Again in Moscow,after a year

I was in Moscow last month, for two weeks.It's been more than one year since my last visit and I really missed this city.

Moscow has a mystical affect on me, I don't think the city is beautiful,but i still miss it,I miss the cold air, gray city, Cyrillic letters,metro and even the smell in the metro stations.

This visit was art oriented:) I visited 'Picasso in Moscow' exhibition at Pushkin's museum.This was my second Picasso exhibition,I also had a to visit 'Picasso in Istanbul' exhibition in 2006,well...I am more fan of classic art,clearly Picasso is not my style.

I also had the great chance to visit 'Khruschev and His Time' photo exhibition in Moscow House of Photography.


And finally, there was another interesting photo exhibition, Best of Russia 2009.It seems this is a selection of best photos among categories Russian Architecture, Nature, People, Everyday Life and Style. Here is one sample from style category

MN@R - National Museum of Art of Romania

National Museum of Art of Romania is a huge building localed on Calea Victoriei. The museum is in fact consisted of two separate buildings, one is Gallery of European Arts and other is Gallery of Romanian Art.

I first visited European Arts section and surprised to see masters as Rembradt, Anton van Dyck, Rubens,Jan van Eyck, Pieter Bruegel the Younger....they were also rooms for Italian masters,French,German and Spanish Schools which included a few El Greco pieces.

Then I advanced to Romanian arts section which consisted of several medieval Romanian pieces including orhodox icons, treasuries , clothes used in rituals ....the museum also inclused modern Romanian paiting artists.

OLIGART- The Great Russian Art Boom

This new (published in 2008) documentary is on a very interesting subject. The new elite of Russia - the oligarks- are now interested in buying art, some are buying it as investment, some are buying it for political reasons and some simply for the love of art.

The result is simple: Russian art pieces worth millions and millions of pounds!! In the documenrary there were scenes from 2 auctions, the gross amount was 11 million founds for the first one and another 9 million was collected in the second action.

As I see pre-revolutionary art is very valuable but they also buy pieces built during Soviet union and simply traveled abroad or sold for a few dolars , today they are worth millions.

Natalia Goncharova is the worlds most expensive female artist as of today.See the article.

Baroque by Taschen

Baroque is another nice Tashcen book.


Artists featured: Francesco Albani, Caravaggio, Valentin de Boulogne, Jan Breughel the Elder, Annibale Carracci, Anthonis van Dyck, Adam Elsheimer, Georg Flegel, Luca Giordano, Guercino, Frans Hals, Pieter de Hooch, Jacob Jordaens, Willem Kalf, Giovanni Lanfranco, Charles Le Brun, Johann Liss, Claude Lorrain, Batolomé Esteban Murillo, Nicolas Poussin, Mattia Preti, Rembrandt, Guido Reni, Jusepe de Ribera, Hyacinthe Rigaud, Peter Paul Rubens, Jan Stehen, Hendrick Terbrugghen, Georges de la Tour, Diego Velázquez, Willem van der Velde the Younger, Jan Vermeer, Simon Vouet, Francisco de Zubarán

Detailed info on the books is available on Taschen's site.


see my Gothic post for another Taschen book.

Gothic by Taschen

Taschen publishes great art books and Gothic is one sample.Here is the link to the whole series on amazon.

The book is published on bright, high-quality paper, starts with history and basic description of the Gothic-era then each artists gets 2 pages with one or more paintings and a short history of lige.

Artists featured: Giotto di Bondone, Duccio di Bouninsegna, Dieric Bouts, Robert Campin, Cimabue, Petrus Christus, Barthélemy d’Eyck, Jan van Eyck, Andrea da Firenze, Jean Fouquet, Nicolas Froment, Hugo van der Goes, Jaume Huguet, Stefan Lochner, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Simone Martini, Master Bertram, Master Franke, Master of the Glatz Madonna, Master of the Paradise Garden, Master of Saint Veronica, Master Theoderich, Master of the Wilton Diptychons, Master Wittingau, Hans Memling, Lorenzo Monaco, Lukas Moser, Michael Pacher, Martin Schongauer, Rogier van der Weyden, Konrad Witz

Book Review(s): The State Tretyakov Gallery

I have mentioned about my first and second visits to Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow as well as my other visit to Tretyakov XX.Century Contemporary Art Museum.

In my second visit to the old Tretyakov Gallery I bought two books from the souvenir shop.
One of them[the one with the blue cover] is on the old gallery and the other one with the red cover is on the 20th Century Collection. Both books are hard cover but there are paperback editions also.Hardcover ones cost 90 rubles each.

The books present history of the gallery, how the collection was initially founded and how it arrived today. The books are in very good quality,I mean the paper and print.

Both books present few[they are thin books] samples of their famous items presented in the corresponding gallery.I wish they contained detailed descriptions also, but I guess that was out of scope.

I would recommend this books to everyone planning a visit to the gallery.

Movie Review: Girl with a Pearl Earring(2003)

This movie is rather old[2003] and I've seen it sometime ago but i was suprpised that many people that I mentioned this movie about have not seen the movie and some even haven't heard of it.

It is a very nice movie and especially valuable if you are interested in Flemish paitings or painting art in general.

The movie is about the story of a painting of Dutch master Vermeer which gave its name to the movie also.
The maid of the house poses for Vermeer for the painting which causes problems with the wife :)

This is the movie that made lovely Scarlett Johansonn well-known[at least for me :)], on the left is the original paiting and Scartlet,note the great similarity.

Anyway if you have not seen it :Watch it!

Here is the IMDB link and here is a link on Vermeer.

Movie Review: Russian Ark (2002)

This movie is hard to rate, one might grade it as super but also it is possible to call it boring...
One man from today suddenly finds himself in Hermitage of 19th century..And walks throught the history of Russia.

I personally liked the long views Hermitage rooms full of artpieces, particularly paintings.[so it may be graded as super]
But the movie was so slow,dialogs were dull [so it is possible to name it boring]

Stay away if you are not interested in arts and history.

Tretkayov Gallery XX.Century Contemporary Art

In my first visit to Tretkakov Gallery I was upset that I could not meet a single sample of Socialist Realism artworks, later on I learnt that the is 'one more' Tretyakov for this.

In my second visit to Tretyakov, I got information on how to access to this other gallery thanks to the English speaking lady in the information desk. In the souvenir shop of the museum I bought two books both titled 'The State Tretkakov Gallery', one for the traditional one and other for the gallery of modern arts.

So I visited the 20th Century Collection on the Krymsky Val. Unfortunately I was not satisfied,I was hoping to see more products of Soviet era, there were only a few paitings and 2-3 sculptures. One nice sample is the famous paiting showing Lenin working on his desk. In this site, there are many works listed in Tretyakov but I could not meet many of them.

The most important gain of this tour for me to meet Tatyana Nazarenko works. The night before I visited the gallery I was reading one of the two books I bought from the souvenir shop of old gallery. The below photo attacted me since I realized the The Arnolfini Weedding on the upper left corner which was very interesting but the book was not giving any details. In the exhibition I faced the paiting.
It is interesting, from the painter's own site I learnt that it is a self-portrait from 70s. I still wonder that this van Eyck piece doing on her self-portrait. Was Nazarenko also pregnant when married? what does the formation of her arms and hand tell us? Please share me if you know a link regarding these info.

I recommend you to visit her site, she was not only very nice paitings but also very good photos.

One more time in Tretyakov Gallery

I have visited the largest collection of Russian arts, the State Tretyakov Gallery before but I was unable to see the Icons hall since it was closed at 17 o'clock. So this time I payed another visit to the temple of Russian art in Moscow.

As before several halls contain good samples of Russian paintings, I personally liked Repin for his portrait works which looked like photos, Nikitin and Shishkin are also to mention.

Special interest is needed for Ivan Aivazovsky who visited Istanbul and has nice works on Istanbul [including Maiden's tower,Golden Horn and a few others]

This time I was able to see the Icon Halls, the gallery has a very large collection, some of the pieces were brought from Constantinople[guess where? :) ]

There were also halls for sculptures but since the gallery is huge, my interest in arts is mainly on paintings and i was already tired, I simply skipped them:)



Coming soon: Tretyakov Gallery XX. Century Contemporary Art on Krimsky Val

Ice Sculptures Exhibition in Moscow

I was in Moscow for two weeks at the end of February.I had a chance to visit a few places. Ice Sculptures exhibition was one of them. I heard about the exhibition from another Moscow blow in this post. The exhibition was located in the botanic garden of MGU, near Prospect Mira.



Luckily I visited the exhibition in the evening, after work. Since the illumination effects make sense in the evening I guess it would be dull to visit during daytime. The sculptures were nice but most have started melting.


My favorite was the huge bear :)

Book Review: Rembrandt'in Orospusu

This nice novel is based on true life-story of Rembrandt van Rijn. After death of his 3 new born kids his wife also dies, Geertje Dircx takes care of his kids, one day a new servant enters Rembrand's house and becomes his lover but this relationship is not accepted by the church or society which leads to many problems..
Here is the link to buy online.

Hieronymus Bosch - The Delights of Hell (2003)

Hieronymus_Bosch The Delights of Hell (2003) is a documentary of one of the greatest artists, Bosch. This BCC Four program is about a Bosh exhibition in Roterdam which Queen Beatrix of The Netherlands also visits,shows information about paintings,how they are protected, renovated, transported and sure many nice info about details of Bosch paintings.Upper, you may find some screen caps.

Few words on Tretyakov Gallery and Pushkin Museum

I first visited Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts which had a nice collection of European arts but then a shock was waiting for me: Some of the pieces in the 'museum' were in fact copies!!!

All art pieces had descriptions but they were all in Russian so I could not undertand which were original.


Then I had the opportunity to visit The State Tretyakov Gallery The National Museum of Russian Fine Arts which had an enormous number of Russian masterpieces,unfortunately due to time constraints I could only see the halls in one building.

I definitely recommend to visit both museums to the ones who are gonna visit Moscow ever.

Documentary: Great Artists with Tim Marlow

I found a nice documentary [thanx internet gods:)], Great Artists with Tim Marlow which is an 14 episode documentary each concentrating on one of Giotto, Leonardo, Durer, Michelangelo, Raphael, Titian, Bruegel, Rubens, Rembrandt, Vermeer, El Greco, Velázquez, Turner, and Van Gogh.

So far, I had time to watch episodes on Bruegel, Rubens and El Greco and all quite seem very well.A twenty-minute tour on each of the the artist's masterpieces,cities he has been to and life.

An attempted exibition visit:)

During my 6th visit to Moscow (Feb.2008), I read on moskovalife.com that a famous soviet-era photographer Igor Muhin had an exibition at "Na Solyanke" Gallery. I had one of my Russian-speaking colleagues phone there. The exibition was open till 21. I got there on 19:45 with a sign on the wall working hours till 20.And they did not let me in.
So,I l looked at the photos on the artist's site.http://www.moukhin.ru/

Use Your Illusion II

It's been 15 years and I am still listening the same album over and over and over.

The 14 songs album is playing on my winamp while I am writing this and many other times.

Am I Just conservative or the album is great,which one is true ? IMHO second.

God bless Axl Rose!

Book Review: 1000 Masterpieces of European Painting: From 1300 to 1850

Title: 1000 Masterpieces of European Painting: From 1300 to 1850
Writer: Christiane Stukenbrock , Barbara Topper
Year: 2005
Pages: 1008

As the book title already describe, the book presents the pictures and information of a thousand wonderful European paintings from Van Dyck to Leonardo and many more... . I bought it from Sevda Cenap And Music Foundation Book Store at Tunali/Ankara but the the amazon.com link is here. I absolutely recommend the book to anyone interested in arts and painting. The paper and picture qualities are high but the book is heavy as a brick:)