Russian Revolution at the Royal Academy
Two of the year's biggest exhibitions have opened in the same week in London - Revolution: Russian Art 1917-1932 at the Royal Academy and David Hockney at Tate Britain.
One hundred years after the 1917 Bolshevik revolution, which brought Vladimir Lenin to power, relations could scarcely be worse between successive British governments of David Cameron and Theresa May and Vladimir Putin's in Russia.
Yet art has triumphed over politics. In the five years it has taken to compile this "momentous" exhibition, the Royal Academy has received the maximum possible co-operation from the Tretyakov and State Historical museums in Moscow, the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg and several regional museums.
The 200 works displayed include portraits of Lenin and Joseph Stalin, paintings by Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky and Kazimir Malevich alongside the socialist realism of Isaak Brodsky, plus photography, sculpture, film, posters, porcelain and even food coupons.
"We try to bring history alive on the walls," said Ann Dumas, curator at the Royal Academy where the walls and central staircase have been done up in a rich red.
Dumas and her fellow curators - John Milner and Natalia Murray, professor and lecturer in Russian art, respectively, at the Courtauld Institute of Art - have focused on the heady period between 1917 and 1932 when "a lot of great art flourished despite a lot of constraints".
"After 1932 there was no freedom in Russia," added Dumas. "That is when you get a lot of bad socialist realist art which has none of the artist's individual expression."
Stalin decreed that only art that served as propaganda for the Soviet cause would be permitted and banished key cultural figures as well as ordinary citizens to the Gulag, where they were either shot or died in captivity.
If the exhibition has an overall message, it is that "freedom is good for art", according to Dumas.
And the human spirit, she implied.
Is there a warning here for other countries with self-appointed guardians of what should or shouldn't be patriotic culture?
CA dreaming
In search of David Hockney, the "world's most extensive retrospective" of "one of Britain's greatest living artists", I went to Tate Modern by the Thames in Southwark when I should have gone to Tate Modern, also by the river, but in Millbank (nor was this the first time I have made this mistake).
Hockney, now 79, began his career in his native Yorkshire - many of his giant landscapes of England's biggest county are truly magnificent - but now lives in Hollywood where he has been equally prolific.
"I love that," I heard one man say to another as they gazed at a painting of (a trunkless) Peter Getting Out of Nick's Pool.
He also famously did double portraits - for example, Christopher Isherwood and Don Bachardy, an openly gay celebrity couple in Los Angeles.
He has been adept at catching the golden quality of the California sun and the myriad greens and blues of the Hollywood Hills. They are a far remove from the lyrical beauty of the snows, mellow autumn and high summer of the Yorkshire seasons.
The Tate is right to assert that Hockney's art "is one of the great landmarks of post-modernism".
Berlin premiere
Gurinder Chadha made her name with her 2002 hit movie, Bend It Like Beckham , in which the England footballer is the inspiration for the Punjabi girl who wants to take up the beautiful game.
Alas, the British media, which likes putting heroes on a pedestal before knocking them down, has turned against "Becks" with real vengeance for allegedly bending tax laws and his cynical pursuit of a knighthood.
Today is a big day for Gurinder - her new movie about the partition of India, Viceroy's House , with a cameo from the late Om Puri, premieres this evening at the Berlin Film Festival.
Gurinder tells me "the film's been dubbed into Hindi but they don't want to release it in India until closer to August 15".
Vaz siblings
John Bercow, speaker of the Commons, has been attacked by the Daily Mail which has published a picture of him with "disgraced" MP Keith Vaz. Although one Tory MP has tabled a "no-confidence motion" against the Speaker for his anti-Trump ruling, Bercow has been defended by Keith's younger sister, Valerie Vaz, who happens to be Labour's shadow leader of the Commons.
Tittle tattle
The latest Private Eye cover has a picture of the Queen signing a book under the headline: "Millions sign petition to stop Trump state visit".
Her Majesty's weary explanation: "One has to draw the line somewhere..."