Archaeology · Art · Heritage · Science
In Bacon Hole Cave in South Wales, red horizontal bands have been recognised as a cave painting more than 17,000 years old. They were found as long ago as 1912, but in 1928 they were written off as a natural seepage of iron oxide, and for almost a century
Art · Cinema · Moscow · Observations · People
The posthumous fate of an artist is rarely decided by the artist himself. It is decided by those who remain: an heir, a pupil, a gallerist, an executor, the sort of person who will gather the scattered works, arrange them by year and spend decades patiently reminding the world of
Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
Five years ago I watched this seventeenth-century "Holy Family with Saint Elizabeth and the Infant John the Baptist", attributed to the French painter Jacques Stella, go under the hammer and fail to sell at an estimate of 60,000 to 90,000 euros. Today I see the
Archaeology · Science · Humour
For a hundred years El Mirón Cave in the Cantabrian mountains was judged of no promise to science and used to keep goats. In 1996 Lawrence Straus and Manuel González Morales began to dig at a spot abandoned since 1903, and over thirty years they drew out of this one
Faith · Art · Museums · Paris
According to tradition, the noble and learned Catherine sought a bridegroom who would surpass her in wealth, wisdom and beauty. A hermit monk told her that he knew just such a young man: Jesus. After she received baptism, Catherine was granted a vision of the Virgin with the Child. Christ
Listings · Moscow · Coming Up · Art · Museums · Heritage
Herzen was finishing "My Past and Thoughts" in London, and visiting compatriots scolded him for having long since left Russia and forgotten it too well. The émigré is always charged with forgetfulness, though it is usually the homeland that does the forgetting. This week, in the rubric of
Archive · Mores · Ethnography
This photograph by Rustam Mukhametzyanov is titled "A Tatar Woman's Farewell" 1984, a send-off to the army in a Tatar village.
Faith · Interviews · Observations · Society · Pop Culture · Humour
Well, that's a turn-up! Candace Owens in the studio of "Parsuna" with Vladimir Legoyda. The mission "from Twitter to the Paterikon" has officially begun. Congratulations to the team, and to Vladimir Romanovich personally! We await the broadcast, we are preparing our dogmatic remarks,
Coming Up · Architecture · Art · Paris
The installation La Caverne du Pont-Neuf on the Pont Neuf, the oldest bridge in Paris. On the night of 20 to 21 May 2026 the bridge was covered by an inflatable structure of printed fabric depicting snow-covered cliffs, 120 metres long and about 18 metres high. Its form
Archaeology · Art · Books · Monarchies · Museums · Observations · Heritage · Science · Society
“What is our life? A tale we shall not recall twice, once it has been told,” runs the thought from Byron’s “Don Juan”, and so at the end of every month we reassemble the key publications that can be reread and kept in memory. Archaeology and the origins of
Art · London · Museums · Paris · People
The artist Julio Le Parc, a pioneer of the second wave of kinetic art, died in Paris on 30 May at the age of 97. Le Parc worked with light, mirrors, movement and optical effects: suspended mobiles, vibrating light installations, mirrored rooms, environments of projected light that "came to
Books · Society
The International Biographers Organisation has named the winner of the 2026 Plutarch Award for the best biography of 2025. It is Gertrude Stein: An Afterlife by Francesca Wade. The jury noted her original approach to Stein's life and work and her contribution to the very understanding of the