NB! · Art · London · Observations · Humour
How all men should look on 8 March. William Bruce Ellis Ranken (1881-1941), Covent Garden, 1930. Happy International Women's Day, to all the lovely, esteemed, priceless, dear girls and women 🌸
Art · Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
I can hardly believe anyone paid $12 million for this Churchill painting. Then again, one remembers Andy Warhol, and belief comes at once. Especially given its provenance: painted in January 1943 after a meeting with the US President Franklin Roosevelt in Casablanca, presented to Roosevelt that same year, acquired in
NB! · Art · People · Humour
“I hate flowers. I paint them because they are cheaper than models and they don’t move,” - Georgia O’Keeffe (1887-1986), the first American modernist woman artist
In the Press · Books · Mores · Ethnography · Humour
What is better to give one's beloved: sperm whale teeth, a leg of lamb, a little gold, or a bouquet of tulips in the old-fashioned way? In the pre-holiday Kommersant Style supplement I have mused on the place of gifts in the annals of world culture.
Books · Observations · Humour
In his "Historical and Critical Fragments", Mikhail Pogodin has an amusing phrase dating from 1846, setting the Renaissance West against Muscovite Rus': "... with them propaganda, with us preservation, with them movement, with us tranquillity...". It makes one smile that today these words would most likely
NB! · Observations · Humour
Observations · Pop Culture · Humour
Leonardo da Vinci has appeared on the stage of the annual Italian Sanremo Music Festival. The extravagant Max Gazzè turned up in a rather convincing Leonardo get-up, accompanied by a cardboard orchestra of eminent figures from world pop culture, from Elizabeth II at the drums to Paul McCartney on
NB! · Art · Observations · Humour
What a sweet little dog! She looks just like her mistress! Jamie Wyeth, 1980
Monarchies · Science · Humour
At last genetics is being put to serious use (not), for instance to establish whether Richard III was a good king or a scoundrel, and to shed light on the origin of the hump with which Thomas More and William Shakespeare endow him: was that barely noticeable scoliosis hereditary? Besides
Archive · Books · Mores · Humour
"On Wednesday he called them hangmen, And on Thursday, tempted by their victuals, He was polishing their boots at «Nakanune». That service did not go unrewarded: A count, a landowner and a bourgeois squared, He is now being published by «Gosizdat»" Literal translation Sasha Chorny, A.N. Tolstoy,
Cinema · Observations · Humour
Remember that scene in "Gentlemen of Fortune" where Yevgeny Leonov, as the kindergarten head Troshkin, tells the children: "Today breakfast is cancelled! We are flying to Mars in a space rocket. Igorek is appointed commander. Take up your space spoons. Fortify yourselves thoroughly. The rocket will not
In the Press · London · Monarchies · Pop Culture · Humour
The Mirror reports that the Queen and Kate Middleton are planning a special TV show on the very day Meghan Markle is to be interviewed by Oprah. Well, well, what scheming minxes. But here is how it really is. The Queen and Kate will appear in a programme in place