Nicholas and Alexandra
Until October 30; Royal Museum, Edinburgh

“Gold, silver, platinum, diamonds, spinel, pearls, sapphires, rose quarzite, wood and velvet”, says one matter-of-fact label in a show dedicated to Russia’s last Tsar and Tsarina. These are the ingredients of just one exhibit, a miniature crown and sceptre made by Fabergé in 1900. The glittering ornaments share space with gold embroidered priests’ vestments, and with exquisite holy icons bedecked, almost as an afterthought, with miniature Fabergé eggs.

Nicholas and Alexandra, the last of the Romanov dynasty, ruled Russia from 1894 until 1917. It’s hard, surrounded by such ostentatiously regal objects, to believe that the cutting edge of contemporary art was thriving at the same time, in the same place. During this period, Kasimir Malevich exhibited his famous Black Square (oil, pigment, canvas) in St Petersburg, heralding the birth of abstract art.

There are no black squares in this exhibition, but instead gold, diamonds, old-fashioned portraits and lavishly illustrated menu cards. There is no cutting edge here, in this celebration of excess. This show is – quite consciously – one big demonstration of why there had to be a revolution.

Many of the paintings in the show, which is drawn from the Hermitage in St Petersburg, are more of historical interest than aesthetic merit, but two extraordinary watercolours are certainly worth seeing; at 59 metres and 127 metres long, they depict panoramas of Moscow and of Britain, beautifully arranged and painted with panache. Too long to display in their entirety, the Hermitage has never put them on display, but our own museum has solved the problem with an appealing DVD which pans from end to end.

The curators are clearly fond of the last Tsar and his family. They insist that the decision to continue with coronation ceremonies in a field full of dead bodies, suffocated in a crush for food, was not his. And on Bloody Sunday, when hundreds of peaceful protestors were killed by soldiers, they argue that Nicholas was out of town and not directly responsible.

In other places, the show doesn’t shy from the truth, concluding that the Tsar’s weakness, and his refusal to reform, made revolution inevitable. The strongest section comes half-way through, when you are squeezed through a corridor. On one side of you, a lavish ball-room setting is populated with sumptuous gowns, made for the masquerade ball of 1903, when Nicholas celebrated the Romanov dynasty.

A few feet away, the opposite wall is a sinister dark grey. Along with a large image of Lenin, dark and grim, there are a number of texts describing growing discontent among the people, and the consequent rise of the Bolsheviks. This wall sounds the death-knell of Nicholas, while he, oblivious to his fate, swans around in all his golden finery.

This dual approach works, and there should be more of it, setting gold and diamonds against bread queues and crushed revolts. Instead the exhibition prefers to dwell on the Tsar’s strengths as a family man, and on the tragedy of his children’s fate, put up against a wall in 1918, and shot.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 24.07.05