Welcome back to the home of the oxymoron. Evil genius. He asked the newspaper to print his obituary early so he'd enjoy it. That's like hiding at your own funeral. Yeah, it's a big, great gig. I'm Russell Kane. Join me to weigh in on whether the biggest players in history are more evil or genius. Becoming that rich, I'd say that at some level of genius. It also helps that it's a long time ago, right?

It's like the podcast version of telling your kids the ice cream van plays music when it's out of ice cream.

Listen to evil genius on BBC Sounds.

Hello, painting's not a natural activity.

It's not like spitting, said the artist Frank Arbac,

nor is looking at art, the subject of this evening's programme. Soon, an interview with the great

American documentary filmmaker Fred Wiseman, whose new project is a three-hour film on London's

National Gallery. Later we'll be

conjugating the ways you can look at painting with a cultural historian, an artist, a philosopher

and the director of a gallery. When each of them looks a Malavich's iconoclastic black

square painting from 1915, the impetus for a new exhibition in London, what do they see?

But we begin with Fred Wiseman, whose first documentary, Tittycup Follies, was made in 1967,

about an institution for the criminally insane.

Since then, he's made more than 40 films, and from the very first he's had a

trademark way of making them, no commentary, no interviews, no identification of those people overheard.

His film on the National Gallery is no exception. Filmed over 12 months and running at three hours,

it is a sustained meditation on looking at art

and on looking at those who look at art.

Early in the film, we watch and listen to a National Gallery lecturer

talking about a medieval altarpiece,

conjuring up the world in which it would have first been seen. Just imagine that you are looking at this painting by the light of candles.

Candles which would shine against the gold, and you might think, because remember you can't read,

...