The long-awaited exhibition of Russian and Soviet Painting, third in the series of shows which the Metropolitan Museum has garnered in its detente-motivated alliance with the Soviet art authorities, opened with more of a whimper than a bang. Nor are the show’s weaknesses all attributable to politics: the examples of Socialist Realism which fill the last two galleries are neither worse nor better than visitors to Russia have reported, though their striking resemblance to paintings from the Nazi period shown in Munich earlier this year is even more blatant than photographs had led one to surmise. One may lament that only a few of the medieval icons on view are of top quality—but this is understandable considering the fragile condition of so many of them. The selection of eighteenth and nineteenth century works seems adequate, though it is too bad that such highly original artists as Repin and Serov are not shown at their best. As for the twentieth century section, the Soviet authorities have made a propaganda gesture by permitting Americans to see a number of paintings (including two by the present-day dissidents Plavinsky and Kanduarov) which are verboten to their own citizens. These paintings serve mainly to underscore the deadening mediocrity of the rest of the exhibition.
Probably the main reason Russian painting has been a closed book to most Westerners is precisely that mediocrity.
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