Art · Books · Observations
The notion of the miniature, oddly enough, has nothing to do with size, and the word derives not from minimum but from the Latin minium, the name of the red pigments often used in the decoration of manuscript books. In time the words miniature and miniature (as an adjective) came
Art · Museums · Observations · Paris
The banker's wife Sophie Couteux du Molay with her children, a miniature of 1787 by Jacques-Antoine Lemoine called The Balcony. It is in the collection of the Louvre. I am very fond of the slanting, carelessly fixed blinds, and of the boy holding the cord in his
NB! · Archive · Art · People · Humour
Art · Moscow · Observations · Society Pages
Went to the Moscow Biennale of Young Art yesterday and was at first disappointed, but after talking to some gallerist acquaintances, I have partly changed my mind. After all, one ought not to have compared this event from the outset with the major art occasions of not so long ago,
Art · Museums · New York
How can gallery-goers who linger before a single picture at a private view help art? A visitor to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York noticed that the exhibition “Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle” was missing several paintings from the master's celebrated series “Struggle: From the
Art · Observations · Mores · Society
A painting by the Soviet woman artist and front-line veteran Raisa Zenkova, called "Drones", 1949. I cannot decide on the tone: is this still passive aggression or already the active kind? But the artist is plainly ill disposed towards at least two of the three heroines of
Archaeology · The East · Art · Observations
We have long known that the distant past was far more colourful than its ruins. Here is an attempt to restore colour to the artefacts of ancient Persia, using the example of Achaemenid stone reliefs, on the basis of chemical analysis of microscopic pigment residues in the stone. It is
NB! · Coming Up · Art · Museums · Saint Petersburg
Art · Museums · Society · People
The musician Vladimir Tarasov has given the Lithuanian National Museum of Art more than 500 works by Soviet nonconformists. Tarasov, who was personally friendly with the authors represented in his half-century collection, will be remembered by future generations if only through the name of the collection, "The Museum
Coming Up · Art · Moscow · Museums
Today is museum day, so it is the right moment to consider what might be visited over the coming month. If you are in Moscow or planning to visit the capital, save this listing. At the Alexander Solzhenitsyn museum-apartment on Tverskaya, the exhibition “Comrade Captain!”, devoted to the writer&
Art · Museums · Education
What interests us about Golubitskoe is not so much its vineyards, which also have a rather gripping history, as the activity of the Golubitskoe art foundation, which has established a residency for artists, curators, art historians, journalists, critics, writers, historians, archaeologists and other creative and humanities specialists, who have the
Faith · Art
The central panel of the altarpiece of the Basilica of San Zeno, Verona. Crucifixion, Andrea Mantegna, 1457-1459. In the foreground we see the mottled, lifeless summit of Golgotha, somewhat like marble, or perhaps bone, as though it represented the top of a skull with its sutures and sparse blades