Shot in the Neoclassical splendor of Saint Petersburg, Russia’s Mikhailovsky Palace, Igor Bezrukov’s eight-minute-long film The Red Square, or the Golden Ratio, 1999, follows a would-be painter (played by gender-bending artist Vladislav Mamyshev-Monroe) who, after carefully studying the Venus de Milo, paints a red square. Enraged, his teacher (artist Timur Novikov in a top hat and monocle, though he had recently gone blind) bends his pupil over and proceeds to spank the avant-garde out of him. The parable concludes with the student producing a perfect Aphrodite as the master looks on, beaming.