Interviews · Cinema · People
One of the finest masters of Russian cinema, the director Vadim Abdrashitov (1945-2023), when asked whether he considered his films arthouse, replied:. I think that the pictures Mindadze and I made can hardly be assigned to this, so to speak, movement. So to speak, I stress. Because we always
Art · Nature · Humour
The depiction of monkeys in human guise in various comic situations became a distinct genre in the 16th and 17th centuries. This parodic genre was called singerie, from the French for "monkey business". Monkeys in human attire first appeared in Flemish painting; it is enough to name Pieter
Architecture · Faith · London · Observations
A 1904 project envisaged a new neo-Gothic abbey in the immediate vicinity of Westminster Abbey, which had been judged too crowded with antiquities. The complex was to include the tallest building in Great Britain, far higher than the towers of Westminster, Big Ben and Saint Paul's Cathedral.
Archaeology · Art · Observations
The Breathtakingly Beautiful Kondon Nefertiti, One of the Greatest Sculptures of Humankind, a Clay Figurine Made in the 4th–3rd Millennium BC, Was Found in 1963 at the Camp of Settled Fishermen 80 Kilometres from Komsomolsk-on-Amur. The figurine was named Nefertiti at once, as soon as it emerged
NB! · Monarchies · Mores · Ethnography
Russians dearly loved their long beards and moustaches, which Tsar Peter I took from them. But people prized these marks of respectability so highly that they carefully kept their shorn beards in order to be buried with them, imagining how dreadful they would look in the coffin with a bare
Coming Up · Art · Museums · Observations
The exhibition makes one attend to the place of the body in artistic language, to the interpretations of the body in different media, and to the influence that perceptions of corporeality exert on art. It opens with a sketch from a beach in besieged Leningrad, one that, according to the
Archive · Moscow · Mores
“…And in this present year of 746, in Cheese Week, on the Monday, he, Gavrila, went to the Foreign Quarter, to the market called Ladoga, and at that market he, Gavrila, fell in with the runaway soldiers Ivan, surnamed Stromynsky, and Savely… and the said Ivan and Savely invited him,
NB! · Art · People
Architecture · Art · Heritage
Allegory of March, fresco in the Hall of the Months in the Palazzo Schifanoia, Ferrara. The Salone dei Mesi (Hall of the Months) is one of the masterpieces of Italian palace architecture, famous for the allegorical frescoes symbolising the months on the walls of a hall 24 metres long, 11
NB! · Art
NB! · Architecture · Art · Moscow
Smalti mosaic panels after sketches by Alexander Deineka on the vaults of Mayakovskaya metro station. One of the most beautiful details of the Moscow Metro
Books · People
Alpina has published an unusual autobiography: a collection of true stories from the life of the diplomat, musician and advertising man Alexander Ohanjanyan, "Diplomats, Footballers and Other Musicians" These are twenty-four biographical sketches about how much in everyday life is funny, touching, beautiful, inspiring, at times sad