how to shock and stir our emotions, and behind this ability a subtle calculation—the desire not only to show a work, but to make sure it would be talked about, to ensure that the public or viewers would not remain indifferent. Today we might call this a marketing technique, though the artists of the past would mostly not have used such a phrase. And yet, if one looks closely at the history of art, it becomes clear that many great artists consciously built communication with their audience, created a special atmosphere around their works, and even turned them into events. This in no way diminishes their artistic value, but rather adds another layer—the ability to work with attention, emotions, and the expectations of the public.

In 19th century Russia, an example of such an approach can be found in Pavel Fedotov (1815–1852). His paintings were filled with satire and social observations, but the artist went further: he accompanied them with ratseya (from the Russian «рацея») — short rhymed verses that at once explained and ridiculed what was depicted. These texts served as a kind of verbal commentary to the paintings, as in the case of his famous ´The Major’s Courtship´. There Fedotov wrote ironically about poverty, about the futile chase after fashion, about ruined aristocrats and the new but no less superficial merchant class. Thus the viewer not only looked at the image but also immediately received keys to its interpretation. The painting and the poem together created a multilayered picture of the epoch, while the artist himself became something like a stage director, uniting painting and poetry to amplify the effect. It was, in a way, a marketing device that allowed the audience to immerse more deeply in the context, to empathize more strongly, and therefore to remember the work.

Another Russian artist, Konstantin Makovsky (1839–1915), chose a completely different path. He understood that female sitters wanted not merely a portrait, but a special status—a sense of belonging to something greater than a simple likeness. So Makovsky began collecting old Russian costumes and ornaments, integrating them into his artistic practice. Ladies who posed for him dressed in kokoshniks and luxurious garments, and the sitting became a ritual. The resulting portrait was not just beautiful—it acquired an aura of historicity and cultural depth, as if each model had become part of a legend about the greatness of Russian culture. For his clients it was akin to purchasing symbolic capital, and for the artist—a brilliant way to strengthen his name and forge a unique style that set him apart from colleagues. Makovsky was attuned to the moment: society’s interest in national themes was growing, and he offered a ready-made form in which both artist and patron benefited. This was an exemplary case of how a marketing device could be organically woven into art and serve both sides.

Of course such strategies were not new and art history is full of precedents – in the 17th century Rembrandt (1606–1669) collected costumes and accessories from different cultures and dressed his sitters in them. Turkish turbans, exotic fabrics, weapons—all gave his paintings a distinctive atmosphere. The viewer saw not simply a portrait but a whole world, full of allusions to distant lands, wealth, and power. Here marketing was built into the very foundation of artistic intention: Rembrandt understood that viewers wanted to see in a painting not only themselves, but also a dream of something larger than their own lives.

In the twentieth century artists’ marketing strategies became far more intentional. Andy Warhol (1928–1987) was perhaps the first to state openly that art is business, and that there is nothing shameful in it. He consciously turned his own name into a brand and everyday objects into works of art. His famous Campbell’s soup cans became the symbol of an entire era. Warhol displayed them in a gallery as though it were a grocery store, and viewers realized for the first time that art could be not lofty but utterly commonplace. It was both a provocation and a clever calculation. He took what was familiar to everyone and transformed it into an image impossible to forget. For him, the soups were not only a memory of childhood and of a daily staple, but also a symbol of democracy: a can of Campbell’s could be bought by both a president and a homeless vagabond. Warhol made art both mass and elite, and in this lay his brilliant marketing strategy.

Working in a similar vein is Jeff Koons (b. 1955), who began as a ticket seller at MoMA and then as a stockbroker. The experience of financial trading taught him an essential lesson: one must create not only for oneself but also for the public. Koons realized that the strongest emotions are tied to childhood, to toys, to the feeling of joy and simplicity. That is how his metallic puppies, rabbits, and other “toys for adults” appeared. Their glossy surfaces reflect the viewers themselves, and each person saw in them his or her own face, memory, or feeling. It was a calculated device: Koons’s works required no special preparation, they spoke immediately to everyone, from a billionaire to a casual museum visitor. In this way he showed that art could be accessible and comprehensible without complex interpretations, and that the power of a work lies in its ability to instantly evoke emotions and create a sense of celebration.

If Warhol turned banalities into art and Koons brought us back to childhood, René Magritte (1898–1967) pursued philosophy. His famous phrase “Ceci n'est pas une pipe” was a marketing lesson long before the term itself existed. Magritte demonstrated that we consume not objects but ideas. We do not buy a pipe—we buy the representation of it. In contemporary marketing this has become a rule: what is sold is not the product, but meaning, image, lifestyle. Magritte anticipated his time and turned a painting into an advertising slogan, an aphorism easy to quote and impossible to forget. At the same time, in his own life he was quite pragmatic: although he openly expressed disdain for commerce, when it came to his own livelihood he accepted various jobs—copying his works for collectors, painting interiors, and during the war even producing forgeries of Titian and Picasso. This is precisely what distinguishes a good entrepreneur—the ability to adapt, to negotiate, to find ways of remaining in demand under any circumstances.

All these examples show that art has never existed in a vacuum. Artists have always understood that what matters is not only what you create, but also how you present it, how you draw the viewer into your game. Some did it through poetry and social satire, others through costumes and rituals, others through everyday objects or reflective surfaces. In each case, the viewer was invited not simply to look, but to become part of the story, to feel included in the process. This feeling of participation is the central marketing device common to all great artists.

The art world today often contrasts pure creativity with commerce, but in reality these spheres have always been closely intertwined. An artist who could attract attention and generate intrigue around him or herself has most often remained in history, because his or her works not only have amazed the public of the day but have also been remembered. In this sense, marketing is not the enemy of art but its ally. It helps the artist speak to the viewer, find a common language, and create the very atmosphere in which the work becomes more than an object.

One might say that artists’ marketing devices are not so much crafty tricks as expressions of their human need to be heard. Fedotov wrote verses for his paintings because he wanted to be understood. Makovsky dressed his models in costumes because they themselves longed for a special image. Warhol and Koons spoke in the language of everyday life and memory because it was close to everyone. Magritte asked philosophical questions because he understood that behind simple objects lie entire worlds of ideas. And all of them, each in his own way, proved that art is always a dialogue. And for that dialogue to happen, one needs not only brush and paint, but also the ability to find a path into people’s hearts.

When the Spanish poet Federico García Lorca (1898-1936) wrote of “the troubled air” in his 1928 surrealist collection of poetry ‘Gypsy Ballads’, he was speaking of an atmosphere heavy with foreboding, but also of something that trembles, quivers, and carries emotion. It is precisely this fragile, vibrating space that French philosopher and art historian Georges Didi-Huberman takes as his starting point in the exhibition ‘In the Troubled Air…’, currently on view at the CCCB in Barcelona. The show arrives at a moment when turbulence feels global: wars, authoritarianism, and deepening political divides. Yet it also arrives at a time when museums in many parts of the world —those institutions designed to hold, reflect, and console—are increasingly struggling to attract visitors. This paradox is worth dwelling on. Just when art’s capacity to sustain hope and reflection feels most necessary, either audiences are drifting away or governements are cutting funding that keeps them truly alive.

This exhibition dares to place utopia at the heart of its inquiry. But this is not utopia as a perfect, distant ideal, more utopia as persistence: a fragile space of imagination and breath that endures even in the midst of ruin. Didi-Huberman structures the show like a grammar of emotions, each gallery a new register inspired by Lorca’s poetry: Childhoods, Thoughts, Faces, Gestures, Places, Politics. The result is less a linear narrative than a poetic atlas—a collection of images, films, and fragments that together chart the ways people confront despair, endure violence, and yet keep imagining.

In the opening and closing sections, ‘Childhoods’, children’s drawings from the Spanish Civil War, photographs of gypsy children near Barcelona in 1937, and images from the Warsaw Ghetto remind us that innocence is never untouched by history. And yet, as Lorca knew, children retain the capacity for play, for imagining something different. Waad al-Kateab’s film from Aleppo, capturing a mother coaxing a smile from her daughter Sama under bombardment, closes the exhibition with a devastating tenderness. This is utopia stripped bare: hope not as fantasy but as survival. Other works reinforce this tension. Rossellini’s ‘Germany Year Zero’ follows Edmund, a child wandering through Berlin’s ruins, while Picasso’s grieving mothers and Bertolt Brecht’s ‘Kriegsfibel’ distill catastrophe into images and words that nonetheless insist on testimony. These works do not console by erasing pain; they console by keeping pain visible, and therefore open to transformation.

The exhibition is also a dialogue across centuries of thought. Lorca’s duende—the dark, tragic energy of art—sits beside Nietzsche’s masks of tragedy, Brecht’s dictionaries of war, Pasolini’s cries of rage, and the gestures of flamenco singers captured in photographic detail. Didi-Huberman elevates Lorca to the rank of Kant or Goethe, not to canonize but to insist that poetry can stand as a philosophy of its own. In this way, the exhibition links past upheavals with present ones. The Spanish Civil War speaks to Syria; May ’68 rhymes with today’s protests; images of lamentation bleed into images of resistance. “They fought, they fought… forever,” Lorca wrote. The lesson here is not despair, but continuity: each generation must rediscover how to breathe within troubled air, and how to wrest from it forms of imagination that point toward justice. This is what makes ‘In the Troubled Air…’ more than an anthology. It is an argument about the political necessity of art in times of crisis. Art, it insists, can still carve out utopian spaces—places of shared mourning, fragile solidarity, and the stubborn survival of imagination.

Why does this matter now? Because as exhibitions like this affirm the role of art as a form of hope, museums themselves are facing profound challenges. Everywhere, attendance has not fully recovered since the pandemic. In the United States, nearly half of museums still report visitor numbers as being below pre-pandemic levels, and audiences are coming less frequently than before. In the UK, Tate galleries have lost 27% of their visitors since 2019, a decline attributed to both Covid and Brexit for while domestic attendance has recovered to about 95%, international visitors remain down at around 61%. Funding cuts compound the problem, with many institutions tightening budgets just as costs are rising. It is a double bind creating a crisis.

Thankfully it is not bad news everywhere. The picture in continental Europe looks more resilient. The Louvre, Vatican Museums, Prado, and Uffizi have all reported attendance near or above pre-pandemic numbers. Spain’s state museums had their best year of the century in 2024, with a tally of over 3.1 million visits. 

Meanwhile, the Middle East is rapidly becoming a hub for cultural growth. In 2025, the Zayed National Museum opened in Abu Dhabi, while the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi is set to open in 2026. Egypt’s Grand Egyptian Museum is scheduled for full opening in November 2025, showcasing the complete Tutankhamun collection. Qatar is advancing major projects like the Lusail Museum and the Art Mill, and Kuwait’s National Cultural District is becoming one of the largest museum complexes in the world.

Although Russia’s cultural landscape has become more fragile amid political and economic pressures, with several independent museums closing, major institutions like the Garage Museum and GES-2 in Moscow remain active. Over the past few years the State Tretyakov Gallery has also been expanding, with new branches in Samara (2023), Kaliningrad (2025), and a planned site in Vladivostok by 2027.

This uneven map suggests that audiences are not simply turning away from culture but are divided by geography, politics, and perhaps shifting expectations of what museums should be. Yet the paradox remains: just when art’s role as a space of reflection feels most needed, many institutions face contraction.

What ‘In the Troubled Air…’ shows is that museums are not simply about preservation; they are also about atmosphere. Moving through CCCB’s galleries feels like passing through different airs: the fearful gaze of children, the silence of masks, the swirl of gestures, the roar of protest. The design is immersive, not encyclopedic. Air itself is a recurring motif. Óscar Muñoz’s mirrors reveal the faces of the dead only when visitors breathe on them. Clouds float in works by Richter and Tàpies. The exhibition is not about “objects in display cases” but about the air we share—its fragility, its turbulence, and its capacity to carry song, lament, and hope. In this sense, the exhibition itself becomes a kind of utopian act. It constructs a space where viewers can confront painful images without turning away, where they can grieve and also imagine, where they can breathe together in troubled air.

Lorca once wrote that children see death everywhere, but do not yet believe it is irreversible. That strange coexistence of fear and possibility is the essence of ‘In the Troubled Air….’ It does not ask us to ignore catastrophe. It asks us to live through it, and still find a way to dream. This matters because museums are precisely the spaces where such collective dreaming can occur. They are not luxuries but necessities: places where societies rehearse empathy, preserve fragile truths, and allow imagination to flicker against despair. And yet, as attendance falters in parts of the world and funding is slashed, the very possibility of such utopian breathing is under threat. That is the paradox the exhibition also underscores. In a moment of planetary turbulence, museums are not ornaments to civic life—they are its lungs.

‘In the Troubled Air…’ insists that a book, a painting, a film, a child’s drawing can still sustain hope in the ruins. To walk through its rooms is to be reminded that a museum, too, can be more than a repository: it can be a space where utopia is not deferred, but lived—fragile, trembling, but shared.

AI is transforming the world of art. A host of new tools has rapidly outpaced traditional methods of valuing and assessing artworks, and the field of technical expertise is evolving with innovative techniques for establishing authenticity. The speed and accessibility of these tools—along with once-rare information now readily available—mean that far more people can access quality art expertise from the comfort of their own homes. While the use of AI in art authentication is still in its early stages, there’s little doubt that within twenty years—if not much sooner—technical art expertise will become more efficient, more widely available, and likely more reliable.

Much is said today about AI replacing human jobs, but the art world—long an exceptionally niche and deeply human domain—will likely continue to offer opportunities that transcend the fluctuations of the market or changes in public funding. In fact, it may serve as a kind of sanctuary from the increasing digitisation and technologisation of our lives. Art helps define humanity’s place in this shifting landscape; it gives voice to the spirit of our time, and remains a champion, a comforter, and a teacher. And for those who work with art—whether in museums, galleries, studios, or auction houses—nothing replaces the physical experience of handling objects. Over time, through personal engagement and human effort, we grow into our roles, building collective memory, deep knowledge, and understanding.

Expertise and connoisseurship are often related, but they are not the same. While AI may revolutionise the authentication of art, it is difficult to imagine it ever truly becoming a connoisseur. Even as a tool for expertise, AI will always require human oversight. Despite its impressive capabilities, it can malfunction, misinterpret data, or lack the nuance required for certain judgments. Connoisseurship may well be the final frontier—one grounded not only in visual analysis and technical skill, but in intuition, memory, and the deeply human art of interpretation.

Art is not merely a product of the soul—it is also a reflection of the ever-evolving dialogue between past and present, a dynamic narrative shaped by countless decisions, contexts, and communities. As art historians, artists, connoisseurs, and collectors, we are all participants in that story. Unreliable, at times, in our wonderfully human way—and yet uniquely equipped to understand one another, both individually and collectively.

Those Kulturträger attuned to change—past or present—can sense what is coming before it’s spoken. They evolve along with their knowledge and, through their insight, help others do the same, in this artificial intelligence has little place.

Russian artist Francisco Infante-Arana’s extensive solo retrospective at the State Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow earlier this year has served as a reminder to us of the importance today of this grand pioneer of 20th century kinetic art.

During the 1960s Infante experimented with geometric forms, arranging circles, spirals and squares into dynamic compositions that suggest movement and transformation.  His works reflect on time, structure and metaphysical aspects of human perception.

In one such textbook work from 1963, called ‘Catholic Spain’ the static surface conveys a powerful sense of shifting space and rhythm.  The title is a reference to Infante’s own Spanish roots because in the late 1930s his father was among only a few thousand Spanish children who were evacuated to the USSR during the Spanish Civil War. Yet this connection between his own biography and the work itself is left intentionally abstruse, the metaphysics of the artist’s own individual existence as expressed in the forms and colours of the composition ultimately connect with our own perception as the viewer, forcing us to wonder what it all means as we assimilate the light and dynamics in the picture.

Collecting Russian works of art is as much about connoisseurship as it is about passion. For discerning collectors, intricate gold and silver objets de vertu by Fabergé´s top workmasters, luminous icons, and finely carved figurines hold a unique allure, and are a tangible connection to Russia’s rich cultural narrative. These are not merely decorative pieces; they embody craftsmanship, history, and in the case of icons, spiritual devotion.

Fabergé workmaster Mikhail Perchin’s spectacular and historical nephrite, gold and jewelled platter, once gracing the collection of the distinguished Wernher family, and recently rediscovered in a European collection of Russian works of art, assembled over a lifetime, has a commanding presence. The cool depth of its green stone framed with glorious gilded ornamentation, speaks to the grandeur of Russian artistry at the turn of the 20th century – until its recent rediscovery the platter was only known to art historians in a vintage photograph of the legendary Fabergé exhibition in London in 1935 where it is visible on a shelf above the Bay Tree Egg which had been made for Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna. In contrast, the works created by the nuns of the Serafimo-Ponetaevsky Monastery reflect a quieter, more contemplative beauty—devotional objects crafted with humility and reverence, yet no less remarkable for their refinement and detail.

I believe that to collect such treasures is in some way to participate in a dialogue with history. Each acquisition offers a glimpse into the lives of its creators and patrons—aristocrats, artisans, and religious communities who shaped Russia’s artistic legacy.

As a Russian Art advisory and Russian Art Dealer we strive to find exquisite works of art for you.

The bright, airy rooms of the Beyeler Foundation on the outskirts of Basel could not be a better location for a solo show of the subtle, monochromatic works by Latvian-American artist Vija Celmins (b. 1938). I visited first thing in the morning, as the gallery opened its doors on a sunny June day — a sanctuary of tranquility in what is one of the busiest months in the art calendar. Celmins works at a seriously unhurried pace on each picture, reminding me also to slow down and observe more deeply.

Her practice began with paintings of the most banal, everyday objects found in her studio: heaters, lamps, pencils. These early works laid the groundwork for a lifelong fascination with translating the ordinary into the extraordinary. Moving through the galleries, I found myself gradually drawn in by her mesmerizing images of night skies — black spaces pierced with hundreds of white dots that seem to emit their own inner light. The intense attention to surface, to subtle tonal shifts, lends these works a near-hypnotic quality. Some take on a square format, evoking immediate associations with Kazimir Malevich’s iconic black square, but here reimagined as a cosmos of infinite depth.

Celmins’s art rewards patience and a contemplative eye. Her night skies are at once vast and intimate, cosmic and deeply personal, inviting viewers to lose themselves in their boundless dark fields. These meticulously rendered images function almost as portals, transporting us beyond the white walls of the museum toward something elemental and eternal. In an era of constant noise and speed, Celmins offers a quiet, steady resistance, encouraging us to rediscover wonder through close, attentive looking — and reminding us that stillness can be a radical act.

Russian American artist Oleg Vassiliev (1931-2013) is famous for his powerful paintings that capture moments of introspection, nostalgia, and tranquility. Three of his most notable monumental works, 'Kira on the Path to the Dacha' (1991), 'Before the Sunset' (1990) and 'The Abandoned Road' (2001), stand out for their emotive depth and unique compositions.

'Kira on the Path to the Dacha' displays Vassiliev's mastery in using windows as a metaphor for introspection and self-discovery. The painting depicts the artist’s wife and muse Kira standing within an abstracted ‘window’, lost in thought as she walks along a path leading to the country house towards the viewer or is it towards Vassiliev himself who paints her in his mind’s eye? The subtle play of light and shadow in the central image creates a sense of quiet contemplation, inviting viewers to reflect on their own personal journeys and memories.

In 'Before the Sunset', Vassiliev's use of windows as a framing device enhances the sense of nostalgia in the painting which serves to distance the viewer between past and present, the image of a statue of Lenin bathed in the warm glow of a setting sun in the distance.

'The Abandoned Road' is a striking example of Vassiliev's exploration of solitude and isolation. We see a desolate landscape stretching into a black void, with its overgrown vegetation and crumbling structures, reflecting a sense of abandonment and decay. The stark contrast between the interior and exterior spaces heightens the feeling of loneliness and desolation, inviting viewers to contemplate the transient nature of life.

It is in the mid 1960s that Oleg Vassiliev starts to play with the colour spectrum, creating fully abstract compositions constructed on the diagonals which become a geometric framework.  Later, in 1972 we see the first work on canvas where he creates within the composition a second reality, a naturalistically painted landscape with a figure in an illusory three-dimensional space. There follow a series of canvasses with his wife Kira walking down an alley of birch trees into the centre of the painting, introducing a dynamic we see later of a figure walking into the middle of the painting which eventually paves the way for ´Kira on the Path to the Dacha´. Between 1986 and 1987 Vassiliev explores this further, creating the first ‘window’ composition in ‘Spatial Composition’ a black, white and grey abstract painting in which he places his signature and the date of the painting in red in a prominent position.

In unique ways, all three masterpieces by Vassiliev boldly reference the geometric abstraction of the Russian avant-garde, especially the revolutionary art of Kazimir Malevich. Beyond their formal radicalism, and taken together, Oleg Vassiliev's 'Kira on the Path to the Dacha', 'Before the Sunset', and 'The Abandoned Road', are powerful meditations on memory, introspection, and the passage of time, and have socio-political relevancy as well as being commentaries on the history of art. Through his masterful use of light, composition, and symbolism, Vassiliev invites viewers to ponder the complexities of human experience and the fleeting beauty of art and existence.

The recent passing of French collector Jean-Jacques Guéron is a sad event for those of us who knew this softly spoken, unassuming man who once supported a whole generation of Russian emigree artists living in France at a time when barely anyone else was interested in their work. I always found it remarkable that Jean-Jacques, a Frenchman by birth, collected Russian art for over a decade before he finally had the opportunity to visit the Soviet Union in 1989 and he reminded me that it is possible, as an outsider, not only to find a deep appreciation of the art of another country to that of one’s birth (and one that for many years he only knew through emigree artists and their stories) but also to create a legacy which itself adds some palpable, individual contribution to the cultural heritage of that other country.  This is an amazing achievement which perhaps with time will become more clear.

Jean-Jacques’ art collection grew through personal encounters and, later, long lasting friendships with artists, especially Mikhail Chemiakin and the late Vladimir Yankilevsky whose work he admired above all others.  He often acknowledged the role that Chemiakin played in forming him as a collector, from the early seventies the artist opened doors to other Soviet non-conformist artists who had settled in Paris including Oleg Tselkov, Oscar Rabin, Lydia Masterkova, and Jean-Jacques discovered a diverse community so rich that he never found the need to cast his net wider as a collector, preferring to contain his interests among the artists of the second Russian avant-garde. Jean-Jacques lived surrounded by his art collection, which he displayed almost casually in his Paris apartment where paintings were hung everywhere from floor to ceiling, piled up in corners, chests filled with works on paper, there was a feeling of quiet chaos, of the art being a living presence in his home.