Today we are so defenceless against the effects of this spiritual artillery that scarcely anyone is able to win that inner detachment which is necessary to grasp the full monstrousness of the spectacle
Oswald Spengler on what is still our own day
"The Embrace" by Egon Schiele
At 13, Sergei Prokofiev became a student of the Saint Petersburg Conservatoire – and it was a real breakthrough! His talent was noticed by Alexander Glazunov, who himself suggested that the boy should enter the Conservatoire at once. And what proved decisive at the entrance examinations was the opinion of Nikolai
Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun, portrait of the artist's daughter, Julie, as a bather In 2027 this painting will be offered at auction at Christie's in New York
When I was a boy of seven or eight, I had a passion for the cheap mint gingerbreads sold on our quiet street, in a little hole-in-the-wall shop; for some reason they were called "zhamki", and for a kopeck you were given two of them.