There were only two distinct faces in Assyrian art—one with and one without a beard. Neither of them was a portrait except as attributes or inscriptions designated. The type was unendingly repeated. Women appeared in only one or two isolated cases, and even these are doubtful.

Decline of Italian painting
There was nothing more to do (...) For the men that came after Michael Angelo and Tintoretto there was nothing. All that they could do was to repeat what others had said, or to recombine the old thoughts and forms. This led inevitably to imitation, over-refinement of style, and conscious study of beauty, resulting in mannerism and affectation. Such qualities marked the art of those painters who came in the latter part of the sixteenth century and the first of the seventeenth. They were unfortunate men in the time of their birth. No painter could have been great in the seventeenth century of Italy.

Not impartial, not objective, but a very humorous and living History of Art by J.C. van Dyke, 1909

Now, from the same book (  www.gutenberg.org/files/26638/26638-h/26638-h.html   )
here are some BAD compositions from the great masters

 

Raphael's Madonna with the Blue Diadem: "Irrelevancy of subject and background, main lines of the latter repelling cohesion"
Annunciation by Botticelli: "Subject disturbed by lack of reserve in background, the vision drawn across the foreground by continuing verticals"

    
The Last Judgement by Michaelangelo: "Composition in three tiers and subdivided vertically, a strain to unity."
Birth of the Virgin Mary by Durer: "Subject relegated to background, picture divided through centre."
And, finally, Teniers goes down:

I replaced the poor reproductions from the original (except the last one) by the images from the Web Gallery of Art ( www.wga.hu/ )
 

Art vs nature

"The first stage of the art collector is that in which his admiration dwells on imitation such as the still-life painter gives him, but soon (...)  he seeks the constructive sense of the man who paints the picture.
In the same manner does the student usually develop. With the book of nature before him he is eager to sit down anywhere and read, attracted by each separate item of the vast pattern, but he finds he has opened nature's dictionary and that to make poetry or even good prose he must put the separate words and phrases together."

"Good art, of the gallery, is the best guide to a trip afield"

"Personality in 99 cases out of a hundred is a graft. The forms of artistic expression have been pre-empted long ago."

That's from "Pictorial Composition" by H.R. Poore, published in 1903. Digitized by Gutenberg project:
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/26638/26638-h/26638-h.html

Hanoi, Vietnam

I took these a year or two ago.
    

Toddlers for Obama

My baby girl is 5 months old. Today, after 30 minutes of unintelligible babbling, she suddenly stopped and quite distinctly said: O-ba-ma.
This appears to be the first word she said. Now, imagine McCain had won...

6 times 4 or 4 times 6? who cares?

President Medvevev wants to extend presidential term to 6 yrs. It could be worrisome if we indeed had normal elections.

No more illusions :)

My blog is worth $0.00.
How much is your blog worth?

and I can't blame the financial crisis :)

how we do this market thing

Oil prices dropped by half, but gasoline prices in Russia somehow remained as high as ever. People started asking questions. Now, the government, citing the US markets, ordered Russian oil companies to cut gas prices, or else... The companies grudgingly agreed. This is how market economy works in our country :)

I tried to sing a lullaby to my baby, but instead of falling asleep, she started singing along.

I bark if you park

  
Sign reads: "No Park..."

Taganrog; 300.000 residents; one famous birth; one famous death

Chekhov was born here and Tsar Alexander I died here - they got monuments to both of them. I don't know Chekhov's reasons, but Alexander might die of sheer boredom. No, the place is nice, but what on Earth do people DO there?
  

swinging subway train

 
ink, pen, A3 paper.

  
bye-bye summer.

Women's sports rulezzz

   

this sculpture looks perfectly normal until you start thinking : what the hell is going on there? Two women (apparently) are playing basketball and a man is trying to join in, but unable to jump or run, just sticks in the way like a dumbass. This is a truly feminist sculpture in disguise. Dates back to Soviet era, found in in Moscow River Port park.

Mike, the sculptor I wrote about earlier, is leaving for Canada soon. So much joy for Canada, so much pity for me. Because now, to talk to him about drawing and stuff, I'll have to fly 9 hrs by plane. Anyway, he asked me to get a few images of horses' heads from the Animal Anatomy Atlas, which I post here as well - just in case someone might need them too :) I didn't draw these, of course
  

some background

Disclaimer: I love my country. But you gotta see this :)

   more at  http://mihailfedorov.ru/toys/russia/

        

now, that was prophetic! :)

 
cross-posted from simplex

Izvestia - a look inside

I can't quite remember, how on Earth I got into this building, but never mind. That's Izvestia newspaper publishers. Look at the walls - the purest Soviet design with workers and peasants reading newspapers. Ironically, they are reading Pravda (the rivalry between these two Bolshevik papers at some point got so acute, that the Party had to interfere).
They also show off some old curiosities - like a typewriter that belonged to Bukharin, Izvestia's editor-in-chief, shot by Stalin.
 

Thank you Mr Bush

... and special thanks to Mr Saakashvili. You two have strengthened Putin's regime like nobody else. Before the war in Georgia it looked like Putin may finally retire and his cronies gradually go with him. Now it appears, that the military party in Russia is indispensable - especially when everyone around is yelling "Isolate Russia". 

1. I never liked Putin. But will I criticise him, when the war is around? No. Nobody ever will. That's what Brits taught me: before the war started we can be anti-war, but with the first shot, we'll all back our army (that's what they said about Iraq).
2. You only need clever, moderate, sensitive politicians in peacetime. Imagine Al Gore reacting to 9/11 - I'm afraid that might be a disaster. The US exactly needed a heavy-handed Bush to fight terrorist bullies. Yeah, with illegal ops, with undeclared prisons, with Guantanamo and Abu-Ghraib - but that yielded some result. Now, many Russians may ask: is President Medvedev tough enough? Another Cold war is seen coming. Maybe let Putin stay in charge? 

more about this war

No, seriously? Russian aggression in Georgia? Look, we got dozens of thousands Ossetian refugees. And where do they flee? To Russia. Amazing! Have you ever seen refugees running towards aggressors?

war in Georgia

Georgia counter-attacked yesterday, encircled Tskhinvali, pushed the offensive north and threatened the last Ossetian stronghold of Dzhava. Tbilisi reported, the Roksky tunnel, the only link between Russia and Ossetia is blown up (later denied by border guards). Russia and Ossetia are barely holding the attack. Would you imagine that? Apparently, Georgia was better prepared for the war, whereas Russia was not prepared at all. So, who started it? Georgian president, Mr Saakashvili said Russia invaded Georgia like it did in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Afghanistan in 1979. Laughable. When Moscow DID invade Afghanistan, Kabul was seized in a day, and president Amin got his head torn off by a grenade the same day. I guess, the same would happen to Mr Saakashvili, if Moscow really wanted to invade Georgia.

Okay, Russian troops are in Georgia. "We come as peacekeers", they say. "But we don't want you there", - Georgians reply. Well, who cares? Did the US ask Serbs if they want them in Kosovo? Of course, not. The Serbs would much rather keep smashing Albanians. Just like Georgians, given the opportunity, started razing Ossetian villages and pounded their capital to ashes. Now, in the best Western traditions, Russia is starting a humanitarian offensive (remember Belgrade? there were a lot of humanitarian achievements those days). Of course, we expect an outcry from Western media. That's what Russia media did, when the US bombed Yugoslavia or invaded Iraq. Luckily, nobody heard our cries. But not to worry, we won't hear yours, either.

Kuvshinovo estate, Tver region

I went on business to Tver region, which is around 6 hrs drive from Moscow. The place is famous for its deserted villages - indeed, in some places, just 2 or 3 families appear to survive out of a few dozen. We had to find a hotel somewhere and stopped in Kuvshinovo, because there was a "Hotel" sign on the road. I'll get back to the hotel in a while - but what a strange building was NEXT to it:

No bad news, please

Putin meeting Russia's  leading editors-in-chief

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8i7dBj1Zjs

 

Russia wins in UEFA semifinals

No, no, you must be wrong. Russia actually beat Spain 7-2. I got the result on my TV screen. I just did it on my Sony Playstation.
Poor Fabregas! Poor Spanish coach! They left embarrassed. And as I waved goodbye to them, I said: okay, okay, just go and win some shit in the "real world", if it says anything to you, wretched 2D creatures!

recent pics

some recent pics from the subway and from the drawing class (guess which is which :P)
some look strange, bcoz I had to photograph them (the scanner is not at hand)
 

Nuclear Institute - breakthrough attempt

On the same day we decided to explore the old estate in Cheremushki. It's now split in two, and you can enter neither part: The one in the pic is now an Institute studying intestinal worms (it is not REALLY well-guarded - what for?) 

But just across the street is a secret nuclear lab

Hippie session in Tzaritzyno

Tzaritzyno used to be a beautiful ruin in Moscow, but now, redesigned, redeveloped and totally fucked up, it's a kinda "old" palace, where everything is fake and cries "I'm a Turkish sea resort; built yesterday, will crumble tomorrow." We went there on June 1. BUT: behind the phoney palace there was a nice bunch of hippies (I guess it was their annual gathering on the first day of Summer). I like the veteran hippies - with long beards, drunk and hoarse. somehow, as i am looking thru the photos - there are mainly young girls in the pic. I wonder why :)
  
 

feeling happy

at last!!! after  a year of hesitation and delays I finally got to the sketching class. somehow drawing itself makes me feel happy

Entertainment in X-city

Just a few minutes drive from Moscow - and here we go, the X-town, where I live
 
we've got a local theatre here. What's on?  On the 22nd - "Features of National Prostitution"; on the 20th - "Miracle Cat"; the 12th - "Romeo and Juliet"; the 10th - "Three Little Pigs". 

and an earlier pic I forgot to post here

ballpen, A3

just a guy posting an ad in Tverskaya St, Moscow. Or maybe a graffiti artist with a monumental drive - who knows?  

something to remember

 "When your hands grow numb or your feet get paralyzed - REMEMBER, how you stole from the Botanical garden"
- a scary signpost in an otherwise quite poetic Moscow Bot. garden.
  

and there's another pic I've just finished. That is, I dropped it at this point, can't go on any more :)
   
Ink on A3 paper

drawing people in clothes is so boring!
why won't girls just walk around naked?

From the horse's mouth

I came across a funny sculpture in the Tretyakov gallery. Forgot the author's name. Yeah, this is a work by a Soviet sculptor Isidor Frich-Haar. It's supposed to be a scene from the Civil war in Russia (1918-1922). Red Army guys do some military planning (they are using 1:1 maps, obviously)

btw, I like the thoughtful eyes of the messenger's horse. The reference site says Mr  Frich-Haar was working in the naive style, because, like he said, "I can't afford being a serious artist".
 

Растущее достоинство

рассматривая первое, наткнулся на второе. Колонка главного редактора в журнале объявлений, Новосибирск
     

Red Square renovated for the May 9 parade

the guys are replacing pebbles in front of the Kremlin wall. Check out the instruments they are using - a replica of a good old wooden mallet?