NB!
Alexandr Radayev
Almaty · Art · Moscow · Museums · Observations · Heritage · People
Itkind's legacy in Kazakhstan and the condition of his wooden sculptures
Today Itkind's sculptures are displayed in many museums around the world and held in private collections, while a considerable part of the master's legacy is in Kazakhstan, where the most productive decades of his life were spent. Unfortunately, for a time some of the wooden sculptures
Almaty · Archive · Art · Society · People
Sculptor Isaac Itkind, arrested in 1937 and living to the age of 98 in Alma-Ata
I have been fortunate to hear about Itkind from people who were his friends, who knew him and his family, and who could shed light on the misconceptions largely introduced into circulation by a popular sketch by the journalist Eduard Topol, who met Itkind. The brief biography of the truly
Almaty · Art · People
Sculptor Isaak Itkind, arrested on charges of espionage, and the legends about his life
The Jew who died twice. The rabbi who became an artist. The eccentric old man, a half-wild sorcerer-elder who lived on roots and gathered old tree stumps, dwelling in a dugout on the outskirts of Alma-Ata. The best-known Soviet sculptor of the 1930s, who vanished into
NB! · Observations · Humour
When You Decide to Have a Haircut in Self-Isolation
Books · Observations · Education · Humour
The Kultura Television Channel
The Kultura television channel. Former Minister of Culture Shvydkoy reminds viewers that the Decameron was written during the plague of the 14th century. Are you serious? That is the eighth-form school syllabus
Archive · Books · Museums · Society · People
Mikhail Kuzmin's diary at the Literary Museum and a reprimand for Bonch-Bruevich
In late 1933 Vladimir Bonch-Bruevich, director of the State Literary Museum, acquired the archive of the poet Mikhail Kuzmin. The papers included the celebrated diary of the Leningrad poet. For the diary entries covering August 1905 to December 1931, Kuzmin received an enormous sum: 25 thousand roubles. Needless to
Art · Museums · Observations · People
Goethe in Johann Tischbein's portrait and the explanations for his two left legs
Remembering Goethe today, 188 years since his death. I do like the way that, in the portrait by his friend Johann Tischbein, who won his fame precisely through his portraits of Goethe, he has settled himself in the pose of an ancient Roman upon a ruined Egyptian obelisk, beneath an
Archive · Science · Society
How the Metric System Was Introduced in Russia from 1875 to 1925
A standard metre reached Russia as early as the late eighteenth century, but the metric system began to be used there only after 1875, when Russia, together with 16 other countries, signed the international Metre Convention. The law permitting the use of the metric system of measures in Russia was
Heritage · Science · Society · Paris
The Metre of the French Revolution and the Marble Standards Surviving in Paris
One of the innovations of the French Revolution that almost all of humanity uses every day is the metre. It was a truly revolutionary decision to introduce a unified unit of length at a time when France alone had tens of thousands of different ones, and it was soon adopted
NB! · Humour
You Take My Meaning
Architecture · Observations
Model of the Black House with an Exoskeleton by Alexander Konstantinov
A model of that very black house with an exoskeleton by Alexander Konstantinov, whose photographs once went the rounds of every architectural magazine. Quite possibly the most extraordinary dacha I have ever seen. One of these days I shall show a photograph of the house in the flesh; it really