And I went to a show about 25 years ago now, at the Barbican. Of early-20th-century Russian painting. It was an area of painting that I particularly loved – in fact it was my period, really, that I loved thinking about and looking about and I thought I knew quite a lot about it. I went to this show at the Barbican and there were probably 150 artists in there, including all the big names like Kandinsky and Tatlin and Rodchenko and so on and so on. And I would say that 70 of the artists in there I’d never heard of. And they were really good. And I thought that’s so mysterious, why didn’t I know about any of those people? And so I thought there must have been so much going on at that time and the differences between the ones who survived into history – like Kandinsky – and the ones who you’ve never heard of, was very small. There were a lot of people making great pictures then. So I thought how did that come about? Why was there so much going on at that time? And I started reading about that period in history in Russia.

Well, one of the reasons that went on was because it had a lot of help. There were a lot of collectors. They put a lot of money into the scene, but there were a lot of hangers-on as well. What would normally be called hangers-on.

There were people who had nice apartments that artists could meet and have parties in, or people who rented salons. There were people who had empty places where you could have a show. You know, even if you weren’t very well known. There were galleries that went out in competition with one another to poach the newest, the best young artists. There was a whole thriving scene around the artists themselves. And that thriving scene was actually what produced all this work, I think.