Painting Begins Where the World Ends: The Psychedelic Attack of Oleg Holosiy

In this episode of The Bigger Picture, Dr Peter Tuka explores Oleg Holosiy’s monumental 1990 painting Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits – a key work of the Ukrainian New Wave and a haunting, large-scale example of Neo-Expressionist painting shaped by Perestroika and the collapse of the Soviet Union. From Holosiy’s own writing (“Painting begins where the world ends”) to the artwork’s fever-dream imagery ofelectric-blue, humanoid rabbits, this art history podcast unpacks the painting’s politics, liminality, and metaphysical “inner space,” tracing connections to Kuzma Petrov-Vodkin’s On the Line of Fire, surrealist automatism, and the anxieties of transition in 1990s Ukraine. If you’re searching for a deep dive into Ukrainian contemporary art, Soviet and post-Soviet culture, Glasgow Museums hidden treasures, or the meaning behind Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits, this episode is your essential listening.Oleg Holosiy, Psychedelic Attack of the Blue Rabbits, oil on canvas, 200x300cm, Glasgow MuseumsKuzma Petrov-Vodkin, On the Line of Fire, 1616, oil on canvas, 196x275cm, State Russian Museum, St. Petersburg