East and West 1913

Pavel Filonov created this densely packed oil painting, East and West, sometime in the first half of the twentieth century. Look how the paint has been applied in so many small, discrete marks, it's like he's building the image up from its constituent parts. The surface is full of visual incident, a real riot of pattern and colour. There's a strange tension between the figures and the still life, the fish almost seem to merge into the dark background. The faces are mask like, theatrical, with the strange, staring eyes of religious icons. Look at the way the light catches the sleeve of the figure on the left, the way the colours seem to vibrate against one another. This is painting that seems to embody the idea of the Russian avant-garde, that art can be a form of social and spiritual transformation. It reminds me a little of the work of Max Beckmann, in the way that it seems to capture the anxiety and alienation of modern life. It's a painting that asks more questions than it answers, and that's what makes it so compelling.