NB! · Art · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
The cover of Bryan Ferry's album Olympia with Kate Moss is a reference to Édouard Manet's painting "Olympia". The musician says he wanted to convey the spirit of the picture without copying the pose. Doubtful, of course. The resemblance is, in truth, nil. Presumably
Coming Up · Art · Moscow · Museums
Philips Galle's Alchemist after a drawing by Pieter Bruegel the Elder: a man sinking into utter insignificance and ruin, driven by the wish to grow rich quickly in the fields of alchemical transmutation. Instead of turning lead into gold, the experiments of the philosopher's stone, as
Art · Moscow · Museums
A cast from the Pushkin Museum
Art · Observations · Pop Culture · Society Pages
Yesterday Sistema Gallery opened three exhibitions at once, to mark the gallery's third birthday. The project that impressed me most was Daria Pasechnik's "Posts from Nowhere", done in an enchanted, fairy-tale style. The artist explains that she is exploring the longing for visual
NB! · Art · Nature
Architecture · Faith · Art · Museums · Heritage · Rome
After ten years of painstaking restoration, the state Hall of Constantine in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican has regained its original splendour. The largest of the Raphael Rooms, named after the Roman emperor who granted Christians freedom of worship, was decorated under five pontiffs over the course of the
Faith · Art · Museums
Museo Correr, Venice. Da Messina was a gifted painter of the Early Renaissance, a native of Sicily. He is credited with introducing oil painting to Italy, which he mastered thanks to the Netherlanders and to Jan van Eyck, acknowledged as its genius.
Architecture · Art · Moscow · Observations
But a cursory glance through the catalogues reveals that this is not the only likeness of the disgraced monument on the artificial island at the confluence of the Moskva River and the Drainage Canal, not far from the Bersenevskaya Embankment. On the same occasion a whole series of similar medals
Architecture · Faith · Art
Saint Olga. Mikhail Nesterov. Sketch for the mural and the mural itself in St Vladimir's Cathedral in Kyiv, 1892
Faith · Art · Moscow · Museums · Heritage
In the fifteenth century the icon stood in the iconostasis of the Trinity Cathedral of the Lavra, founded by St Sergius of Radonezh. After the Revolution it was removed from the monastery, and in 1929, after nine years spent in the museum at Zagorsk, it was transferred to the Tretyakov
Art · Moscow · Museums · Saint Petersburg
The subject is a Russian peasant whom the invaders meant to conscript into Napoleon's army, and whose hand they branded with the letter N; whereupon, before the astonished eyes of the intruders, he hacked off his branded hand. The Roman Scaevola, that is to say the Left-Handed,
Architecture · Faith · Art · Moscow · Museums
The painting "Footballer" by Alexander Deineka, which can be seen at the artist's exhibition at the Tretyakov Gallery on Kadashevskaya, depicts the bell tower of the Church of John the Baptist in Yaroslavl, the very one that appears on the 1,000-rouble banknote. The 45-